Among the other demands is for the government to implement its 2010 pesticide policy and to integrate this with a food security plan that reduces reliance on chemicals for pest control. (Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Government must stop conflating food poisoning from highly toxic pesticides with food contaminated by foodborne illnesses.
This is among the demands in a petition issued by the South African People’s Tribunal on AgroToxins, a coalition of civil society; vulnerable and affected people; trade unions; academics and individuals.
“This has led to the inappropriate solution of blaming spaza shops for the government’s failure,” said the petition, which accused the government and South Africa’s chemical industry of “reckless endangerment”.
The petition called on the government to immediately ban the toxic agrochemical Terbufos and institute mechanisms for outlawing all highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) within three months.
Last month, six children died after eating snacks bought at a spaza shop in Naledi, Soweto. The health department confirmed that the deaths were caused by Terbufos, an HHP from the organophosphate family. It was listed as a “restricted agricultural remedy” last year, requiring specific labelling.
Terbufos has been banned in the EU since 2009.
“There is no reason for it not to have been banned here — European bodies and African bodies react to poisons just the same. Further, and given that it is banned elsewhere, there are alternatives available,” the coalition said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has declared a national disaster and decreed that all spaza shops must re-register within 21 days but these solutions “do nothing” to deal with the source of the issue — “the unacceptable presence of HHPs on the local market” and the failure of the relevant departments to carry out their duty to effectively regulate agrotoxins, according to the petition.
“We are alarmed that the chemical industry, CropLife, immediately created a narrative in the media to place the blame on spaza shops, the lifeblood of most communities in South Africa, fanning xenophobic flames,” said the groups, noting that this was a bid to deflect attention from their responsibility for the historical and continuing tragedies.
“We are alarmed that our government has supported them in this endeavour.”
The groups are calling on the department of agriculture to overhaul the pesticide registration system within 12 months and to ban aerial spraying of pesticides, as recommended by the UN special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, Marcos Orellana, after his visit to South Africa in 2023.
Orellana’s report found that regulatory gaps and enforcement shortcomings had led to the emergence of street pesticides, widely available at markets, and used in informal settlements to combat rats and other pests, aggravated by the absence of good sanitation services.
“Street pesticides are either legally registered for agricultural use but decanted into unlabelled containers and used illegally for domestic pest control or they are unregistered products, probably imported illegally.”
In 2022, there were 34 poisoning cases, including five deaths in Gauteng from an organophosphate, “probably Terbufos”, Orellana’s report said.
Although the state responded to his report, they did not acknowledge his findings in this regard or “show any urgency to remedy the regulatory problems he identified”, the coalition said.
The petition urged the government to ensure adequate funding for government poison information centres and to establish an independent inquiry into the structural causes and the role of industry in the cases of pesticide poisoning.
Among the other demands is for the government to implement its 2010 pesticide policy and to integrate this with a food security plan that reduces reliance on chemicals for pest control.
A fund must be established within one year to compensate pesticide poisoning victims fairly and equitably.
“We urge the department of health to ensure access to quality healthcare for survivors of pesticide poisoning — particularly children — whose long-term development and health may be at risk from the poisoning.”
Terbufos is one of more than 9 000 toxic chemical compounds registered for use in the country, in varying categories of toxicity, used extensively on wine, maize and citrus farms.
“Farm workers and their children, farm dwellers and people living adjacent to farms are also exposed to these toxins regularly.
“Spraying season has just begun and those living on and adjacent to farms are experiencing the familiar symptoms of exposure to cocktails of toxic pesticides drifting in the air — asthma, sinus, streaming eyes, mood swings, headaches — and many will know the long-term impacts on their bodies in years to come.
This toxic mode of food production is not inevitable, the groups said. They rejected the “well-worn narrative that we cannot achieve food security if we do not spray our food” with poison from seed to production to storage.
“What will it take for our government to take a serious look into alternative, safe methods of food production, if the death of children from Terbufos poisoning has been an opportunity to deflect blame and responsibility?”
Leslie London, a pesticide expert at the University of Cape Town’s School of Public Health said the agriculture department had long served to strengthen and support the needs of commercial agriculture.
“The agrichemical industry was intrinsic to the growth of commercial agriculture and so they are now in the pound seats when it comes to inputs to agriculture. Our entire department believes that pesticides are essential for food security and should not be tampered with in any fundamental way.”
Other countries have recognised the need for pesticide reduction policies and making integrated pest management a core principle of pest control, he noted.
“Not so South Africa, which remains wedded to the antiquated idea that a pesticide treadmill is the only way to secure food security.
“This is aside from the obvious point that food security in South Africa has less to do with producing enough food — which we do —- but with distributing it fairly, since inability to buy nutritious food is the hallmark of our incredibly unequal society with the uncontested highest Gini coefficient in the world.”
Spraying herbicides and insecticides is “not the answer to putting mealie meal on a poor person’s table”, London added.
