Karlena Matthyzer scooping samp in the Pebbles Kitchen, which produces between 2 200 and 2 400 meals daily. (Photo: Biénne Huisman/Spotlight)
News & Features
7th October 2025 | Biénne Huisman
Despite the country’s relative wealth, South Africa has shockingly high levels of childhood malnutrition and stunting. Spotlight spent some time with a small team who have made it their business to bring solutions to the table and to get nutritious meals to the kids of farm workers in the Western Cape.
At the Pebbles Kitchen at Klein Joostenberg outside Stellenbosch, Karlena Matthyzer is scooping boiled samp into plastic packets. These are marked with a “packed date” and a “best before date”, before being stashed, frozen and stored away for distribution around the Western Cape.
Matthyzer tells Spotlight that her favourite meal is their Malay curried chicken. “I am just crazy about curried food,” she says. “And the children, they love it. I have seen that for myself.” Matthyzer would know as she lives on the nearby Kaapzicht Wine Estate. Here, her two-year-old grandson and her 15-year-old son benefit from Pebbles’ meals and care.
The kitchen produces between 2 200 and 2 400 meals daily, of which about 1 000 are distributed to children benefiting from Pebbles programmes. The rest go to other local charitable organisations.
On a weekly schedule, Dante Zwaan steers the Pebbles refrigerated truck along highways and rooibos-flanked backroads all the way to Clanwilliam and Citrusdal; circling back to the Cape Winelands, from Franschhoek to the Hemel en Aarde Valley, delivering nutritious meals to the children of farm workers.
You cannot teach a hungry child
Founded in 2004, the Pebbles Project aims to bring education and skills to children on Western Cape partner farms. Essentially, the project provides a service to farm owners who wish to better the lives of children on their estates. In return, some farm owners provide buildings for the activities, some pay nominal fees, or pay to employ teachers. According to the organisation’s latest annual report, 4% of their funding is from government, the rest is mostly from donors.
Currently, the charity runs 32 early child development centres for children up to 5 years old and 19 after-school clubs, with a mobile library and activities such as football, dancing, surfing and marimba bands.
In time, the project’s leadership identified that children attending their education programmes were not receiving the nutrition required to learn and thrive. This gave rise to the Pebbles Nutrition Programme in 2015; and thanks to the project’s donor network – in this instance two Dutch organisations, the Stichting Clouds Foundation and Goede Mensen – their airy 450m² kitchen opened four years later.
“At the end of the day, the kids were hungry. And you cannot expect them to concentrate when their tummies are empty,” says Thelma Du Plooy, the project’s kitchen and nutrition service manager. “Sophia Warner [the founder of Pebbles Project] believed in a holistic approach. So even though the dream started with just education, you cannot teach a hungry child. You cannot teach a sick child. So the project has grown organically.”
A special menu
In her office next to the Pebbles Kitchen, Du Plooy elaborates on their menu consisting of 14 meals, including boerewors and baked bean stew (another firm favourite), chicken chakalaka and lentil and spinach bolognaise. This is served with rice, samp, pasta or maize.
She says the recipes were developed in collaboration with Dr Yolande Smit, a senior lecturer in human nutrition at Stellenbosch University.
“Dr Smit brings her students here for them to experience what a commercial production facility looks like,” says Du Plooy. “They do the [nutrient] analysis for us, and it’s really interesting. A lot of us think nutrition is common sense, but these people do have a different take on it.”
Du Plooy adds that portion size is significant, too. For lunch, youngsters up to five years old get 100 grams of sauce and 100 grams of starch per portion. Children who attend school before joining after-school clubs get 125 grams of sauce and 125 grams of starch. Those in early adulthood programmes, aged between 16 and 25 years, get 150 grams of sauce and 150 grams of starch.
Cooking for change
At the Pebbles Kitchen, Matthyzer is one of four assistants to chef Darren Bunker. The others are Jesmin de Koker, Hanicia Joubert and Grenece Jansen. During a tour of the premises, Bunker could be seen bent over large metal containers, mixing curried chicken.
Bunker says he attended catering school in Kimberley as part of his two-year military service, after which he completed his apprenticeship at the Lord Charles Hotel in Somerset West. He says he has headed the Pebbles Kitchen since its inception six years back.
“Every time you go to one of the centers, when you see the smile on their faces – that makes it worthwhile. That’s all you need. That’s when you know you are doing something right. Their faces, they light up. And also, the empty plates,” he says.
Around us, preparation is underway for the following day’s meal consisting of beef and bean stew with samp and mushrooms.
Du Plooy points out their storeroom with neatly stacked items: 2.5 kilogram tins of peeled tomatoes, processed peas, sweetcorn and baked beans. Large bags of spinach, butternuts, sweet potatoes, onions and carrots.
In addition, rows of knee-high 12 kilogram buckets of StartWell chickpea and peanut multigrain breakfast cereal. “This is a wonderful product for a nutritious breakfast porridge,” says Du Plooy. “And for those children who might be allergic to nuts, we have Weet-Bix instead. And on Fridays, we give them eggs and baked beans and a slice of toast – to keep things interesting. They get a mid-morning snack too, normally fruit or yogurt. And an afternoon snack as well.”
SA’s stunting crisis
Du Plooy refers to the Thrive by Five Index 2024, released in September, noting how poor nutrition hinders early childhood development, locking many children into cycles of disadvantage before they even start school.
According to the report, of South Africa’s approximately 1.2 million four-year-old children, “a staggering 68% live in households that fall below the upper bound poverty line (an income of less than R1 634 per person per month), and 37% live below the food poverty line (R796 per person per month).”
From a sample of around 5 000 children, all just over four years old and enrolled at early learning programmes, only about 40% were “developmentally on track in early learning”. An estimated 7% showed “signs of moderate or severe stunting”. The 7% figure is low, the report says, compared to earlier national surveys. The 2016 South African Demographic and Health Survey reported that 27% of children under five years old were stunted, while the 2021–2023 National Food and Nutrition Security Survey estimated stunting at 29% for kids under five years old. Stunting in children is when poor nutrition and repeated illness impede their growth, leaving them too short for their age and sometimes affecting brain development.
The index states that socioeconomic vulnerability is especially concerning during the first five years of a child’s life and that deprivation can have lasting negative effects on cognitive, emotional and physical development. It emphasises five requirements for optimal child development. These are good health, adequate nutrition, responsive caregiving, safety and security, and opportunities for early learning.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi revealed that 155 children “with moderate or severe acute malnutrition as an underlying condition” died at South African public health facilities in the first four months of 2025. He was responding in April to a written question before Parliament from DA Member of Parliament Michéle Clarke.
Children’s right to basic nutrition is enshrined in Section 28 of South Africa’s Constitution. To this end, the government-led National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) provides at least one meal daily to about nine million learners across 20 000 schools. These meals are designed according to South Africa’s Food-Based Dietary Guidelines. The project has achieved success in addressing child hunger, but challenges remain. An article published in the South African Journal of Education makes the case that access to meals should extend over school holidays. There is no official NSNP-style programme for pre-schoolers.
Civil society steps up
While the problem of malnutrition continues to dog South Africa’s most vulnerable children, Du Plooy says their kitchen has scope to increase its meal output to 5 000 a day and that they hope, in the near future, to purchase a second refrigerated truck.
As we wrap up the interview on a hot spring afternoon, Du Plooy’s enthusiasm is palpable. “We are also very, very fortunate that we get wonderful donations in kind, actual food products,” she says. “Whatever we get, well that’s less for us to buy. And that makes the best difference.”
Her immediate challenge? To develop a lighter, more seasonal menu in collaboration with dietitian Smit, as the mercury starts to rise for summer.
