Health and education are two important aspects of human capital and form the basis of an individual’s economic productivity in any country. In South Africa, hunger and malnutrition continue to hamper the health, quality of life and survival of school going children such that some children drop- out of school due to these socio-economic problems (Tomlinson,2007:2). The introduction of previous School Feeding Schemes to address the question of hunger and poverty within schools was mostly left in the 1980’s and 1990’s to charitable and Non-Governmental Organizations such as Operation Hunger and ITHUBA (Swartz, 2009:38). According to Perlman (1993:14) South Africa’s track record of child deaths was more than double that of any other country of similar income levels worldwide, due to the apartheid government deserting its responsibility of feeding the nation. The White Paper for the Transformation of Health System (1997: 125) had also stated that improving nutrition within the rural schools is an imperative and a sound economic investment which is politically rewarding. Nelson Mandela (1996:8) once said “Our children are our nation’s future. Prospects for development are seriously undermined by the kind of large scale deprivation of children that South Africa has experienced. On the other hand investing in their health, nutrition and education not only improves our children’s quality of life – the gains reverberate into the future generations. ” From April 1994, through the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) the Government of National Unity under the leadership of Dr. Nelson Mandela identified the area of school feeding as a policy prime concern in redressing the imbalances and inequities of the past governments. Another initiative to redress the inequities of the past, was through the programme of Poverty Reduction which manifested itself in lack of income, lack of education and skills, lack of access to services and amenities and lack of ownership of land and housing (Public Service Commission, 2007.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9224 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Fili, Linda Phinx |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | 36 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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