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Efforts to curb South Africa’s foodborne disease outbreak have been mismanaged from the time children began dying. The chaos began with poor communication among silo-thinking bureaucrats, who – for reasons beyond all comprehension – chose not to collaborate in their efforts to draw attention to and address the real issues.
The first official intervention appears to have come from the Department of Co-operative Governance & Traditional Affairs, which gazetted a notice on 7 November 2024 misguidedly headed “Local Government: Municipal Systems Act, 2000 ... standard draft by-law for township economies”. Few ordinary South Africans bother reading the Government Gazette – and even fewer journalists, it seems. Especially when, at first glance, there’s nothing to suggest any click bait potential.
That said, in the context of recent developments, the term ‘standard draft’ really means a baseline document to be used by each individual municipality to prepare a by-law specific to its needs – but nevertheless meeting all requirements spelled out in the draft.
And although the department did issue a media statement on its ‘standard draft’ the following day, neither it nor the document itself drew attention to the municipal by-law’s main thrust. Which is to ensure that all township businesses are registered, that they comply with basic hygiene standards, and that waste removal services operate efficiently and effectively.
By contrast, being somewhat controversial ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula’s utterances during the ensuing three days did indeed attract media attention. By then at least 12 children had died and many more had been hospitalised for treatment. But no official media statement was issued by the ANC – leaving concerned South Africans dependent for news of the crisis on half-baked media reports. According to one, Mbalula called for the immediate closure of ‘all’ spaza shops pending re-registration, the deportation of any owners ‘found to be foreigners’ (TimesLIVE) – and for the South African National Defence Force to be ‘roped in’ to assist the police in ‘root(ing) out’ out spaza shops selling expired goods.
All of which prompted NCOP Education, Sciences & Creative Industries chair Makhi Feni to issue a press release welcoming Mbalula’s ‘pronouncement’ but making no mention of the by-law. Perhaps Feni forgot that, under the ‘government of national unity’, a Minister’s political affiliation isn’t supposed to matter. Co-operative Governance & Traditional Affairs Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa is also Inkatha Freedom Party president, by the way. And for what it’s worth, the by-law doesn’t ban foreign nationals from operating spaza shops – which Feni would apparently like to have seen.
On 11 November, National Assembly Small Business Development Committee chair Masefako Dikgale issued a statement expressing support for a move by Free State Fezile Dabi’s district council to close wholesalers found not to be complying with Health Department regulations on ‘general hygiene requirements for food premises, the transportation of food and related matters’. But the very next day, a press release from NCOP Economic Development & Trade Committee chair Sonja Boschoff drew attention to the ‘unco-ordinated’ manner in which government had been communicating with members of the public on ‘the spaza shop crisis’. In her view, at the time ‘conflicting’ messages were undermining confidence in government’s capacity to manage the situation.
At which point, on 15 November, President Cyril Ramaphosa finally stepped in to address the nation. By then, the number of child deaths from foodborne illnesses had risen to 22. Pointing to ‘the unregulated use of restricted pesticides’ in communities plagued by rat and other pest infestations (largely because of irregular refuse collection), the President also referred to a lack of capacity in some municipalities to conduct environmental inspections. Noting there’s ‘no evidence that the problem is confined to spaza shops owned by foreign nationals’ and that ‘shops owned by South Africans’ are just as likely to be found wanting on issues of basic hygiene and food storage, the President then listed interventions already under way to stem the outbreak or the pipeline.
Four days later a national disaster was declared, and a day after that the Department of Justice & Constitutional Development released a media statement on behalf of the Ministers of all national departments directly involved in dealing with aspects of the crisis. Unfortunately, at the time of writing the link was dysfunctional and the statement therefore unavailable.
Which pretty much sums up the entire debacle ...
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