A steaming dish of milk and maize porridge interrupts an early-morning mathematics class in Sitoromo Junior Secondary School in South Africa's Eastern Cape province.
A dozen hungry pupils dig their spoons into the brimming bowls as the sun slowly thaws the frosty meadows surrounding their town, Sterkspruit, tucked in the Maluti mountains across the border from Lesotho.
Before the pandemic, around nine million children in South Africa's state-run schools received a meal per day as part of a government-led nutrition programme. Schools that shut at the start of South Africa's coronavirus outbreak in March started gradually welcoming pupils back to class last month, with three more year groups allowed back from Monday.But over the weekend, provincial authorities postponed the return date due to an"increase in the number of infections" across the Eastern Cape -- the country's third-worst-affected province.
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