UCT food bank offers science students peace of mind

Words: Alice Scott / GroundUp

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When Gladwin Ngobeni’s funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) was cancelled for the second time during his studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT), he didn’t know what to do.

He’d lost it once while taking a leave of absence from university and had to fight to get it back. Just a year later, he learned that the scheme had stopped funding him because his family earned more than R350 000 a year.

Except his family didn’t earn more than R350 000 a year. His mother and his stepfather are unemployed.

In the months that followed, Ngobeni pleaded with NSFAS, found tax records and documents to prove that his family earned less than the income ceiling for funding, all while studying towards his degree in computer science. But without his NSFAS funding, he did not have enough money for food.

‘At some point, I was like, ‘You know what? I want to quit UCT. I just want to go back home.’ At least at home, I can eat whatever my family has. Because they didn’t work, they couldn’t even send me whatever they had for groceries,’ Ngobeni said.

But Ngobeni didn’t quit UCT. Instead, he was able to take advantage of a new initiative working to solve the exact problem he was facing.

Student Outreach and Support (SOS) is an on-campus food bank funded entirely by donations. The food bank is open four days a week for an hour during lunch, and students can pick up whatever they need.

Ngobeni used the food bank from 2024 until 2026, when he graduated from UCT with his Bachelor of Science. Now he works full-time as a software engineer.

‘If it wasn’t for this initiative, I was definitely not going to be here today,’ Ngobeni said. ‘I would have quit a long time ago.’

SOS was founded in 2024 by Mohammed Kajee, just a year into his tenure as the science faculty’s student development officer.

The food and groceries bank of SOS was founded in 2024 by Mohammed Kajee. Picture: Alice Scott / GroundUp

‘As I was encountering students who were failing, I realised there was this underlying issue of food security,’ Kajee said.

One afternoon, Kajee met a student who said he had not eaten in ten days. Kajee immediately drove the student to the store to purchase groceries.

‘He just wept the entire way back to campus in the car,’ Kajee said. ‘I guess … the emotion of realising that he was going to have groceries for the next week.’

SOS began from there. Kajee set up a bank funded mostly by himself with some donations from staff members, friends and family, available to students in the science faculty. That year, the food bank supported around seven students.

But the initiative expanded quickly as more students became aware of it. Kajee now runs SOS with a team of student volunteers, and the organisation has been officially recognised by the science faculty, though it is independent of the university.

Since 2024, the food bank has supported more than 70 students, some through postgraduate study. This year, Kajee said, 48 students are using the food bank.

Kajee said many of the students who use the food bank have problems with their NSFAS funding. Some have had their funding cancelled for ‘dodgy’ reasons.

The most recent case he dealt with involved a student who lost her NSFAS funding because her mother received her pension payout. The money, about R300 000, was flagged as taking the household over the NSFAS income ceiling.

Other students, Kajee said, have lost funding because their profiles disappeared from the NSFAS system. Others send their NSFAS money home.

‘They have to send a lot of it home to help pay for school fees for siblings, food for mom and dad, that sort of thing,’ Kajee said. ‘And those students, they feel like they don’t have a choice.’

GroundUp sent questions to NSFAS but had not received a response by the time of publication.

UCT has a programme run through the Department of Student Affairs which provides students with a monthly food pack. UCT said the programme, set up in 2018, had supported 2 315 students with monthly grocery packs this year. Toiletries were included with the grocery packs wherever additional funding is available.

The programme depended on donations, and a donation of R455 enabled the programme to supply a student with enough for one cooked meal daily and a month’s supply of toiletries. A total of R1 800 was needed to provide food support for a month, UCT said. But Kajee said the groceries were often insufficient.

A few tins of beans, jam and containers of milk on the shelves of the food bank. Picture: Alice Scott / GroundUp

Hunger affects students’ ability to study, said Olufunke Alaba, a senior lecturer at UCT’s School of Public Health, who has been researching food insecurity on campus since 2024.

‘It is not simply experiencing hunger, but also the uncertainty about sufficient, safe and nutritious food,’ Alaba said. ‘It affects concentration and memory. Another underlying problem is actually the stress factor — the fact that they are not sure of where the next meal is coming from.’

Matome Lethwane, who graduated from UCT in March, started using the food bank during his final year. Before then, he said, he had difficulty studying due to hunger and sometimes avoided going to campus due to shame.

‘My final year was really much, much better,’ Lethwane said. ‘I knew that I didn’t have to stress about food. I could stress about academics at last.’

The SOS team runs the food bank like a shop, allowing students to pick the items they need rather than receive a food parcel. Kajee and his team of volunteers also take requests for what items students would like.

All the items come from donors who provide food or funding through SOS’s BackaBuddy link. So far, the initiative has raised just over R26 700 of its R100 000 goal for 2026.

In August, the Lilah Foundation began donating 30 food packs a month, which Kajee said has helped SOS buy a wider range of food items.

‘It means we can use the funds that we’ve raised to buy things that are nice to have, like mayonnaise and coffee and things that just make life feel human,’ Kajee said. ‘It doesn’t feel like you’re just getting a standard food pack that’s got rice and baked beans in it all the time.’

The food bank has also been given a deep freezer. Kajee said he hopes that by 2027, the food bank will be able to use the freezer to provide students with perishable items, such as fruit, vegetables, bread and meat.

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**Picture: **Alice Scott / GroundUp

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