As the world marked World Food Day on October 16, we are reminded that every child has a fundamental right to safe, adequate and nutritious food — an essential foundation to prevent stunting, safeguard brain development and build a healthy future.
Yet the department of basic education (DBE) finds itself in the tragic position of returning millions of rand to the National Treasury while young children go hungry.
A young child who spends their day hungry cannot understand why there is no food.
At an early childhood development (ECD) centre, a practitioner must find a way to feed the children in her care, often taking food from her own household.
In 2024, Unicef reported that 23% of young children in SA lived in severe child food poverty, without the variety of foods they need to grow well.
Behind that statistic are children whose needs cannot wait for another financial year.
Yet the DBE has failed to get a funded ECD nutrition pilot off the ground. Its tender has now been postponed eight times.
Money intended to help feed young children has been left unspent while the need for it remains urgent. This time, the money was there.
The department failed to turn it into meals.
That is a failure to the children it is meant to serve.
Since 2023, ECD practitioners organised through Real Reform for ECD have called for a national nutrition programme for young children attending ECD centres.
These practitioners know what hunger looks like at their centre.
They see children struggling to concentrate and families unable to afford enough food.
Their call is for the government to support the work they are already doing, and to reach children whose centres receive no subsidy.
When R197m was allocated for a pilot in the 2024/2025 budget, there was reason to hope.
Practitioners had helped put young children’s nutrition on the national agenda.
Here was a chance to test how the government could provide reliable, nutritious food at ECD centres and build towards a national programme.
The promise had funding behind it. By March 2026, the DBE had advertised the tender to appoint service providers.
The proposed pilot was designed to reach 26,620 children at 1,035 centres in the Eastern Cape.
It targeted centres with entry-level registration, known as bronze status, that do not qualify for the existing ECD subsidy.
These were children who urgently needed additional support.
After two years of waiting since the first allocation, the tender should have brought that support closer. Instead, the deadline kept moving.
The original closing date of April 9 2026 was pushed into May.
May brought two successive deadlines, and still the process did not close.
June passed into July, then August and September, each bringing another delay.
The seventh postponement moved the deadline to October 2; now an eighth has pushed it to October 23.
More than six months after the original closing date.
For children who need food today, each extension means waiting longer for the support this pilot was meant to provide.
The department cannot ask families to treat this as ordinary paperwork.
According to News24, the DBE surrendered R743m in unspent funds to the National Revenue Fund after failing to use them during the 2025/2026 financial year.
This included R389.3m allocated to ECD nutrition pilots and resource packages.
Returning these funds means the state has surrendered its opportunity to nourish young children, leaving practitioners and families to continue to carry the burden of hunger.
The DBE must explain how this funding will be restored and when it will reach children.
The hunger experienced by children does not go away at the end of a financial year.
There must be proper safeguards when public money is allocated.
But safeguarding money also means making sure it serves the people for whom it was allocated.
The DBE has not publicly explained the reason for each of these eight postponements.
If there are problems with the tender, the public deserves to know what they are, who is fixing them and when children will receive food.
Every child has a constitutional right to basic nutrition.
Section 28 makes that clear.
In our view, allowing a funded programme to remain stalled while children go hungry is a grave breach of that right.
A child’s right to nutrition cannot depend on whether a department manages to finish its paperwork in time.
The harm reaches far beyond an empty stomach.
The national food and nutrition survey conducted between 2021 and 2023 found that 28.8% of children under five were stunted.
That means more than one in four were too short for their age, a sign of long-term undernutrition.
Poor nutrition can affect children’s brain development and make them more vulnerable to illness.
A child who misses nourishment during these early years cannot simply get those years back when the government is ready.
ECD centres offer a practical, existing network to reach young children at scale.
The pilot was an opportunity to strengthen these centres, test delivery models and gather vital evidence for a national programme.
Every delay postpones those crucial lessons and erodes public trust.
Trust is built when commitments lead to action.
As election season once again puts government priorities in the spotlight, the public deserves a clear explanation for these delays and, most importantly, a clear timeline for when this already allocated funding for child nutrition will finally reach the children it was intended to support.
The minister and the DBE must now account publicly for what has gone wrong.
They must explain all eight extensions and disclose the status of the funds.
They must publish a credible timetable that ends with meals reaching children, identify the officials responsible and explain what lawful interim support can be provided while procurement is completed.
Families should not have to search tender notices to find out whether help is coming.
We need to know when the first children will be fed, and what will prevent another year of unspent money.
Tshepo Mantjé and Dr Jessica Ronaasen of Real Reform for Early Childhood Development
