As of last year, there were 14 million South Africans who had inadequate or severely inadequate access to food. Hunger is a reality that many South Africans will face unless the right to food is realised soon. The Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute (SPII) launched a report on the Continue Reading
SECTION27 welcomes the Competition Commission’s decision to launch a market inquiry into the Grocery Retail Sector. This decision follows years of focus on the part of the Commission on markets relating to food and a number of important findings on, among others, price-fixing in the milk, poultry and bread markets. Continue Reading
Press Release March 16, 2014 Urgent calls for proper consultation on SA’s Food Policy Civil Society Organisations have repeated their calls for meaningful government consultation on South Africa’s food policy following information that only five organisations have been invited to give input at public sessions tomorrow (March 17, 2015). On Continue Reading
The Phillipi Horticultural Area (PHA) Food & Farming Campaign and the Makaza Food Growers have released a statement supporting SECTION27’s call for wider policy consultation on the National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security. You can read the full statement here: PHA support for Section 27 Food Policy Call.
GOVERNMENT URGED NOT TO RUSH THROUGH FOOD SECURITY POLICY 3 March 2015, Johannesburg – South Africa has about 13.8 million individuals that regularly experience inadequate access to food, according to government’s own figures. But the rush to implement a new National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security for South Africa Continue Reading
On 22 August 2014, the National Policy on Food and Nutrition Security for the Republic of South Africa was gazetted. If this is news to you, you’re not alone. The Policy was not subject to any public consultation and is utterly deficient in its identification of problems with the food system in Continue Reading
Today is World Food Day. The day is celebrated on the anniversary of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation in 1945 but in South Africa, a country with a constitutionally protected (albeit far from realized) right to food, it is much more than an anniversary. Instead, it is Continue Reading
SECTION27 hosted a Right to Food seminar on the 4th of November. This afforded the organisation and other stakeholders the opportunity to form a strategy to ensure the realisation of this critical but legislatively and judicially undefined right. The presentations given during the seminar can be accessed here. Attendees came Continue Reading
The 7th meeting of the Budget and Expenditure Monitoring Forum was held on 21 and 22 November 2011 in Johannesburg. The purpose of the meeting was to develop a clear picture of where South Africa is at in terms of its financing, budgeting and expenditure for the response to HIV/AIDS. Continue Reading
The 5th meeting of the Budget and Expenditure Monitoring Forum heard that funding for public health care in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng were in crisis and discussed what needs to be done to resolve many of its causes.
SECTION27 will be offering a new certificate course with the Mandela Institute at Wits University. The course, HIV/AIDS and the Law, is designed to provide practical training for government officials, lawyers, activists, journalists and health care workers to improve their knowledge on current law, policies and guidelines as they relate to HIV and the history and politics of the struggle for recognition of the human rights of people living with HIV. The course will provide learners with a solid foundation on which to analyse and understand the implications of policies and the rights of individuals living with HIV and the possibilities for recourse under the Constitution and the laws of the country.
Following the initiation of legal proceedings, on 7 May 2010, the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (CIPRO) has agreed to permit the AIDS Law Project (ALP) to reserve the name SECTION27, incorporating the AIDS Law Project.
CIPRO initially refused to reserve the name, SECTION27, incorporating the AIDS Law Project, explaining as follows, “your proposed name connote government patronage. The wording employed to serve as a name, cannot be allowed and are calculated to cause damage, moreover misleading and damaging”. CIPRO also refused our request on the basis of a comparison with existing names on its database, however, they bore no resemblance to the requested name.