Speech by the MEC for Health and Welfare Mr. Seaparo Sekoati on the occasion of World Food Day Celebration and Official Launch of Mopani District Health Council Shivulani Clinic (Greater Giyani Municipality)

29 October 2004

Programme Director
Executive Mayor of Mopani District Municipality
Mayor of Greater Giyani Municipality
Hosi Nwadzekudzeku
Councillors
Government representatives
Ladies and Gentlemen

World Food Day marks the founding of the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations Organisation (FAO) in 1945, 16 October.

Since its founding, the celebration has become an annual event that highlights the need by our people to sustainable access to enough, high quality food to lead active and healthy lives.

This celebration serves as a call for urgent action to be taken on many fronts not just to provide food for the hungry, but also to eliminate the underlying causes of hunger rapidly, sustainably and permanently.

The depth of hunger is clearly greatest in sub – Saharan Africa. This region is home to most of the world’s poorest countries, where prevalence of under nourishment is high and prospects for immediate and rapid economic growth is limited. In this region, where progress is slow and people are caught in a trap of poverty and hunger, a particular concerted attention and action is required.

This state of affairs directly impacts on the prospects of our country to meet the challenges of food insecurity experienced by our people, particularly because of the influx of many people from neighbouring countries to our country in general and province in particular, often hoping to be rescued from acute hunger and starvation. This adds to our challenges to provide food security.

Over a period of time government has ensured the evolution of policies, programmes, projects, resources and activities to achieve food security, geared towards ensuring adequate availability and stability of food supplies, economic affordability of food as well as food quality and safety.

In order to further combat the multiple causes of food insecurity and restore the basic human right of our people to be free from hunger and reduce malnutrition, which is a result of consumption of less fortified food, government together with milling companies agreed on basic standards to fortify most of our people’s staple foods – maize and wheat. We take this opportunity to urge bigger milling companies to assist smaller ones to fortify our staple foods.

The aim of fortifying these staple foods was to ensure that our people who cannot afford nutritious food are able to get the necessary micronutrients in their daily meals, essential for good health.

Lack of physical or economic access to safe, nutritious and healthy food at all times leads to negative consequences for our people.

In addition to increasing susceptibility to disease, chronic food insecurity and hunger means that children may be listless and unable to concentrate in school, mothers may give birth to underweight babies and adults may lack energy to fulfil their potential.

Having realised that poverty, hunger and malnutrition as a result of food insecurity leads to ill health, gender discrimination and social isolation and the inability to devise an appropriate coping strategy by those trapped, a number of initiatives were devised.

These range from the establishment of greenery gardens to other income generating projects such as bricklaying, fencing, sewing, bakery, etc, targeting mostly women, children, the aged and disabled, all of whom are threatened by food insecurity.

Other initiatives like land restitution will also enable our people to engage in commercial agriculture that will provide opportunities for employment and therefore food security.

We will continue to establish or provide resources to set-up other small-scale projects to help groups of rural poor to produce more and better food, improve family nutrition and generate extra income for food, particularly staple foods that are often expensive.

A worrying factor though is that, there seems to be over reliance by our people on just four species of cultivated plants - rice, wheat, maize and potato and few mammal and bird species for food supply.

There is less emphasis on fisheries and forestry as a source of food, and these two sectors have been sources of food for our people in the rural areas for quite a long time.

At the same time there are a rich variety of plants, animals and fish that exist and are a strong foundation for food security. For an example Mopani worms, African wild spinach (morogo) and the African corn are some of the our traditional staple foods whose consumption can help to increase food security.

Over reliance on one sector for food production and security to feed a growing population like agriculture, which takes 40% of the land surface, is putting tremendous environmental pressure on the sector.

This therefore calls for the exploitation of other sectors for food production and security. However as we do this we must continue to take into consideration issues of environmental sustainability and natural resources management.

Conservation of our natural resources that have a dietary function is important for rural communities that have limited access to food and markets.

We are therefore called upon to adopt improved food production method that are not harmful to our environment, but instead promote and enhance food supplies and reduce hunger.

In the final analysis it is improved access to productive resources, better management and conservation of natural resources, income or employment generating opportunities and improved access to social services that are all necessary to help improve food security.

In the area of social assistance in particular government has made serious strides. The introduction of the various social security grants, food parcels and the programme of recruiting auxiliary nurses are all government’s attempts aimed at freeing our people from food poverty.

The final solution to the problem of food insecurity lies in the ability of our people to participate in the economic mainstream. We therefore need to look at various possibilities of lessening our dependence on social security services.

We invite individuals, leaders, civil society organisations, private corporations and farmers, to join government in the fight against poverty, joblessness, diseases and other social ills. The scourge of hunger and poverty is morally unacceptable and has to be defeated.

Today, as we are gathered here, we are also launching the Mopani District Health council, the first to be launched in the province.

The provision of health and welfare services to our people is mostly the responsibility of the department at provincial level.

However the district health councils are the local voice in health planning delivery.

These councils bring together all the interested parties in the use and delivery of health and health related services.

Their establishment is premised on the belief that local people can best determine local health needs and priorities.

It is our hope that this council will be able to discharge its responsibilities of planning and coordinating all the health services in the most appropriate way for the people of Mopani.

We expect the council to identify service gaps, assess community needs and advice accordingly.

In simple terms this council must forge and promote cooperative governance, make recommendations on resource distribution to address the health needs of the district, advice on the integration of health services and undertake any task necessary to bring quality health care to our people.

As the department we trust that these issues and others that are crucial to the health needs of our people will be addressed through this council.

On our part we will do all that is necessary to ensure that this council receive the support that it needs.

We wish you all the best

Thank you.

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