The 27th of April is Freedom Day in South Africa. Jane Battersby and Scott Drimie (Stellenbosch University) look back at the ideals of the Freedom Charter and what they can tell us about addressing food and nutrition security today.

Picture credit: Samantha Reinders for the Nourished Child Project

"If you read the Freedom Charter, the call for plentiful food and no one going hungry is in the same section as the calls for decent housing, for having preventative health schemes that are run by the state, for the building of suburbs where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, crèches and social centres. The collective authors of the charter knew that the provision of food cannot be separated from the provision of other fundamental basic services and infrastructure, and yet somehow this has been missed by our government. And in missing this, they have created food security programmes that are disconnected from the other core elements of our lives.”

Please read more on this story as published in Daily Maverick: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-04-24-food-for-thought-the-freedom-charter-and-freedom-from-hunger/