Who and what is AfriForum?

AfriForum is an Afrikaans civil rights organisation that protects the rights of minority groups at national as well as provincial level, and anyone who can identify with AfriForum’s principles and objectives may join the organisation. AfriForum’s community plan focuses on mobilising communities to thus take control of their own streets and neighbourhoods again. AfriForum ensures that your constitutional and civil rights are recognised and protected at national level.

Wie en wat is AfriForum?

AfriForum is ’n Afrikaanse burgerregteorganisasie wat die regte van minderheidsgroepe op sowel nasionale as provinsiale vlak beskerm, en enigiemand wat met AfriForum se beginsels en doelstellings kan identifiseer, mag by die organisasie aansluit. AfriForum se gemeenskapsplan fokus daarop om gemeenskappe te mobiliseer om só weer beheer terug te neem oor hul eie strate en woonbuurtes. AfriForum verseker dat jou grondwetlike én burgerregte op nasionale vlak erken en beskerm word.

FMD crisis: Government now has its foot on farmers’ necks with procurement, administration of vaccines

Soundbite: Lambert de Klerk (English)

Soundbite: Lambert de Klerk (Afrikaans)

The government’s latest plan to tackle foot-and-mouth disease creates a monopoly on the procurement and distribution of vaccines. AfriForum believes that while overall monitoring by the government is necessary, it cannot force farmers to participate in a scheme of which the costs and compliance regulations are still unknown. In the meantime, due to the government’s centralist approach, many cattle now have to be vaccinated anew after they were re-infected due to a delay in the procurement and administration of the second round of vaccinations.

AfriForum believes that the current damage, uncertainty and risk of reinfection that farmers face could probably have been limited or even prevented if the government had created the space for farmers, private veterinarians and the agricultural industry to obtain vaccines themselves and implement vaccinations more quickly and widely.

“The problem is not that farmers did not want to act, but rather that the government wanted to exercise control over a crisis that spread faster than the administrative divisions of the departments concerned could keep up with,” says Lambert de Klerk, manager of Environmental Affairs at AfriForum.

Although the new scheme encourages collaboration between the public and private sectors, it still poses many problems for farmers. Farmers must pay for the vaccines and its administration themselves, although the costs involved are not yet known and subsidies and cost-sharing are still only a possibility.

According to De Klerk, this means that farmers are now expected to pay for a vaccination process that could have taken place earlier and faster if they had been allowed to approach the private sector themselves. “The government’s failure to act decisively in this crisis has left the agricultural industry unnecessarily vulnerable.”

In addition, participation in this scheme is described as “voluntary”, but it appears that farmers who do not participate in the scheme but do require vaccines will not be able to obtain them. Farmers who do not cooperate with this scheme and its requirements also run the risk of having their farms placed under quarantine.

“In a crisis like this, time is everything. Every week of delay leads to more animals being exposed, creates greater uncertainty and exacerbates economic damage. The private sector has the necessary knowledge, networks and logistical capacity to help more quickly, but they should have been allowed to do so earlier,” adds De Klerk.

AfriForum now calls on John Steenhuisen, the Minister of Agriculture, to remove all unnecessary obstacles to participation from the private sector and to adopt a practical, industry-driven emergency plan.

“Farmers should never be held hostage by a slow government process. If the government had made way for the private sector earlier, the problem could probably have been closer to a full solution,” concludes De Klerk.