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Budget 2026 a chance to boost ‘sugary drinks tax’, cut costs and save lives
As South Africa prepares for its 2026 budget speech, the under-discussed Health Promotion Levy stands out as a proven tool to curb sugar consumption, reduce costly non-communicable diseases and ease pressure on the healthcare system. Allowing the sugary drinks tax to stagnate under industry pressure risks deepening inequality, shifting the burden of preventable illness onto poor communities instead of strengthening prevention and public health.
As South Africa approaches this year’s budget speech (25 February 2026) , much attention is being paid to unemployment, national debt and inequality.
Yet one tax, which has the potential to improve the lives of South Africans, particularly the poorest, receives little attention.
The Health Promotion Levy, commonly called the sugary drinks tax, was introduced in 2018 with a clear objective: reduce excessive sugar consumption with a view to reducing obesity and associated non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes and hypertension. When the levy was adopted, it worked. A United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research study released in 2025 noted that the levy led to an increase of 15% in the consumption of non-taxable sugary drinks.
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This article was published in The Daily Maverick on the 24th of February 2026.
The Bitter Truth: Nestlé still adding more sugar to baby food in SA despite previous backlash BACKLASH
Media Statement
18 November 2025
For Immediate release
A new investigation by Swiss NGO Public Eye has exposed how global food giant Nestlé is adding sugar to baby cereals sold in South Africa, while selling sugar-free versions of the same products in Europe. This follows the scandal that broke earlier in the year where it was revealed that Nestle has a pattern of selling sugary baby food in lower-income countries, while reserving healthier product formulation for richer counterparts.
Laboratory tests of Nestlé’s Cerelac range found that 90% of products sold across Africa contain added sugar. In South Africa, 3 in 4 Cerelac products tested included added sugar, averaging 4.9 grams per serving — more than a teaspoon — in products marketed for babies as young as six months. Some variants contained as much as 5.2 grams per serving. Equivalent products in Germany and the United Kingdom contain none.
“This is corporate hypocrisy at its worst,” said Nzama Mbalati CEO for the Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA). “Nestlé knows full well that added sugar harms infants, yet continues to dump sugary products on African babies. It’s a blatant double standard that treats African children’s health as less important.”
The World Health Organization explicitly warns that baby foods should contain no added sugar, as early exposure increases the risk of obesity, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases later in life. South Africa already faces one of the world’s highest childhood obesity rates — a crisis fuelled by aggressive marketing of ultra-processed foods.
“South Africa has experienced a dramatic surge in overweight and obesity in children under five,” says Lori Lake, Communication and Education Specialist at the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town.
Lake adds that rates nearly doubled from 13% in 2016 to 22% in 2022 – with one in four young children now overweight or obese – and this is more than four times higher than the global average.
“So, we need to ask ourselves, if Nestle is really committed to optimal health and nutrition, then why are they continuing to add extra sugar to their infant cereal – and to what extent are they helping to fuel an epidemic of non-communicable disease in South Africa,” she explains.
According to Lake adding sugar to infant cereals acts like a gateway drug, helping establish a lifelong preference for sugary foods that then increases the risk of obesity, diabetes and other NCDs later in life. So, while sugar is sweet – it can leave a bitter aftertaste. She adds that multinational food corporations stand to profit, but it is South Africa’s children and families – and health care system – who will have to carry the costs – which further entrenches inequalities.
Despite acknowledging on its own South African website that high sugar intake poses serious health risks for children, Nestlé continues to promote Cerelac as a “nutritious” and “balanced” product. The company also pays local influencers to endorse Cerelac online, blurring the line between advertising and trusted nutrition advice.
We call on Nestlé South Africa and the National Department of Health to take immediate action: remove added sugar from all baby and toddler foods; enforce strong, mandatory front-of-package warning labels; and introduce strict regulations to stop misleading marketing practices targeting parents and caregivers.
Ends.
For media enquiries please contact:
Lori Lake: Communication and Education Specialist at the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town.
lori.lake@uct.ac.za | 0825580446
Dorothy Breslin: Senior Communications Organiser at Groundwork
dorothy@groundwork.org.za | 0823193741
Zukiswa Zimela Communications Manager at HEALA
zukiswa@heala.org | 0745210652
UN Political Declaration on NCD’s, mental health and food justice reflects a diluted commitment to decisive action.
Press Statement
For Immediate Release
23 September 2025
Ahead of the United Nations High-Level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) and the Promotion of Mental Health and Well-Being – 25 September 2025
As the world prepares for the Fourth UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs and Mental Health, the Food Justice Coalition is deeply concerned that the current draft of the Political Declaration reflects a diluted commitment to decisive action. While it acknowledges global ambitions to reduce premature deaths and promote mental well-being, it lacks bold, measurable, and enforceable commitments urgently needed to reverse the rising tide of NCDs and diet-related ill-health.
In 2021, NCDs caused an estimated 43 million deaths, many preventable. South Africa and other low and middle-income countries carry the heaviest burden, despite proven, cost-effective, interventions. Yet, the declaration weakens critical language on industry accountability and omits clear fiscal and policy mechanisms to tackle the commercial determinants of NCDs, especially sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), ultra-processed foods, tobacco, and alcohol.
Taxes on harmful commodities are proven tools to reduce consumption and generate revenue for health systems. The latest advocacy report by the NCD Alliance, a global alliance of organisations committed to fighting the rising tide of NCDs, shows that financing essential NCD interventions requires at least 1.1–1.7% of gross national income, with up to 54% of costs allocated to essential medicines. Removing or softening commitments on taxation undermines governments’ ability to protect health and achieve financial protection for people living with NCDs.
Weak language signals weak resolve, emboldening powerful industries that profit from disease. The commercial drivers of NCDs, including aggressive marketing, price manipulation, and policy interference, cannot be addressed without binding, measurable fiscal and regulatory commitments.
Call to Action: South Africa and Member States Must Lead
The Food Justice Coalition calls on the Government of South Africa and all UN Member States to:
• Adopt binding regulations to reduce sugar, salt, and harmful chemicals in processed foods, alongside strict monitoring.
• Implement and scale up taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, ultra-processed foods, tobacco, and alcohol, at levels proportional to their health harms.
• Ringfence revenues from these taxes to finance universal access to NCD prevention, essential medicines, and mental health services.
• Enact safeguards against industry interference, including full transparency on political donations and lobbying.
• Mandate independent monitoring of corporate products and marketing, with annual reviews against explicit targets on reducing harmful consumption and NCD mortality.
• Guarantee equitable access to nutritious food, mental health care, and primary health services, prioritising low-income and marginalised communities.
• Centre the voices of people living with NCDs in policy design, implementation, and evaluation.
Conclusion
The Political Declaration cannot be another missed opportunity. A bold and uncompromising stance is needed to confront the structural drivers of ill health, close the financing gap, and protect future generations. South Africa, with its constitutional right to health and progressive public health record is uniquely positioned to champion stronger language and insist on clear fiscal and accountability measures.
The Food Justice Coalition stands ready to work with government, civil society, and global partners to ensure that the UN High-Level Meeting delivers on its promise: a future where every person can exercise their right to health, free from the predatory practices of industries that profit from disease.
[Ends]
Issued by:
The Food Justice Coalition –
The Food Justice Coalition is a values-driven alliance of organisations committed to advancing food justice through collective action, mutual support, and shared leadership.
For media enquiries please contact:
Zukiswa Zimela | HEALA | zukiswa@heala.org | 074521065
HEALA statement on Advertising Appeal Committee’s ruling on sugary drinks advert
HEALA is studying the decision by the Advertising Appeal Committee. It is important to note that the Committee does not state that our campaign advert is misleading due to warning the public against the harms of fizzy drinks and fruit juice, and expressly provided that it would not be misleading to warn against the consumption of “excessive sugary drinks” or “regular consumption of sugary drinks”.
The Committee also cites the World Health Organisation in this analysis, indicating even “a single serving (at least 250 ml) of commonly consumed sugary drinks per day” is to be avoided for health reasons. For a full synthesis on the harms of sodas and fruit juice, we direct interested persons to HEALA.org, where we provide an easy-to-read summary of the most up-to-date science as co-developed by several world-leading nutritionists, medical doctors, and public health specialists.
We would like to thank the Advertising Appeal Committee for its express recognition and commendation for the work that HEALA does to further the interests of public health.
For media interviews please contact
Zukiswa Zimela: Communications Manager HEALA
Zukiswa[at]heala.org
Announcement of the new HEALA CEO
The HEALA Board is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr Nzama Mbalati as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) effective from the 1st of July 2024. Nzama has been serving with the organisation since April 2018 and has served as the Programmes Manager and recently the Interim CEO driving the overall HEALA strategy.
His professional experience encompasses over a decade in social justice, health, food and nutrition advocacy. He has a degree in Communication Science and Advance Project Management from the University of South Africa (UNISA) Graduate School of Business Leadership. He has significant experience in coalition building, community mobilisation, communication and management. He has spearheaded the conceptualisation of the food justice framing in South Africa’s food policy space and the establishment of HEALA Food Justice Coalition. Together with the HEALA team, Nzama has led the establishment of HEALA as a registered non-profit company two years ago.
During this time of transition, the HEALA Board appointed Nzama as Interim CEO for seven months from the 1st of December 2023. During this period, the Board provided important support to Nzama including regular engagement around his performance, in particular the transition from operational management to strategic oversight and strengthening of the organisational arrangements. A coach was appointed to support Nzama over the period to support his professional development. The Board also established a performance and human resource management process and is satisfied with the report of deliverables.
Please join us in congratulating Nzama on the appointment of his role and to wish him all the best and continued success.
Your sincerely,
Professor Scott Drimie HEALA Board Chairperson
HEALA Board Appoints Nzama Mbalati As Interim CEO
The HEALA Board is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Nzama Mbalati as its Interim CEO effective 1st December 2023. Mr Mbalati has been serving with the organisation since 2018 and has been a valuable member of HEALA as the Programmes Manager driving the Programmes Strategy. His professional experience encompasses over 17 years in social justice, health, food and nutrition advocacy.
Nzama is an experienced social justice activist with strengths in community and health systems strengthening, community mobilization, policy advocacy, lobbying, human rights and project management. Having worked in the social justice and public health space for over a decade, he is well-versed on issues of politics, policy, health, human rights, inequality and various other socio-economic issues facing the people of South Africa.
The term of the Interim CEO will be tied to the search of the next CEO. Over the next few months the Board will lead the search for the next CEO of HEALA with a passion for our vision and mission.
During this time of transition, we count on your continued support. Please join us in congratulating Mr Nzama Mbalati in this role and wishing him all the best and continued success.
Sincerely,
HEALA Board
Delays in increasing the Health Promotion Levy a danger to South Africans
On World Diabetes Day the Healthy Living Alliance, HEALA, embarked on a day of action calling on the government to increase the Health Promotion Levy to the recommended 20% to reduce the over consumption of sugar sweetened beverages (SSB’s) and decrease the incidence of diabetes amongst South Africans. Concerned South Africans gathered outside the offices of the National Treasury demanding for the increase and calling for an expansion of the levy to include fruit juices.
New research points to an alarming trend of a dramatic increase in the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages (SSB’s) in Sub-Saharan region. The sub-Saharan Africa region had the highest increase in SSB consumption between 2005 and 2018 (2 serving/week increase) while in high income countries consumption decreased by about one serving/week.
Experts from Harvard School of Public Health found that those who drink between 1 and 2 cans of sugar sweetened beverages have a 26% greater chance of developing type two diabetes than those who limit their consumption.
There were huge differences in SSB intake between more vs. less educated adults in sub-Saharan Africa (more educated adults consumed over 4 weekly servings compared to less educated adults).
Taxes on sugary drinks have been shown to work in reducing the consumption of these drinks. A South African studyreleased in 2021, three years after the implementation of the Health Promotion Levy, a levy put in place to support of the Department of Health’s deliverables to decrease diabetes, obesity and other related diseases in South Africa, found that there “SSB taxes were associated with reduced sugary drink intake in a low-income population within a middle-income country”.
However, due to government’s inertia in increasing the tax to the recommended 20%, there is danger of eroding gains made from implementing the tax.
“It’s clear we have reached the cross roads as the country and key policy decision to significantly increase the sugar tax presents a unique opportunity to halt Noncommunicable disease rates that have doubled up in the past decade and raise much needed revenue on the fiscals in the dire strain,” says Nzama Mbalati, Programmes Manager for HEALA.
Dr Dr Lungi Hobe, Chairperson at Rural Doctors Association of SA, says the cost of diabetes on the individual is high.
“This is a multi-organ disease. So it can affect any organ in someone’s body. The reason for that is that it primarily affects your vessels. Your vessels, as we all know, exist in every organ of our body. You have veins in your eyes that may be affected by diabetes. Patients can end up with what we call diabetes retinopathy. Some patients end up with complete blindness just from diabetes,” Dr Hobe explains.
“You can also affect a vessel in your heart. So patients with diabetes have a higher risk of having heart attacks, or what we call cardiac devastation. You can have problems with the vessels in your kidneys. A lot of patients with diabetes will present with kidney failure or chronic kidney disease,” she adds.
Over 4 Million South Africans are currently living with the life altering illness, almost half of those are undiagnosed. The disease comes at a high personal and public cost. In 2018 experts estimated that the public sector costs of undiagnosed type 2 diabetes where R2,7bn. Considering the undiagnosed the number shoots up to a staggering R21.bn.
The country cannot afford any more delays to the increase of the levy. The costs of government’s inaction and pandering to the sugar industry are too high.
“We believe that government will make the right choice and not listen to the food and beverage industry who want to look out for their own interests,” concludes Mbalati.
OPINION: Let’s be upfront on front-of-pack labelling
By Nzama Mbalati and Zukiswa Zimela
It is really difficult to read food labels. What is trans-fat? How is it different from saturated fat? Why is sodium in milligrams instead of grams? Is it good for me?
That is, of course, if you even see the label on the back of the package.
On April 21, 2023, the National Department of Health published R3337, putting forward a draft regulation to introduce front-of-pack labelling in South Africa.
The draft regulation aims to provide easy-to-understand information on the front of packaged food to help consumers make healthy purchasing decisions.
This type of labelling has been incorporated successfully into several other countries and has been shown to help consumers better understand what they are eating.
The draft regulations also propose introducing restrictions on how foods can be marketed when those foods are deemed unhealthy.
The restrictions specifically aim to restrict techniques used to entice children to purchase and eat unhealthy food – an important measure as children are more vulnerable to persuasive marketing practices.
The draft regulation seems to be a no-brainer: more people will understand what is in food, and children will be less likely to be manipulated into making unhealthy eating decisions.
Especially in light of the worrying revelation early last week by Statistics South Africa that non-communicable diseases – diseases often associated with poor diets – have increased by 58 percent in the last two decades.
However, there has been staunch opposition from the food industry, and several red-herring arguments have been advanced.
We provide the following clarification to help the public understand the new proposed draft regulations.
Food producers will have fair use of their trademarks
The food industry argues that the restriction in the regulations aimed to remove misleading product descriptors “arbitrarily” deprive producers of their intellectual property rights.
First, the Trade Mark Act, the law regulating the protection of trademarks in South Africa, already contains a list of criteria limiting the use of trademarks, including allowing other laws to restrict trademarks or prescribing that marks which are confusing or misleading do not attract legal protection.
Second, food producers register multiple variations of their trademarks and will not face significant trade implications should a variation fall foul of the law.
As an example, we searched the Companies and Intellectual Property online database for trademarks affiliated with a popular soda brand in South Africa and found 60 different trademark results.
The regulations are deemed successful internationally The World Health Organization has called for front-of-pack labelling as a key consumer nutrition literacy intervention to promote healthy diets.
While it is very difficult to show how a policy intervention like a front-of-pack label can improve overall dietary choices, preliminary evidence exists (from Chile and more broadly), and strong evidence shows that the information-imparting objective is effective.
Additionally, the importance of the attached marketing restrictions to protect children has been proven, as studies show a strong link between unhealthy food marketing and childhood obesity.
Consumers should know that food contains ‘artificial sweeteners’
Evidence suggests that providing a warning label on excess sugar can lead consumers to unknowingly substitute sugar-sweetened beverages with alternative sweetened beverages (beverages containing artificial sweeteners).
The safety of artificial sweeteners is still debated.
The warning label is intended to be a consumer information intervention and warning consumers, especially parents, allows consumers to make a decision on appropriate artificial sweetener intake given the risk of allergic reaction, impact on diet for patients with diabetes, potential impact on long term food preferences and emerging evidence on the risk of cancer.
The label will not make it more difficult to import or export food
All countries have variations in food safety and labelling standards and require different procedures to meet local laws. There is a definite trend towards introducing front-of-pack labelling, and food producers seek regulatory harmonisation, endorsing FOPL policies to best achieve this goal.
The food industry will unfairly lose profits
Some food producers argue that they will lose profit because consumers will not buy foods with the warning labels – that is the point!
People will always eat – having people eat healthier foods should encourage food producers to make better alternatives available to the public. Corporate profits can never be more important than public health.
* Nzama Mbalati is the programmes manager at the Healthy Living Alliance (Heala).
* Zukiswa Zimela is the communications manager at Heala.
This oped was first published on IOL on the 9th of November 2023
South Africa can show BRICS leadership with a new sugar approach
South Africa blazed a trail as the first African country to legalise a tax on sugary drinks, making a bold stand on 1 April 2018. By implementing this pioneering move, we paved the way for a strategy that could reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages significantly.
Studies by the World Health Organization (WHO) show that a carefully designed tax, aimed at increasing the retail price by 20% or more, would result in proportional reductions in consumption, steering citizens towards healthier choices.
READ MORE: WE Can’t Rely On Food and Beverage Industry to Safeguard Our Health.
Not long after South Africa’s groundbreaking action, other countries, including Botswana and Zambia, followed suit, implementing their own versions of the sugary drinks tax. However, the road to a healthier society has not been smooth. Many African nations have been slow to act, potentially because of resistance from the beverage industry, which has been fighting back vehemently against these new regulations.
South Africa’s courageous step may have set the stage for a broader transformation, sparking a debate on how to combat obesity and promote healthier living. But the struggle against industry pushback and the adaptation of these laws across the continent continues.
This opinion piece was published in the Daily Maverick on the 29th of August 2023
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