Promises were made, but will the chequebook come to the party? During his recent State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Cyril Ramaphosa stated that more than a quarter of South African children under the age of five are stunted, increasing their risk of disease and affecting their ability to learn and grow. He further stated that in 2026, the state will embark on a mission to end child stunting by 2030 and tackle malnutrition among young children.
This will be done by building on existing support such as the Child Support Grant (CSG), by focussing on the vital first 1 000 days of a child’s life from conception, and through targeted interventions to ensure that pregnant women and low birth-weight children receive optimal nutritional during this key development period.
The President’s comments have been met with general acclaim and approval, and nutritional experts agree that it is imperative that child stunting not only remain on the national agenda but also be adequately reflected in the national budget, which will be presented by the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, on 25 February.
“Commitment to nutrition outcomes such as stunting is not new. South Africa set an important global example with the Tshwane Declaration of Support for Breastfeeding in August 2011, which signalled a clear policy shift towards protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding. Yet around 15 years later, exclusive breastfeeding still falls well short of where it needs to be. Only about one fifth (22%) of infants under six months were exclusively breastfed in 2024,” says Prof. Christine Taljaard-Krugell, a registered dietitian at the North-West University (NWU).
“The Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation’s implementation evaluation of the National Food and Nutrition Security Plan (2018–2023) captures the core lesson: the plan had clear intent and potential, but that potential was not realised because of slow implementation, weak coordination, including delays in convening key structures, and resources that were budgeted but not made available. In short, there remains a gap between design and delivery at scale. Against this backdrop, the renewed public emphasis on stunting and the first 1 000 days is refreshing and welcome. However, the key question is whether this becomes another statement of intent, or whether it is matched by the leadership, financing and implementation discipline needed to translate political commitment into a measurable decline in stunting.”
According to Prof. Waldo Krugell, an economist at the NWU, the best-case scenario would be for Minister Godongwana to use some of his commodity tax windfall with “genuine ambition and strategic focus”.
Krugell explains: “For the 2025/26 Budget it would also be possible to fast-track the idea of a Maternal Support Grant in pilot form, learning from the Khulisa Care model, with automatic conversion to the Child Support Grant at birth registration. It would help to close the CSG take-up gap if government were to simplify documentation requirements and enable hospital-based registration at birth. Plans for the medium term would require more resources that will only be available if the economy grows at a faster pace.”
With that constraint in mind, both academics advocate for:
• Increasing the Child Support Grant to at least the food poverty line (R855/month), phased in over two to three years. • Scaling the Khulisa Care voucher model nationally, potentially with multiple retail partners. Khulisa Care is an initiative launched by the Western Cape government aimed at preventing child stunting. • Expanding and optimizing the ECD nutrition programme in tandem with the Bana Pele registration drive, ensuring that every registered child receives at least one nutritious meal per day.
They also agree that any short-term successes as well as looking beyond a three-year horizon will require multisectoral action and serious political accountability. The optimism sprouting from President Ramaphosa’s SONA promise is undeniable, and a generation of children now wait to see if it is kept.
