On October 13th Oxfam, the British aid organisation, published a report titled "Hidden Hunger in South Africa: The Faces of Hunger and Malnutrition in a Food-Secure Nation." In a press statement released with the report the organisation claimed that "One in four people in South Africa do not have enough to eat, and half the population is at risk of hunger, despite the country producing more than enough food... [L]ow incomes, rising costs, a lack of access to productive resources and climate change are amongst the reasons causing 13 million people to go to bed hungry. One family of four [with two children] was found to live on just R6 (USD$0.54) a day."
These claims were picked up and repeated across the South African media, including the SABC. The Mail & Guardian reported that "Oxfam uses statistics from the general household survey in 2012, which found that 14-million people ‘regularly experience hunger'. This means that from day to day they do not know where their next meal will come from. A further 15-million are on the verge of hunger, so any reduction to their already meagre income will push them into chronic hunger." The publication announced that that on Thursday October 16 - United Nations World Food Day - its newsroom would be trying to live off R6 a day, and it challenged its readers to do the same.
In a statement ahead of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene's Medium Term Budget Policy Statement COSATU also repeated these claims. It stated: "Even though SA is supposed to be ‘food-secure', one in every four people - that's 14 million people - go to bed hungry every night and half the population is at risk of hunger, despite the country producing more than enough food. A further 15 million are on the terrifying verge of joining the ranks of the chronically hungry."
It then quoted Rashmi Mistry, Oxfam's economic justice campaign manager, as asking: "How can this possibly be true in this day and age, in 2014, in South Africa, one of the richest countries in Africa? It is a national scandal that South Africa is a food-secure country, yet the stomachs of so many - particularly women and children - were empty. Hunger strips away people's dignity and perpetuates people's problems."
The question no-one in the media seems to have thought to ask, is are these claims accurate?
Do 1 in 4 South Africans go to bed hungry?
The Oxfam report states that "the reality is that, despite some progress since the birth of democracy in the country in 1994, one in four people [out of South Africa's population of 53 million] currently suffers hunger on a regular basis and more than half of the population live in such precarious circumstances that they are at risk of going hungry." The source the report cites for this is the Human Science Research Council's South African National Health and Nutrition Survey (SANHANES) - released in August 2013 - which, it claims, "revealed in 2013 that 26% of the population was actually facing hunger and a further 28% were at risk."
The HSRC assessed "Hunger (food insecurity)" through the methodology of the "Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project". This was originally developed by an activist organisation in the United States in the early 1990s, the Food Research and Action Center, and the questions were calibrated to detect food insecurity in a land of incredible abundance (and 34.9% adult obesity.) Using the CCHIP's methodology the HSRC asked the following eight questions of certain households:
1. Does your household ever run out of money to buy food?
2. Do you ever rely on a limited number of foods to feed your children because you are running out of money to buy food for a meal?
3. Do you ever cut the size of meals or skip meals because there is not enough money for food?
4. Do you ever eat less than you should because there is not enough money for food?
5. Do your children ever eat less than you feel they should because there is not enough money for food?
6. Do your children ever say they are hungry because there is not enough food?
7. Do you ever cut the size of your children's meals or do they ever skip meals because there is not enough money to buy food?
8. Do any of your children go to bed hungry because there is not enough money to buy food?
If the respondents answer yes to any of these questions they are then asked whether it has happened in the past 30 days and, if so, whether it has happened five or more days in the past 30 days. If the respondents answered "no" to all of these questions they were classified by the HSRC as "food secure" (45.6% fell into this category). If they answered "yes" to between one and four of these initial questions they were classified as "at risk of hunger" (28.3%) and if they answered yes to over four questions they were classified as "experience hunger (food insecure)" (26%).
There are a number of aspects of this survey that are worth noting. Firstly, it casts its net very widely. The first two questions could potentially cover many overly indebted but relatively high income families struggling to make ends meet towards the end of every month. Secondly, there is no time limit placed on the initial question. When answering "yes" to some of these questions respondents could be thinking back a few months, a year, or a few years. This potentially could inflate the affirmative response rate. Thirdly, five of the eight questions (2, 5, 6, 7 and 8) are applicable only to households with children. Fourthly, only two questions (6 and 8) deal directly with the question of hunger and then only of the children in the household. Finally, a number of these questions are highly subjective, and dependent on the perceptions of the respondents -which may differ greatly according to their class position and expectations of what constitutes an ideal diet.
To get an accurate picture of the percentage of children going hungry, at any given time, the critical data seems to be the percentage of children in households saying they are hungry, or going to bed hungry, over the past thirty days. Politicsweb asked the HSRC if they could provide this data but this request was declined. Given that the survey is only properly applicable to households with children, and the questions on hunger relate only to the children in the household, it is not clear how the results can be projected onto the population as a whole and the adult population in particular. Indeed, it is not clear how this section of the survey questionnaire could be put to households without children, at all. Again, a request to the HSRC to clarify these points was met with silence.
The HSRC did ask households, in the next section of the survey questionnaire, whether "In the past 12 months, were there times when members of your household went hungry because there was not enough food in the house to eat?" If they said yes, respondents were asked to set down in which months this occurred. The results were not published in the final SANHANES report, and Politicsweb's request for access to this data was also declined by the SAHRC.
A similar question is however asked in Statistics South Africa's General Household Survey (GHS). Since 2002 (with the exception of 2009) StatSA has asked respondents: "In the past 12 months, did any adult [or child] in this household go hungry because there wasn't enough food?" If the respondents reply "sometimes", "often" or "always" they are classified as "vulnerable to hunger". In the 2013 survey 11.4% of households and 13.4% of individuals surveyed reported some experience of hunger over the past year. Oxfam was aware of this data, as it cites the GHS on other matters, but seemingly chose not to include it in its report. On the broader question of access to food the GHS found that 23.1% of households (and 26% of individuals) had inadequate access to food, and 6.1% had severely inadequate access to food.
If the GHS estimates are accurate, it is reasonable to say that over 7 million South Africans will sometimes experience hunger over the course of a year. While this is a severe problem, and one that needs to be dealt with, it is a long way away from Oxfam's claim that "13 million people go to bed hungry" every night in South Africa. This seemingly exaggerated claim has the perverse effect of diverting attention from the estimated 1 in 20 households who actually have severely inadequate access to food - and who should be the primary focus of efforts to combat food insecurity.
The unemployment issue
In an interview with the SABC Rashmi Mistry accused government policies of having been "piecemeal" and "ineffective". Again, this is not quite correct. Food insecurity and hunger in South Africa have been substantially ameliorated, though not eradicated, over the past fifteen years by the massive expansion of social welfare, and particularly child support grants, from 2001 onwards. According to Treasury, in the 2013/2014 financial year R111 billion rand was spent on welfare grants; with 2.9 million old age grant beneficiaries, 1.1 million disability grant beneficiaries, 519 000 foster care grant beneficiaries and 11 million child support grant beneficiaries receiving social assistance. A further R5.2bn was spent on feeding 8.7 million pupils in the poorest 60% of South African schools.
The old age and disability grants currently stand at R1 350 per month, the foster care grant at R830 and the child support grant at R320 (see here - PDF). This means that a family with two small children would receive R640 a month from the state. (To give an indication of how far these grants could stretch in terms of food purchases: In July 2014 rural food prices for various staples, according to StatsSA, were as follows - A litre of full cream long life milk cost R12.48, a 700g loaf of brown bread R9.57, 5kg of maize meal R33.55, 500g of margarine R20.97, 2kg of rice R23.74, 750ml of sunflower oil R15.19, 62.5g of black tea R9.88 and 2.5kg of white sugar R28.89.)
The effect of the increase in the number of child welfare grants - from 150 000 in 2000 to 1,3m in 2002 to 7,9m in 2007 - on hunger is captured in the following graph from StatsSA's 2013 General Household Survey (GHS). As can be seen below the reported vulnerability of persons to hunger declined from 29,3% in 2002 to 13,7% in 2007, and of households from 23.8% to 10.8%, before flattening out at approximately that level (the financial crisis hit not long after).
The central obstacle to reducing those numbers further is clearly South Africa's massive and chronic unemployment problem. Curiously, in its press release Oxfam does not mention this as a significant factor behind food insecurity in South Africa. Its report however does note that the "unemployment level" is at "25% nationally". But, as the authors should know, this figure obscures the true extent of the problem. StatsSA's Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the second quarter of 2014 put South Africa's unemployment rate on the strict definition at 25,5% and on the expanded definition (including discouraged job seekers) at 35.6%. The labour absorption rate - the percentage of the population aged between 15 and 64 actually in work - was a mere 42.7%.
There seems to be a fairly clear correlation between the levels of household food insecurity by province reported in the SANHES study, and the expanded unemployment rate recorded by StatsSA, and an inverse correlation with the labour absorption rate. Gauteng and the Western Cape, the provinces with the lowest unemployment rates (on the expanded definition), and the highest labour absorption rates, have the lowest levels of food insecurity according to SANHANES. The Eastern Cape and Limpopo, the two provinces with the highest unemployment rates and the lowest labour absorption rates, have the highest levels of reported food insecurity.
While unemployment is clearly the main driver of food insecurity in South Africa - as evidenced by the moving testimonies of unemployed individuals quoted in the report - Oxfam appears completely uninterested in pressing for any of the necessary reforms needed to turn the jobs situation around in the country. In particular, it makes no call for reform of the iniquitous system whereby big business and organised labour in the metropolitan areas essentially set wage rates, in their sector, for the entire country (including the smaller towns and rural areas hardest hit by joblessness). In its recommendations the prioritisation of "decent employment" comes in at number four (a National Food Act comes in at number one) and this section does not contain any substantive proposals, just the vacuous admonition on the government and the private sector to ‘work harder'.
The inexorable rise of the maize price
Oxfam's questionable presentation of the data extends to its section on rising food prices in South Africa. The report notes that the price of maize determines "grocery shopping patterns for 64.5% of women and 35.9% of men" and an increase poses "serious problems for people living in poverty in both urban and rural areas." This is especially so, as the report notes elsewhere, as the "poorest income groups" spend "50% of their incomes on food." In this context it states:
"The commodity price of maize provides a rough indication of how food prices will behave in the coming year. From February 2013 to February 2014, the commodity price of this staple food increased by 50% (see Figure 3): In the short to medium term, this increase will affect the retail price of maize meal, increasing food insecurity. It will also affect meat and poultry producers, as maize is used as an animal feed."
The graph (below) shows a steady increase of the maize price, with some fluctuations, from low of R500 per tonne in August 2000, rising inexorably to just under R3 200 in February 2014 - a six-fold increase.
The claim of a 50% increase in the maize price last year and the graph produced to illustrate it, though accurate in a narrow sense, are misleading for two reasons. Firstly, while Oxfam's report was released in October the graph only goes up to February 2014. This is the graph, based on the same FAO data as Oxfam's, with the last seven months maize price data included:
Thus, while there was indeed a 50% increase in the white maize price - from R 2 112.40 in February 2013 to R3 172.50 in February 2014 - it subsequently fell back to R1 723.19 in September 2014.
Secondly, the graph reflects the maize price in nominal not real rand values since 2000, and as such it does not control for the effects of inflation. This is the same graph with the prices of maize in real (December 2012) Rand values.
As can be seen from the graph above while the maize price has fluctuated over the past fifteen years, in September 2014 the price was below both the historic (post-2000) average and mean. This graph inadvertently highlights perhaps the major omission of Oxfam's report. South Africa, despite its challenges when it comes to food security, remains far ahead of any other sub-Saharan African country. According to the Global Hunger Index, which is cited in the SANHANES report, the severity of hunger is lower in South Africa than any other sub-Saharan African country - as well as China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia as well - and on par with Eastern Europe, Russia and Brazil. See map below.
South Africa's relatively high levels of food security are, to a significant degree, due to its highly productive (and unsubsidised) commercial farming sector. Thanks to this sector the country, despite the low capability of most of its land, is the continent's largest maize producer and exporter. In 2013, according to FAO estimates, South Africa produced over half the maize in Southern Africa*, and just under half the maize in the entire SADC region (including Tanzania and the DRC).
The South African maize price runs between the two tracks of the import parity price (basically, the world maize price plus the cost of importing it) and export parity price (the world maize price minus the cost of getting it to an overseas market). According to Wandile Sihlobo, an economist at Grain SA the spike in the maize price between December 2013 and March 2014, last year, was due to a surge in demand for South African maize from Zimbabwe. That country imported 246 692 tons of white maize which, in turn, led to a domestic shortage in South Africa. This meant that 80 000 tons of yellow maize had to be shipped in from overseas. The graph below illustrates the resultant switch across of the maize price from export parity pricing to import parity pricing. The price began dropping as soon as domestic supplies started coming back on stream in March, after harvesting.
As can be seen from the graph the export parity price of maize is approximately half that of the import parity price. For as long as South Africa produces a surplus of maize it will track along the export parity price line most of the time. The effect of a temporary deficit, even on a regional level, is an almost immediate doubling of the maize price. The effect of a permanent deficit on food prices, and food security, would be severe. This highlights how critical our commercial farming sector is both to South Africa and the region's food security. Apart from Zimbabwe, in 2013/14 South Africa exported 161 338 tons of white maize to Botswana, 151 185 tons to Namibia, 80 852 tons to Mozambique, 48 638 tons to Lesotho and 18 998 tons to Swaziland.
It is completely inexplicable then that Oxfam fails to mention any of the threats the commercial farming sector in South Africa is facing. These include the high numbers of attacks on farms and farm murders; the strident demands by the Economic Freedom Fighters for the seizure of all farmland; the ANC's government's reopening up of farm land to tens of thousands of (what have to be mostly spurious) land claims; and the advanced plans to expropriate, without compensation, half of the value of all farms.
Given the horrific, enduring consequences of Zanu-PF's racist land seizures from 2000 onwards for Zimbabwe's food security, Oxfam should know perfectly well where current trends could potentially lead. And yet, it chooses to remain silent on this issue - instead going off at length about the risks that climate change poses.
* Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe. FAO statistics for 2013.
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