It is time to take a much more careful look at supermarkets which use their market and corporate power to push smaller players and SMMEs — South African and foreign-owned — out of South Africa’s township economy.
To address this lack of awareness and stimulate deliberations supporting more democratic urban food planning and governance, PLAAS and researchers in the CoE-FS’s Food Governance and Policy Reform theme undertook to develop a series of information briefs on key issues and concerns in local food governance
Learning from the evolution of state-subsidised university restaurants in Brazil, is an important consideration for universities in the global South currently dealing with how to end student hunger on campuses.
Hunger among university students ranges between 30% to 65%, costing not just the individual students, but also the institutions and the country, writes Oluwafunmilola Adeniyi.
Farm workers are essential to the economy and food system, but they are poor and vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Evicted farm workers, in particular, face an under-reported crisis of underemployment, poverty and hunger. At a time when the future for farm workers looks increasingly precarious, new thinking and fresh ideas are needed. Some of the challenges facing farm workers are explored here.
Mahmood Mamdani’s recent article about land reform in South Africa correctly states the importance of righting historical wrongs and creating a vibrant economy that works for its population. In contrast to what some writers have argued, including US President Donald Trump, the government of South Africa has not been seizing land from white farmers, nor is there a programme of genocide against the white farming community. But the article by Mamdani glosses over an important and complex issue, one that we have studied for the past 25 years.
South Africa’s spaza shops: how regulatory avoidance harms informal workers
Small informal retailers are a ubiquitous feature of any developing country’s urban landscape. Known as spaza shops in South Africa, they are an important, even vital, component in the townships. Numbering over 100,000 across the nation, they make critical contributions to local food security, self-employment and community cohesion. In the last decade, the sector has undergone extensive change. A new class of traders has emerged. They have often – but not always – been foreign. For this reason, this changing character of South Africa’s spaza sector has become associated with chauvinistic and xenophobic portrayals of immigrant shopkeepers.