The national inquiry into the food systems of South Africa will begin next week, from 12 March 2026. It takes place at a moment when the evidence is no longer in dispute.
Across this five-part series, we have traced how hunger is produced: through history, through markets, through the marginalisation of indigenous knowledge and through the concentration of power in the food economy.
With the window for submissions now closed and testimony set to begin, the question shifts from diagnosis to direction: What does global experience reveal about how countries change their food systems?
South Africa occupies a notable position on the global hunger map. According to the 2025 Global Hunger Index, the country records a score of 15.1, indicating a moderate level
of hunger.
While this is better than many low-income and conflict-affected nations, it is nevertheless significantly worse than countries at similar or comparable income levels.
The key drivers are well known, including persistent food price inflation, which makes healthy diets unaffordable for many, economic inequalities and unemployment and stubbornly high levels of child malnutrition.
The reality must be read alongside South Africa’s binding legal commitments.
Domestically, the Constitution guarantees everyone the right of access to sufficient food and provides children with an immediate right to basic nutrition.
Internationally, the country is a state party to the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which recognises the right to adequate food and obliges governments to respect, protect and progressively fulfil it.
At the regional level, obligations are reinforced through the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which requires states to ensure adequate nutrition for children.
Together, the instruments place a clear duty on the state not only to alleviate hunger but to transform the structural conditions that produce it.
If the commitments are to be met, the international lessons offer both sobering lessons and grounds for optimism.
Across the world, countries that have made sustained progress in ending hunger and malnutrition treat food as a matter of governance and as a system shaped by law, institutions and democratic participation.
One of the clearest examples comes from Brazil, where the Fome Zero strategy reframed hunger as a structural policy challenge rather than a welfare problem. The Fome Zero strategy integrated family farming as a central anti-hunger tool by linking social protections with local food production.
Through public procurement schemes, especially buying food from smallholders for schools, food banks and community kitchens, the programme guaranteed stable markets and income for family farmers while expanding access to fresh, locally produced food for low-income households.
The approach strengthened rural livelihoods, reduced vulnerabilities among small producers and helped localise food systems. In turn, this contributed to both falling hunger rates and reductions in inequality by shifting resources towards poorer rural regions. Crucially, civil society participation was institutionalised, ensuring that those most affected by hunger had a voice in decision-making.
At the global level, the Food and Agriculture Organization Right to Food Guidelines emphasise similar principles: accountability, participation and policy coherence. The guidelines recognise that food insecurity is rarely the result of scarcity alone. Rather, it is more often the outcome of policy fragmentation and unequal power.
Public procurement has emerged internationally as one of the most effective transformation tools. When governments use their purchasing power strategically, they can create stable markets for small producers while improving nutrition outcomes.
In Europe, the European Union Farm to Fork Strategy integrates sustainability criteria into public food systems, aligning climate and health objectives with economic policy. The strategy aims to halve pesticide reliance and use in agriculture, reduce fertiliser dependence and increase organic farming by 2030, by mainly promoting local, small-
scale production.
Food waste offers another area where global practice is instructive.
A widely cited example of global best practice in food waste reduction is the legislative framework adopted by France, which demonstrates how binding regulation can reshape food system behaviour.
France, in 2015, passed a law prohibiting large supermarkets from destroying or disposing of edible food. Instead, they must formalise donation agreements with charities. Such measures underscore that reducing waste is not only an environmental imperative but also a social justice intervention.
What emerges from the examples is not a single blueprint but a shared principle, which is that hunger declines where states actively govern food systems in the public interest.
South Africa’s legislative policy landscape contains many of the building blocks, including a constitutional right to food, social protection programmes and sectoral strategies across agriculture, health and trade. Yet the instruments remain fragmented, often operating without a unifying framework that aligns economic policy with nutritional and ecological goals.
The South African Human Rights Commission inquiry into food systems therefore arrives at a critical juncture. It can either catalogue challenges or catalyse systemic reform.
Given the information that is available, the challenges are well known. In considering systemic reform, three priorities will stand out.
First is governance reform. International experience highlights the value of a mechanism to align policy and monitor progress and ensure accountability across departments.
Second, market restructuring through procurement and competition policy by leveraging public purchasing to support small-scale and historically excluded producers has shown to have the ability to reshape value chains and broaden participation in the food economy.
Third, embedding sustainability and indigenous knowledge into national food strategies has demonstrated the potential to lessen the impact of intensifying climate pressures.
Resilience depends on diversifying production systems and recognising the expertise
long held by rural communities, particularly women.
As the inquiry begins its work, expectations will be high. From the onset, the global evidence is clear: transformative change is possible when political will aligns with institutional design.
This five-part series has facilitated and framed a national conversation focused on naming the problem. The next phase, which begins formally from 12 to 20 March 2026, turns to the architecture of a just food system.
The inquiry offers a rare opportunity for a turning point, where no stomach goes to bed hungry or wakes up uncertain of their next meal.
The success of this inquiry will depend on whether we are prepared, as a nation, to move beyond managing hunger toward redesigning the systems that produce it.
The national inquiry will be livestreamed on the SAHRC website and YouTube channel.
Philile Ntuli is a commissioner of the South African Human Rights Commission. Her focal areas include land rights, the right to food and the national preventive mechanism. She is also a recipient of the M&G Power of Women 2025 award.
*This is the last of a five-part series.
The South African Human Rights Commission inquiry into food systems arrives at a critical juncture, offering a rare opportunity for a turning point, where no stomach goes to bed hungry or wakes up uncertain of their next meal
