Animal welfare activist Cora Bailey was making peanut butter sandwiches for a group of hungry children who had stopped by her shelter on their way home from school when a shy child caught her attention.
The child had sidled up to her, hoping to speak to her.
“There is no food at my home. Do you have something for me to take back to my family please?” the child whispered to her, prompting her to hand over the only food she had left — a 2kg bag of maize meal.
Bailey runs CLAW (Community Led Animal Welfare), a shelter and clinic situated on what was Durban Deep Mine property on the West Rand. And while its purpose is to aid animals, CLAW is increasingly becoming a feeding scheme for local children who stop by when they are hungry.
“We try our best to feed whoever comes to us. Every single day about 20 children will come through, sometimes a bit more, sometimes less, and we do what we can.
We have loaves of bread and buckets of peanut butter and we’ll give them a sandwich because we know there’s nothing at home. Sometimes we have jam, and occasionally Oros,” she said.
The plight of these children is the stark reality for one out of every five South African children under six, according to the South African Early Childhood Review 2024, a new research report released last week.
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The review tracks data on the status of children under six years old and shows clearly how life for the country’s young children has worsened in almost every way. Jointly published by Ilifa Labantwana, the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town,the department of planning, monitoring & evaluation in the presidency, the department of basic education, the Grow Great Campaign and DataDrive2030, the publication highlights the desperate plight of the youngest and most vulnerable in the country.
It details how rocketing food inflation now means that the Child Support Grant (CSG) of R530 a month is no longer enough to feed a child and the number of starving children requiring hospitalisation has increased by 25% in five years.
The CSG, intended for poor caregivers to provide for children's nutrition and basic needs is now substantially below the food poverty line — R760 a month in 2023, calculated by Stats SA.
Increased food prices and soaring electricity and transport costs mean the buying power of the grant has not kept pace with inflation, and an estimated 1,000 children a year are dying of severe acute malnutrition in hospital, according to Medical Research Council figures.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and nowhere near the full and true picture,” Mervyn Abrahams of the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity (PMBJED) group told the Sunday Times.
The PMBJED publishes a monthly household affordability index which monitors food prices and tracks what it costs to feed a person across different age gaps and genders. They have found that the cost of a basic nutritious diet for girls and boys between three and nine years old is R821.30 a month.
“Our data shows that the poverty line, while it’s a useful index, has also not kept pace with inflation and reality in general. We work on averages, and so we can say that the CSG is 30% below the poverty line and then 40% below the average actual costs calculated by our household affordability index.”
Abrahams said one of the arguments given by authorities is that there are also many school feeding schemes that are helping.
School feeding schemes are good and useful and welcome. But it doesn’t unpack what happens for children under five who are starving at home and by the time they get to school they are stunted and the damage already done is practically irreversible
— The PMBJED's Mervyn Abrahams
“School feeding schemes are good and useful and welcome. But it doesn’t unpack what happens for children under five who are starving at home and by the time they get to school they are stunted and the damage already done is practically irreversible,” Abrahams said.
The review points out that of the 13-million children receiving the CSG, 4.3-million are under six years old, and 2-million are in the 0-2 age group.
“Restoring the CSG to the food poverty line would be an administratively simple and effective way of improving nutrition for young children as it puts money directly in the hands of the children’s caregivers,” said Abrahams.
He said a key challenge was that the youngest children, especially infants, are most likely to be excluded.
“This has been a perpetual problem and has worsened since the Covid-19 pandemic. Enrolling eligible infants into the CSG from birth will require a deliberate and collaborative effort by the relevant departments, including health, home affairs, social development and Sassa,” was a key recommendation to resolving the exclusion problem for infants and improving nutritional outcomes for the poorest children,” he said.
Abrahams said increasing the grant from R530 to R760 was what they were recommending as a first step.
“The thing is that in rural areas the CSG is paid out for one particular child, but that child doesn’t live alone, is not the only one eating from the pot,” Abrahams said.
“Something we have picked up on is that an increasing amount of money is being spent on electricity because when you buy food for the month you need to preserve it and then you need to prepare it, so you need a fridge and a stove. The demands on the grant are getting heavier in the battle to keep children away from malnutrition,” he said.
Children in rural parts of the country have historically been the most vulnerable to poverty and poor nutrition, but now we are seeing a rise everywhere – even in the wealthier urban provinces of Gauteng and the Western Cape
— Dr Edzani Mphaphuli, executive director of Grow Great
“Children in rural parts of the country have historically been the most vulnerable to poverty and poor nutrition, but now we are seeing a rise everywhere — even in the wealthier urban provinces of Gauteng and the Western Cape,” said Dr Edzani Mphaphuli, executive director of NGO Grow Great..
Malnutrition is difficult to reverse, with stunting the result of chronic undernutrition. It is the most common form of malnutrition in South Africa, affecting one in four children under five years.
“Stunting leads to inequality because stunted children are more likely to grow up to be poor, unskilled, unemployed, and suffer from chronic diseases,” said Mphaphuli.
“They will go on to become labourers and take up the lowest paying jobs. And then they will have children that they will not be able to feed properly and so the cycle perpetuates,” Abrahams said.
The status of children under six, according to the review, has not improved in any way over the past three years. Data shows that 29% live in homes with no water supply, 22% have inadequate sanitation, 70% live below the upper bound poverty line set at R1,417pp/month, and 39% live in food poverty.
Bailey has witnessed the sinking situation, watching how people are starting to chop down the trees near the shelter for wood to burn so they can cook and keep warm.
“About every half-hour a mother will arrive here to ask for food, some with little ones in tow. Even a week or so after receiving the grant, because the whole family needs feeding and the money doesn’t go far enough.”
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