DBE accused of dragging its feet while millions of children starve

Hungry children need food now, not “one day”.

This was the argument put forward by Equal Education’s (EE’s) legal team in the North Gauteng High Court, when the youth-led social movement faced off against the department of basic education over the suspension of the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP).

Advocate Geoff Budlender SC, for EE, slammed the department’s stance – that it had not refused, per se, to reinstate the NSNP but the process could not happen “overnight”.

Budlender described this as “bizarre” and pointed to the millions of vulnerable children who continued to go hungry, every day the NSNP remained suspended.

“We suggest the [department] goes and tells them the NSNP will be resumed ‘one day’ and sees what they say,” Budlender said. “I do not say it lightly, it is cynical and it is callous and it is time to put an end to it.”

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga in March announced the closure of the country’s schools and with it, the suspension of the NSNP – which ordinarily feeds more than 9 million of the country’s most vulnerable children on an almost daily basis.

In May, she announced the phased re-opening of schools and said only pupils in Grades 7 and 12 would return to class in June, but that the NSNP would resume for all qualifying pupils at the same time.

She subsequently backtracked, however, saying the department needed more time to “acclimatise” and so initially, only those pupils who were actually attending school would have access to the NSNP.

This prompted Equal Education, together with two Limpopo high schools, to turn to the courts.

They launched an urgent application against Motshekga and the country’s nine Education MECs, for an order declaring “all qualifying learners, regardless of whether or not they have resumed classes at their respective schools, are entitled to receive a daily meal as provided for under the NSNP”.

They also want a supervisory order, directing the department to come up with a plan to resume the NSNP and to file detailed progress reports with the court every two weeks.

When the case came before Judge Sulet Potterill on Thursday, advocate Marius Oosthuizen SC – for the department – vehemently denied the allegations of callousness levelled against the minister.

“There appears to be an impression that the minister and the provincial departments don’t care for the children for which they are responsible,” he said. “Since 1994 they have been running the NSNP and feeding these 9 million children and when Covid-19 came, they immediately started planning for the resumption of this programme.”

Oosthuizen pointed to the logistical challenges of providing food for children who were not at school.

“Yes, there are a lot of children on the ground who have not yet received meals but that doesn’t mean we’re sitting doing nothing,” he said. “We’re working day and night to address this problem as soon as is practically possible”.

The Children’s Institute, represented by the Centre for Child Law, also made submissions in court, in support of EE’s case.

Of the department’s argument that parents were primarily responsible for their children’s nutritional needs, the institute said this did not mean it was parents’ exclusive responsibility.

The state still had an obligation to provide material assistance and support programmes in cases of need, the institute said. “In the prevailing context of extremely high unemployment, poverty and food insecurity, 6 million children in South Africa (even prior to lockdown) were living in households where there were no employed adults. When it comes to income poverty, 11.6 million children live in households below the upper poverty line and even if you take all grants into consideration, of South Africa’s 20 million children 33% live below the lower food poverty line.”

Judgment was reserved.

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