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Civil society coalition says: Heads must roll for Terbufos regulatory failure
Press Release: South African People’s Tribunal on AgroToxins
31 October 2024
A coalition of civil society organisations and trade unions working together to expose the harmful reality of pesticides in South Africa mourns the tragic deaths of six children – Monica Sebetwana, Ida Maama, Isago Mabote, Njabulo Msimanga, Katlego Olifant, and Karabo Rampou – in Naledi, Soweto. Their deaths werecaused by the ingestion of Terbufos, which is a highly toxic agrochemical still registered for agricultural use, along with many other harmful agrotoxins and routinely used on both commercial and smallholder farms. Farm workers and dwellers, including their children, live and work in environments saturated with highly toxic agricultural chemicals.
Organisations within the coalition have been campaigning for years, calling for the banning of highly hazardous pesticides, stricter regulation, and proper enforcement, to no avail. Not even a damning report, released in July 2024 by the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Hazardous Substances and Wastes, Dr Marcos Orellana, has evoked a decisive response from the South African government with regard to the regulation of hazardous substances.
Orellana reported that many children “had been poisoned or died after eating, drinking, or handling hazardous street pesticides,” citing at least 34 poisoning cases and five deaths in Gauteng in 2022. The Special Rapporteur found that deaths from Terbufos and other illegal ‘street pesticides’ in South Africa happened as a result of “regulatory gaps and enforcement shortcomings”, along with dire sanitation conditions in low resource areas, leading to the use of pest remedies that are toxic and not appropriate for domestic use. Terbufos is classified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a class Ia compound, the most toxic category for any pesticide. It should be banned immediately because it is extremely hazardous.
Orellana also raised concerns around the corporate capture of South Africa’s regulatory system, including in the system for pesticide registration. He warned that regulatory failures tend to impact the most marginalised in society, as tragically illustrated in this case.
Co-ordinator of the South Africa People’s Tribunal on Agrotoxins, Haidee Swanby, said “the UN Special Rapporteur released his shocking findings just two months ago, this should have been an international embarrassment for our government. Instead, their response to his report was defensive and callous – there was no recognition of the suffering caused by their regulatory negligence and cosy relationship with industry, nor any sign of a will to address the serious harms caused by agrotoxins under their watch. The People’s Tribunal has been ghosted by the Portfolio Committee on Labour, our requests to the Department of Employment & Labour to consult with farm workers on the draft regulations to the Hazardous Substances Act were ignored, while the Minister of Agriculture claimed in the media that our protests are ‘premature’. When will it be the right time for our Government to protect us from dangerous toxins?”
Faiz Neethling of the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU) said, “We feel deeply for the families of these children. We know very well the impacts of these pesticides, because we as farm workers are forced to use them daily in our work, where no one cares to ensure our safety, health and dignity. Highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) must be banned, the industry must be properly regulated, and government must put in place measures to transform out of this toxic agricultural system.”
Another place where Terbufos is known to have contributed to serious health impacts on an entire community, is in the Blackburn informal settlement in Durban during the July 2021 riots. A warehouse storing about 6 000 tons of pesticides, including 20 tons of Terbufos was set alight, resulting in days of toxic smoke that choked the community. According to community leader, Kwanele Msizazwe, “firefighters were not aware of what was stored in the warehouse, so they used water to put out the fire, resulting in pesticides polluting the soil and water that our community uses. Tons of dead fish lined the shore in Umhlanga. The poisonous fumes were unbearable to breathe, for days. Authorities should have known what poisons were stored there, but they failed us. We have had little to no assistance with the health impacts that affect us now and will continue to impact us for generations”.
Call to end Double Standards and corporate capture of regulation
Initially, chemical industry body, CropLife, put the spotlight on foreigners and spaza shop owners by claiming that a banned substance, smuggled over our borders, was responsible for the children’s deaths. However, toxicology tests confirmed that the deaths were caused by Terbufos, a potent organophosphate legally registered for agricultural use in South Africa, but clearly inadequately regulated.
Terbufos is banned in the European Union since 2009, but continues to be manufactured and exported from Europe – what campaigners have dubbed ‘double standards’ and the Special Rapporteur calls “a practice that reproduces long-standing racist and colonial patterns of exploitation”. Colette Solomon, director of Women on Farms Project, opines that, “To export chemicals that are known to have carcinogenic potential to developing countries is deplorable. The meaningless death of these children illustrates the deadly consequences of maintaining this racist double standard in the international pesticides trade. Because the South African government lacks the capacity to monitor the impact of these pesticides or mitigate their negative health and environmental impact, we call upon the Department of Agriculture to discontinue, with immediate effect, all HHPs already prohibited in their country of origin.”
UnPoison, a multi-sector advocacy network of organisations and experts, also focused on banning HHPs, reports that there are currently 184 registered HHPs in South Africa – that are legally used and deployed in many different brands. “Although we welcomed the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development’s (DALRRD’s) phase out of 28 HHPs in June, we note that there are 116 pesticides in the class of pesticides that the Registrar gazetted would be phased out by June 2024. Why have 88 pesticides in this class been exempt from the ban?” Additionally, pesticides that are acutely toxic in Class1a and 1b of the WHO classifications, which include Terbufos, have only been restricted, along with those listed in the international agreements – the Stockholm Convention, the Rotterdam Convention and the Montreal Protocol. “All of these pesticides need to be banned immediately and not recategorized in ways that put the public at severe risk”, said UnPoison.
Failure of Government Oversight: A Systemic Issue
Professor Leslie London of the University of Cape Town’s School of Public Health stated that Ministers need to be held to account for “a system that allowed Terbufos be used in this country under the conditions it was used”. London said that the Rotterdam Convention (to which SA is a signatory), “would have at the very least required some notification, but the Minister responsible withdrew the regulations”. Similarly, the Department of Health holds the obligation to enforce the Hazardous Substances Act, yet there is complete inaction.“Whomever sold the Terbufos should have a register that the Department of Health is able to inspect. It’s convenient to blame the vendor, but Government departments – including Health, Agriculture, Labour and Environmental Affairs – are complicit in this failure to protect public health.”
Vainola Makan from the Surplus People’s Project (SPP) stated that, “adequate consultation with affected communities has been glaringly missing in the government’s handling of pesticide regulations and decision-making. For example, recent public participation processes failed to gather the opinions of farm workers who have to use these poisonous substances as part of their every-day duty on farms. Government’s close relationship with industry, and lack of transparency and accountability has now been publicly exposed, sadly by the death of innocent children.”
Demand for Immediate Government Action
A coalition of civil society organisations and unions concerned with the impacts of pesticides is calling on the South African government to take urgent, effective action to prevent further tragedies in vulnerable communities. Our demands include:
- Government Accountability and Cohesion: there must be consequences for authorities that have failed to ensure regulatory oversight and enforcement. Further, the key spheres of government that regulate hazardous substances, including Agriculture, Labour and Health, need to convene to create cohesive policy to support inter-governmental regulation and enforcement.
- Chart a route out of toxic agricultural practices: agrotoxins are inherently dangerous, regardless of label instructions and regulations. This reality needs to be acknowledged with the implementation of a pesticide reduction policy as well as policy and legal measures to ultimately replace these toxins with benign alternatives and environmentally safe and sound agricultural methodologies.
- Inclusive, Transparent Decision-Making: No more self-regulation for industry. Government must fulfil its human rights obligations and take up the regulatory reigns, end conflicts of interest in regulatory bodies and ensure meaningful public participation in policy and decision-making. A publicly accessible database of chemicals registered in South Africa, as well as a database of all HHPs must be made available.
- Immediate Ban on Double-Standards: Prohibit the use of highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) in South Africa that are banned in the EU and other jurisdictions due to their health and environmental risks.
In Solidarity with Farm Workers and Vulnerable Communities
The death of children is unbearably painful and utterly unacceptable when caused by regulatory negligence. This is a pain that no parent should have to endure. The Naledi tragedy is not an isolated incident; it exposes the daily reality of many families who live in informal or unserviced conditions that are driven to use highly toxic solutions for pests. It also shines a light on farm workers and their families who are continually exposed to toxic chemicals in their daily work and dwellings. We stand in solidarity with South Africa’s farm workers, farm dwellers, and the Naledi community. We call for a just transition from our historically unjust, toxic and extractive agricultural system to agroecological production systems that strive for health, worker’s rights, availability of nutritious food and environmental sustainability.
Civil society movements and coalitions will continue to fight for justice, dignity and protection for farm workers and dwellers. We will continue to expose the system that causes human and environmental rights violations through the use of harmful agrotoxins and the exploitative nature of the colonial, neoliberal agro-food system that is propped up by the state.
Endorsed by the following Organisations:
- African Centre for Biodiversity
- Women on Farms Project
- groundWork, Friends of the Earth SA
- Surplus People Project
- Ubuntu Rural Women and Youth Movement
- Commercial Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union
- Trust for Community Outreach and Education
Notes for editors:
- Visit to South Africa – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes, Marcos Orellana. July 2024. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5752add1-visit-south-africa-report-special-rapporteur-implications
- Comments by the State: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes on his visit to South Africa. September 2024. https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g24/149/14/pdf/g2414914.pdf
- Pesticide Action Network (PAN) list of HHPs https://pan-international.org/wp-content/uploads/PAN_HHP_List.pdf
- Terbufos information sheet: https://echa.europa.eu/substance-information/-/substanceinfo/100.032.679
For Media Inquiries:
- People’s Tribunal on Agrotoxins:
