Present Realities of Urban Food Insecurity in South African Townships

The year 2022 marks the twenty-eighth anniversary of the repeal of some of the most devastating apartheid legislation in South Africa. These draconian apartheid laws were facilitated through spatial and economic segregation. The legacy of this segregation, anchored on separate development, manifests in the political and physical landscape of post-apartheid South Africa. While most countries in the world incorporate two distinct geographic areas, one rural and the other urban, South Africa's landscape also includes townships, which constitute large and underdeveloped communities disconnected spatially from urban centres that offer better economic prospects. These townships are sites of extreme poverty and food insecurity. This paper is non-empirical in nature and aims to deconstruct the present realities of food insecurity in South African townships. It places historical processes of land dispossession and the migrant labour system at the centre of urban hunger. The context of its consideration are the South African townships with specific reference to Mamelodi and Soshanguve situated in the City of Tshwane metropolitan municipality, which serves as the country's administrative capital. Theory building and critical scholarship review are methodological insights used to obtain secondary data. The study found that urban food insecurity, particularly in townships, has increased exponentially over the years. This has reproduced the cycle of generational poverty and disenfranchisement among Black people in particular. It recommends and concludes that the expropriation of land for sustainable town