Growing Towards Disability and Food Justice in the Eastern Cape

Nosintu Mcimeli is the founder of Abanebhongo Persons with Disabilities Organisation (APD), located in rural Eastern Cape, South Africa. ADP works to care for over 100 persons with disabilities in the villages surrounding Nqamakwe, as well as improve awareness of and social inclusion within the households and communities of people living with disabilities. The legacies of oppression, inflicted by Dutch and British colonialism and the White-led Apartheid regime, continue to shape the lived experiences of South Africans today.[1] The post-apartheid neoliberal policies, imposed and encouraged by Global North-dominated world organisations, have increased inequality in the country as a whole, with some of the highest levels of poverty to be found in the mostly rural Eastern Cape.[2] Such regional economic marginalisation exacerbates the pre-existing challenges people living with disabilities often face, including access to resources as well as general social marginalisation within South African society. These many-layered challenges motivated Nosintu, who herself has a disability, to found APD in her hometown and work to alleviate the tangible legacies of oppression and continued marginalisation in her community more broadly. This article is based off of several phone interviews between Nosintu and TGP Communications Coordinator, Annabelle von Moltke. 

Climate change, COVID-19, and hunger

2015, the year that APD was founded, was South Africa’s driest year on record.[3] For rural people with disabilities, climate change compounds the severity of the challenges that they and their communities are already facing. The extended drought, which has induced acute water shortages across the country and severely hinders food growing, has been accompanied by increasingly devastating insect plagues, such as locusts and the Fall Army worm, which destroy staple crops such as maize and sorghum.[4] With her community struggling to access water, Nosintu took matters into her own hands and put out an appeal on the radio. This was answered by an NGO, which initially offered to supply water tanks, but upon negotiation agreed to pay for the drilling of a borehole, to provide a more long-term solution to the water crisis locally. With the disabled and bedridden always in mind, Nosintu has recently organised a team of young people through ADP to regularly fetch water for those of limited mobility. This way everyone can benefit from this newly freely accessible, and communally governed resource.

Reuters reported that up to a quarter of South Africans experienced hunger on a regular basis in 2020, as poverty and the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation were clearly compounded by the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns.[5] As food remains highly commodified in South Africa, like many parts of the world, hunger is a reflection of accessibility rather than availability. According to Nosintu, ‘many rural families in South Africa rely on money sent home by their children, who have migrated to urban centres to work’. For many, lockdown and the ensuing rise in unemployment has led to those streams of income drying up. Nosintu explained that people with disabilities have been disproportionately affected by hunger, both during and before the pandemic, as they have less mobility to shop for food, face difficulties planting their own food gardens without help, and often experience neglect within their own households. Frequently, Nosintu said, ‘family members cash-in a disabled person’s government support grant without that person’s knowledge’ or ability to access their own income.