With Pots & Pens to Parliament

Food insecurity is rising, yet support for community kitchens is dwindling. Between 2020 and 2024, food insecurity in Cape Town worsened significantly, driven by poverty, unemployment, and deepening inequality. In six research sites—Bridgetown, Gugulethu, Hanover Park, Mfuleni, Mitchell’s Plain, and the Winelands—household surveys revealed that food-secure households dropped from 42% in 2020 to just 13–14% by 2024. The number of people relying on community kitchens has also surged: by 2024, over half of surveyed households had accessed a kitchen, with one in three depending on it regularly.

These kitchens are not only feeding tens of thousands; they are also lifelines for women facing gender-based violence. Data from 2023 and 2024 shows a strong correlation between food insecurity and GBV—by early 2024, nearly 70% of women who experienced GBV lived in severely food-insecure households. Community kitchens have emerged as trusted safe spaces and critical first responders, providing survivors with legal, medical, and emotional support.

Documenting over 60,000 meals a month, the kitchens are sustained by the tireless efforts of women-led teams. Despite limited resources, these women shoulder invisible care work and lead initiatives like hydroponic farming, savings schemes, and collaborations with restaurants. 

The Urban Food Futures programme, in partnership with the Food Agency Cape Town, Social Change Assistant Trust, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and other civil society partners and academics, supported a four-year action research process with 20 women from seven kitchens. Together, they have reimagined these spaces as hubs of healing, resilience, and solidarity.

From pots and pens to policy influence, Cape Town’s kitchens are reshaping urban food systems—and proving that care is a powerful form of resistance.