4.6 million children rely on school meals

Close to five million South African school children rely on state-sponsored meals as high unemployment and the HIV/AIDS pandemic take their toll on families.

Out of 12 million learners, 4.6 million children at about 17,000 schools across the country were receiving meals, the director of school nutrition, Cynthia Mpathi, told IRIN on Friday.

"It is worrying that so many children are in need of school feeding, but this is a direct link to the current high unemployment rate. In some cases, even though children are fed at home, they are still malnourished. This is because they do not receive adequate nutrients in their meals, especially Vitamin A and iron," Mpathi said.

"We have seen that the nutritional status of children has deteriorated in households affected by HIV/AIDS, but in some instance the weather plays a part in determining the food supply in some households. In the Eastern Cape province, for example, the recent poor rains meant that there were vast tracts of barren land. Households who previously produced their own food are no longer able to and, therefore, have to concede to the school feeding programme," Mpathi explained.

The government has announced that it had nearly reached its goal for the school feeding programme, "as most of the country's poorest schools have been covered".

Despite impressive gains since it came to power in 1994, job creation remains a key challenge for the government, and deepening poverty has been compounded by spiralling HIV infection rates.