The right to food is guaranteed in South Africa’s Constitution as it is in international law. Yet food insecurity remains widespread and persistent, at levels much higher than in countries with similar levels of per capita GDP and development, such as Brazil. In this book, leading local and international researchers on food security and related policy work have come together to create the first systematic and trans-disciplinary analysis of food security and its multiple dimensions in South Africa and the southern African region. Drawing on Amartya Sen’s entitlement theory to identify the key drivers of hunger, they see food insecurity as a chronic, structurally based condition rather than only resulting from natural environmental disasters, temporary economic shocks and household vulnerabilities. The authors focus on a range of policy options and choices to provide short-term and longer-term solutions to the systemic causes of unemployment, failing rural livelihoods and traditional subsistence production. They also emphasise the linkages between the social and economic dimensions of food insecurity and use an integrative, interdisciplinary approach to analyse the reasons why these conditions persist and what can be done to address them. Importantly the book brings together work undertaken at local and national levels in new ways so that policy-makers, researchers, human rights advocates and social and economic scholars are better able to make the links between macro- and micro-processes of development.

Hunger and Poverty in South Africa: The Hidden Faces of Food Insecurity explores food insecurity as an issue of socioeconomic, political, cultural and environmental inequity and inequality. Based on extensive original research in Free State Province, South Africa, the book explores how people living in poverty make meaning of their food circumstances within the socio-cultural, political and economic contexts of post-apartheid South Africa, how they view the government’s food security policies and programs and their perceived agency to affect change. The personal narratives contained in the book show that food insecurity is shaped by many issues, among which are structural poverty, racism, attempts or non-attempts at reconciliation during and after apartheid, public health issues such as HIV/AIDS, and environmental circumstances. At a time when most discourse around food insecurity focuses on how to provide more food to people facing hunger, this book's multidimensional approach is a valuable contribution to the contemporary dialogue on poverty, food security/insecurity, sustainability and democratic agency both within South Africa and around the world. This book will be of interest to researchers in the areas of food security, multidimensional poverty, democratic agency and sustainable development, both in South Africa and internationally.

When discussing development issues in Africa, it is not sufficient to simply stress the ubiquity of failure, malnutrition, disease, predatory states and war; one also has to recognize that important aspects in the lives of millions of ordinary people have been transformed over the last five decades. The contributions in this book are rooted in extensive empirical research at local, regional and/or national level in different African countries (Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, South Africa and Uganda), while some take a pan-African view. All, however, offer insight from different analytical perspectives into the heterogeneity of poverty and development processes in Sub-Saharan Africa and confront the ideas, concepts and assumptions that lie behind pro-poor policies. The volume also encourages policy makers to choose realistic policy prescriptions in an attempt to move people out of poverty.

First Published in 1998. In discussing the moral and practical dilemmas posed by the malnourished children in Mount Kilimanjaro, the authors explore the shame associated with child hunger in relation to social organization, colonial history and global economy.

This Book is based on 100 % true story Preface "At times when I recall your life from the past, pleasure comes rushing through my neural systems mainly because having been grown up in remote rural villages of Moletjie area, I know that one might loose hope of reaching the stars." That was my buddy trying to sum up my life with few words. Poverty couldn't be the wall to boundary my potentiality, but I have built the foundation of my victory based on history. Along the thorny road to reaching my dreams, lots of salty tears escaped my ocular boundaries and I have tasted about few milliliters of them. This includes the time when the Bantu Education teachers sjamboked me to the level where I could not sit nor walk. I dropped schooling for sometimes. The life of a poor village boy was nothing but anything parallel or below zero. Indeed my history has determined my destiny. Today I'm a Fulbright Scholar. My stomach has taken many forms during my metamorphosis stage of growth and development. From a ballooned stiff stomach airbag like, caused by malnutrition and poverty at young age to an elastic fresh healthy one as a result of feeding from balanced diets and high nutritive value of daily intakes. The colonizers the Afrikaners, European gangsters and the ruthless Botha's of my country (South Africa) has planted crops on the soil of my motherland without giving it proper fertility. He harvested and emigrated with a bag full of wealth. Today the soil of our land, dry as it is, cannot even serve a mere seed of corn to germinate. Is as barren as Hannah, the wife of Elkanah in the Old testament of the Bible, but she later gave birth to a Prophet-Samuel. My motherland shall recuperate, and yesterday will never see the present day. I consider myself as a powerful seed, the seed of power that germinated and survived the apartheid of South Africa, Corporal punishment of Bantu education system, lightning's and thunderstorms of the cold blooded witches of the village while dwelling in a clay hut and shack, all this with almost empty st