South Africa condemns Israel’s incursion into Lebanon:
South Africa on Monday condemned Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon as a violation of international law and cautioned that it risked plunging the Middle East into all-out war.
“The international community cannot afford to remain indifferent,” the department of international relations said in a statement.
“South Africa calls for an immediate end to the bombing campaign as the longer the war continues, the higher the risk that the region will descend into a major military conflagration, presenting a grave threat to international peace and security.”
It said Israel’s strike last Thursday on central Beirut, in which 22 people reportedly died, targeted a densely populated residential area “which is removed from Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah’s headquarters have been repeatedly bombed over the past weeks”.
In addition, Pretoria accused Israel of repeatedly “breaching the blue line” with its ground incursion into southern Lebanon where 10 400 peacekeepers are deployed under Spanish command.
A number of peacekeepers were wounded in Israeli attacks in Lebanon last week.
After Israeli tanks entered a peacekeepers’ base in Ramyah in the south of the country on Sunday, UN secretary general António Guterres called on Israel to respect the organisation’s positions. The UN Security Council was due to hold an emergency meeting later on Monday.
Israel on Monday issued new evacuation warnings for more than a dozen cities and towns in southern Lebanon, and overnight attacked a school compound in Gaza where families were sheltering.
According to the United Nations Works and Relief Agency, 20 people were killed in the strike in Nuseirat. Israel said it targeted Hamas fighters inside the compound.
The department of international relations accused Israel of continuously “violating international humanitarian law with impunity” in Gaza.
It called for an immediate end to Israel’s bombing campaign there and elsewhere in the region, adding: “The longer the war continues, the higher the risk that the region will descend into a major military conflagration, presenting a grave threat to international peace and security.”
The warning followed confirmation by the United States on Sunday that it would send an advanced missile defence system, along with about 100 troops, to Israel, in the first US deployment to Israel since the Hamas attacks on the country a year ago. The announcement came as Israel plans to retaliate against Iran following a missile attack a fortnight ago.
South Africa is one of a group of nine countries that drafted a letter to Guterres in which they deplore the extraordinary step by Israel to declare him persona non grata and voice collective respect for his leadership.
“In our view, such actions undermine the United Nations’ ability to carry out its mandate, which includes mediating conflicts and providing humanitarian support,” the letter dated October 10 reads.
It was written by Paula Narváez, the foreign minister of Chile, on behalf of what she called a core group of her own and eight other countries, including Brazil, Indonesia, Spain, South Africa, Uganda and Mexico.
It was signed by 104 countries, plus the African Union, reflecting “wide and collective support across the international community”, Narváez said.
“We reaffirm our full support and confidence in your work as the secretary general,” the text continued.
“We, the signatories, are confident of your commitment to peace and security, and alignment with international law including in promoting respect for international humanitarian law, and the relevant United Nations resolutions regarding the situation in the Middle East.”
The letter voiced concern and condemnation of the statement on 2 October by Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, that Guterres would be barred from entering the country for failing to condemn attacks against Israel in sufficiently strong terms.
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel, as nearly all the countries of the world have done, does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil,” Katz said after an Iranian missile attack on Israel a day earlier.
In last week’s letter to Guterres, nations said this stance risked further delaying a ceasefire and the establishment of a credible path towards a two-state solution to allow Israel and Palestine to live side by side peacefully, in accordance with UN resolutions.
“At times of heightened tension, the role of the secretary general is essential in fostering dialogue and understanding among conflicting parties.
“The secretary general plays a vital role in advancing the purposes of the United Nations, as outlined in the charter, including to maintain international peace and security, and develop friendly relations among states.”
The letter voiced support for Guterres’s commitment to peace and security and said he was working in accordance with international law, including in promoting respect for international humanitarian law and relevant UN resolutions regarding the situation in the Middle East.
“The secretary general’s efforts reflect our shared desire for an end to violence and for meaningful dialogue in the pursuit of lasting peace in the Middle East.
“As member states of the United Nations, we call for respect for the UN’s leadership and its mission.
“We call upon all parties to avoid actions that could weaken the critical role of the United Nations in conflict resolution and instead, to support initiatives that contribute to a peaceful and lasting solution of the crisis in the Middle East.”
The letter was signed by a number of European countries, among them Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland, but not by Germany and the United Kingdom. Nor was it signed by the United States. Russia and China are among the signatories.
Hera the European roller’s epic migration uncovers new flight paths for bird conservation:
More than 10 000km in just two months. That’s the astonishing distance that Hera, a European roller tagged by BirdLife South Africa, flew to get to her breeding grounds in Uzbekistan.
The perilous journey of this Afro-palearctic migrant is helping the bird conservation organisation uncover the marvels of migration for this colourful summer visitor to South Africa.
In March, Hera was one of two individuals tagged with tiny, solar-powered satellite trackers through BirdLife South Africa’s European roller monitoring project, which works to expand understanding of their migratory routes. The birds were also ringed with unique colours.
The data collected from satellite tags allows researchers such as Jessica Wilmot, the flyway and migrants project manager, to map the full migration cycle of the birds. This helps to identify critical habitats and potential threats along their flyways.
Hera, which means goddess of the skies, is a fitting name for the bird, which weighed just 1.59g when the technology was fitted by a donor of the project, Wilmot said.
“She travelled along the east coast of Africa. From Limpopo, she went into Mozambique, and then stuck to the coast, until she got to Somalia where she spent about a month, slowly making her way to the Horn of Africa. And then when she got there, she crossed the Arabian Sea and crossed the ocean again to the coast of Pakistan, travelled to Afghanistan, was there for about a week, and then travelled to Uzbekistan.”
According to BirdLife South Africa, Hera’s migration along the Eastern African-Eurasian Flyway is not only a “marvel of endurance” but also a symbol of ongoing efforts to protect migratory birds and their fragile ecosystems.
“Hera really is pioneering the route that she is flying because we didn’t know,” Wilmot said. “And generally, depending on where they breed, migratory birds use different flyways but there has never been a recorded route of birds travelling within this flyway. It’s very exciting … and a first for South Africa.”
World Migratory Bird Day was marked on Saturday, under the theme “Protect Insects, Protect Birds”.
Hera’s extraordinary journey is “shining a light on the interconnectedness of species and ecosystems”, BirdLife SA said.
Insects are a critical food source for many migratory birds, including European rollers like Hera, it said.
“As insect populations decline because of habitat destruction, pesticide use and climate change, birds face greater challenges in completing their long migrations. Hera’s journey is not just about survival; it’s a story of resilience, hope and the incredible natural processes that sustain life across borders.”
The satellite tags weigh a mere 3.2g, to ensure that the research doesn’t interfere with a bird’s migration and mating success.
“We don’t want to influence its fitness to get to its breeding ground and back because that’s counterintuitive to the research that we’re trying to do,” Wilmot pointed out.
Despite their global classification as of least concern, European rollers are regionally listed as near threatened, with populations declining since the 1970s, with records of local and national extinctions throughout Europe.
One of the main aims of the project is to gain a better understanding of the migration of European rollers and identify key stop-over sites they use from within their overwintering sites. This can be used to secure additional key habitats for this species and to understand some of the threats faced at the sites.
South Africa was identified as an important country along the migration route, BirdLife South Africa said. Much of the research and conservation work on European rollers has traditionally focused on their breeding grounds in Europe.
“Expanding our monitoring and tracking efforts to Southern Africa will deepen our understanding of their overwintering behaviour and potential threats, thereby ensuring our protection efforts include all of their life stages.
“With Hera staying in Somalia for a month, we can deduce that, at least for a month, that site was very important,” Wilmot added. “We would need her to complete the migration at least twice to confirm that this is the route she flies annually and those are the sites that she is dependent on.”
Understanding which sites are important is important for organisations involved in bird conservation because, without that understanding, “we really won’t know where to put our resources or which stakeholders to work with”.
Hera is in India at the moment and the researchers said they look forward to watching what route she takes to return to South Africa in the coming weeks.
“The last point [GPS location] we’ve got was on 29 July on the coast of India … and we suspect that feathers have grown over the solar panel so it’s not charging very well … We’re just hoping that, when she starts migrating back, the feathers will shift and it’ll be able to charge enough and get another point.”
There are many risks involved in tagging birds. For Wilmot, “it’s terrifying” deploying the tags and then waiting for an update. “And then it doesn’t come and then you think, ‘Oh gosh has the tag failed, has the bird been predated?’ You really feel for the individuals.”
That was the case with the other individual European roller tagged with Hera, Royal Wasi, a name derived from the Shangaan word for the colour blue. “When it got to the Horn of Africa, we lost transmission. We haven’t got any since, so we assume that either the bird was predated or the tag failed …. Tag failure is a risk that we will probably have to contend with again.”
Statistically, the project needs to deploy more satellite tags to prove that Hera’s is the route that the migrating European rollers fly. The plan is to deploy five more in February.
The technology is not cheap. Imported from New Zealand, the satellite tags alone cost R53 000, while the satellite data fees for a two-year span amount to R33 000. Fundraising is constant, Wilmot added.
“We are using Hera as an ambassador. Imagine what else we can do, and what more we can do, if we deploy more tags.”
South Africa’s global food security ranking improves, but household insecurity persists:
I recently said on X that South Africa is food secure at a national level but has a major household food insecurity problem.
One of the measures researchers often use to evaluate the food security condition of each country relative to the world is The Economist’s Global Food Security Index.
In 2022, South Africa ranked 59th out of 113 countries and was the most food secure in sub-Saharan Africa. This is an improvement from the previous year’s ranking of 70th. South Africa ranked the second most food-secure country in the African continent after Morocco.
The Global Food Security Index comprises four sub-indices: 1) food affordability, 2) food availability, 3) food quality and safety, and 4) sustainability and adaptation.
The affordability and availability subindices carry a combined weighting of two-thirds of the total index. The affordability sub-index includes the change in average food costs, agricultural trade, food safety net programmes, proportion of population under the global poverty line, and funding for food safety net programmes.
The availability sub-index includes the sufficiency of supply, access to inputs, agricultural research and development, farm infrastructure, supply chain infrastructure, food loss, and political and social barriers to food.
In 2022, South Africa experienced a mild deterioration in the food affordability sub-index of seven points. The rest of the other subindices improved significantly.
This decline in the affordability sub-index is unsurprising because the country witnessed a broad acceleration in consumer food price inflation since the start of the year. It averaged 9,5% year-on-year in 2022, from 6.5% up from in 2021. Food inflation was also elevated in 2023, averaging at 11%.
In 2024, however, we saw market deceleration, with South Africa’s food inflation averaging 4.8% in the first eight months of the year.
Importantly, the higher food inflation in 2022 and 2023 was a global issue and not unique to South Africa.
But, in an environment such as South Africa with higher unemployment, the effects of food inflation shocks tend to be more severely felt by consumers.
Over the past few years, several factors have added upward pressure on global food prices.
First, the drought in South America in the 2019-20 season reduced the harvest, primarily in Brazil and Argentina. These countries collectively account for 14% and 50% of global maize and soybean production. The drought has persisted for roughly three seasons, further exacerbating the grain price increases from 2020 to 2022.
Second, China’s imports of grains and oilseed as the country rebuilt its pork industry after a devastating African swine fever also added to the surge in demand at a time when global stocks were tight. China’s growing demand had a consequential effect on global grain prices because of its share size of imports, which is about 60% of globally traded soybeans.
As Covid-19 spread in early 2020, several major grain producers such as India, Kazakhstan and Vietnam worsened global price increases by temporarily banning exports. As this unfolded, shipping costs soared, increasing global grain prices further. In sum, a combination of trade policy actions by other countries, logistics and weather conditions placed upward pressure on food prices.
These problems were further worsened by the Russia-Ukraine war. Russia and Ukraine are substantial players in the grains and oilseeds market. The former produces about 10% of global wheat, while Ukraine accounts for 4%. Together, the two countries account for a quarter of global wheat exports.
Moreover, Russia and Ukraine are notable players in maize, responsible for 4% of production combined. But their contribution is even more significant in exports, accounting for an average of 14%.
Both countries are also among the leading producers and exporters of sunflower oil. Pre-war, Ukraine’s global product exports accounted for 40%, and Russia for 18%. Thus, the war led to a surge in grains and oilseeds prices for much of 2022.
As a small, open economy, South Africa was not insulated from these agricultural and food price shocks.
Admittedly, in 2022 and 2023, South Africa was in a reasonably better place, with abundant supplies as the La Niña weather event brought good rains and supported agricultural activity. Still, the prices did not reflect the increased domestic supplies because the global shocks dominated.
These were the first round of shocks in global food prices. By the end of 2022, as the grain trade resumed in the Black Sea region following the Black Sea Grain Deal initiative that started in July 2022 and allowed for exports of grain from Ukraine without military attacks by Russia, the global agricultural prices came off the record levels seen months after the invasion of Ukraine.
The global agricultural prices continued to decline throughout 2023 and 2024. Thus, even domestically, the food price inflation moderated somewhat in 2024 (The new upside risk on prices in South Africa is the domestic drought in the 2024 summer season).
The major issue to keep in mind when observing global agricultural indices is that subjectivity can never be fully eliminated. Resource constraints can hinder objective data collection on the ground in each country, and they sometimes rely on blueprint models that may not be site-specific.
Sources of bias can stem from inconsistency in data quality, frequency and reliability from all countries. The weightings and rankings are also tricky because they must be tailored to suit different socio-economic contexts.
With that said, the key message is that South Africa is in a better place regarding food security when compared with various countries in the world.
This does not mean there should be complacency. South Africa will need to continue improving food security through expansion in agricultural production and job creation in various sectors of the economy.
At a technical level, the ideas of expanding agriculture and agro-processing capacity to boost growth and job creation were well established as far back as in the National Development Plan 2012.
They were again highlighted in the 2019 National Treasury paper, in the 2022 Agriculture and Agro-processing Master Plan and, most recently, in my book, A Country of Two Agricultures: The Disparities, The Challenges, The Solutions.
These include expanding agricultural activity in the former homelands and government land; the release of PLAS (Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy) land with title deeds (about 2.5 million hectares are in government books); effective blended finance scheme; enhancing government-commodity organisations’ partnerships in extension services; investment in the network industries (water, electricity and road infrastructure); port infrastructure and state laboratories.
Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape are the most food-insecure provinces, but they also have vast tracts of underused land.
These provinces should be a priority in agricultural development plans, with a commercial focus where conditions permit job creation to be achieved, all to boost South Africa’s food security conditions.
Wandile Sihlobo is the chief economist at the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa and a senior fellow in Stellenbosch University’s Department of Agricultural Economics. His latest book is A Country of Two Agricultures.
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