Steenhuisen was warned—repeatedly. South Africa's FMD disaster is his to own.

This is a damning piece of accountability journalism. South Africa's foot-and-mouth disease crisis was not an unforeseeable catastrophe — it was a failure foretold, in letters, meetings, technical notes and court papers, by farmers, veterinarians, industry bodies and an independent economist. Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen chose the plan, centralised the plan, and defended it even as the warnings mounted. He then removed the experienced veterinarian from his own task team who had warned him most loudly. A single import permit took roughly 100 days; no vaccine entered the country for 127. His Chief of Staff described a further appeal for engagement as "amusement." As Andrew Morphew writes - Steenhuisen owns the FMD disaster. .By Adrew Morphew.He was warned: Steenhuisen’s FMD plan is failing, and now he must own it.Farmers, industry bodies, veterinarians and an independent economist set out, again and again, why South Africa's foot-and-mouth vaccination plan would not stop the disease. The biology was spelled out by a member of the Minister's own task team. He pressed on — and removed one of the task team's most experienced members weeks after that member criticised the response.This is not a story about one rude email.It is about a foot-and-mouth disease plan that farmers, industry bodies, veterinarians and an independent economist all said would not stop the disease — and a Minister who pressed on anyway.The warnings were not political. They were operational, biological and economic. They were made in letters, in meetings, in public statements, in technical notes and in court papers. Again and again, they were answered too slowly, incompletely, or not at all.For much of the outbreak, the state moved slower than the virus. No foot-and-mouth vaccine entered the country for 127 days, and a single import permit took roughly 100 days to issue. If the Minister disputes those figures, he can settle the matter by publishing the full vaccine import and permit timeline. While that time passed, farmers stayed trapped under quarantine, the disease kept moving, and capacity that could have helped sat behind administrative gates.Too slow, too late became the pattern. It is worth setting out how clearly that pattern was foreseen..The plan is his.Minister John Steenhuisen cannot treat this as an inherited administrative accident. He adopted the strategy, defended the centralised structure, announced the targets, and asked the country to judge progress by that plan.This is not an argument against regulating the disease. Foot-and-mouth is a state-controlled disease for sound reasons, and few farmers dispute that. The question was never whether to regulate. It was whether the chosen plan could do what the Minister said it would — stop the disease and earn FMD Free with vaccination status — and whether the state could execute it at the speed the disease demands.Having made the plan his, he made its outcome his to account for..The warnings began early.The first warnings were practical. As early as the second half of 2025, organised dairy warned that vaccine shortages had reduced the response to reactive, farm-by-farm crisis management, and that this could not hold. It asked for urgent engagement. A delay on one permit, it noted, would set availability back by at least a month.Industry said the same in different words: time was not on the country's side, and the response needed structured execution at the speed of the outbreak, not the speed of the bureaucracy.Each of those warnings was, in its own terms, correct. Each was answered too slowly, incompletely, or not at all..The biology was spelled out — inside his own task team.The science was never a mystery. It was set out plainly, in an April technical note for Milk SA, by Dr Mark Chimes — a member of the Ministerial Task Team on Controlled Diseases — drawing on leading FMD specialists including Prof Francois Maree, Prof Dietmar Holm, Dr Livio Heath and Dr David Gerber.The note cut through a confusion that has dogged the whole campaign. The goal is not to vaccinate 80% of the national herd. It is to have 80% of susceptible animals immune at the same time. Because not every vaccinated animal develops protection, that means vaccinating close to the entire herd — and doing it inside a tight four-to-eight-week window.Vaccinate too slowly, and the first animals are due their boosters before the last have had a first dose. Immunity begins to wane at around six months. The result is pockets of high, low and no immunity.That is not a wall. It is a patchwork. And foot-and-mouth moves through patchwork.That was the biological test. The rollout has not met it.It is also why vaccinated herds becoming infected is not proof that the vaccine failed. When vaccinated animals are surrounded by unvaccinated ones, the vaccines have not failed. The plan has..The independent verdict.The same conclusion arrived from the policy and trade side, from someone with no reason to flatter the farming lobby.Professor Johann Kirsten, director of the Bureau for Economic Research, has been openly critical of the "grandstanding" over private vaccination, and he is clear that foot-and-mouth is a state-controlled disease that only the state can take to the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH).But on the Minister's own scheme, his verdict was blunt. Guided through the WOAH code by Dr Gideon Brückner — a former Deputy Director General of WOAH and former president of its Scientific Commission for Animal Diseases — Kirsten concluded that the department's Section 10 vaccination scheme cannot, by its own design, deliver the FMD-free-with-vaccination status the Minister says he is pursuing.The scheme is voluntary, where the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) requires compulsory vaccination. It is silent on the post-vaccination monitoring WOAH requires as proof of immunity. And, as Kirsten put it, vaccinating 80% of a population is not the same as 80% immunity — it typically yields closer to 63%.The Minister's stated goal and the structure of his scheme do not match..He removed the man who warned him.In February, the Minister terminated Dr Danie Odendaal's membership of the Ministerial Task Team on Controlled Diseases with immediate effect. Officially, the reason was procedural: Odendaal had not signed a required impartiality and confidentiality declaration.But the timing is hard to ignore. Odendaal is one of the country's most experienced ruminant veterinarians and had sat on every foot-and-mouth task team since 2016 — and in the weeks before he was removed, he had publicly criticised the vaccine strategy and the pace of the response.A Minister who ignores outside advice is one thing. A Minister who removes a senior technical voice from his own task team, as that voice is warning him, is choosing to hear less..The solution was available — and rationed.None of this had to happen. This was not a shortage of capability. It was a shortage of permission.The countries the Minister likes to cite show the model. Brazil and Argentina did not defeat foot-and-mouth because the state administered every dose. They beat it because the state set the standards and the private sector executed at scale, under supervision, in tight, auditable campaigns. South Africa borrowed the rhetoric and left out the mechanism.The High Court then opened the path in law: lawful private procurement and administration can take place under reasonable reporting and traceability conditions. The court did not create private capacity. It revealed that capacity which could lawfully have been used had been held back by policy choice.Supervised private execution — the thing that could ease the bottleneck now — remains available and remains rationed by choice. The fix is not unknown. It is being declined..The receipt.Which brings us back to the email.After the warnings, the letters, the public appeals, the litigation and the court order, FMD Response SA wrote to the Minister's office once more, asking to engage on the vaccination strategy.The Minister's Chief of Staff forwarded that request to the Director-General and Deputy Director-General "for some amusement."The phrase matters — not because farmers were offended, but because it names the posture with which serious technical warnings have been met. The slow permits, the spelled-out biology, the removed expert, the idle capacity: this was the attitude behind all of it.The email is not the story. It is the receipt..His plan, his failure.The Minister cannot claim he was surprised.He was warned about the permits. He was warned about vaccine access. The arithmetic of coverage and the biology of immunity were set out for him in black and white — by people inside his own task team. He was warned by farmers, by industry, by veterinarians, and by an independent professor. He was warned before the courts became involved, and again afterwards.He chose the plan. He defended the plan. He centralised the plan. He removed a critical technical voice instead of reconsidering the warning. His office treated a further request to engage as amusement.He cannot now hide behind the department, the inherited system or the bureaucracy.He wanted to run this alone.He owns the failure..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. 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Steenhuisen was warned—repeatedly. South Africa's FMD disaster is his to own.

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