Mapaballo Borotho
- The Gauteng Education Department has dismissed reports that pupils in Tembisa are going hungry due to a food supply crisis.
- It says one service provider briefly disrupted deliveries but the issue was swiftly resolved.
- All affected schools received meals through alternative service providers.
The Department of Education in Gauteng has rebutted reports citing that some pupils in Tembisa public schools are facing hunger due to a crisis in the National School Nutrition Programme.
This comes after the Sowetan newspaper published an article titled “Hunger stalks Gauteng pupils,” which has since been described as factually incorrect by the Department.
“This claim is factually incorrect and has caused unnecessary alarm among the public and school communities. It is unfortunate that the publication chose to ignore the detailed official response by the Department on this specific matter and selectively used minimal information while disregarding some facts shared by the Department prior to publishing,” said GDE spokesperson Steve Mabona.
Mabona clarified that the matter relates specifically to one service provider operating under the National School Nutrition Programme in Tembisa.
“The Department became aware on Wednesday, 15 October 2025, that this service provider refused to accept a newly allocated delivery schedule and consequently failed to deliver food to nine (9) schools, and attempted to deliver food at schools not allocated to the said service provider.
It must be noted that a meeting was scheduled on Thursday, 9 October 2025, where delivery schedules were discussed with all service providers and shared accordingly. A majority of service providers started with their deliveries on Friday, 10 October 2025, which continued over the weekend before the start of Term 4.”
He confirmed that the Department used other service providers to deliver food to all affected schools in Tembisa and Ivory Park.
“Irrespective of this unfortunate delay, all deserving children were served a meal accordingly.”
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