PROJECT: FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE - A MAN-MADE NATIONAL BIOSECURITY FAILURE AND ITS ESCALATING CONSEQUENCES (PART 3)
- Isabel Spies
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
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Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) is not merely an agricultural challenge;
it is a national biosecurity threat with profound economic, food security, and social consequences.
In South Africa, what began as a containable animal health outbreak has, since 2019, escalated into a nationwide crisis.
The current wave, which intensified from 2021 onwards, now affects the majority of provinces and
shows no credible signs of containment. This is not the result of an unusually aggressive virus alone,
but of systemic government failure to enforce existing laws, control animal movement,
and maintain critical veterinary infrastructure.
Specialised Security Services (SSS) views the ongoing FMD crisis as a textbook example of institutional collapse
across national, provincial, and municipal spheres. Despite clear legislative mandates and constitutional obligations,
the state’s response has been characterised by delays, poor coordination, and enforcement paralysis.
The result is a preventable catastrophe threatening South Africa’s livestock industry,
rural economies, and international trading credibility.
THE UNCHECKED ESCALATION OF FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE:
South Africa formally lost its FMD-free status in 2019.
Since then, outbreaks involving multiple strains, including SAT1 and SAT2, have spread across KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, North West, Gauteng, Free State, Limpopo, the Eastern Cape, and beyond.
Instead of decisive containment, the disease has migrated steadily across provincial boundaries, exposing the absence of effective national control mechanisms.
Farmers have been subjected to severe restrictions, including quarantines, movement bans, and, in some cases, compulsory culling of livestock.
Yet these sacrifices have not translated into meaningful disease suppression.
The virus continues to move freely, largely because livestock itself continues to move freely.
Illegal transportation of animals without permits, undocumented interprovincial transfers, and uncontrolled roadside and communal grazing have created ideal conditions for transmission.
In many communal and peri-urban areas, livestock roam along highways, railway servitudes, informal settlements, and town boundaries.
Herds mix without oversight, contaminate shared environments, and effectively turn public spaces into vectors for disease spread.
These practices are neither new nor unknown to authorities.
They persist because enforcement is absent.
STATE FAILURE UNDER THE ANIMAL DISEASES ACT:
The Animal Diseases Act places a clear legal duty on the state to prevent, control, and eradicate diseases such as FMD through vaccination, surveillance, movement control, and enforcement.
Repeated outbreaks demonstrate that these obligations have not been met.
A national strategy was only introduced after years of escalating transmission.
While it promises mass vaccination and industry cooperation, it remains largely aspirational, with timelines extending far beyond what the current crisis allows.
Announcements without immediate enforcement capacity do not stop disease spread.
Vaccine procurement failures are central to this crisis.
Despite FMD being a state-controlled disease, vaccines matched to local strains have been unavailable or delayed for extended periods.
State-supported local vaccine production capacity has effectively collapsed, despite significant public investment.
This failure has forced reliance on imported vaccines, often delayed by procurement inefficiencies, regulatory bottlenecks, and cold-chain challenges.
Small-scale and emerging farmers have been disproportionately affected, suffering losses while waiting months for intervention.
Allowing increased private-sector participation is a step forward, but it does not absolve the state of responsibility for the prolonged absence of a functional vaccination system.
These failures extend beyond policy.
They represent a breach of constitutional obligations to protect food security, livelihoods, and a safe environment.
Underfunded veterinary services, poorly trained officials, and fragmented authority structures have rendered disease control ineffective.
ENFORCEMENT COLLAPSE AND THE ROLE OF SAPS:
Effective containment of FMD depends on enforcement.
The South African Police Service (SAPS) has a critical supporting role in enforcing movement restrictions, inspecting livestock transport, and assisting at disease control points.
In practice, this role has been largely absent.
In Disease Management Areas, animal transport permits are legally required.
Yet livestock continues to move across provincial borders with minimal interference.
Roadblocks rarely include livestock inspections.
Documentation is seldom verified.
Officers often lack training in animal health protocols, resulting in passive or inconsistent enforcement.
This enforcement vacuum allows infected animals to travel unhindered, rendering veterinary quarantines meaningless.
Without SAPS integration into routine disease control operations, national containment efforts are fundamentally compromised.
MUNICIPAL BYLAWS: IGNORED AND UNDERMINED
At the municipal level, the failure is even more visible.
Most municipalities have bylaws explicitly prohibiting livestock from roaming freely in public spaces.
These bylaws exist to protect public safety, prevent accidents, and limit disease transmission.
During an active FMD outbreak, their enforcement is not optional; it is essential.
Yet across South Africa, illegal grazing continues openly.
Animals are not impounded.
Owners are not fined.
No deterrent exists.
Municipal authorities, fully aware of the risks, have chosen inaction.
This is not ignorance. It is neglect.
By allowing illegal grazing and uncontrolled animal movement during a declared animal health crisis, municipalities are actively enabling the spread of FMD.
Their failure has direct economic consequences: export bans, market losses, rising food prices, and the erosion of rural livelihoods.
This breakdown reflects a broader collapse of cooperative governance.
National directives are issued without enforcement support.
Provinces declare quarantines without capacity.
Municipalities ignore their own laws.
Responsibility is shifted, while the virus advances.
ECONOMIC IMPACT:
The financial consequences are severe and escalating.
South Africa’s livestock sector has suffered billions of rand in losses due to export suspensions, reduced slaughter numbers, declining milk production, and disrupted supply chains.
Farmers face shrinking incomes, rising costs, and prolonged uncertainty.
Banks have tightened credit.
Insurers have withdrawn or increased premiums.
Many producers, particularly in heavily affected regions, are approaching insolvency.
Rural employment is under threat, and food affordability for consumers is increasingly at risk.
What is unfolding is not a temporary setback, but the systematic erosion of an entire sector.
Without decisive intervention, recovery will take years, if it remains possible at all.
The Foot-and-Mouth Disease crisis in South Africa is not an unavoidable natural disaster.
It is a foreseeable, preventable, and ongoing failure of governance, enforcement, and leadership.
The laws exist. The risks are well documented. The tools for containment are known.
What is absent is the WILL to enforce them consistently and decisively.
Specialised Security Services emphasises that continued inaction sets a dangerous precedent.
When the state allows lawlessness during a national biosecurity emergency,
it signals that compliance is optional and accountability is negotiable.
This undermines not only disease control but the rule of law itself.
Immediate action is required. Vaccine supply chains must be stabilised without delay.
The SAPS must be actively integrated into movement control and enforcement.
Municipalities must enforce grazing bylaws without exception.
Veterinary services must be rebuilt with proper funding, training, and authority.
The agricultural sector, the public, and the international community must demand accountability.
Failure to act now is not passive oversight; it is an active decision to allow the continued destruction of
South Africa’s livestock industry and the livelihoods it supports.
Specialised Security Services will continue to monitor, analyse,
and expose systemic failures that place national security,
food security and economic stability, at risk.
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