While hungry children in the Eastern Cape get sick, miss school and live in appalling conditions, thousands of families have missed out on emergency food parcels after a contract was awarded to a business that failed to distribute aid in time. Maverick Citizen photographer Hoseya Jubase visited such a family to record their daily struggle to survive.

Last week Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Sisulu said in a written response to a parliamentary question that a "submission" was being prepared in the form of a motivation to the provincial treasury for the approval of additional allocation of funding to the Social Relief of Distress programme.

This is a special and most urgent intervention to enable 62,954 beneficiary family households to have access to food and to address immediate needs of hunger, child poverty and malnutrition among poor and vulnerable Eastern Cape families which mostly fall under the category of households without income.

The Eastern Cape Department of Social Development failed to distribute R134-million in aid last year. This was rolled over to the present financial year.

Yet the MEC for Social Development, Siphokazi Lusithi, is widely advertising a new child protection campaign urging people to wear green ribbons before Child...