ABSTRACT
Chapter One delineates how multidimensional poverty and food insecurity are two of the worst problems a significant proportion of the world’s population faces today, as well as the important place that achieving food insecurity has had in the democratic path that South Africa has been carving over since the end of apartheid. The author lays out the multiple instruments that the government created to effectuate the transformation of the South African society into a more socially, economically and politically equal one, with achieving food security having a central place. Among these instruments are: the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the 1996 Constitution, the Growth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy (GEAR), and the Integrated Food Security Strategy (IFSS). She analyzes the successes and failures of these multiple programs with regard to reducing poverty and achieving food security. Within this context of democracy over the last twenty-three years, she also introduces the situations of poverty and insecurity in the Free State Province. The chapter ends with recent cases of racial discrimination on the province that illustrate the sad reality that the structures of apartheid are still very present there.
