In the midst of plenty, many South Africans remain famished nd despite abumper summer harvest, millions are still reeling from severe hunger. In similar situations other countires have mobilised themselves into a social movement aimed at pressing for sufficient access to food in the name of rights, but famished South Africans continue to endure their daily struggles in relative anonymity and silence. Moreover, though South Africans are known for constantly using contentious politics such as activism to press home many demands in the area of health care, land and education, these group-based activities have not been extended to food security. This chapter has two objectives: first, to explore this puzzling paradox and second, to provide recommendations on how to overcome the conditions hindering mobilisation around food security. The chapter takes a closer look at the political contestation around basic rights such as the right to health, land and education in order to understand which factors triggered mobilisation around these entitlements. The chapter concludes by drawing inspiration from these movements in order to provide a blueprint on how to launch food activism in South Africa and beyond.

This chapter takes up the first of the four development “problems” highlighted in Part III. Whether in the name of civilization, modernity, or modernization, interventions to transform the composite materials, structural designs, and locations of African homes represented the development agenda to reform African domesticity and labor. Discourses on improvement masked the political and economic agendas at work and ignored the indigenous logic of African residential construction and organization. From the nineteenth century development efforts urged Africans to build square or rectangular houses in place of round huts. The scientific work of early twentieth-century urban planners set the stage for what “modern” urban spaces would look like in African cities. In the postcolonial era urbanization has far outpaced the ability of states and private enterprise to provide affordable, modern housing for citizens. Urban Africans have begun to fight back against the assumptions made about informal settlements by development specialists and city planners from the global north. These activists are challenging their governments to see urban residential areas as social spaces that belong to all citizens, not just wealthy ones. In their challenge, informal settlement dwellers are forcing the international development community to Africanize the development episteme.