Moving Posts #3
The poor cannot afford their daily bread
The poor cannot afford their daily bread
The irony of the Witness news headlines (Retail turf war heats up) did not escape me as PACSA and Oxfam presented facts on hunger in South Africa today: A national supermarket chain goes head to head with a transnational supermarket chain to protect their trade monopoly in fresh produce in shopping malls across the country.
As consumers we are led to believe that competition is good for us, because it drives food prices down. Critical consumers, however, know that these same supermarkets have pushed out local shops and informal traders, who are a critical part of a truly competitive market.
Although price collusion by corporates is a global phenomenon, corporates in South Africa got away with a slap on the wrist for fixing the price of bread and of milk, food staples for the poor. The studies by PACSA and Oxfam GB confirm the research findings of the NGO alliance I represent: the poor can no longer afford their daily bread. 1 in 4 households go hungry each day, and half of our population is at risk of hunger.
Due to rising food prices the poor further spiral into poverty. The legal battle between two Goliaths is paid from profits made over the backs of the small food producers, corner shops, and urban and rural poor who have found the mall’s sliding doors shut in their faces.
I call on you to help David – or perhaps this time it is his powerful female incarnation - rise again against Goliath.
The Scandal of Hunger in Our Wealthy Nation
I feel cheap, I feel smallmy children go hungrythey will stay small toolittle money buys little foodcheap food, expired foodsmall packets of potato, a bit of ricemaize meal if we’re luckypeople look down on melaugh and gossip because I’m poormake me feel even smallera failure-of-a-mother, a failed fatherno longer a bread winneras my child asks “Ma, when will we have bread again?”
Monique Salomon, coordinator of Tshintsha Amakhaya,
NGO alliance for land and food justice
- The poor cannot afford their daily bread The Witness 18 Sept 2014
- Retail turf war heats up.The Witness 16 Sept 2014