Capability Month Begins: Nourishing What It Means to Flourish

There is something fitting about Capability Month beginning on 1 September — the first day of Spring in South Africa. It is a season of new growth, of things long dormant coming into bloom, of the jacarandas turning our streets purple. Spring asks a hopeful question, and it is the same question at the heart of Capability Month: what allows life to flourish?

Nourishment as a capability

This month we begin with one capability that sits beneath all the others: health and nourishment.

To be adequately nourished is a capability worthy of every human life.

It is easy to treat food and health as simple needs. But the Capability Approach invites us to see them differently — as freedoms. The freedom to be well-nourished, to be healthy, to have the strength and security to pursue a good life. In South Africa, where food insecurity remains a lived reality for many, this is far from abstract. Before a person can learn, work, create or lead, they must first be able to be healthy and adequately fed. Nourishment is not the end of flourishing; it is the ground it grows from.

To mark this first day, Optentia will be sharing cupcakes across our community. It is a small and joyful gesture — but a deliberate one. In a country grappling with poverty, inequality and unemployment, the simple act of offering and sharing food carries real weight. It reminds us that nourishment is not a luxury but a capability worthy of every human life, and that dignity often begins with the most basic of provisions.

I am because we are

No one flourishes alone. The Nguni proverb captures it: umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu — a person becomes a person through others. Our capabilities are shaped by our communities, our relationships, and the conditions we create for one another. To nourish one person is, in a real sense, to nourish us all.

As Heritage Day on 24 September approaches, this connection feels especially close. Heritage Day asks us to honour where we come from — the histories, cultures and communities that have shaped us. Capability Month adds a second question: knowing where we come from, where can we go?

A book worth celebrating

Among the highlights of the month, on 23 September we celebrate the launch of Capabilities at Work, edited by Prof. Jac van der Klink and Prof. Sebastiaan (Ian) Rothmann and published by Cambridge University Press. It brings together thinking on how people can truly flourish in the world of work — a fitting contribution to a month devoted to human potential.

Join us

Capability Month runs throughout September 2026. We invite you to be part of it — to reflect, to attend, and to imagine with us what becomes possible when people have what they need to flourish.

This Spring, let's grow something together.