This Is The System
This is not a personal grievance. It is how the system is designed.
The minutes of the Ministerial Task Team on Controlled Animal Diseases, meeting on 17 March 2026, say it plainly: “Owners are not permitted to vaccinate independently.”
No alternatives. No parallel channels. No private procurement.
The state decides which vaccines enter the country. It controls procurement. It controls distribution. It controls who administers them. Farmers sit at the end of that chain with no choices and full exposure.
That Is Not Acceptable
This is not voluntary participation in a national programme. It is compelled dependency during a declared national disaster — while animals are dying and businesses are failing.
And that system is now asking farmers to carry risk it has not disclosed.
Let me say this simply. You cannot control everything and only tell people part of the story. The Disaster Management Act — under which this disaster was declared — requires the state to share information with affected parties. Not selectively. Not when convenient.
Inside the institutional collapse that killed South Africa’s foot-and-mouth defence
Full control and partial transparency are not compatible. The state has insisted on the first. It has not delivered the second.
What Was Said — What Was Known
This is not one mistake. It is a pattern.
Public statements describe one reality while internal records describe another. Each example below comes from a verified public statement on one side and from the minutes of the 17 March 2026 task team meeting — now on public record as Annexure A in case 2026-047152 in the Gauteng High Court — on the other.
Local strain matching is being done
What was said: In a briefing to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on 3 February 2026, the Department stated that local strain matching was being conducted by ARC Onderstepoort. The message was that South Africa had its own in-country capability — that we did not depend entirely on Pirbright to know whether the vaccines matched the virus on the ground.
What was recorded: The Pirbright test — the internationally verified check — showed the SAT1 component of Biogenesis Bagó did not match the circulating strains identified in that analysis. This vaccine had already been deployed at scale. If ARC was conducting effective local matching on the same product, one of two things is true: either the mismatch was found and not communicated, or it was not found at all. Either way, farmers vaccinated their herds believing the product matched. It did not.
Pirbright is not holding up vaccines
What was said: On 26 January 2026, as the first Biogenesis Bagó consignment was already in procurement and moving toward South Africa, Minister Steenhuisen stated: “By sending our latest FMD virus strains to Pirbright, South Africa is ensuring the millions of vaccine doses being procured are scientifically proven to protect our national herd.” — Business Day, 26 January 2026.
The framing is important. Vaccines were already being procured. Pirbright was presented as the scientific confirmation of a decision already made — not a condition that had to be met before ordering could begin. The one million doses that landed at OR Tambo on 21 February arrived before any Pirbright results were back. The test, as presented to the public, was a validation exercise running alongside delivery. Not a gate.
What was recorded: Pirbright results were received before 17 March. They showed that the SAT1 component of the Biogenesis Bagó vaccine — already administered to farmers’ herds across the country — did not match circulating field strains. SAT3 had not yet been evaluated. SAHPRA would not issue the permit for the next five million doses until the SAT3 matching results were received from Pirbright.
Pirbright is not running alongside procurement. It is now being used to decide whether procurement can continue.
Supply is assured
What was said: On 25 March 2026, at Parliament’s Portfolio Committee, Minister Steenhuisen stated: “I do not want anybody to be under the illusion or misapprehension that there will not be enough vaccines. We are procuring vaccines at scale, and there will be plenty of vaccines to meet that target by the end of the year.”
What was recorded: Eight days earlier, on 17 March, the task team recorded that no Section 21 permits had been issued. Without those permits, the manufacturers of the next eleven million doses could not deliver, and one would not start production. The minutes record permit delays as a direct threat to supply continuity. The public message was certainty. The internal record shows a system still waiting.
The pipeline the Minister described as flowing was waiting on paperwork that had not been signed.
The diagnostic system is working
What was said: Throughout January and February 2026, ARC was presented as a central, credible institution — producing local vaccines, conducting strain matching, and building domestic capability.
What was recorded: The task team recorded serious concerns about ARC’s diagnostic function. Serotyping results were delayed or absent. State veterinarians and provinces were receiving no feedback. Requests to ARC went unanswered. ARC did not engage directly with the task team, insisting all communication be routed through the Department. Provinces were waiting months for confirmation of which strains were circulating. The minutes do not describe this as a concern. They identify it as the primary problem — worse, at that point, than vaccine supply itself.
The ARC that was celebrating a 20-year production milestone in February was simultaneously refusing to engage the Ministerial Task Team managing the outbreak.
These two pictures — public and internal — do not match. That is the problem.
Why This Matters
I had no choice about the vaccine. I relied on the system. The system had problems it had not told me about.
I believed my herd was protected. Now I am not sure.
That changes everything. Not abstractly — practically, on the ground. How I manage animal movement. What I tell my staff. What risks I think I am carrying right now. I was making those decisions on incomplete information, in a system that kept me in the dark.
A Prior Lesson
There is precedent for what happens when internal information about this response becomes public.
Dr Danie Odendaal served on ministerial FMD task teams since 2016. He is one of the most respected ruminant veterinary specialists in southern Africa. He raised concerns publicly — about failures in vaccine strategy, about a registered local vaccine the state failed to manufacture for years despite having the means, and about contradictions between what the Department said and what was actually happening.
A day after he revealed the ‘new’ vaccine was registered in 2022, Minister Steenhuisen terminated Dr Odendaal’s task team membership with immediate effect. The stated reason: he had not signed a confidentiality declaration.
Theo de Jager of SAAI said the message was clear — that those who speak for farmers rather than protecting officials risk being removed.
It is reasonable to ask, in that context, whether this system is built to encourage transparency — or to manage it.
That question does not need an answer here. It only needs to be on the table.
The System Problem
The state controls everything. Farmers control nothing. That is the arrangement.
Total control carries a total obligation. If you are the only one allowed to act, you are responsible for making sure people are fully informed.
That obligation has not been met.
The Questions
They need answers.
Why was the SAT1 mismatch not communicated to farmers who had no choice but to vaccinate with this product?
Why were we told supply was assured on 25 March when the permit process was unresolved eight days earlier?
What else is known internally that has not been communicated?
Where is the uninterrupted, strain-matched vaccine supply that was promised?
Farmers are not asking for perfection.
We are asking for the ability to act within a regulated framework — to access vaccines, assess alternatives, and make informed decisions with our vets.
Right now, we are fully dependent — on a system that is, by its own internal record, not working as described. And we are being asked to trust it anyway.
That is the problem.
