A recent poll conducted by the agricultural organisation Saai among farmers on the foot-and-mouth disease crisis unequivocally shows that farmers have completely lost confidence in the Department of Agriculture’s bureaucratic as well as political leadership. This should spark renewal within the department.
The poll, with more than 2 000 individual participants, shows that 95% or more of respondents believe the response to the disease was too slow, that the vaccine roll-out is poorly managed and that experts are being silenced. The general statement that leadership has failed is supported by 87%.
While livestock farmers wait for vaccines that are expected to arrive from Argentina and Turkey by the end of February, it is already too late to successfully avert the crisis. The only remaining option is to limit the damage as much as possible.
The ministerial task team appointed in 2016 to investigate the possible impact of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak recommended the kind of urgency that only became evident in the department’s response since 2026.
The country is facing a total collapse of governance, equal to load shedding. It is unthinkable that the same officials who have steered the department into this crisis should be entrusted with leading the country out of it.
In an interview with Rapport on 15 February 2026, the Minister of Agriculture, Mr John Steenhuisen, stated that his department had misled him and Parliament about its progress with vaccine production and its ability to manage the containment of the disease.
This points to serious shortcomings in the administration of the department as well as the political oversight. The result is that a disease that had only affected a few regions as late as the beginning of 2025, is now completely out of control.
The Freedom Front Plus (VF Plus) believes that the crisis is severe enough that it justifies the Minister expecting all senior officials in the department to either motivate why they should stay on or to leave.
The time is also running out for Minister Steenhuisen to keep claiming that this is an “inherited problem”. He should take responsibility for the nearly two years of his own administration, during which foot-and-mouth disease escalated from isolated outbreaks to a comprehensive crisis.
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