The South African agricultural sector is facing a severe crisis due to a prolonged foot and mouth disease outbreak, exacerbated by government mismanagement, lack of essential resources like vaccines, and a failure to adequately support affected farmers.
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If there's one thing that South Africans
or certainly members of the business
news tribe have learned from the co 19
experience that is question question
especially anything that comes out of
government. Well uh it seems as though
we're being asked to swallow this again.
This is to do with a foot and mouth
disease. John Steen Hazen, leader of the
Democratic Alliance, agriculture
minister of South Africa, put on a very
brave face yesterday, relying on a
department that has mucked up the whole
thing. Well, interestingly enough, uh
there is a farmer in parliament. His
name is Athl Trollup. He is the
parliamentary leader of action SA, a
party that is disrupting uh wherever uh
it does see opportunities to disrupt.
And I've asked Athel to come and uh
update us on his perception of the foot
and mouth disease which farmers are
telling us is the greatest tragedy this
agriculture sector has faced since the
Ethel, in a way, I'm quite sorry
actually that you you guys at Action SA
stayed out of the government of national
unity because with your background,
having been a farmer, I'm not sure there
too many other people in parliament,
mostly townies, who would be as well
positioned to understand what's going on
in agriculture because it certainly
doesn't seem to be the case at the
moment from what the farming community
tell us. But you did something unusual
yesterday. John Cena has a press uh
conference uh and you went along to it.
I suppose you're allowed to. But on top
of that, you asked a question which is I
I I'm not sure I've ever heard of that
before where a a parliamentarian has
gone to a press conference of uh cabinet
minister and actually put them on the
spot. And you certainly did. Just
explain the background to that in this
very unusual disruptive decision.
>> Uh good morning, Alec. Uh thanks very
much for having me on your show. First
of all, I just want to commend you. You
know, you you have a a a a business
called Bismuse and you talk about
business a lot. I mean, that is your
core business. And I was very impressed
that you included agriculture in your
business focus and I listened to your
interview with um Peter Keane and Dr.
Lond from KZN
and it made every hair in my body stand
up. Uh, and for people who don't know
what foot and mouth is, uh, maybe they
should have a look at that interview.
Maybe they should start reading about
the impact of foot and mouth. Um, I read
recently a dairy farmer's diary for one
month of what happened on his farm and
it's just quite
um, sobering. Um,
so that's where we are. And you said I
did something unusual. Uh the minister
used exactly the same words yesterday
when I asked him a question at his
ministerial briefing and he said that
it's unusual having a parliamentarian
coming to this briefing because I've got
all the mechanisms parliamentary
mechanisms to ask questions to the
minister and I'm a member of the
portfolio committee. Well, that's
precisely why I went to that press
briefing. I am a member of the portfolio
committee and the minister had not
briefed the portfolio committee about
this new plan of his and I thought well
let me go and be uh get firsthand
information. The problem an is that foot
and mouth this current foot and mouth
outbreak has been around since 2021.
That's four years now. You remember how
long the two years of co were for South
Africans. Well, these four years for
farmers have been an absolute nightmare
because the minister quite glibly says
he's going to wage a war against foot
and mouth disease. But the question is
what's he going to wage the war with?
You need vaccines and we don't have
vaccines. And this is what gave rise to
my question to the minister when I said
to him yesterday, you say that it's the
responsibility of the farmer to maintain
biocurity on his farm. Well, absolutely.
that that is what proper farmers do.
They uh make sure that they have proper
fencing that they can exclude other
animals that might have diseases. Um and
the government should be doing the same
thing. We don't have a barrier anymore
between the Krueger Park and uh
livestock farmers in South Africa. That
barrier is gone. So the first barrier of
prevention is gone because of neglect
like all the other neglect we see in
this country. Neglect of road and rail
and all of our infrastructure, traffic
lights, you name it. It's just gone.
This government does not look after
infrastructure. So the consequences then
and I think you said if you don't
maintain your road you get potholes.
Well, if you don't maintain your buffer
zones of foot and mouth, you're going to
get a foot and mouth disease outbreak.
So my question to the minister was, so
you tell us you're going to do this, you
have no ammunition, you have no
vaccines. Farmers for the last four
years have been waiting for the
department to provide vaccines and the
vaccines haven't come and in fact many
of the farmers that have vaccinated and
been able to get hold of vaccines their
animals have still died. Now it is said
that animals and yesterday one of the
departmental officials said that animals
don't die of foot and mouth. Well they
might not die of foot and mouth disease
but they die of secondary diseases.
Clustradial diseases, pasteurella, riff
valley fever, all the other diseases
that also require vaccines. And I want
to tell you that honest biological
products and the agricultural research
council have been absolutely delinquent
in producing vaccines. Alec, every
single summer I get inundated by calls
from farmers to say hot water, uh,
gallickness, Asiatic, African heart
water are killing my cattle. I can't get
blood. I can't get vaccines. And then I
contact the director general and I
contact the minister and they assure me
that the product is available and the
farmers come back and say the product's
not available. So poet biological
products used to be an iconic South
African establishment that provided
vaccines to South African farmers and
also farmers across the continent and
even the world. Now we can't do it
anymore. 500 million rand, half a
billion rand has gone missing from port
where they were supposed to be upgrading
their facilities uh to good
manufacturing practice standards so that
we could export vaccines and that we can
also have proper vaccines. We can't do
that and that is why or minister pert
and the arc cannot provide vaccines. So
when I asked the minister, are you are
you sure that the people who are going
to head up this war against foot and
mouth disease, your departmental
officials and ARC and OBP um leadership?
Are you sure that they can manage
because they are the people that have
put us in this mess? If we had been
vaccinating properly, Alec, in all the
uh district management areas or red zone
areas where we've had outbreaks in the
last four years, we wouldn't be in the
situation we are in now. Putin mouth has
become like a felt fire. The dairy
industry in KZN is on its knees. And uh
you know, I listened to um Peter Keane
talking to you yesterday. Dairy farmers
love their cattle. They see them every
day. Sometimes three times a day their
milks, but certainly twice a day. They
know them almost by name, but certainly
by sight of the animal. They know their
animals. They know their production. And
when you see production starting to go
down and you see your animals developing
mastitis and you see them walking on the
ends of their legs because their hoof um
covering has hoof walls have fallen off.
Uh it it can break a person. And you
know, Alec, the other question that was
asked yesterday uh to the minister that
he evaded and didn't address at all is
what about compensation? When you have
an outbreak, Alec, by law, you are
expected to inform the department that
there is an outbreak. Now, what that
done does is immediately it brings your
farm to zero income. Zero income. dairy
farmer, beef farmer, feed lot, suddenly
you have zero income. And the minister
makes a lot of fuss about movement of
animals. And he's right. Technically, if
you want to confine and control a
disease, you uh you must quarantine it.
Any kind of disease, whether it's in a
hospital or whether it's on a farm, it
must be quarantined. But if you're going
to quarantine a business, you must give
it some support. Otherwise, that
business will fail. or else people will
not report and they will move their
animals because there's a price
differentiation and they'll move their
animals to where they can sell them.
They've got bills to pay, children to
educate and that kind of thing. So what
has happened is that the farmers are
expected to fight this war with their
hands tied be behind their back with
their own resources and John Steen was
asked yesterday what are you going to do
about compensating people that are um
reporting incidents of foot and mouth
outbreak and that are going to zero
income situation and he was absolutely
still on that. The only good thing that
came out of the press conference
yesterday was that the minister has said
that he's going to appeal for this to be
declared a national disaster. Now,
that's still a long way from being
declared a disaster. What he said and
what he's done in this government are
two separate things, but at least they
have woken up to the fact after four
years that we have a national disaster
here. And I'm going to conclude by
saying we learned a lot during CO. And
that is what I actually wrote in my
press statement. We learned during CO
not to ask less questions and be
accepting, but to ask more questions,
especially when it comes to the economy.
You know what CO did to the South
African economy? Well, that's what foot
and mouth disease has been doing to the
agricultural economy for the last four
years and it's still not declared a disaster.
disaster.
>> There's so much in what you've just
shared with us now, but I I want to
start with the politics first. There is
already feedback from people saying
Steen has been lined up by the ANC with
this portfolio because they were under
the impression that he would mess it up
which he appears to have done and they
were well aware that this was not going
to be an easy portfolio at all. In fact,
it's a disaster that was brewing with
foot and mouth disease. you you know
politics, you know,
can it be as machavelian as that or are
people trying to make more out of uh the
political side of this than is actual
fact? Look, I don't think it can be or
is as mavelian as that. I really don't.
This thing has been four years in the
making. Steen Hazen has been the
minister for about 18 months. So, it was
already being messed up before he
arrived. But but the problem with South
African politics, Alec, is that when
John Steinen became the minister of
agriculture, I think the farming
community thought, well, great, now
we've got somebody who will listen,
somebody who looks like us, talks like
us, and um will hear us. Now, in proper
politics where governments appoint the
most appropriate person to the job, not
like our country where you have people
like Angie Mocha as the minister of defense,
defense,
uh it doesn't matter what color you are,
it doesn't matter what language you
speak, but if you have expertise in an
area, that's the area that you should be
deployed to. Now I I I looked at some of
the officials uh in the department of
agriculture for example that are
responsible for handling this outbreak.
Yesterday there were three veterinarians
doctors that were seated next to the
minister and you know they are
veterinarians. I'm not a veterinarian.
I'm just a farmer and and you know I
can't question their their
qualifications but there is an official
in the department that's actually
responsible for day-to-day management
who advises the minister and I've
searched everywhere. Alec to find out
what his qualifications are with regards
to veterary
uh biocurity and disease management
outbreak and I can find none and I have
said for a long time in the committee
that I believe that the minister is
being misled by his officials. I've
written messages on our portfolio
committee group to say that if we can't
manage the influx of illegal aliens
across a linear border of this country,
how on earth are we going to manage the
infiltration of an enemy like foot and
mouth that spreads across our country
where there are no fences, where we have
massive communal farming areas, where we
have livestock in the cities that roam
in our streets, how are we going to
manage it? And I don't believe that we
have the officials, the capacity, the
expertise or the skills to manage this
the disease outbreak. The minister did
say one good thing and I've written it
down and I'm going to monitor it very
very carefully because from the farming
community and the stakeholders in
agriculture, it is apparent that there
is no partnership between the department
and them. The minister says yes, they've
met with various people and they got
various representatives from uh you know
the academic field and so on on on a
task team. But when it comes to the
farmer, the man who milks his cattle,
the man who pulls his dead calves out of
animals that have got um foot and mouth
disease, they don't believe that there's
a proper partnership. And the minister
said yesterday that the department can't
manage this alone and that they will
have to collaborate and cooperate with
farmers. Now that was good news for me
because farmers I think it was Pete Keen
uh who said to you yesterday that he
manages his contagious abortion or
brucyosis in his own dairy herd. So he
acquires the vaccines, he applies the
vaccines, administers them and he
monitors the recovery of that animal.
Minister's DNA said the Department of
Agriculture must do this vaccination.
They must be part of the comprehensive
vaccination because they will then
follow up. There's no better followup
than the man and woman or men and women
on a farm that deal with those animals
daily. They will see them every day and
say, "Oh no, my cattle are improving. My
cattle are getting worse." That's the
best way to follow up. Nobody in an
office in Ptoria can effectively follow
up. And um I think Dr. Lond said one of
the problems with the department
officials being responsible for
surveillance and followup is once
they've been on your farm, Alec, where
you have an outbreak, they can't come to
my farm within 7 days. So those staff
effectively become disengaged for 7
days. Whereas I will monitor on my own
farm, my own animals on a daily basis.
So this has to be a collaboration and a
cooperation between every farmer their
production representation organizations
whether it's the milk producers
organization or the red meat producers
organization or agri sa or agri eastern
cape sigh all of those institutions they
should be involved and they will monitor
and they will report back because it's
in their interest to break this current
outbreak not to simply go along year
after year after year and then tell us
yesterday that this is a 10-year
project. Which business can endure a
10-year project at their own expense?
It's simply unacceptable. This is a
government responsibility. It's a state
um uh controlled disease and if it is a
state controlled disease and it's
legislated that the state is responsible
for its control, then the state must
control it. But that brings in a whole
lot of issues and you did mention that
Stanasen was quiet about compensation
for farmers but as a state controlled
disease you stop the farmers from
acquiring vaccines. So you're
responsible for making sure that they do
not suffer losses. I mean it's a it's an
open andsh shut case in commercial law.
I has that penny dropped because the
feedback we're getting from the business
news community members and we have a lot
of farmers on our very very active
WhatsApp groups with our premium members
telling us that these farm these
agricultural uh bureaucrats are
incredibly arrogant. They think they
know better. They've been informed about
this ages ago and they actually just
it's almost like they don't want to work
with the farmers and they want the
farmers to fail. So has the penny
dropped about the liability that the
state and unfortunately we as taxpayers
are going to be facing in this regard.
>> I don't believe the penny has dropped. I
heard uh one of the doctors or the
veterinarians on Minister Stehazen's
team yesterday say that animals don't
die from putting mouth disease. So that
means he doesn't understand what
secondary infections are. And he said
the only problem is that you do lose
carbs, a high number of carbs. Now let
me just explain to you Alec and your
listeners. If you're a dairy farmer,
your your enterprise cannot continue if
you don't get heer carves. If you don't
get any calves, that's the end of your
business. You need replacement females
to carry on your enterprise. So, that's
the first problem that was highlighted
to me yesterday when an official made a
remark like that. But what happens with
um a foot and mouth disease outbreak and
the economic consequences are the
following. First of all, you lose
production. So um the veterinarian um
Dr. Lond explained to you that if your
cows come off production, say a cow's
producing 18 lers of milk, she contracts
a high temperature, gets foot and mouth
disease, she will either develop
mastitis and not let down milk because
her teeth are too sore to milk, but the
production will go down. When she comes
back into production, she might produce
eight or 10 liters of milk. So you've
already lost half of your production. So
that's the first consequence. production
falls dramatically. But if you are in a
district management area and you have
been quarantined, you may not sell your
products. That's the next consequence.
So you lose production, you lose income.
Then the next thing is that you lose
replacement livestock, the future of
your business when they die either from
foot and mouth disease or uh secondary
infections. And some of those secondary
infections require other vaccination and
vaccines. And if you can't access them,
your hands are tied behind your back.
And then the last one, and this is
probably the most difficult to manage
because feed lots uh can be given
exemption where they inoculate their
animals and they can still slaughter
them. So farmers can sell uh their
wieners or their young livestock to the
feed lots to be fattened and prepared
for market. And when they get to a feed
lot and they contract foot and mouth
disease, they can be vaccinated and in
90 days or more they can slaughter the
animals and production continued. But if
you are a
stud breeder and you've built up the
genetics of your stud to the very best
way you can, acquiring genetics from all
over the world and you contract foot and
mouth disease, you may not sell those
genetics. So you can't sell ghouls, you
can't sell heers, you have zero income.
Now no business can tolerate zero
income. But this department of
agriculture and this government expects
farmers to tolerate zero income. It is
completely unacceptable. And Alec, you
must remember there's another thing
about dairy farming. Most dairy farmers
reproduce or have their animals
reproduce through artificial
insemination. So they're not even
bringing in bulls from other areas and
putting them into their herds. They are
inseminating their cattle to get them
pregnant so that they can carve and
produce milk artificially. So they can
manage an environment and they can
quarantine themselves absolutely
perfectly. But the minister said
yesterday, and this is the point that
really really bothers me, and you asked
me, has the penny dropped? And I say the
penny hasn't dropped because the
minister gets told by these officials
that quarantine and seclusion is the
best way to um confine an outbreak.
Well, it hasn't been the best way
because it's been four years now and
it's getting worse by the day. The
minister says vaccination is not a
silver bullet, quote unquote. He said
bio security on farm is the
responsibility of the farmer. Now I
agree that it is but think about a
farmer who lives in a communal area
where he puts his livestock out into the
pasture every day with no fences. His
cattle mingle with all the other
livestock in that area and people are
buying and selling cattle all the time
to educate a child or to pay a bill or
bring new bulls in and bring new rams
into communal herds and communal flocks.
there is no biocurity control. So if
you've got commercial farmers securing
their farms and emerging or um
subsistance farmers doing the opposite,
we will never get rid of this outbreak.
So that's where the government needs to
catch a wake up and John Steinen needs
to understand that biocurity is his do
department's responsibility especially
in a state controlled disease. Well, I
had a a a voice message from Pete Keane,
the farmer as you mentioned that I spoke
to earlier this week, and he said bio
security is impossible because the neighbors
neighbors
uh who want to get their cattle onto
your land uh or just through anger,
whatever, uh cut down fences. He says he
had a fence that was cut in 260 places.
This is just not possible. And he made
the point as well that a crow eating off
a carcass which has passed because of
foot and mouth disease will it doesn't
know that it's not supposed to go into
the next door farm. So this isn't the
way it's being looked at is it appears
to be incredibly naive and certainly out
of touch. But right at the as far as the
farmers are concerned they're saying
please just let us get our own vaccines.
Don't you as the state tell us how that
you will give us vaccines, you can't
give it to us and in the meantime our
herds are being smashed. Let's get back
to what happened at on that 500 million
rand that disappeared at the Ornist
biological products. You mentioned that
yesterday when talking to the Minister
of Agriculture. Do you have any insight
into where that money went? Because from
what you've said and from what the
farmers tell us, this was once a a pride
of South Africa. We were producing
fantastic vaccines, more than enough for
our own management of a of a crisis like
this. Now there's nothing and 500
million was put there by taxpayers and
it's unaccounted for. Do you have any
insight into what happened to that
money? Well, I think the short answer to
that is if you watch the Madlanga
Commission or the Adoc Parliamentary
Committee uh inquiring of what's
happened to the money in the South
African Police Services, the answer
would be the same. Money gets frittered
away uh especially through the tender
processes and people enrich themselves.
But once again, I'm going to speak to
what was said at the press conference
yesterday. The CEO of the ARC
said that the vaccine production
facility at onward stroke arc
uh was built in 1980.
1980 that was 45 years ago, Alec. And he
said it became so outdated that they had
to do away with it and build a new
facility that um would meet good
manufacturing practice standards. Now
that's well and good but you don't
destroy something but before you've got
an alternative to produce vaccines. And
then he went on to really incriminate
the department and himself when he said
that that facility used to produce
vaccines for foot and mouth outbreaks
and they used to produce about a couple
of thousand vaccines a week when there
was a buffer management zone and the
outbreaks were not as intense. That's
what he said. Essentially what has
happened now four years later there is
no buffer zone the outbreak is now a
national disaster and he says they can't
produce vaccines and the minister says
that they will increase that production
by the end by midFebruary to 20,000
vaccines a week. Now you've heard the
numbers the national herds about 14
million strong. um some of the vaccines
that we're going to be procuring from
other countries because we can't produce
them. They need a double dose and they
need a follow up within 6 months uh
honest to put and OBP um and the ARC
tell us they have a vaccine that is a
one application vaccine but they can't
produce it. So what we are saying is
action SA and what all the farmers are
saying is let's collaborate. Let's use
private sector laboratories. If you've
got the vaccine, we can massroduce it.
Let's put a plan together.
Do away with archaic legislation that
prevents that. sweep off the table if
it's a national disaster all the
constraining um
regulations and let's go to a private
laboratory that produces medication for
humans or whatever medication and give
them a contract to produce the required
number of vaccines like in two weeks
time because we we're not looking for a
vaccine Alec we've got a vaccine now we
just need to reproduce it let me give
you a a a story about vaccines and
regulations and legislation just to
illustrate how it can be overcome. There
was a scientist in France called Louis
Pasteure and he discovered a cure for rabies.
rabies.
Now in the past if a rabbid animal bit
you that was the end of it you died or
if it put another animal it died.
And the the symptoms are very similar to
foot and mouth disease. You start
salivating and that's what cattle do.
They salivate and drool. And uh a woman,
a French woman's son was bitten by a
rabbid animal. And she traveled across
France to meet Mr. Louis Pasture. Was
not a doctor. He was a chemist. To meet
him and say, "I need you to treat my
son." But the legislation and the law
prohibited this man applying the vaccine
to this child. And he wasn't a doctor,
so he couldn't apply it. Anyway, he he
consulted two doctors about this child.
And the doctor said, "The child has got
rabies. It's going to die in the next
two days." And he consulted the mother
and said, "I have injected thousands of
animals with this antivenenom or
antidote and they have recovered, but
I've never injected a person. If I
inject your son and he dies, I'm going
to be culpable." She said, "My if my son
is going to die, I'm going to take that
chance." And he applied the medication
or the antidote to the child and he
lived. Now, if you have a national
disaster, you need that kind of
intervention. You need that kind of
leadership to tell farmers and tell the
country, "We're going to do this because
we have to do this in order to save our
industry." Can't say we can't do this
because of the law and this regulation
and the next regulation and we can't
import this vaccine because this person
hasn't given permission yet. If it's a
national crisis, and it is a national
crisis, we were acquiring vaccines for
CO that hadn't even been tested. Alec,
why can't we do the same thing for
agriculture? We were acquiring vaccines
that have been shown to have been
detrimental to human beings.
Why can't we do the same thing when
farmers are on their knees saying our
livestock are dying? We are dying of
poverty and this is psychologically
killing us. In the United Kingdom, when
they killed thousands of cattle, tens of
thousands of cattle, farmers were
committing suicide, but the government
was compensating them. In South Africa,
farmers are considering suicide because
they're losing their income and their
dear livestock and the government is not
compensating them and the government's
not even backing them up. That's where
the real issue lies in uh the vernacular
and it's opposite because they would say
that is where the calf has died. Uh
certainly from Peter Keen's uh
perspective he I'm sure would and he and
other farmers would would welcome the
intervention that you recommending and
it seems pretty rational but he said
even before that just give us the chance
to buy vaccines wherever we can. Let us
go and get let us look after our own
assets. The fact that the government is
not allowing uh farmers to do that is
baffling to me and it does appear as
though again the the penny hasn't
dropped because if you are not treat if
you're treating this as a national
emergency which is what we are told that
the government is kind of believing well
then that's the kind of intervention
that one needs surely so if you were man
minister of agriculture to close off
with if you were the guy if you were in
Sten Hazen's job if action is a had join
the government of national unity and uh
there was somebody bright who said hang
on we got a farmer here he knows uh
agriculture far better than anybody else
that we have around let's put him into
that role if you were running the
agriculture department what would you do now
now
>> well first of all if you listen very
carefully to what uh Peter Keenan said
when he buys um contagious abortion or
brucilosis vaccine from his nearest
co-op or veterinarian services. He looks
at the coal chain to make sure that that
vaccine is effective. Now, no farmer is
going to apply vaccines to his livestock
that's going to wipe it out. The whole
idea about applying the vaccines is to
save your livestock and production. So,
this big brother mentality of the
government saying we need to we need to
um apply the vaccine, we need to certify
the vaccine, we need to surveil what
happens thereafter after application.
That's complete madness. The best remedy
to control this is to give the
responsibility of application,
surveillance, and followup to the people
who have got skin in the game. Those
officials that are sitting at the ARC
and the OBP get paid at the end of their
month. Their salary gets paid whether
the outbreak is coming to an end or
whether the outbreak's getting worse.
And the outbreak's getting worse because
there's no consequence to those people.
the the people that feel the consequence
should be the people that are
controlling this disease and those are
the farmers, those are the livestock
owners. I sat there and I listened to
the African Farmers Association of South
Africa asking questions, how are we
going to fight this? How are we going to
prevent this infecting our herds? What
are you going to do about it? What are
you going to do about compensation?
Nothing. So that's the answer, Alec. We
have, you know, the Department of
Agriculture is very thin on extension
services, on veterinarians on the
ground, people that interact with
farmers on a daily basis. That's been
one of the probably one of the biggest
shortfalls of this new government is
they did away with effective, efficient,
competent, capable extension officers
that would be on the ground monitoring
outbreaks, speaking to farmers, engaging
them, providing vaccines. That's all
gone. So in the absence of that you have
an infrastructure of farmers, people who
look after livestock on a daily basis
who are there at the front line who can
become your extension officers. So the
government has got a network of
extension officers, farmers like Peter
Keane, vets like Dr. Lond right across
this country. They are the front line.
Put them into service. If you're going
to wage a war, then wage it with
everything at your disposal. And the
people at the front line are the best
people to fight the war.
>> And I'm sure you will continue to fight
the war in parliament as well. When does
it reopen? When do when do all the
politicians go back and and have debates
on issues like this, Iran and other
pressing issues?
>> Well, we've been back this week and we
dealt with the budget and I'm back in
parliament. Uh we're having a press
conference today but um you know
parliament takes a while to warm up and
that's why I was perturbed and a a bit
beused that the minister was holding a
press or briefing uh to tell the press
about what he was going to do without
calling us as a portfolio committee. I
mean I wrote to the portfolio committee
chairperson in the beginning of December
and I said this is a disaster. We need
to do something. we need to do something
different because our officials are not
up to it and I believe they are
misleading the minister and you know
we're now mid January and we haven't had
that portfolio committee meeting so if
it was urgent if it was a national disaster
disaster
uh we should have been dealing with this
stuff and uh I'm not going to wait and
the minister said it was unusual that I
was there to ask questions I'm going to
do the unusual in unusual times that's
my responsibility and I will continue to
do it I'll do whatever I can and that's
why I have to thank you for the
opportunity to speak on this matter.
This is not a parochial matter, Alec.
This has got nothing to do with any
particular political party. This should
concern every single member of
parliament and every single South
African because this is a national
disaster. Food insecurity is one issue.
But when food becomes inaccessible and
milk becomes inaccessible,
this government will import meat and
milk so that people can eat and stay
alive and allow importation. What will
that do to our industry? It will break
our industry. We have always been a food
sufficient country. We've seen our
neighboring countries become food
insecure because of bad political
decisions. We can't afford to let that
happen in South Africa.
Trrollop is the parliamentary leader of
action SA. I'm Alec Hog from businesswe.com.
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