{"id":12334,"date":"2021-08-07T05:00:51","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12334"},"modified":"2021-08-07T05:00:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-07T12:00:51","slug":"no-work-no-food-pandemic-deepens-global-hunger-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=12334","title":{"rendered":"“No Work, No Food: Pandemic Deepens Global Hunger”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/span>Christina Goldbaum,\u00a0<\/span>Photographs by <\/span>Joao Silva, front page story,\u00a0<\/span>

Relentless waves of the virus, combined with crises caused by conflict and climate change, have left tens of millions of people around the world on the brink of famine.<\/em><\/p>\n

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A man fed a child at a community-run soup kitchen near East London in the Eastern Cape of South Africa in May.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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EAST LONDON, South Africa \u2014 Even as thousands died and millions lost their jobs when the Covid-19 pandemic engulfed South Africa last year, Thembakazi Stishi, a single mother, was able to feed her family with the steady support of her father, a mechanic at a Mercedes plant.<\/p>\n

When another Covid-19 wave hit in January, Ms. Stishi\u2019s father was infected and died within days. She sought work, even going door to door to offer housecleaning for $10 \u2014 to no avail. For the first time, she and her children are going to bed hungry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to explain our situation is different now, no one is working, but they don\u2019t understand,\u201d Ms. Stishi, 30, said as her 3-year-old daughter tugged at her shirt. \u201cThat\u2019s the hardest part.\u201d<\/p>\n

The economic catastrophe set off by Covid-19, now deep into its second year, has battered millions of people like the Stishi family who had already been living hand-to-mouth. Now, in South Africa and many other countries, far more have been pushed over the edge.<\/p>\n

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An estimated 270 million people are expected to face potentially life-threatening food shortages this year \u2014 compared to 150 million before the pandemic \u2014 according to analysis <\/a>from the World Food Program, the anti-hunger agency of the United Nations. The number of people on the brink of famine, the most severe phase of a hunger crisis, jumped to 41 million people currently from 34 million last year, the analysis showed.<\/p>\n

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Thembakazi Stishi, left, at her home. When she lost her father to Covid-19, she also lost her main source of food.\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The World Food Program sounded the alarm further last week in a joint report with the U.N.\u2019s Food and Agriculture Organization<\/a>, warning that \u201cconflict, the economic repercussions of Covid-19 and the climate crisis are expected to drive higher levels of acute food insecurity in 23 hunger hot spots over the next four months,\u201d mostly in Africa but also Central America, Afghanistan and North Korea.<\/p>\n

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The situation is particularly bleak in Africa, where new infections have surged. In recent months, aid organizations have raised alarms about Ethiopia \u2014 where the number of people affected by famine is higher than anywhere in the world \u2014 and southern Madagascar, where hundreds of thousands are nearing famine after an extraordinarily severe drought.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Farm workers inspecting the carcass of a cow that died in a prolonged drought on a farm in the Eastern Cape.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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For years, global hunger has been steadily increasing<\/a> as poor countries confront crises ranging from armed groups to extreme poverty. At the same time, climate-related droughts and floods have intensified, overwhelming the ability of affected countries to respond before the next disaster hits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But over the past two years, economic shocks from the pandemic have accelerated the crisis, according to humanitarian groups. In rich and poor countries alike, lines of people who have lost their jobs stretch outside food pantries.<\/p>\n

As another wave of the virus grips the African continent, the toll has ripped the informal safety net \u2014 notably financial help from relatives, friends and neighbors \u2014 that often sustains the world\u2019s poor in the absence of government support. Now, hunger has become a defining feature of the growing gulf between wealthy countries returning to normal and poorer nations sinking deeper into crisis.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI have never seen it as bad globally as it is right now,\u201d Amer Daoudi, senior director of operations of the World Food Program, said describing the food security situation. \u201cUsually you have two, three, four crises \u2014 like conflicts, famine \u2014 at one time. But now we\u2019re talking about quite a number of significant of crises happening simultaneously across the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Unloading a truck of food supplies at a nongovernmental organization\u2019s warehouse in Johannesburg.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In South Africa, typically one of the most food-secure nations on the continent, hunger has rippled across the country.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, three devastating waves of the virus have taken tens of thousands of breadwinners \u2014 leaving families unable to buy food. Monthslong school closures eliminated the free lunches that fed around nine million students. A strict government lockdown last year shuttered informal food vendors in townships, forcing some of the country\u2019s poorest residents to travel farther to buy groceries and shop at more expensive supermarkets.<\/p>\n

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An estimated three million South Africans lost their jobs and pushed the unemployment rate to 32.6 percent <\/a>\u2014 a record high since the government began collecting quarterly data in 2008. In rural parts of the country, yearslong droughts have killed livestock and crippled farmers\u2019 incomes.<\/p>\n

The South African government has provided some relief,<\/a> introducing $24 monthly stipends last year and other social grants. Still by year\u2019s end nearly 40 percent of all South Africans were affected by hunger, according to an academic study.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Residents of Rietbron, in the Eastern Cape, lining up to receive food parcels from a nongovernmental organization in May.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In Duncan Village, the sprawling township in Eastern Cape Province, the economic lifelines for tens of thousands of families have been destroyed.<\/p>\n

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Before the pandemic, the orange-and-teal sea of corrugated metal shacks and concrete houses buzzed every morning as workers boarded minibuses bound for the heart of nearby East London. An industrial hub for car assembly plants, textiles and processed food, the city offered stable jobs and steady incomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always had enough \u2014 we had plenty,\u201d said Anelisa Langeni, 32, sitting at the kitchen table of the two-bedroom home she shared with her father and twin sister in Duncan Village.<\/p>\n

For nearly 40 years, her father worked as a machine operator at the Mercedes-Benz plant. By the time he retired, he had saved enough to build two more single family homes on their plot \u2014 rental units he hoped would provide some financial stability for his children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The pandemic upended those plans. Within weeks of the first lockdown, the tenants lost their jobs and could no longer pay rent. When Ms. Langeni was laid off from her waitressing job at a seafood restaurant and her sister lost her job at a popular pizza joint, they leaned on their father\u2019s $120 monthly pension.<\/p>\n

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Anelisa Langeni, right, and her sister Anela lost their father \u2014 who had helped support them during the pandemic\u2019s economic crisis \u2014 to Covid-19.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Then in July, he collapsed with a cough and fever and died of suspected Covid-19 en route to the hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t breathe when they told me,\u201d Ms. Langeni said. \u201cMy father and everything we had, everything, gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unable to find work, she turned to two older neighbors for help. One shared maize meal and cabbage purchased with her husband\u2019s pension. The other neighbor offered food each week after her daughter visited \u2014 often carrying enough grocery bags to fill the back of her gray Honda minivan.<\/p>\n

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But when a new coronavirus variant struck this province in November, the first neighbor\u2019s husband died \u2014 and his pension ended. The other\u2019s daughter died from the virus a month later.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never imagined it would be like this,\u201d that neighbor, Bukelwa Tshingila, 73, said as she wiped her tear-soaked cheeks. Across from her in the kitchen, a portrait of her daughter hung above an empty cupboard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Two hundreds miles west, in the Karoo region, the pandemic\u2019s tolls have been exacerbated by a drought stretching into its eighth year, transforming a landscape once lush with green shrubs into a dull, ashen gray.<\/p>\n

Standing on his 2,400-acre farm in the Karoo, Zolile Hanabe, 70, sees more than his income drying up. Since he was around 10 and his father was forced to sell the family\u2019s goats by the apartheid government, Mr. Hanabe was determined to have a farm of his own.<\/p>\n

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Zolile Hanabe has had to lay off workers and reduce the size of his flocks because of the ongoing drought.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In 2011, nearly 20 years after apartheid ended, he used savings from working as a school principal to lease a farm, buying five cattle and 10 Boer goats, the same breed his father had raised. They grazed on the shrubs and drank from a river that traversed the property.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018This farm is my legacy, this is what I will pass onto my children,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But by 2019, he was still leasing the farm and as the drought intensified, that river dried, 11 of his cattle died, the shrubs shriveled. He bought feed to keep the others alive, costing $560 a month.<\/p>\n

The pandemic compounded his problems, he said. To reduce the risk of infection, he laid off two of his three farm hands. Feed sellers also cut staff and raised prices, squeezing his budget even more.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMaybe one of these crises, I could survive,\u201d Mr. Hanabe said. \u201cBut both?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A prolonged drought in the Eastern Cape has drastically reduced the herds on Mr. Hanabe\u2019s farm near Graaff-Reinet.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The New York Times<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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By Christina Goldbaum,\u00a0Photographs by Joao Silva, front page story,\u00a0Aug. 6, 2021 Relentless waves of the virus, combined with crises caused by conflict and climate change, have left tens of millions of people around the world on the brink of famine. A man fed a child at a community-run soup kitchen near East London in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12335,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12334\/revisions\/12335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}