The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) is alarmed by Statistics South Africa’s latest National Poverty Lines, which put the Food Poverty Line at R868 per person per month in 2026.
That is just R28.55 a day.
This is the amount below which Stats SA considers a person unable to afford enough food to meet the minimum daily energy requirement necessary for adequate health.Let us be clear: R868 is not enough to live on. It is essentially the statistical boundary separating extreme food poverty from being able to consume minimum calories.
Stats SA has also raised the Lower-Bound Poverty Line to R1,457 per person per month and the Upper-Bound Poverty Line to R2,962.
The Lower-Bound Poverty Line describes an especially brutal existence: people at this level cannot afford both adequate food and essential non-food items and therefore have to sacrifice food to pay for necessities such as transport, clothing and shelter.Even the R2,962 Upper-Bound Poverty Line is not a measure of a comfortable or decent life. It merely represents the minimum amount required to afford basic food and essential non-food necessities.
MILLIONS ARE LIVING BELOW EVEN THESE MINIMUMS
The significance of these new poverty lines becomes devastating when placed alongside Stats SA’s latest comprehensive Poverty Trends report.
In 2023, 10.8 million people — 17.6% of the population — lived below the Food Poverty Line and therefore could not afford enough food to meet their minimum energy requirements.Another 23.2 million people, or 37.9% of the population, lived below the Lower-Bound Poverty Line. Most devastatingly, 40.8 million people — 66.7% of the population — lived below the Upper-Bound Poverty Line.
In other words, approximately two out of every three South Africans could not afford Stats SA’s minimum combination of food and basic non-food necessities.
SAFTU acknowledges that there has been progress. The proportion living below the Lower-Bound Poverty Line declined from 57.5% in 2006 to 37.9% in 2023, while extreme food poverty declined from 27.4% to 17.6%. But after more than three decades of democracy, 10.8 million people unable to afford sufficient food and 40.8 million living below the broader poverty threshold cannot be celebrated as success.
POVERTY STILL HAS A COLOUR, GENDER, AGE AND ADDRESS
Even more disturbing is who remains trapped in poverty.
Stats SA found that Black Africans accounted for 93.6% of poor South Africans. Women constituted 53.6% of the poor. Children remain particularly devastated. Children aged 0–17 constituted 43.1% of all poor people, and almost half of South African children — 49.1% — were poor in 2023. In rural areas, the situation is even worse: 64.3% of children remained poor.
These figures confirm that poverty in South Africa is not colour-blind. Its racial and geographical character continues to bear the fingerprints of colonialism and apartheid, reinforced today by mass unemployment and grotesque inequality.
R868 VERSUS THE REAL COST OF FOOD
The gulf between Stats SA’s extreme poverty threshold and what nutritious food actually costs is enormous. The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group’s August 2026 Household Affordability Index puts the average household food basket at R5,479.80 a month. A basic nutritionally adequate food basket costs R6,597.25, while adequately feeding just one child costs an average R961.96 a month. That last comparison should shock the country: the average monthly cost of adequately feeding one child is already higher than Stats SA’s R868 Food Poverty Line for one person.
This is the difference between statistical survival and adequate nutrition.
NOW COMES ANOTHER FUEL SHOCK
The crisis will be aggravated by the latest massive fuel-price increases. Petrol is rising by around R1.30 a litre, while diesel increases by between R2.94 and R3.15 a litre. This is not simply a crisis for motorists. Diesel powers farms, food production and the trucks carrying food from farms and factories to supermarket shelves.
Higher fuel costs also feed into public transport costs. The working class is therefore squeezed from every direction: hit in the taxi, at the petrol pump, at the electricity meter and again at the supermarket till.
HUNGER AMIDST ABUNDANCE
South Africa is not a poor country. It possesses enormous mineral wealth, sophisticated agriculture, highly profitable banks, supermarkets and corporations, alongside extraordinary private wealth.
Yet millions cannot afford adequate food. This is hunger amidst abundance. The crisis cannot be separated from mass unemployment, poverty wages, deindustrialisation and austerity. Government has inflation targets, debt targets and deficit targets. Where are South Africa’s binding targets to eradicate unemployment, hunger, poverty and inequality?
SAFTU demands a fundamental change in economic direction: mass creation of decent jobs, a living wage, an end to austerity, stronger social protection and a Basic Income Grant of at least R1,500 as an immediate step towards an adequate income floor.
Government must also confront food-price profiteering and introduce progressive wealth and solidarity taxes to redistribute resources from those who have accumulated extraordinary wealth.
The R868 Food Poverty Line must become a national wake-up call.
Behind it are children going to school hungry, parents skipping meals, pensioners stretching grants across entire households and millions of unemployed people without an independent income.
Political freedom cannot be complete while millions remain prisoners of hunger. South Africa needs an economy organised around human dignity — not the statistical management of poverty.
