From South Africa to the global stage
CoE-FS grantee Dr Zembe-Mkabile’s extraordinary work recently received international recognition when she was appointed to the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Wealth Inequality, convened under South Africa’s G20 presidency.
The committee, chaired by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, is tasked with producing a landmark report on inequality and generating actionable policies for global leaders. Zembe-Mkabile’s appointment signals the value of her approach: combining rigorous evidence with the lived experiences of those most affected by poverty and hunger.
Her participation ensures that African perspectives are represented at the highest levels of global policy debate, reminding the world that food security is inseparable from wealth distribution, social protection, and human dignity.
A paradox of abundance and hunger
South Africa is food secure at the national level. Supermarkets are stocked, and the agricultural sector produces more than enough to sustain the population. Yet more than 15 million people experience daily food shortages, and up to 20 million are classified as severely food insecure.
The problem, as Zembe-Mkabile and other researchers have shown, is not about production but access. Poverty, unemployment, and inequality mean that households—particularly in urban and peri-urban areas—cannot afford the food that is available. Families in Gauteng, for example, may spend up to 40% of their income on food, often forced to buy smaller quantities of cheaper, less nutritious items.
At the same time, South Africa wastes almost 10 million tonnes of edible food annually—enough to feed millions. It is a staggering contradiction: abundance on one hand, hunger on the other.
For Zembe-Mkabile, this disconnect between national-level food security and household hunger underscores the urgency of research that is people-centred, participatory, and grounded in dignity.
A scholar grounded in community realities
Born and educated in South Africa before pursuing her doctorate at Oxford University, Zembe-Mkabile’s academic journey has been driven by one central question: how do social policies translate into the everyday lives of the people they are meant to serve?
Her PhD thesis, completed in 2013, was titled “Good but not good enough: the limitations of a social assistance program for children in South Africa – the case of the child support grant”. The research revealed that while social grants help millions of households survive, they often fall short of ensuring adequate nutrition or lifting families out of poverty.
Rather than focusing only on numbers, Zembe-Mkabile works directly with communities to document how people stretch limited grants, what compromises they make, and how dignity can be preserved in the face of hunger.
“Some questions are not worth exploring if they are going to trample on people’s dignity,” she has said. This principle has guided not only her fieldwork but also her mentorship of young scholars, encouraging them to pursue research that is both rigorous and socially conscious.
COVID-19 and the hunger crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic made these questions even more urgent. In Cape Town’s Langa township, for example, Zembe-Mkabile’s research revealed how government relief measures often failed to meet household needs. Even with emergency grants, families reported having to choose between paying for transport, buying electricity, or purchasing enough food to feed their children.The pandemic laid bare what Zembe-Mkabile had long argued: that safety nets are inadequate without structural reform. Social grants are vital, but they remain below the threshold required for a nutritious diet. And in contexts of high unemployment, they are often stretched across entire households.
Her work helped shift public debates during and after the pandemic, highlighting that South Africa’s food insecurity crisis is not a matter of scarcity but of systemic inequality.
Shaping academic and policy discourse
Beyond her own research, Zembe-Mkabile has been instrumental in decolonising academic discourse. At forums such as the African Psychologies colloquium, she has called for health and social science research that is rooted in African realities rather than imported frameworks.
She has also spoken out about the need to “abnormalise hunger” in South Africa. Hunger, she argues, must not be accepted as an inevitable feature of inequality but challenged as a violation of human rights.
This perspective is deeply aligned with the mission of the Centre of Excellence in Food Security (CoE-FS), which views food security not just as a technical challenge but as a matter of justice, dignity, and citizenship.
Towards systemic solutions
Addressing hunger in South Africa, Zembe-Mkabile insists, requires systemic change. Solutions she hopes to continue to advocate for in her new role include:
- Strengthening social protection: Raising grant levels to meet nutritional needs and ensuring they reach those most vulnerable.
- Reducing food waste: Implementing legislation, as France has done, requiring retailers to donate unsold edible food.
- Supporting urban agriculture and school nutrition programmes: Expanding access to fresh, affordable food in cities and townships.
- Transforming food systems governance: Ensuring inclusive, climate-responsive policies that address inequality at its roots.
These measures reflect the urgency of moving beyond piecemeal relief towards structural transformation.
Dignity at the centre
Dr Wanga Zembe-Mkabile’s work is a reminder that South Africa’s food security crisis cannot be solved by producing more maize or wheat. It is a crisis of access, inequality, and dignity.
Her research, from the streets of Langa to the corridors of the G20, underscores a simple truth: food security is not just about calories—it is about justice.
As the DSTI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security continues to advance research and advocacy, Zembe-Mkabile’s journey offers both inspiration and direction. By centring dignity, amplifying community voices, and challenging systemic inequities, she exemplifies the possibility of building a society where abundance is not shadowed by hunger.
