As we begin 2024, I would like to thank our benefactors, both fiscal and food, for the extremely generous gifts they have given SA Harvest, enabling us to feed millions of hungry South Africans each year. Although 2023 was challenging, it was a successful year and we are delighted that in December we reached our 51st millionth nutritious meal delivered since we started operating four years ago.
While we are proud of this achievement, we are cognisant that while charity feeding is essential in South Africa – 20 million people are on a spectrum of serious food vulnerability, which ranges from families who run out of money for food early in the month to people who go to sleep hungry every night, which includes millions of children – it does not end hunger.
Ending hunger is our mission and it is in the integration of charity feeding and what we have termed systemic solutions, that will help us to realise this mission.
A very significant aspect of the systemic approach is to get the government to fulfil its obligations with respect to Sections 27 and 28 of the South African constitution, which states that every South African has the right to enough food (section 27) and that every child has the right to sufficient nutrition (section 28). Our leaders have been woefully remiss in not implementing anything close to what is required to deliver on these rights with results no less than catastrophic for this country.
To help in this process, SA Harvest has assembled a team of lawyers, researchers, economists, journalists and others to prepare a constitutional ‘argument’ showing what can be done to implement interventions that would make massive and fast changes to the hunger and malnutrition situation in South Africa. The bottom line is that the ‘massive, fast’ changes can only be made by government, and it is a shame ours has not taken the necessary action, especially in a country where there is enough food for all!
Perhaps the most damning statistic is that of malnutrition amongst our children. Almost 30% of South African children under 5 are stunted. A 2016 South African Human Rights Commission report on the Right to Access Nutritious Food, highlighted that despite South Africa being food secure at a National level, a high prevalence of hunger, as measured by the evidence of stunting, wasting and micro- nutrient deficiencies, persists. It says that in attempting to source a remedy, legal or otherwise, the gap between these two seemingly contradictory realities must be filled with great urgency.
Our new branch in Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape is the living example of SA Harvest’s integration of charity and systemic solutions. Here we employed unemployed youth from the area to run our company and, at the same time, we have funded their training in government-accredited agri-business programmes ensuring that that when, and if, they want to move on, they will be fully prepared to fend for themselves, and become proud, independent, and productive participants in the South African economy.
Currently SA Harvest employs 35 people with a further 6 external consultants, we have nine trucks countrywide – Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and the Eastern Cape – and we have delivered 51 million nutritious meals in the four years since our launch. To keep up this extraordinary effort we need funds. Fiscal gifts from corporations, foundations, high nett worth individuals and whoever else wants to help us serve millions of very hungry South Africans, are the lifeblood of those whom we feed and of our ability to continue our work.
I hope I have managed to give you a high-level understanding of who and what we are and the support that we require moving forward .
With gratitude,
Alan Browde