ABSTRACT
Chapters Three, Four and Five encompass the stories of twelve people, life in some communities, food insecurity faced by university students, and food initiatives in the province. These persons narrate how they make meaning of their multidimensional poverty and food insecurity, within their social, economic, cultural, political and economic contexts in democratic South Africa. Chapter Three succinctly describes the urban and rural places of engagement, as well as the people of the book. It then goes into the stories of those who live in the townships of Bloemfontein and work in the city. These stories are of cleaning women at the University of the Free State, unemployed persons in the townships, the Lesedi Centre of Hope dedicated to HIV/AIDS patients, and the staff at a Christian NGO focused on the homeless, unemployed and working poor. Within the realities of structural poverty that they live are intertwined the issues of social and economic inequity and inequality, attitudes towards gender roles, their agency, food insecurity in different levels and forms, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, alcoholism, drug abuse, teenage and multiple pregnancies, domestic abuse, child prostitution and rape. Some of these issues are expressed in the themes elucidated in their stories.
