St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane in St George's Cathedral – Eucharist, 26 July 2009

2 Sam 12:1-14
Eph 3:14-21
John 6:1-15

May I speak in the name of the One God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

DEAR friends, I have to say how strange it feels, and yet how familiar it is to be back in this pulpit once again!

So thank you, Father Bruce, for the invitation to make a return appearance.

I feel a bit like one of those pop stars, who, every time they retire, they then make a come-back tour!

As you may know, having retired as Archbishop, where I had one hat, I now have two hats! One is the restoration of historic schools that were originally founded and run by the churches – schools that produced leaders of high calibre and integrity such as Nelson Mandela and many others who are making significant contributions in our country and elsewhere. Our hope is to return them to centres of academic and cultural excellence, after decades of being run down under the apartheid government.

My other project is African Monitor of which I am Founder and President. This is an independent continental body that monitors development funding commitments by African governments and their donor partners and to see how these impact on the lives of the grassroots communities.

As I travel around our continent I come into contact with many faces of poverty and at the heart of poverty is hunger, and with it, the growing need to focus on food security.

So today my come-back tour relates our concern with hunger to the Gospel account of Jesus feeding the multitudes.

Did you know that this is the only miracle of Jesus which appears in all four of the gospels?

Ensuring that the hungry are fed is evidently a fundamental concern of our Lord – and not only that we are spiritually nourished and sustained, but that our bodily needs are also met.

You will remember how, towards the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus teaches that the sheep will be divided from the goats, on the basis of whether we have fed the hungry, given the thirsty a drink, welcomed the stranger, tended the sick, clothed the naked and visited the imprisoned.

And the very fact of the incarnation – God in Jesus Christ taking on the fulness of humanity – underlines that God cares about human well-being at every level, both spiritual and physical.

The Church cannot choose on which to focus – we must always attend to both – indeed, we will often find that they are inseparable.

In John's gospel, Jesus tests Philip, asking him where enough bread can be bought.

In all three of Matthew, Mark and Luke's accounts, the challenge to the disciples is even more direct.

The disciples ask Jesus to send the crowd away, so that they can go to the villages to buy food, as it is getting late.

But Jesus responds, 'YOU give them something to eat.'

And of course, they look at the task before them, and it seems quite impossible.

But in Jesus, the impossible becomes possible, and the daunting becomes do-able.

And, in all three of these gospel accounts, Jesus gives the blessed bread and fishes to the disciples, for them to distribute to the people.

In the same way, we too should be encouraged that the power to make a difference – a Jesus-shaped difference for good – this power lies within our own hands, far, far more than we often realise.

This is certainly the case when it comes to hunger, and the alleviation of poverty.

Exact statistics are hard to pin down. Hunger can be a very seasonal thing. But generally speaking, around one in three people in sub-Saharan Africa is malnourished. Three hundred million experience chronic hunger. The global financial crisis threatens to push an additional 100 million people into chronic hunger and poverty.

This is a not problem that only lies north of the Limpopo.

When I was one of the commissioners in the 1998 Poverty Hearings that were organised by SANGOCO, Human Rights Commission and the Commission for Gender Equality, the main issues that people raised were access to jobs, and the opportunity to eke out their own living with dignity.

African Monitor, with Hope Africa and other NGOs, conducted another round of hearings in 2008. I have to say that I am not an alarmist but I was shocked, seriously shocked, at the differences we found. More than 50% of the people who attended the hearings were young people and more worrying was the level of anger, frustration and hopelessness among them.

Someone even remarked that if young people's frustrations are not addressed we could be having another June 1976 in the making!

The service delivery protests that are currently taking place are probably a manifestation of that anger and disappointment, noting also that they seem to be led by young people. During the poverty hearings, most of the issues that these service delivery protests are about were raised by the people.

Unemployment remained a key concern – but it was unemployment in a new, and more debilitating, guise.

Among unskilled and semi-skilled young people, unemployment rates were alarmingly high. Worse, there was a terrible fear that if they passed the magic age of 35, they might as well give up all hope of EVER finding a job.

And the consequence of unemployment for these young people in urban areas was lack of secure access to food, and almost permanent hunger.

One young man said 'Hunger fills my heart with anger. I see a person with money and I want to rob him (or her).'

Another said 'An empty stomach knows no law.'

There are people in this city who are going hungry – and some are from families, from places, in the Eastern Cape and elsewhere, where there is good agricultural land that is lying unused.

Why did they not stay there, and plough and reap, and fill their bellies?

The Mayor of Cape Town has said that in Cape Town for example 16000 people come to live in the city per year. This is against the fact that the city can only build 12000 houses per year. This means an increase in poverty.

Rural development is the key to food security – and the heart of this is investment by government in agriculture.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, 55% of the population depend directly on agriculture.

It should be obvious that this is the prime sector to address, in overcoming poverty.

Experience in Asia suggested that if a government spends 14% of its budget on agriculture, for 10 years, it will bring revolutionary changes.

So, in 2003, the governments of the African Union, in the Maputo Protocol, committed themselves to spend – well, not quite 14%, but 10%, of their budgets, on agriculture and rural development.

The object was, by doing so, to increase agricultural GDP growth by 6% annually, and achieve household food security, and halve poverty, both by 2015.

It was a vital commitment – but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Six years on, two countries have achieved the full 14% - Malawi and Burkina Fasso. And only three others, Senegal, Mali and Ethiopia, have achieved 10%.

But where this is happening, the difference is remarkable.

Take Malawi.

When he came to power in 2004, President Bingu wa Mutharika said 'I will not be a president who goes around begging for food.'

This was even though over several years, Malawi had been forced to import vast quantities of maize, because of drought and underutilisation of land.

So he doubled the government's agricultural spending – from 7.4% to 14%.

And between 2005 and 2007, the country went from a food deficit of 43% to a food surplus of 57%. Productivity per hectare doubled. Maize production trebled.

Two years on, this change for the better is still continuing.

Of course, there is more to this than merely throwing money at the problem – one must consider such questions as access to land, ensuring the widest possible effective participation, appropriate diversity in production, and targeting small-holders.

Monitoring shows that for every 1% increase in investment, there is a 6% growth in expenditure gain amongst the poorest rural populations.

Targeting the poorest in this way, for once actually does benefit them most.

Well, what has all this to do with us, sitting in this Cathedral at the heart of this beautiful city?

First, all of us need to eat – and food does not appear miraculously ready-packaged on the shelves of Woolworths and Pick'n'Pay. It must come from somewhere!

Every one of us is actually part of some network of production.

And each network – whether viewed globally or locally – must ultimately generate enough food for the consumption needs of all its members. And, more than this, it must produce a surplus that can be sold to fund other needs – food and housing, at the most basic level.

This is the essence of food security.

But at the global level, we are failing to deliver the basics of food security in ways that meet every human person's needs for adequate nourishment and well-being.

International financial problems are compounding the volatility of commodity prices – which already saw the international price of many basic foodstuffs double, triple or even quadruple between 2007 and 2008.

The invisible hand of the market is proving to be ineffective in overcoming spiralling food prices and distorted production.

We have to look for solutions closer to home, especially at national levels – as Malawi has found so successfully.

And while we here today might feel the pinch of rising prices and global credit crunch in our pockets, an increasing number are feeling the pain in their stomachs.

These are the people we see scavenging through our wheelie-bins, before the refuse lorries come round.

The number is growing.

And the xenophobic violence of last year, and the threats that it will be repeated, have drawn much of their energy from people unable to cope with the extreme poverty they face.

This is of course no excuse for violence – but it is the reality we must work with.

Last year the World Bank estimated over 30 countries faced social unrest because of food and fuel price hikes. Many countries experience food riots, as we have seen on our television screens.

We too must recognise that poverty and hunger are a South African reality.

And we must also remember Jesus' words, 'You give them something to eat.'

So my conclusion is that South Africa must also do its part in focussing on food security, and on agricultural and rural development.

And while we might see many and urgent spending needs within our cities, we ought also to realise that our own priorities will be served by rural development.

Because a stronger agricultural sector would mean more local food production, and less imports (and with them, lower food miles – an important environmental consideration). Higher productivity would also reduce prices.

If what is happening elsewhere is replicated here, some of the population drain from the countryside to the cities would also slow down, or even reverse.

And the very poorest communities of our nation – the ones least helped by our macro-economic successes and BEE and so forth – would be helped the most.

In the long term, this would be far more effective than all the soup kitchens and feeding schemes our churches run, vital though they are – because it would address the causes, not the consequences, of poverty and hunger.

The converse is that if we continue to fail to tackle poverty, growing political instability may be the consequence.

Yet this requires us to be a little less selfish in the short term – in the knowledge that we too will stand to gain in the longer term.

Therefore, both within the Province and in the national political arena, city dwellers must say that adequate rural development is a vital priority.

Let us use our voices on behalf of the voiceless; let we who have enough to eat speak up for the hungry.

It might at times feel like our words within the noisy world of politics are no more than two small fish and five bread rolls among a gathering of 5000.

But look what Jesus did with those!

Every little bit counts – and when we offer our small contribution to Jesus, we never quite know how great its effect will be.

Brothers and sisters, you will have guessed that all this is very dear to my heart!

But the reason I am so heavily involved in this work is that I believe it is also close to our Lord's heart.

'You give them something to eat' said Jesus to the disciples.

So let us do it – of course, through the vital work that the Cathedral does with the homeless of the city, and similar projects.

Yes we can make hunger history and we will make it history.

There is an African proverb that says: If you want to walk fast, walk alone but if you want to walk far, walk together. That has been the message of the Dinokeng Scenarios, Dear Friends. We can only walk far and wide if we have an engaged citizenry that works together with civil society, government and the private sector.

But let us also do it, by calling on government to take those steps that will overcome the most fundamental causes of poverty and hunger.

And may God bless us, as we follow his call.

Amen

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