The plate divide: Food inequality in Joburg

by Ruby Delahunt | Dec 15, 2024 | Indepth2024

The right to food is enshrined in the South African Constitution, yet millions of people are still food insecure. In Jo’burg, hunger does not manifest evenly – it is a consequence of inequality, the ghost that haunts this metropolis.

Johannesburg has always been a city of extremes. It was never intended to be an equal city and today it still tears at the seams trying to accommodate the two extreme ends of the economic spectrum – and all the people who fall in between. 

As a city that contains such a wide array of lifestyles, from the moneyed elite to people just scraping by, our culture reflects a swathe of differences, all with their own traditions, values and tastes. Nowhere is this more evident than in our food.

Perhaps this is why Jo’burg was voted the second-best city in the world for food in May 2024. There is a wealth of restaurants in Jo’burg that display the city’s diversity with their creative and delectable cuisine.

Time Out, which bestowed Jo’burg with this ranking, gave special mention to Braamfontein, ‘the pulse of the city’, for its food. Time Out recognised the ‘innovative ventures combining the forces of food and culture’ in the area. 

Indeed, Braam has an abundance of phenomenal places to eat. But the award does not acknowledge that this is not the Braam most people experience. 

For most South Africans, food is a tool of survival, not something to be savoured. For 63.5% of South African families, food insecurity is an everyday struggle. 

In the four square kilometers of Braamfontein, the city’s vast gap between rich and poor is quite clear in the pervasive food inequality. 

How is it that being able to eat is still a major hurdle for people living in the city – even for those living around a prestigious university and in a gentrified urban area?

The many faces of Braamfontein: the suburb as a case study

Braamfontein is a stellar example of the past 30 years of democracy distilled into one place. In the late ’90s, Braam was run down and tired, neglected in the face of all the overwhelming reworking that needed to be done by the new government. 

But in 2002, the Johannesburg Development Agency embarked on a multimillion-rand regeneration programme for Braam, recognising its importance to Jo’burg as an economic hub. 

Since then, Braam has bloomed: R4-billion of private investment has been poured into the area, and it has become the place to be for many young professionals with cash to burn. 

To many Jo’burgers today, Braam is synonymous with trendy bars, beautiful street art and, of course, delicious food. 

But Braam is so representative of post-apartheid South Africa because this change, although real, is limited – and only certain people get to bask in its glow. 

On the outskirts of this shiny, new Braam, struggling students and residents still live – and still need to eat. What they have access to reflects dire levels of food insecurity and the unequal nature of access to food in South Africa. 

The award-winning Salvation Cafe, and the sophisticated Olives & Plates both sit within Braam’s perimeters, small enclaves of cosmopolitan cuisine that in no way align with the average Braam resident’s wallet. 

Around the corner and over the way are the everyday food spots that Braam residents actually frequent: fast-food joints, spaza shops and feeding schemes. 

These are the many faces of Braamfontein, all painting a picture of the complex and devastating way that food accessibility still stands as a major marker of inequality, starkly segregating South Africans even today.

Savouring the city

Remko van Niekerk is the co-owner of Salvation Cafe, which was established in 2006. 

Salvation Cafe is nestled in the heart of 44 Stanley, among boutique stores and coffee shops. Van Niekerk calls it “an artisanal destination” – a place where people’s creations, including food creations, are treated like art. 

As he sees it, “44 Stanley has mostly remained an oasis in the urban jungle of Jozi”, despite the changes in the area.

The café is a popular brunch spot under the cover of trees, surrounded by hanging pot plants, and complete with an outdoor fountain. Everything about it is meant to attract patrons from Westcliff and other affluent Northern suburbs.

Although Van Niekerk says gentrification has increased in the area, he and his staff have also had to deal with the infrastructure issues that plague Braam, like power and water outages.

To combat such expenses while still maintaining a profit, he says the restaurant’s “prices will just have to keep going up”, particularly given the need to pay for alternative energy sources like generators.

On top of this, Van Niekerk’s boss (and wife), chef Claudia Giannoccaro, “is not keen on using lower quality ingredients, thus prices will have to go up accordingly”. 

Indeed, Salvation Cafe meals are nutritious, fresh and tasty, loaded with greens and healthy carbs. Their prices reflect this. Burgers range between R130 and R150, salads between R90 and R138, and most lunches cost about R118 (unless you want the teriyaki salmon, which is Salon Qualitaire).

A five-minute drive away on the quiet end of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) West Campus, Olives & Plates Wits Club and Conference is housed in a Transvaal vernacular building, with a gorgeous courtyard surrounded by rose bushes and, yes, a fountain. 

It is run by sisters Litza Frangos and Andria Neophytou and their husbands, Apo and Dimitri.

The owners of Olives & Plates, who declined requests for interviews, have grown their business into a successful chain of restaurants after originally beginning as canteen caterers for Wits staff. The business was shut down during the #FeesMustFall protests, after which the owners decided to take the business in a different direction. 

Inspired by the owners’ Greek roots, the restaurant focuses on elevating classic meals like toasted sandwiches and salads while adding a Grecian flair. Lunches here cost between R150 and R200. Expensive fillet steaks seem to be a speciality and are regular menu picks.

But a restaurant that charges R90 for a fruit salad is a bizarre sight on Wits campus, where students have little choice in what they eat and often go hungry. 

So, although fresh food is delivered into Braam every day, the fridges of many students in residence sit empty. What this speaks to, and what the statistics reflect, is that food insecurity is clearly not an issue of supply, but an issue of access.

Walking the breadline

If you walk east from Olives & Plates for about 10 minutes, you will reach The Sanctuary, a beautiful white building that is home to the Wits Citizenship and Community Outreach (WCCO) programme. Every week, the WCCO feeds about 1,000 food-insecure students, who must stand in a long queue to receive their daily meal. Three days a week, the WCCO hands out food parcels of basic groceries to students in need.

Karuna Singh, the WCCO manager, says that in five years the organisation went from handing out “20 parcels to 3,000 parcels” every week.

With ever-rising food prices and stagnant grocery budgets, many students need extra help now more than ever. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) grocery budget has increased only 10% (about R150) over the past four years, whereas food prices increased 50% during the same period.

Need far outweighs what the WCCO can provide, and even what it does offer depends on the tenuous supply of charitable donations. In fact, since 2017, the donations the WCCO has received have been halved as companies slowly pull back. 

“The food bank is not sustainable; the hot meals are not sustainable,” Singh says. To mitigate this, the WCCO has set up food commons, growing vegetables around campus that give students food sovereignty and sustainable, fresh options.

The students at the food bank are not destitute. Mostly, they are young people skating along the line of functional poverty; children of single parents or oldest children having to send some of their NSFAS money home each month. 

Rivaldo Jantjies, a fellow journalism student at Wits, survives each month from the money his mom can send him. “I can only buy essentials, you know – noodles, bread, peanut butter, milk, sugar – the basic things I need to survive.” 

“When it got to the point [at which] I no longer had those basic things, I would go to [the] WCCO,” he says. 

Walking past students on campus, you might not see it, but “a lot of students are struggling”, Jantjies observes. “The lines [at the WCCO] are always long.” 

Kea Maphila, an international relations honours student, spoke to the all-too-common experience of students in desperate situations while awaiting NSFAS funding. 

“My first year, I only got approved in September”, she tells me. In the interim, she says her mom ‘was paying for my res and giving me allowance… It wasn’t a nice experience.’

Maphila’s situation was manageable, but for many students this would have been catastrophic.

NSFAS provides a stipend for groceries, which is usually about R1,650, but subject to change. “My budget is around R1,000,” Maphila says, which is “enough for groceries, but only for groceries”.

For Maphila, food insecurity is a consuming force, forcing students to prioritise their basic survival. “It’s stressful not knowing when your next meal is, but you’re supposed to be at class at 8am, concentrating,” she says. 

Thoughtfully, she tells me: “It seeps into every area of your life… you can’t go on with the rest of your day. It removes so much integrity from a person.”

Integrity is a major part of food insecurity, particularly in a social environment like a campus; inequality among students is often emphasised by the type of food they can afford. 

This leads back to basic economic inequality – which, in South Africa, is a racial issue, due to the enduring effects of apartheid.

Food insecurity does not exist in a vacuum and food inequality does not sit squarely within the confines of Braam. It is a countrywide problem – an unsolved one, despite promises and attempts by the government.

Zooming out: the economics of inequality

If someone is shopping on a monthly NSFAS allowance of R1,650, a South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) pension of R1,280, a monthly domestic worker’s salary of R3,349, or receives the national minimum wage of R,4400 a month, groceries in today’s economy are almost unaffordable.

The National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC) prices a basic food basket at R1,280.11 as of August 2024. 

This is for a basket of 28 items. But for a basket of just nine basic items (maize, margarine, peanut butter, bananas, potatoes, IQF chicken, black tea, sugar and long-life milk) the prices are still egregious.

Low-priced items will always be the first choice for poor people when buying food. Grocery stores are aware of this fact, enticing them to make their own brand of cheaper products for mass sale. 

Closely related to the food insecurity and inequality conundrum is the persistent issue of nutrition insecurity. Across these four major grocery chains, the same product, due to their varying product value and price, will ultimately hold different nutritional values.

Woolworths margarine has the clear nutritional edge: it is the most energising and fatty margarine, but not too packed with sodium. It costs R32.99, in comparison to R17.99 at Checkers, the least nutritious option.

A research paper from the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security explains the reason behind this unfair price leveraging. The research team found that “the minimalist stance of the government” regarding grocery price setting has granted food companies free reign, with “big retail chains [emerging] as custodians of standards, dictating what should be supplied, how and in what form”. 

This leaves South Africans vulnerable to the whim of these profit-seeking companies, which can and will change their prices at any time. 

Malnutrition is a grave danger, particularly for children – it causes lifelong physical damage and remains a major cause of child mortality in South Africa.

Compounding the threat of artificial scarcity is food scarcity brought about by general government incompetence. 

Although South Africa produces enough food to feed its population, making it one of the most food secure countries in Africa, millions of people cannot eat. Dr Tobias Doyer, chief executive of Grain SA, says this is because “food security stands on two legs” – the security of access to food and the ability to obtain food – which the government has not provided for poor citizens. 

“South African farmers produce enough food. The problem is that millions of South Africans have become poorer with less ability to buy food – causing famine,” Doyer says.

Groceries cost more and money buys less. In an unregulated food market and struggling economy, it follows that food insecurity is an offshoot of inequality, the most pervasive problem in South Africa today. 

Thirty years into our democracy, our leadership has still not transformed the lives of the poor or addressed wealth inequality in any meaningful way. The fact that food insecurity is on the rise in South Africa is not an environmental problem, a social failing or the side effect of a global crisis. It is a major systematic failure.

FEATURED IMAGE: Signpost outside the WCCO building. Photo: Ruby Delahunt.

RELATED ARTICLES:

• Wits Vuvuzela, No power means no food for Braam based students, May 2024.
• Wits Vuvuzela, Pricey food cost lives of the poor, December 2022.