Based upon Guardian article
"T¢ is not generally known what tho true state of affairs is in Vendaland. After more than two years of serious drought « goneral food shortage has arisen in virtually the whole area north of Pietersturg... children are starving to death, In the past few months nino children under five have died of kwashiorkor here, and pellagra is rife." Those quiet words, which mask a vast area of human suffering in Northern Transvaal, are taken from a report in the Johannesburg Star of May 7, 1963, Their source was Pastor Snyman, of the Dutch Reformed Church in Louis Trichardt, and his publication of the facts about the Northern Transvanl famine, in face of a Governaent—-imposed embargo on such nows, was an act of courage and conscience,
eseThe fact that these more recent revelations cama from a Church which is normally complaisant towards the Bantu policies of the Nationalist Government gave them added weight. Thoy were mado by Pastor Snynan because his appronches for assistence made to the local administration had been spurned and he felt that, in face of the human misery involved, he could no longer keep silence.
He added further details: 301 cases of ‘washiorkir and 1,224 of pellagra treated in 5 hospitals in 2 districts alone betwoen September, 1962 and February, 1963, apart from the many more cases left untreated in the villages; hundreds of thousands of people already reduced to 3 meals of thin mealie porridgs a week; the countryside swept bare of the wild spinaches normally used to supploment the diet; no prospect of relief from a new harm vest before February or March, 1964. And once tho news was broken Pastor Snyman's statements were reinforced by mission doctors and others from all over the rogion,
The Government's reaction was sharp. It immedztely imposed an embargo on entry into these areas by press photographers, and warned nissionaries , and others that such reports should be discouraged since they were inaccurate and exaggerated and were intended solely to discredit South Africa's name abrondi. For the same reason it warned thom against the acceptance of overt help from welfare organisations overseas, however disintorested they might be.
e+e*eTho aroas affocted contain, though they do not adequately support, an African population of well over 2 million people. Last year, according to well-informed sources, the Government contrilution to emergency foeding was only £30,000, while, in the area worst affected a total of 150 jobs on the ronds at an all-in wage of a shilling a day were provided as the muich= trumpeted famine Telief progranme...All the indications are that unless the euthorities are prepared to admit a massive influx of wolfare funds, or to mount a major operation on their own account, a very real human tragedy will unfold-in the months ahead,
eeeeS0uth Africa is a country of embarrassing agricultural surpluses, Millions of bags of maize are exported anmially at a hoavy loss to Conmminist China and clsewhere. When prices are considered too low, bananas are destr— oyed in the fields on official instruction and citrus left to rot in great mounds, Ment and meat products are produced in excess of the capacity of the local market to absorb them, and foreign outlats are cagerly sought, while surplus milk is poured into the sea. Yet all this goes on while hundreiis of thousands of people know permanent hunger, and diseases of malnutrition - kwashiorkor, pellagra, and gastro-enteritis - take a heavy toll, particularly among the younger age-groups, causing many deaths and preventing the sound physical developmont of thousands,....In the urban areas, there is one simple cause, It is the impossibly low industrial wego structuro, which investigation after investigation has proved to be totally inadequate for the support of normal family life,...