By Dr Olayinka Oluwakemi Adeniyi, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and Prof Ebenezer Durojaye, Prof of Human Rights at the Centre for Human Rights.
As the world commemorates World Food Day on 16 October, South Africa must confront a fundamental contradiction. Our Constitution recognises access to sufficient food as a fundamental right, yet millions of people still live in households where access to adequate food cannot be guaranteed. Hunger is therefore not only a problem of poverty, unemployment, food prices or agriculture – it is also a human rights issue.
Section 27(1)(b) of the Constitution guarantees everyone the right of access to sufficient food and water, while section 27(2) requires the state to take reasonable legislative and other measures, within the constraints of available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right. Children receive additional protection under section 28(1)(c), which guarantees the right to basic nutrition. These guarantees are reinforced by international and African human rights standards, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which South Africa has ratified. The significance is straightforward: food is not a matter of governmental generosity – it is a right linked to dignity, equality and accountability.
The constitutional gap
Despite these constitutional guarantees, recent evidence shows how far South Africa remains from realising the right to food for everyone. Statistics South Africa’s General Household Survey 2025 found that 22% of households experienced inadequate or severely inadequate access to food, up from 17.8% in 2019. The proportion of individuals vulnerable to hunger also increased from 11.1% to 14.7% over the same period. In the Northern Cape, inadequate or severely inadequate food access affected 43% of households. In practical terms, these figures represent families cutting meal sizes, eating less often, reducing dietary diversity or relying on cheaper and less nutritious food.
South Africa’s challenge is therefore not simply whether food exists in shops and markets, but whether people can afford and reliably access an adequate, nutritious diet. A supermarket full of food does not secure the right to food for a household that cannot afford what is on the shelves. Unemployment, unstable income, rising transport and electricity costs, spatial inequality and other household pressures all shape the ability to obtain adequate food. Climate-related shocks, such as droughts, floods and extreme heat, can further disrupt production, livelihoods, infrastructure and prices. The right to food must therefore be understood in terms of adequacy, accessibility, affordability and sustainability, not simply the availability of food.
From programmes to rights-based governance
South Africa already has important interventions, including social grants, school nutrition programmes, agricultural support and food-relief measures. In 2025, 50.6% of households contained at least one person receiving a social grant, illustrating the central role of social protection. But programmes alone do not amount to coherent rights-based governance. The crucial question is whether policies on food, agriculture, nutrition, social protection, health, employment and poverty-reduction measures work together to progressively realise the constitutional right.
A rights-based response requires government to treat food security as a cross-government responsibility, rather than primarily as an agricultural issue. Food policy intersects with social development, health, education, employment, trade, competition, local government, land, water and climate policy. It also requires measurable indicators: are fewer people going hungry, are nutritious diets becoming more affordable, and are interventions reaching those most at risk? Policy must pay attention to nutrition as well as survival, and the experiences of women-headed households, children, unemployed people, informal workers, rural communities and marginalised urban residents should inform policy design.
Accountability is equally important. Progressive realisation cannot become a language for indefinite postponement. Government should strengthen school and early-childhood nutrition programmes, align social protection more closely with the cost of a nutritious diet, support smallholder and emerging farmers with access to land, water, inputs and markets, and reduce food losses through better storage and transport. These measures need clear targets, coordination across departments and regular public monitoring so that progress can be assessed rather than assumed.
Innovation must include governance
The 2026 World Food Day theme, ‘Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.’, rightly draws attention to innovation. Climate-smart agriculture, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, improved irrigation and more efficient production systems can all contribute to food security. But South Africa also needs institutional and legal innovation; innovation that should mean connecting constitutional rights to budgets, policy, implementation, data and accountability. It should include systems that identify communities at risk before deprivation becomes acute. These systems should also strengthen local food networks, reduce food loss and waste, and improve access to nutritious food.
The challenge is not to establish the right to food anew, but to ensure that the right already recognised in the Constitution and reinforced by international and African human-rights standards translates into practical action and measurable results.
A whole-of-society contribution
Government remains the primary constitutional duty-bearer, but the realisation of the right to food also benefits from meaningful contributions by individuals, communities, civil society, businesses, universities and faith-based organisations. Communities can support food gardens, cooperatives and local food networks; individuals can reduce food waste and support local producers; civil-society organisations can provide nutrition education, rights awareness, monitoring and advocacy; and businesses can reduce food losses, redirect safe surplus food and support small-scale producers. Universities and community institutions can contribute research, innovation and locally grounded solutions. These efforts should complement, not replace, state responsibility – a constitutional right must never be reduced to charity.
World Food Day should therefore be more than a commemoration. It should prompt a practical assessment of whether South Africa’s laws, policies, budgets and institutions are translating constitutional promises into lived reality. Thirty years after the adoption of the Constitution, persistent food insecurity raises a simple but urgent question: what does a constitutional right mean if those who hold it still cannot reliably put adequate, nutritious food on the table? In a constitutional democracy, an empty plate is not only evidence of hunger. It is also a call for action and accountability.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Pretoria.
