Policy Paralysis: After three years without a national food plan, civil society demands answers

South Africa’s national food security plan expired in 2023. A replacement has been drafted but not published. Three years later, civil society is still waiting and has run out of patience.

On 28 May 2026, World Hunger Day, members of the Union Against Hunger gathered outside the Department of Agriculture’s offices in Pretoria. They were there to hand over a memorandum demanding, among other things, that the government publish its draft National Food and Nutrition Security Plan immediately and have it adopted by the Cabinet by World Food Day on 16 October 2026.

In response to the Union Against Hunger’s notice to picket and request to receive its memorandum at the Department of Agriculture, Minister John Steenhuisen said that he was “not the appropriate executive authority to receive a memorandum whose central demands fall substantially outside the constitutional and legislative mandate of the Department of Agriculture”, directing the union to engage instead with “the Presidency and related coordinating departments” on matters relating to the Food Security Council and intergovernmental coordination structures.

A departmental representative nonetheless came out to accept the memorandum on the day.

During a separate engagement with the MEC for Social Development of Gauteng, Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, on the same day, Nkomo-Ralehoko said that the Department of Agriculture had “policy responsibility” and was responsible for issues of food security.

The Department of Agriculture told Daily Maverick that “the department coordinates government response to food security-related matters”.

Speaking at the picket, Heywood said the Department of Agriculture’s own mandate included food security, rural development and market access.

“If food security does not mean people can access sufficient, nutritious and affordable food,” the Union Against Hunger’s memorandum states, “then the phrase has been emptied of meaning.”

The National Food and Nutrition Security Plan 2018-2023, the government’s primary framework for coordinating its response to hunger across departments, expired in March 2023. No replacement has been published.

At the South African Human Rights Commission’s (SAHRC) national inquiry into food systems in March 2026, the Department of Agriculture confirmed that a “draft zero” for a replacement had been developed and was undergoing consultation with other departments and external stakeholders. The department also acknowledged at the inquiry that the new plan had not yet been costed or assigned a ring-fenced budget.

According to Heywood, who cited the Depa