Health Minister Manto Tshabalala Msimang warned on Monday that if exhortation failed to control the price of foods, then a statutory cap on runaway food inflation would be considered.

"If everything else fails, then we should begin to prepare legislation," she told a media briefing in Parliament.

At the same time she appealed to the food industry to keep prices within limits. Speaking as leader of the social cluster of ministries – which includes agriculture, social development and housing – she said: "We wish to appeal to all the role-players in the industry from producers to retailers to work with government in ensuring that we do not make food, especially basic foodstuffs such as bread, milk and maize meal, totally out of reach to the millions of our people."

Increasing social grants

Civil servants accompanying her at the briefing, including Vusi Madonsela director general of social development, Emily Mogajane the acting DG of agriculture and the health DG Thami Mseleku, also explained that the cabinet had instructed an interdepartmental task team to investigate further the possibilities of easing the burden of rapidly increasing prices on the poor by increasing the social grants to those receiving them, and by offering food parcels or food vouchers to those outside the social grants network.

"We have had a lot of trouble with the food parcel scheme," Mseleku said, explaining that because of court cases over tenders the actual delivery of food to the deserving poor had been held up. Other measures will include extending the school nutrition scheme to pre-schoolers at early childhood development centres, and managing an expansion of the vegetable garden scheme.

The task team is also examining the impact – both in budgetary terms and in terms of its likely effects – of zero-rating for VAT purposes more food items, such as madumbe, a traditional African root vegetable used as a subsistence alternative to the potato.

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