25ISSUES MARCH 7 2015

Cash-poor SAA can start by ditching those gravy plane flightsFORGET about the cryptic Nos-tradamus if you want to descry theshape of the future in the utterancesof the past.

Look rather at an unknownmedieval English riddler who withuncanny foresight predicted theexcesses almost 400 years later ofthe South African government.

The riddle is about a man with fourwives on a journey to Nkandla,KwaZulu-Natal. Well, not exactly.That’s taking prophetic licence. It’sactually about a man with seven wiveson a journey to St Ives, Cornwall.

It goes: As I was going to St Ives/I met a man with seven wives/ Eachwife had seven sacks/ Each sack hadseven cats/ Each cat had seven kits/Kits, cats, sacks, and wives/ Howmany were there going to St Ives?’

Arithmetically, there are a num-ber of possible answers, but in aSouth African context the best

answer is one of political philoso-phy. It is, far too many. Especiallywhen they are not walking but flyingSAA and the taxpayer is paying.

In case you hadn’t noticed, thenational airline is in trouble. At along-delayed annual general meetingit last month revealed that its annualloss had doubled to R2.6bn and thatit is “technically bankrupt”.

To remedy this, Nico Bezuiden-hout, SAA’s acting chief executive,

launched a “90-day action plan”,ending on March 31, which will sup-posedly “steer SAA back to fullimplementation of its long termturnaround strategy”. So basically,when you cut through the gumph,it’s clear the SAA managementplane drifted so far off course that ithad to fly for three months to getback to the take-off point.

Bezuidenhout took one hard deci-sion that saves R600 million a year.

He closed the loss-making directflights to Beijing and Mumbai.These routes were opened notbecause of commercial viability butas an act of pandering symbolismupon South Africa’s accession to theBric (Brazil, Russia, India andChina) group of emergingeconomies.

Other SAA stringency measures,however, have a faint air of despera-tion. Last week the airline dumpedall the magazines, used blankets, toi-letries and leftover food from anA340-600 aircraft returning fromMunich, to reduce extra weight andcut fuel costs.

It makes sense to cut weight. ButSAA shouldn’t be dumpingephemera; it should rather ditch thecorpulent free-riders.

Our parliamentarians, number-ing 490, are each entitled to84 domestic economy-class tickets a

year for themselves and theirspouses, as well as 12 for each kid.Conservatively, that’s around 47 000seats removed from the revenueequation, or the equivalent of SAA’s12 Airbus A320-232s, which carry 138passengers, each undertaking 340free flights a year.

The break-even on a domesticticket – where SAA incurs its biggestlosses – is R1 700. So these slip-streaming public representative arepunching at least an R80m hole inthe South African fiscus, because itis the taxpayer who ultimately reim-burses SAA – or any other airlinethat they travel on – for the cost oftheir tickets.

Then there are the ministers andtheir deputies, of which there are 74at most recent count, and their coat-tailing entourages. Because the min-isterial handbook outlining condi-tions of service is considered

top-secret – presumably on thegrounds that it would blow up in thegovernment’s face were we to fullycomprehend the lotus life of ourleaders – one has to work with the2007 version, which theMail&Guardian managed tounearth.

According to this, our etherealministerials are each annually enti-tled to 74 free business-class tickets.I was unable to establish whetherthey also get their 84 economy-classparliamentary tickets.

Each kid at school or in tertiaryeducation gets six free flights a year.There are another eight tickets each,for to-ing and fro-ing between placeof education and Parliament or theministerial permanent residence.Also, during the parliamentary ses-sion, each dependent gets anotherticket to visit the folks.

The children can, “if they cannot

remain at home”, along withspouses, accompany cabinet mem-bers on any “official” trip – one thatinvolves ministerial business of anykind. That’s true also of interna-tional trips, although spouses mustpay for themselves on these.

Again, working conservativelywith two kittens per cabinet member,it means that around 11 000 businessclass seats, at about R4 000 a seat,amounting to around another R44mcan be added to the hidden subsidythe taxpayer is making. Most of thatwould go to SAA, though some wouldgo to other airlines.

Each year the gravy plane perksbecome more lavish and the poten-tial for misuse is obvious. It’s aprofligacy that South Africa not onlycannot afford, but also is obscene ina nation with so much poverty.

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W I L L I A M

S A U N D E R S O N – M E Y E R

Jaundiced Eye

ANN MIDDLETON sat at her pianoon Noordhoek Common.

She and others, fearing theinferno in the mountains abovetheir homes, fled with whatever theycould carry. Ann took Saffron, herdog, and her musical instruments.

Later, as a new day emerged fromthe chaos of the night, she began toplay on the piano. The music, withits snatches of Keith Jarrett-likechords, brought some comfort to herfellow refugees.

The wildfire of this past week leftin its wake a tragic inventory ofirreplaceable loss.

Fran Collings, 82, was one of itsvictims. Her Tokai home burntdown. Many face unemployment as

their places of work have beenaffected, one way or the other, by thefire. Animals succumbed to the

smoke and flames. The fire-fighters, including the

volunteers who put in leave fromtheir regular jobs, braved the heatand danger. Their commitment wasepitomised by Samantha Alexander,a City of Cape Town fire-fighter.

This mother of a two-year-oldheld her own, her resolve evident inthe way she strained her weight intothe fire-hose draped around hershoulder, dragging it towards thefire flaming behind her.

Cape Town, as in times whenshack-fires have rendered thousandshomeless, responded with a gener-

ous gratitude in cash and kind. The fire, we might say, renders all

equal. But does it really, when weweigh up the capricious power ofMother Nature against the legacy ofpoverty?

Within the ranks of these work-ers who fought the flames, werethose who carried the weight of theburden of forced removals.

They fought to protect the livesand property of those who, withinthe cruel arc of history, possessedtheir probable endowment.

One would not have to searchlong among their comrades to find

survivors of shack-fires. Groot Constantia, remembered

more as a celebrated wine estate andless for its place in our country’sunderstated history of slavery, ben-efited from the vigilance and timelyintervention of Iziko Museums.

A valued cargo of historic bed-steads, tables and bottles of winewas escorted by traffic officers intothe city for safekeeping.

During a time of great persecu-tion of Christians in Rome,Lawrence the deacon was instructedby the prefect of Rome to bring thetreasures of the church to him.

After three days he assembled alarge number of lame, blind, leprous,orphaned and widowed personsbefore the prefect and said: “Theseare the treasures of the church.”

Eurecon Primary School in Con-naught Road also had a fire in thisweek. Cape Town was silent. “Whatabout us? Are we not newsworthy?”asked Jimmy Nagan, a former prin-cipal of the school.

All people are to be loved andthings to be used. We must guard,cautions Goethe, against theimmorality of loving things morethan we do people.

It takes more than the threat of fire to make us all equalM I C H A E L

W E E D E R

By the Way

Meeting the needs of the hungryH

UNGER, BenjaminFranklin once observed,“never saw bad bread”.And, perhaps like other

homilies about food – doughty wis-doms such as “through hunger werecognise the value of food” –Franklin’s 18th-century aphorism,typical of many in his long-running,best-selling pamphlet, PoorRichard’s Almanack, has a lastingtruth.

Yet, in a very different world offast food and long, slow commutes, acomplex globalised food industry,unprecedented urbanisation and anapparently unassailable capitalistrationale, “bad bread” is more thanthe mouldy crust it may have beentwo centuries ago, and “hunger” asit’s commonly understood is not thesum of the problem.

On their own, food parcels, orbackyard veggie gardens, are not anadequate response.

So argue Dr Jane Battersby andfellow researchers at UCT’s AfricanCentre for Cities whose detailedstudy for the City of Cape Townmakes the case for a comprehensive,city-scaled response to a conditionthat exacerbates the metro’s socio-economic challenges.

Food insecurity, they point out,goes beyond hunger in the conven-tional sense to encompass a diet thatcannot sustain a healthy body andmind, and, by extension, a food sys-tem that cannot sustain a healthy,stable and developing city, or society.

Food insecurechildren cannotlearn or concen-trate at school, afood insecure work-force cannotadvance, and thehealth-care, devel-opmental, socialand personal costsof this insufficiencyare high.

The conse-quences range frommalnutrition or sus-ceptibility to ill-health, obesity anddebilitating lifestylediseases to eco-nomic dysfunction and socialunrest. Improving the nutritionalprofile of the poor thus benefitseveryone.

In an interview, Battersby said:“Food security can potentially causechronic and immediate problemsfor urban areas – globally, we haveseen food riots, for instance – and, inthe long term, we know there areprofound health and developmentimplications.

“So how we are going to createconditions to enable people to accessaffordable, nutritious and sociallyacceptable foods?

“This is where one has to movebeyond providing food baskets andsetting up food gardens and askquestions about what’s driving thesystem.

“If food security is a concern forurban areas, we need to start think-ing about systemic issues – howfood retailing, in poorer areas espe-cially, actually works and what inter-ventions can be made to achieveimprovements.”

This is the gist of the UCT team’sFood System and Food SecurityStudy, submitted to the city on com-mission last July.

It is framed by Canadian food pol-icy analyst Wayne Roberts’s crispassertion that “a city is what iteats”, and is predicated on the ideathat everything to do with how andwhat a city eats is the business ofcity policymakers.

The opening line of its executivesummary explicitly acknowledgesthe significance of the city’s com-missioning the report in noting that“Cape Town is the first city in thesouthern African region to initiate acomprehensive food security study”.

And it argues that Cape Town, byno means uniquely, has a problem: itis a city where “food insecurity man-ifests not just as hunger, but as long-term consumption of a limited vari-

ety of foods,reduction in mealsizes and choices toeat calorie-dense,nutritionally poorfoods in an effort toget enough food toget by”.

“The lateststudy of food inse-curity in CapeTown found that75 percent ofhouseholds in sam-pled low-incomeareas were foodinsecure, with58 percent fallinginto the severely

food insecure category.”These conditions, the report

says, are the result of householdpoverty, but also “wider structuralissues” such as the food retail envi-ronment and the price and availabil-ity of healthy relative to less healthyfoods.

What is needed, it advises, is anew approach founded on a “foodsystem and food security strategy”,which covers everything from urbanagriculture policy, planningapprovals and transport to healthregulations and waste.

This requires a better under-standing of how and what the cityeats, and what interventions – regu-lations or incentives, for instance –can reshape patterns of food insecu-rity.

The report notes that the consol-idation of food production (5 000wheat farmers nationally, but justfour millers controlling 87% of themarket; or the 10 largest packaged-food companies accounting for 52%of packaged-food sales, for example)tends to generate high inflation,with a sharp impact on the poor.

Processed food is often cheaper,or quicker to make a meal from forcommuting householders whoarrive home late in the day.

Understanding what Battersbycalls the “metabolism” of the foodsystem in poor areas is essential tocalculating effective interventions toensure healthier eating.

As the report observes, low-income households depend on for-mal and informal retailers, both of

which have benefits and weaknessesregarding access to healthy, safe,and affordable food.

Where formal retailers offerlower prices per unit and have well-regulated safety standards, theyretail in unit sizes unaffordable tothe poorest, have limited openinghours and do not grant credit. Infor-mal retailers are often more expen-sive per unit and lack safety stan-dards, but sell in affordable unitsizes, are open longer hours andoften offer credit.

Thus, the complexity of the foodsystem calls for a “holistic”approach to better inform the city’slonger-term responses.

“The scale of the challengemeans that the response can no longer be ad hoc and

piecemeal projects.”The report recommends that the

city should:! Establish a food system and

food security working group todevelop coherent, effective strate-gies to address food insecurity andto work towards a pro-poor food sys-tem, build collaborative partner-ships, and create a food system andfood security charter to guide long-term planning.

!Reassess the Agricultural LandReview (particularly in the contextof development encroachments onareas such as Philippi and Joosten-bergvlakte, warning that, once lostto farming, “they cannot be recov-ered”).

! Develop a coherent, integratedposition on food retailing. “At pres-

ent formal and informal food retailare not viewed as being part of a sin-gle food system… (and) decisionsabout retail development are made(without) consideration of foodsecurity impacts. Retail is the mainfood source for the urban poor (and)it is essential that it provides low-income households with access toaffordable, nutritious, safe food.”

! Incentivise food processing as agrowth industry, particularly in thesmall and medium enterprise sector,not least to boost job creation.

! Advocate more pro-poor foodprice monitoring. “Only with betterdata on the impact of food prices onthe poor will there be the politicalwill to address the problem innational government.”

The UCT report was “noted” at a

council meeting in December.What does this mean in real

terms?Zara Nicholson, spokeswoman

for Mayor Patricia de Lille, saidwhile food policy was not a local gov-ernment competence, “the citywanted to get a better understand-ing of the interdependencies andchallenges in Cape Town’s food sys-tem”.

“This information can be drawnon to understand how the food sys-tem may be a factor in the city’splanning… and where we will needto interact with other spheres ofgovernment while understandingwhat our programmes, such as foodgardens in the Social DevelopmentDepartment, play in the overall foodsystem.”

Nicholson said the study “makesa number of observations whichwill be considered by the city’s linedepartments as required”, based ontheir “relevance for the city as anorganisation”.

Echoing to some extent thereport’s own call for deeper study,Nicholson said: “This study encoun-tered challenges in collecting suit-able data from food retailers, whichmeant that it had to rely on certainassumptions to draw conclusions.”

Five years ago, at the plenary ses-sion on the final day of the WorldEconomic Forum in Dar es Salaam,President Jacob Zuma argueduncontroversially that democracymust “improve the quality of life ofordinary people”, adding, with whathis opponents would doubtless con-sider an ironic metaphor: “You can’teat democracy.”

Democracy, of course, is not foreating – though the phrase is wellunderstood and is a common enoughrefrain, the token of an unsatisfiedhankering, or a gnawing disillusion-ment in our post-liberation enter-prise.

On the other hand, what democ-racy can do is enable people tochange the way the greater food sys-tem is managed so that better nutri-tion and a healthier society areplaced front and centre of policy ini-tiatives.

And that, Battersby argues, iswhat cities, especially, can and oughtto be looking at in a more executive-minded way.

The growing acknowledgementof the role of cities is underscored bythe commissioning of a study by theSA Cities Network – a policy adviserto metros – on food insecurity acrossall nine metropolitan centres.

Food policy analysts insist,though, that a first step must be anat least partial devolution of a man-date for food security to cities.

As Battersby noted: “The absenceof recognition of the urban withinthe new (national) policy means thatwe are unlikely to see the develop-ment of policies and strategies thatcan have an impact in urban areas.”

And, with rising urbanisation,it’s the cities that are hungriest.

Cape Town is noted for its gastronomic finesse, fine dining and gourmet markets, yet more than three quarters of sampled low-income households

are malnourished, writes Michael Morris

CITY DILEMMA: Food insecurity can potentially cause chronic and immediate problems like food riots, and in the long term there are profound healthand development problems, says UCT researcher Dr Jane Battersby. PICTURE: MATTHEWS BALOYI

‘A city is what it

eats’... and Cape

Town, like other

urban areas, faces

severe challenges

in its policies

toward food