South Africa's hungry cities-the 'canary down the mine' [1] World Food Day (WFD) will be 'celebrated' on October 16 in honour of the founding of the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1945. This year's theme is 'Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition'. There is little to celebrate-our news bulletins inform us that one in two South African families are struggling to put food on the table. This stark reality is outlined in Leonie Joubert's book The Hungry Season: Feeding Southern Africa's Cities [2] that came into my hands a few months ago. Written in accessible style, and using the device of tracing, chapter by chapter, a typical meal for a series of 'families' , the author portrays the food insecurity faced by South Africa's (SA's) town and city dwellers. 'Family' ranges from children being raised in an impoverished township of De Aar, but rounded up daily by a kind mother figure for a bath, a change of clothes and the single meal they are likely to have that day, to a plakkerskamp 'family' of poor, jobless whites reliant on food donations, to Karoo citizens dependent for their monthly food on hampers sold to them on 'grant payout day' , to an Indian family in Natal, whose plump figures hint at their higher risk of type 2 diabetes and other non-communicable diseases. [1] In producing what really is a treatise, Joubert collaborated with academic colleagues with expertise in diverse fields. Among them was Jane Battersby, an urban, social and cultural geographer and member of the African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN), who along with Milla McLachlan offers an Editorial in this issue of the SAMJ which is aimed at healthcare personnel. [1] Two-thirds of SA's populace has become urbanised, following an rural-urban shift, which is set to continue at its present rate of 2% per annum. [3] People have moved principally to 'enjoy' the advantages of city life: education for their children, access to clinics and hospitals and the chance of economic security through employment. But, these latter expectations have, all too frequently, not been realised. Over 40% of the population is jobless and many citizens find themselves living in shacks in 'informal settlements' on the peripheries of towns, [4] and struggling to survive on ~R500 per month. [5] The situation would be much worse were it not for our country's well-developed system of social grants in the form of old age pensions, disability grants (that go also to those with HIV/AIDS) and child support grants. [6] The hope must be that 5 million taxpayers will sustain payment of these grants to the 18 million citizens who presently receive them! In leaving their rural homes, people lose the prospect of providing food for themselves through subsistence farming. As Joubert's treatise confirms, and as surveys show, [7] a third of households in Cape Town, Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg experience serious hunger. The problem, as Battersby and McLachlan [1] point out, is not that food is unavailable but rather that people are too poor ...
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