Urges Minister Urged to End Opposition to Farmers Seeking to Protect Their Livelihoods

ActionSA welcomes the interim order granted by the Gauteng High Court, which found that livestock owners were unlawfully excluded from procuring and administering legally manufactured Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) vaccines to their own livestock.

The judgment by Judge Van der Westhuizen vindicates the litigation brought by Sakeliga, the Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI), and Free State Agriculture, and confirms what farming communities have argued throughout this crisis: government alone cannot win the fight against FMD while excluding livestock owners from directly assisting in vaccination efforts.

The Minister of Agriculture was predictably quick to claim that the ruling has been “overtaken” by the publication of the Section 10 Animal Health Scheme and that government has always supported a “coordinated public-private approach”. Yet the Department opposed the court application and was subjected to adverse cost orders in the process.

At Tuesday’s meeting of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, where weekly FMD reports are tabled, it became increasingly clear that government’s current vaccination rollout is struggling to keep pace with the scale of the outbreak.

Reports presented to the Committee indicate that while 9.5 million vaccine doses have already been imported into South Africa, only 3.8 million have been administered to date. Government’s reports further show that the outbreak continues to spread across all nine provinces, while vaccination targets remain unrealistic without allowing livestock owners to procure and administer vaccines themselves.

The Department itself identified several constraints hampering the rollout, including:

• initial limitations in vaccine availability;
• shortages of critical resources such as syringes and ear tags; and
• travel limitations affecting departmental veterinary teams.

These challenges, coupled with mandatory withdrawal periods of departmental staff after exposure to infected livestock, reinforce why allowing responsible livestock owners to participate directly in vaccination efforts is not only sensible, but necessary.

ActionSA is particularly concerned that the initial Section 10 gazette appeared rushed and imposed impractical timelines, while the revised framework still places unduly onerous compliance burdens on farmers seeking voluntary participation in vaccination programmes.

Government’s own statements acknowledge that the country will ultimately require the vaccination of the national cattle herd, including booster vaccinations, to contain the outbreak effectively.

ActionSA therefore calls on the Minister and the Department of Agriculture to:

• cease hostile and costly legal opposition against farming organisations and livestock owners;
• fully embrace a genuine public-private vaccination partnership;
• streamline the Section 10 framework to enable practical farmer participation; and
• focus all available resources on containing an outbreak that continues to threaten food security, agricultural jobs, export markets, and rural livelihoods.

Livestock owners are not asking for a “vaccine free-for-all”; they are asking for the ability to protect their animals, workers, and businesses in cooperation with the state.

ActionSA respects the court’s interim order and trusts that the final declaratory relief will further affirm the principle that combating FMD requires partnership, urgency, and practical cooperation — not unnecessary bureaucracy and obstruction.

ActionSA Key Pillar: Obsession with Rule of Law.