Over a quarter of children aged five and under in South Africa are stunted, meaning they do not have sufficient food to develop properly – a catastrophe that needs to be urgently addressed. However, what hungry people do not need are policy proposals that will lead to more poverty — the major reason there is such a prevalence of food insecurity in the first place.
The foreign-funded NGO lobby, specifically HEALA, is urging people to sign a petition asking the National Treasury to double the sugar tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, while falsely promising that if the Health Promotion Levy (HPL) is increased, it will result in an increase in the monthly child grant to prevent hunger.
The petition is titled "Help increase child support grant by raising the Health Promotion Levy".
A tweet promoting the petition reads: “By signing the petition, you can support increasing the child support grant by raising the HPL to 20%. Help provide affordable, nutritious food for all.”
Child hunger is not spoken about enough in South Africa, and a recent baseline study commissioned by the formerly named department of agriculture, rural development and land reform, released this year, found a prevalence of stunting in children aged five and younger at around 28%. The study, conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), concludes that this stunting figure has remained constant for at least a decade.
An independent study by Nedlac found that the sugar tax introduced in 2018 led to a loss of almost 16,000 jobs in the sugar and beverage industry.
Given the lack of progress in addressing child hunger, it is laudable that the issue is being raised. However, it is deeply cynical for an NGO to promise to fix this issue when it has no means of doing so. HEALA is taking advantage of vulnerable people.
Consider the basic maths. The annual cost of the R370 social relief of distress grant is R36bn. The sugar tax brought in R7.9bn over three financial years (from 2018-21), according to figures provided by finance minister Enoch Godongwana in response to a parliamentary question.
How doubling the sugar tax would pay for an increase in the R530 child grant is anyone’s guess, but the numbers simply don’t add up. As health lobbyists know, the sugar tax is not ring-fenced for spending on health, grants, nutrition programmes, or anything else. It goes into the general tax collection pool.
Yet facts don’t seem to matter to the sugar lobby.
Interestingly, HEALA is funded by the Global Health Advocacy Incubator, an initiative of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which garners its funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
HEALA, on its website, claims it is fighting for stricter food labelling and higher sugar taxes while being concerned about hunger. In their misguided effort, these American-funded NGOs are dictating food policy from wealthy offshore desks, engaging in a kind of "nutrition colonialism". One must ask what wealthy Americans know about South Africa's food issues that local experts do not.
We should look to local studies and local scientists for a better understanding of hunger and nutrition in South Africa. The HRSC study, produced for the department of agriculture, conducted a detailed analysis of hunger at the district level across the country and recommended increasing the number of people with access to land, as hunger figures remained high but were slightly lower for households with land access compared to those without.
One of the most obvious interventions to address malnutrition and stunting, and to increase the range of foods people can access — meats, fruit, dairy, legumes and vegetables — would be economic growth and employment, as the study noted. Allowing subsistence farmers to retain access to land where they can grow some food is another approach, though it may not be sufficient on its own.
Instead, HEALA is pushing for a doubling of the sugar tax — a policy that has already cost nearly 16,000 people including small-scale growers their livelihoods. If land access and economic growth are beneficial for addressing nutrition, why push a policy that reduces employment and undermines subsistence farming?
An independent study by Nedlac found that the sugar tax introduced in 2018 led to a loss of almost 16,000 jobs in the sugar and beverage industry.
The sugar tax and job losses undermined food security — the very issue HEALA now claims to care about.
And what has the sugar tax achieved?
Research published in the prestigious Lancet Planetary Health, conducted by pro-sugar tax researchers at the Priceless SA institute at Wits University and funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, found before the sugar tax, the average person in South Africa consumed around three teaspoons (16g) of sugar per day in sugar-sweetened beverages, based on detailed shopping data. This is far less than the maximum of 10 teaspoons recommended by the World Health Organization.
This average dropped slightly to two teaspoons or around 10g in 2019 after the tax.
This points to reduced energy intake in a food-insecure environment, which is hardly something to celebrate. It’s quite unclear how reducing sugar intake in drinks from an already low, safe level is considered a success. The health lobbyists' research shows the average consumer wasn’t drinking excessive sugar in beverages in the first place.
Meanwhile, health researchers behind the tax at Priceless have used a Sunday paper to accuse the sugar industry of following the "big tobacco" playbook, distorting the truth and being misleading. HEALA frequently mentions "big sugar" in their adverts and recently a researcher who works with them compared sugar to heroin in a radio interview.
HEALA and Priceless consistently fail to grasp the realities of the sugar industry. Over 24,000 small-scale farmers are involved in sugar production in South Africa. It’s not just "big sugar" — it’s many livelihoods, especially in rural provinces where employment options are limited.
These vulnerable people are the most affected by the sugar tax, not some "big sugar" entity laughing all the way to the bank.
If we are to address malnutrition, hunger, child stunting, and obesity in South Africa, we need to have an honest debate based on facts. What is unhelpful are insults, such as labelling the sugar industry as acting like "big tobacco", false promises of increased child grants, or the denial that jobs were lost when the sugar tax was introduced.
In the end, what South Africa needs is jobs, less hunger and a better understanding of local food security challenges — not top-down solutions driven by foreign interests funding local NGOs.
• Andrew Russell is vice-chairperson of SA Canegrowers
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