South Africa was heading for township food disaster
We welcome the Minister of COGTA’s amendment of the lockdown regulations to permit informal trading of food supplies.
This amendment recognises that adequate access to food, in poor communities, is not through supermarkets alone and that day-to-day fresh produce is frequently purchased from informal vendors.
Yesterday I spent the day in Khayelitsha and I witnessed endless queues snaking around the streets on the outside of every supermarket. I was told that some people had been queuing from 3am.
The queuing undermines the purpose of the lockdown – to limit spread of the virus through contact with other people.
Regulations that force township residents to purchase fresh produce only from supermarkets fail to take into account the significant role that informal markets play in food supply for low-income families.
Supermarkets do not provide credit when money is in short supply. They do not unbundle bulk packaging so that smaller, affordable, quantities can be purchased. And, they are not easily accessible to the poorest of residents in township areas.
Food security studies have shown that high income areas have 8 times as many supermarkets per household as those in the lowest income areas. There simply isn’t enough penetration of supermarkets in townships in South Africa.
This is why the City of Cape Town’s recent proposal to restrict shopping hours was wrong and unrealistic. It assumed a middle-class approach to food purchasing.
With the restriction on movement, the limiting of minibus taxi capacity, the low penetration of supermarkets in townships and the shutting down of informal food trading South African townships were fast-tracking to become food deserts – with inadequate supply and access to healthy food products for poor families.
It is urgent that towns and cities immediately implement an efficient and quick process to provide the required written permission for informal traders to trade food supplies.
I call on Mayors and Municipal Managers to implement these amendments urgently.
Issued by Brett Herron, Secretary General, GOOD, 2 April 2020
