• At the KFC Hunger Hack in Johannesburg, leaders and charities agreed that no child in South Africa should go to bed or school hungry.

• Deputy director Mpho Putu said hunger keeps children from learning and growing.

Hunger is robbing South Africa’s children of their future. At the KFC Hunger Hack in Johannesburg, government officials, charities and community leaders came together to fight child hunger.

Deputy director of social development Mpho Putu said it is shameful that a country rich in food and fertile land still has children who go to bed hungry.

“Hunger is the most silent and cruel form of inequity,” said Putu. “No child should go hungry. Every child has the right to food.”

He said when a child cannot focus in class, it often means their last meal was the day before, and that’s a national crisis.

“If we act with urgency, we can build a country where no child is too hungry to learn, too weak to play and too poor to dream,” he said.

The situation is dire. Since January 2025, 155 children under five have died from malnutrition in public hospitals. Nearly a quarter of South African children live in severe food poverty, eating very few food groups each day.

Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of Gift of the Givers, said poverty has become so severe that people no longer ask for building materials, but for food.

He shared how hunger has driven some families to despair. In Lusikisiki, a mother poisoned her children and herself because she had no food, no job and no help.

“Hunger is the worst kind of death,” Sooliman said. “It’s when you watch your child fade away and can do nothing to stop it.”

Pictured above: A child with school lunch.

Image source: Pexels