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Dr Busiso Moyo is a postdoctoral researcher with Union Against Hunger (UAH) founder-member, the DSTI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security (CoE-FS), and a member of the UAH secretariat. Photo Alaister Russell/CoE-FS.

On 12 March the Minister of Finance presented his revised Budget to Parliament. There was no mention of hunger, food security or malnutrition in the Minister’s one-hour speech, and little comfort for millions of hungry, food insecure and malnourished South Africans.

The most contentious issue that caused the postponement of the Budget speech from 19 February was a proposed 2% increase in VAT from 15% to 17%, which was opposed by the ANC’s GNU partners and opposition parties. In a wholly inadequate compromise, VAT will still be increased, by 0.5% this year and 0.5% next year.

Raising VAT by 1% over the next 2 years will increase hunger. It will raise the cost of living for everybody, but especially for the poor and hungry who can least afford it. As SAFTU correctly observed: “Shrinking household budgets will lead to poorer diets, increasing malnutrition and hunger.”

To offset the VAT increase, social grants have been increased in the Budget by slightly above consumer price inflation, which the SA Reserve Bank forecasts at 4.5% in 2025. The Older Persons Grant, Disability Grant and Child Support Grant all rise by 5.7–5.9%. But the VAT increase will in itself fuel inflation and reduce GDP growth, virtually cancelling out the social grants hikes.

The Minister of Finance also announced that the basket of VAT zero-rated food items would be expanded to include canned vegetables and some dairy and meat products. While this is to be welcomed, there is mixed evidence on whether making certain commodities exempt from VAT (or zero-rated) benefits the poor more than the non-poor, or even benefits the poor at all.

No-one disputes that money needs to be raised to pay for increased pro-hunger spending – but not by taxing the hungry.

The Union Against Hunger (UAH), launched on 26 February, aims to abnormalise hunger in South Africa and realise the constitutional rights of every individual to sufficient food and water, and of every child to basic nutrition. The UAH will hold those in power accountable to hungry people, by monitoring government policies and programmes to ensure they are anti-hunger and accelerating progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 2 – zero hunger – by 2030. This Budget is not anti-hunger, and it does not put South Africa on a track to achieve zero hunger.

What should have been done instead? The Union Against Hunger calls on Parliament to scrutinise and amend the Budget, in three important respects:

1. Reject the VAT increase and replace it with wealth taxes: The government needs to find ways of ensuring access to affordable nutritious food for all. Instead of raising VAT and increasing hunger, the UAH supports calls to raise taxes on the super-rich and luxury goods. This would generate billions of rand for redistribution to hungry people and would reduce inequality, one of the major drivers of hunger. South Africa is the world’s most unequal country, so complaints by wealthy South Africans that they are already over-taxed are self-serving and simply untrue.
2. Raise social grants to the Food Poverty Line: The food poverty line, which covers the cost of a basic food basket, stands officially at R796/month, or R27/day. After being increased to R560 in the 2025 Budget, the Child Support Grant (CSG) is still 30% below the food poverty line. The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity group calculates that the CSG is 42% below the cost of a nutritious diet for a child, assuming all the grant money is spent only on the named child and only on food. The CSG should also start earlier, in the second trimester of pregnancy, to ensure that the critical first 1,000 days of life are covered. The Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant has been extended for another year which is absolutely necessary, but it has not been increased from R370/month, less than half of the food poverty line. The UAH calls on Parliament to take steps to urgently close the gap between the CSG and SRD grant payments and the food poverty line.
3. Deliver adequate nutrition to all children in early learning programmes: The UAH welcomes the increased government subsidy for Early Childhood Development (ECD) from R17 to R24 per child per day. A higher proportion of this subsidy must be allocated to nutrition programmes at ECD centres, and the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) should be extended to children in ECD programmes. One in four children under-five years old in South Africa have stunted growth, so the NSNP which delivers meals to learners in primary and secondary school starts too late to reverse this fundamental and unacceptable indicator of chronic hunger.