On 24 February, Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube unveiled a donation by McDonald’s of branded desks for learners at a primary school in Cape Town. In a joint statement, 21 civil society organisations said this donation should “not be seen as a form of charity. It is junk food marketing targeting vulnerable children.”
The McDonald’s logo, along with the company’s red and yellow brand colours, are highly visible on the desks, which turn into backpacks.
“As part of their approach MiDesk Global sources funding from corporate sponsors who in return for their contribution are offered branding rights on the donations they make to each of the recipient schools,” said Elijah Mhlanga, the spokesperson for the Department of Basic Education (DBE).
“It is important to bring home the fact that the department dealt with MiDesk Global Social Impact Organisation who, through the donation from the CSI [corporate social investment] department of McDonald’s, procured the desks.
“The handover of the desks was not a marketing event, it was a public-private partnership (PPP) where the focus was and remains providing support for learners in order to improve educational outcomes in the country,” said Mhlanga.
“The intention of such PPPs has never been to market or advertise any brand or product, [but] rather to work collaboratively to find solutions to the perennial challenges of the shortage of desks in our schools. Corporate sponsors have been generous enough to donate their resources to help the department deal with ongoing challenges relating to the provision of infrastructure and desks in schools.
“Through the innovative solution afforded by MiDesk, a dedicated workspace for learners is provided both at school and home.”
“At MiDesk, our mission has always been to provide children with the essential tools they need for a quality education. Over the years, we have collaborated with multiple corporate partners, 25 in total, including seven foundations since year 2021,” said MiDesk Global.
“Our focus remains on empowering pupils and we welcome support from any organisation willing to invest in education and upliftment.
“Without the generosity of corporate sponsors, thousands of pupils would still be without the fundamental resources needed to thrive academically. Our commitment is to the children and their education.”
Public health concerns
South Africa struggles with malnutrition, high rates of obesity and a subsequent non-communicable disease crisis.
As a study published in Health Systems Trust outlines: “Poor diet now generates more disease than physical inactivity, alcohol and smoking combined, which is largely due to an observed change in diet at the population level.”
The observed change is called the “nutrition transition” and is a shift from diets based largely on staple grains or starchy roots, legumes, vegetables and fruits towards more energy-dense, processed foods, more foods of animal origin and more added sugar, salt and fat.
“This new diet, commonly known as the Western diet, is primarily made up of cheap, highly palatable, heavily promoted, energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods,” the study found.
According to the statement by the civil society organisations, “Nearly one in every four children under five are now either overweight or obese. Sophisticated marketing campaigns tap into children’s deepest desires and longing for love, family, friendship and belonging, while relatively low prices make fast foods even more desirable amidst widespread poverty and deepening inequality.
“These branded desks serve as a form of advertising for McDonald’s, instrumentalise children as consumers of unhealthy food and contribute to normalising the routine consumption of fast food.”
Mhlanga said: “The department is fully committed to ensuring nutritious and balanced meals for learners in schools; this is emphasised by the department’s National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) which feeds in excess of nine million learners every schoolday.
The NSNP menu provides for nutritious and balanced healthy meals. No high-fat, sugar and salt food items are served by the department in our schools.”
Blurred lines?
“Minister Gwarube’s decisions cannot be a compromise between private interests and protecting our children from harmful advertising,” said Palesa Ramolefo of Amandla.mobi in the joint statement.
“Her responsibility is to serve the public and the Constitution, which means keeping private interests in check and ensuring big businesses don’t profit at the expense of our children.”
In its updated guidelines released in 2023 on policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing, the World Health Organization noted that children’s rights, including the right to health, access to safe and nutritious food, and the right to be free from exploitation were undermined by the marketing of food high in fat, salt and sugar.
Countries that are party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, like South Africa, have a legal duty to ensure that these rights are protected and fulfilled and that business respects them, the statement goes on to say.
“It cannot be said that our government is adequately performing this duty if the DBE actively supports the direct marketing of McDonald’s food to children. This incident demonstrates that the South African government urgently needs to finalise regulations and develop legislation to restrict the marketing of unhealthy food in general, and to children in particular, as was done by other countries,” said the civil society joint statement.
The statement said the branded desk donation illustrated the dangers of austerity and cuts to the education budget, incentivising corporate actors to encroach into spaces abandoned by the state.
“Gaps opened up by deliberate disinvestment are then given a Band-Aid by corporate ‘philanthropy’. But this is not generosity — it is branding, which also further promotes unhealthy behaviours in children.”
The statement said corporate charity was not a substitute for government responsibility and called on the Treasury to properly fund education, ensuring that every child has access to dignified learning conditions without strings attached.
“The minister undertook a budget analysis of all the provincial education departments last year and she made the outcomes of that process public in September 2024,” said Mhlanga.
“The hard reality is that the education sector has received below-inflation budget allocations for the past 10 years. This means that the budget of the education sector is lower today than it was in 2014; at the same time, the number of learners has increased during that period.
“The education sector with current budget allocations has a shortage of 2,4 million furniture items needed in schools. The current shortage of furniture is not a creation of the education department, it is a reality of the dire fiscal situation in this country. The education sector is under severe budgetary constraints and this is starting to affect our classrooms.
“The minister has called on the private sector to contribute their resources to plug the resource gap in the education sector and she is encouraged by the enthusiasm shown by the private sector to this call.”
The roadmap to protecting children
Civil society organisations called for the Department of Basic Education to recall the branded desks and ensure the provincial education department supplied desks to the school and desist from future partnerships with Big Food.
They added that the government should strengthen regulations around “corporate social investments to ensure that they are ethical, transparent and not transactional. Ethical corporate support should strengthen and be subordinate to, not substitute, the state’s obligations to learners.”
Mhlanga countered: “It would be unusually cruel to confiscate donations from learners who are using them for their educational needs.
“The minister agrees that there may be a need to have a closer look at the policies governing [corporate social investment] and corporate partnerships; this work must be undertaken in the best interests of the 13.5 million learners in our schools. It cannot be done to achieve geopolitical ends nor any other objectives not connected to the educational needs of learners.”
“No comment,” said McDonald’s South Africa, in response to Daily Maverick’s questions.
The history of corporate social investment in South Africa
The economist Tidings Ndhlovu, in an article examining corporate social responsibility and corporate social investment in South Africa, says CSI is largely a South African phenomenon, born out of the apartheid era, where the business community regarded it as necessary for survival due to international sanctions and trade restrictions and growing domestic political unrest.
He points out that CSI initiatives were portrayed as corporate or strategic philanthropy. Now, CSI projects have become “more focused on sustainable development, governance issues and questions of public-private partnerships.
“Firms are an integral part of society, and their activities have a bearing on the lives of many people. For managers and directors, transparency must be the watchword, not only in terms of their obligations to the owners and/or shareholders of businesses but also to society as a whole.
“While there is an implicit acceptance of private companies as the primary economic drivers, the compelling argument is that, given an increasingly complex world, such a ‘privileged’ position as creators of wealth comes with social responsibility.” DM