Price hikes make students go hungry
Food insecurity is growing and with Covid-19’s impact on the economy, South Africans face high levels of hunger. In tertiary institutions, academic success is threatened if students go hungry.
Donald Molema, a social worker at North-West University’s student support services division that distributes food packages, said the office is swamped with requests from students.
“We also receive pleas from NSFAS students. They come to the office when they might not have received their allowances yet or they have shared it with their families, leaving them with little to survive on,” he said.
Molema joined the university in 2017 and says the division went from receiving 500 applications each semester to 1 000.
“Based on my assessment of the inflow of the applications, there is a growing need for food relief from students,” he said.
During South Africa’s hard lockdown aimed at curbing the first wave of Covid-19 infections, Molema said students and their families were desperate for food and wanted to access the university “just to have food”.
The latest Household Affordability Index by the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity group (PMBEJD) shows alarming levels of hunger in millions of households, as the cost of living keeps rising and prices in key consumer categories rise far above headline inflation.
This is especially noticeable in food prices, which makes up the biggest expense in most household budgets.
The National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) by the World Bank suggests that 30% of SA’s university students might be food insecure, compared to 26% of the general population.
In the past two months, students across the country protested against financial exclusion from universities over historical debt estimated at R9 billion. There is a strong correlation between access to funding and vulnerability to food insecurity.
The fuel price hike implemented in April also increased the cost of production and transportation of food, particularly staple foods such as maize meal and wheat. This is because most of these commodities in South Africa are transported largely by road and thus sensitive to fuel-price changes.
According to Paula Knipe, a doctoral researcher at the Dullah Omar Institute’s Socio-Economic Rights Project research division at the University of the Western Cape, food insecurity is underestimated as a psychological or emotional stressor that can affect student completion rates and other behaviours.
“Research has highlighted the impact of food insecurity on tertiary students’ educational outcomes and wellbeing. A 2015 study found that severe food insecurity may be contributing to the high attrition rates at universities,” said Knipe.
The first step to addressing student food insecurity is the enactment of a framework law on the right to food in South Africa. “Framework legislation on the right to food can help identify the responsible departments for the realisation of the right to food,” Knipe concluded.
