"We'll fight this little struggle": alleviating hunger in South Africa

Abstract

In post-apartheid South Africa, citizens have on several instances resorted to the use of social protest or public dissent as a means of improving their access to essential socioeconomic amenities. The protection of citizens from chronic hunger has been a dominant theme among policy actors in South Africa, most of whom have expansive mandates to ensure citizens have adequate access to food. However, the number of people facing hunger remains high, giving rise to questions about the best approach to address chronic hunger, specifically, through social protest. Social protest, as used here, consists of struggles or resistance against government actions or inactions. Ironically, whiles social protest has been used on different fronts (housing, health, education and wrongful eviction), chronic hunger or lack of people's access to adequate food hardly becomes a pivot around which protesters seek to bring about reform. Based on examples from selected countries, the discussion notes that protest is an effective tool for protecting citizens from food poverty. However, before protest could influence food policy, there is the need for mobilisation of all relevant actors to challenge existing (inadequate) food policies. The paper identified various factors that have contributed to and acted as a hindrance against food protest in various jurisdictions and examined how these factors have prevented widespread food protest in South Africa. "Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny And in this judgment there is no partiality So arm in arms, with arms We'll fight this little struggle 'Cause that's the only way We can overcome our little trouble."(1)