Despite producing enough food, South Africa is experiencing a deepening hunger crisis. (Madelene Cronje)
In November 2011, the Sowetan reported on four children from Verdwaal in the North West who had set out on foot to find their mother and sister, who had left home in search of food.
Having walked more than 10km without sustenance, the children succumbed to hunger and dehydration, their bodies found on a lonely stretch of veld. Post-mortem examinations confirmed that they perished from hunger and thirst.
The heartbreaking case of Sebengu, 9, Mmapule, 7, Olebogeng, 6, and Oarabetswe, 2 shouldn’t belong to South Africa’s past. Yet the latest State of Household Food Insecurity in South Africa Report 2026 makes clear that a deepening hunger crisis persists today.
Millions of South Africans struggle daily to find enough food in a country that produces more than enough to feed its people. The horror of the Verdwaal children’s deaths haunts the present because hunger has outlived public shock and become a statistic.
Fourteen years later, South Africa remains a country where children die because there is nothing to eat. This is not the result of drought, war or famine. It is not because South Africa lacks food. It is because of political failure, structural inequality and a state that has normalised hunger in a country whose Constitution explicitly recognises the right to food.
Hunger in South Africa is not episodic but chronic, with many households unable to meet their basic food needs even with access to external assistance. Nearly 70% of surveyed households experience moderate to severe food insecurity. One in four households go days without eating.
Since 2019, the number of people experiencing severe hunger has risen by more than a million. Most disturbing is what the report reveals about children. Adults routinely skip meals so that children can eat. Yet between a quarter and a third of children in these households experience severe hunger.
Hunger is also not hidden from children. More than three-quarters of households report speaking to children about food shortages. Children are not shielded from scarcity; they are drawn into it — physically, emotionally and psychologically. Hunger becomes part of family conversation, shaping stress, anxiety and childhood itself.
All this unfolds in a country that produces enough food to feed its population — and loses or wastes vast quantities of it — while corruption drains public resources meant to support the most vulnerable.
It is impossible to separate hunger from governance failures: from hollowed-out social services, mismanaged programmes and a political culture in which the poor absorb the cost of state decay.
Our Constitution promises the right to food. That promise rings hollow when children sleep hungry.