Photo by: Bloomberg
South Africa’s R500-billion support package will help to reduce the economic distress precipitated by government’s entirely justifiable response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is wholly insufficient, however, to entirely alleviate the economic pain and close a gaping social-welfare gap that was already worryingly wide ahead of the crisis. One of the biggest concerns has to be hunger, with millions of vulnerable South Africans, such as the women in face masks pictured here, in genuine need of nutritional support. It has been reported that some one-million people in Johannesburg alone are in need of food aid. Photograph: Waldo Swiegers for Bloomberg