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In South Africa, the informal sector, including food vending, is either criminalized or ignored. This is despite the fact that it plays an important role in the economy in terms of employment, income generation, food distribution and livelihoods for the urban poor. This paper assesses the nature, operations, strategies and challenges of the informal food sector in Cape Town. Data was collected through a survey of over 1000 informal food vendors in the city. Most of the enterprises were single-owner businesses, financed from personal savings and started by owners seeking employment, independence and improved financial security for their families. Most businesses had little or no access to finance from government agencies, banks and micro-finance lenders. Entrepreneurs faced various challenges ranging from insufficient sales, competition, changing consumer food needs and rising stock prices. To survive in a challenging economic environment, they adopt various innovative strategies including changing the types of foods they sell, increasing food stock variety, monitoring formal food retailing prices and negotiating with suppliers for favourable stock prices. Despite the various challenges being experienced, the informal food sector has become an integral and indispensable component of the food system of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-2005 migration movements from Zimbabwe to South Africa have included a growing number of children. These children face considerable difficulties in accessing the South African educational system. School attendance rates are significantly lower amongst migrant than South African children. This paper is based on recent interviews with Zimbabwean parents and guardians in Cape Town and Johannesburg and shows the levels and types of discrimination they and their children face as well as their powerlessness to effect change. The exclusion of migrant children from education contravenes South Africa's international human rights obligations as well as its own Bill of Rights and Department of Education directives. The Department of Home Affairs, however, makes schools sites for the enforcement of the draconian provisions of the 2002 Immigration Act. School authorities therefore operate with conflicting mandates. The evidence suggests that most prefer to side with the Department of Home Affairs and make their schools unwelcoming spaces for Zimbabwean children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, Zimbabwe was in crisis, with an economy in ruins and a volatile political environment. The country's GDP had contracted by over 40 % since 2,000 level; the official unemployment rate was over 80 %; hyperinflation was running at over 200 million percent; and food production deficits of the staple crop, maize, hovered around 1,000,000 tons. Within this hyperinflationary environment, food shortages were acute, and over 80 % of households in the country survived on less than US$2 per day. While this deleterious environment affected the whole country, the vulnerability of the urban poor to the economic meltdown and food insecurity was especially severe given their heavy reliance on food purchases and increases in other urban expenses such as rent, electricity, and transport. This paper assesses the vulnerability of poor households to food insecurity in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, under the crisis conditions and beyond. It argues that while the ushering in of the Government of National Unity in 2009 stabilized the political and economic situation by bringing down inflation, introducing a multi-currency regime, and improving the food supply, the general livelihoods of the poor did not drastically improve. The food security challenges facing poor urban households in Harare did not immediately improve for reasons that are discussed in the paper. The analysis is based on a comparison of data from two household surveys conducted in Harare, the first at the height of the crisis in 2008 and the second in 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the contemporary literature on food security has focused on the rural sector. However, within the current context of high demographic growth, rapid urbanization and rising urban poverty which characterizes much of Sub-Saharan Africa, urban food insecurity cannot continue to be ignored. This study therefore examines the vulnerability of poor households to food insecurity in the challenging urban environment of Harare in Zimbabwe, an acute example of a city (and country) 'in crisis'. Findings from qualitative and quantitative research demonstrate severe food insecurity characterized by critical food shortages and the consumption of narrower diets among poor households in the city. Household vulnerability to food insecurity stemmed from a range of factors, including: high levels of unemployment and poverty; high dependency ratios; low levels of house ownership; hyperinflation; skyrocketing food prices; and the general collapse of the formal food system. Vulnerability to food insecurity was further exacerbated by a prolonged adverse socio-political climate that undermined national economic recovery and reduced the livelihood opportunities available to the urban poor. The paper concludes that in Harare, as in most urban areas of the developing world, the urban poor have become highly vulnerable to food insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]