Richard de Bufanos’s dairy farm is opposite Zonkizizwe township, south-east of Johannesburg. A state vet told him in May 2025 that the deadly foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) had been detected in the cattle of an informal farmer across the road.
De Bufanos asked if the herd had been quarantined, as per regulations. No, because the state had no capacity to feed the animals. And the Department of Agriculture wouldn’t or couldn’t vaccinate De Bufanos’s animals, at least not yet.
De Bufanos took measures to prevent FMD from infecting his cows. No cattle were allowed to enter the farm. There was already a two-metre trench around the farm’s border to help prevent this.
How FMD spread across farms
But it is nearly impossible to prevent FMD from infecting your cattle if a neighbouring herd is infected. The disease spreads too easily. A critter like a mongoose could stand in infected dung and scurry to the next farm, dragging the virus on its paws. A worker or visitor to the farm who has had peripheral contact with an infected cow, sheep or pig could unwittingly bring it in.
Even the tyres of a car entering a farm might carry it. Scientists also suspect the virus moves across substantial distances in fog. It’s possible that birds spread it.
FMD can incubate in a cloven-hoofed animal for two to 14 days before the animal gets sick. De Bufanos’s herd may already have been infected when he chatted to the vet.
So it was unsurprising when a few days later, on 26 May, the first cow on his farm started to show symptoms. Four days later, 180 were infected. On 30 May, the state finally vaccinated the farm’s herd, but by then it was almost pointless.
A large bull at the University of Pretoria Onderstepoort Campus, north of Pretoria. Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee
De Bufanos owns or has partnerships in other farms in Gauteng and one in Free State. He asked if the animals on those farms could be vaccinated. No, was the reply. Could he buy vaccines and do it himself? No again.
On 3 June 2025, animals on his second farm got infected. On 6 June, the third farm was hit. On 9 June, the department vaccinated animals on the second farm. And this pattern continued until FMD had infected the cattle on all six farms.
“They couldn’t help, and they prevented us from helping ourselves,” De Bufanos recalled, exasperated. He pointed out that though the DA is the party that champions public-private partnerships, it was the DA minister responsible for agriculture – in fact, the then head of the DA – John Steenhuisen, who blocked farmers from buying their own vaccines. (Our next article deals with this. Steenhuisen has not responded to our request for comment.)
All the farmers we spoke to were disappointed with the way Steenhuisen responded to the FMD epidemic. But the systems responsible for preventing the epidemic had already broken down over many years under ANC rule.
How the system was meant to work
Department of agriculture map showing the FMD protection zones. Not shown on the map is that there is an inspection area on the border of the free zone, in which the state must carefully monitor cattle movement and be on the lookout for possible infections. This zone-based system has completely broken down.
Buffaloes in the Kruger National Park are FMD carriers. In contrast to cattle, they seldom get very ill from the disease. Informal cattle farmers surround the game reserve, and sometimes buffaloes transmit FMD to their animals.
So a protection zone was established in the region bordering Kruger. Once a week, the informal farmers in this zone are supposed to take their herds to state-managed dip tanks. Their cattle are supposed to be de-ticked and checked for signs of disease, like FMD. Apparently it’s typically a lively community gathering, and the farmers attend because it keeps their animals healthy.
If FMD is found, the herd is supposed to be quarantined and a sample of blood taken from the sick animal and sent to the Agricultural Research Council in Onderstepoort for testing.
The herd, and perhaps nearby herds, are supposed to be vaccinated. Samples from infected animals are also supposed to be sent to The Pirbright Institute in the UK, the world’s reference laboratory for FMD. Pirbright then assists vaccine manufacturers to update their vaccines to protect against new strains, if necessary. The better matched a vaccine is to the strain of virus that is spreading in an area, the more effective it is.
Entrance to the Agricultural Research Centre at Onderstepoort. Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee
Also, cattle in the protection zone are generally not allowed to move out of it. So movement has to be monitored and controlled.
This system divides the country into zones: infected zones (the Kruger Park and a small section of northern KwaZulu-Natal), protection zones neighbouring the infected zones, and an FMD-free zone — most of the country. The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) recognised South Africa’s FMD-free zone in 2014. (It was first recognised in the mid-90s, then lost and restored a couple of times after that.) That meant that most of South Africa’s cattle and cattle products could be much more easily exported.
The signs that the system to control FMD had broken started to show in January 2019. The department of agriculture confirmed the disease had been detected in cattle in Vhembe in Limpopo, in the FMD-free zone. WOAH immediately suspended the country’s FMD-free status.
The department frantically negotiated with countries to whom we export meat and dairy products, including our neighbours, with mixed success. Several thousand cattle in nine villages within a 20km radius were vaccinated using a vaccine produced in Botswana. That vaccine is only effective for a few months, and its efficacy against the circulating strain of FMD was unclear because, it turned out, we hadn’t sent FMD strains to Pirbright since 2011.
It would all be too little too late.
- This story was first published by GroundUp.
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