Commodity relations and nutrition under apartheid: a note on South Africa

The influence of commodity relations upon human nutritional status has recently received a good deal of attention in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. This paper takes up the question for the case of contemporary South Africa. It is argued that the structure of racial capitalism in South Africa exaggerates the negative influences of commodity relations on nutrition. In the extreme physical and social environments artificially created by apartheid in both Bantustan and urban township, the survival strategies employed by parents elsewhere in Africa fail to safeguard the nutritional well being of their children. Whereas elsewhere in this Special Issue Bryceson shows that commodity relations can have both positive and negative impacts on nutrition, the South African case reveals only the negative.