New DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis should have fired John Steenhuisen on day one – Frans Cronje
Renowned political analyst Frans Cronje said John Steenhuisen messed up the response to the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak so badly that he should be fired.
Cronje shared his views on Steenhuisen and the ongoing foot-and-mouth disease during a discussion on The Common Sense podcast.
He slated Steenhuisen’s performance as Agriculture Minister, saying he deviated from the DA’s principles of a small state empowering the private sector.
The foot-and-mouth disease has escalated into the worst outbreak in the country’s history, forcing the government to declare a National State of Disaster.
The disease now affects eight of South Africa’s nine provinces, with KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State, and the North West the hardest hit.
Farmers are suffering tremendously. Seeing their animals suffer and die has gone beyond the financial impact to an emotional struggle.
While commercial farms recorded big losses, communal and emerging farmers are equally hard hit.
Because emerging farmers lack safety nets, fenced boundaries, and sophisticated biosecurity infrastructure, the disease can wipe out their livelihoods.
The Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) projected potential losses to agricultural output could reach R11.3 billion between 2025 and 2030.
Farmers have been asking the Department of Agriculture for the right to purchase and administer the foot-and-mouth vaccine.
They argued that the state’s rollout was far too slow to interrupt viral transmission, which caused tremendous damage to the industry.
However, Steenhuisen fought to maintain the government’s strict, centralised control over the vaccines.
It was only after a high-stakes legal battle and a landmark Pretoria High Court ruling that the state was stripped of its exclusive monopoly on these vaccines.
Farmers and agricultural bodies successfully won the right to legally procure and administer approved vaccines to protect their own herds.
DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis should have fired John Steenhuisen on day one
Cronje, who is highly respected in political and economic circles, criticised John Steenhuisen’s performance as Minister of Agriculture.
He said that, rather than empowering farmers, Steenhuisen introduced a policy stating that the government would procure and apply vaccines solely.
Farmers and private veterinarians were actively blocked from administering vaccines, despite routinely handling much more dangerous diseases successfully.
This caused horrific animal suffering, specifically in the dairy industry, and resulted in tremendous losses in the livestock sector.
“Small-scale and emerging Black farmers without access to premier private care were completely decimated by the policy,” he said.
Cronje said the Pretoria High Court delivered a scathing judgment against Steenhuisen and his department for actively engineering legal delays to block the matter from being heard quickly.
He explained that it was frightening for a DA minister to resort to such tactics, and that the court had to lecture him on basic constitutional principles.
Cronje said that Steenhuisen’s actions as Agriculture Minister completely contradict the DA’s core principles regarding government.
He highlighted that the DA’s historical campaign platform has always been that the state should be small and efficient while empowering the private sector.
“Instead, Steenhuisen chose a highly centralised, statist approach when it came to the foot-and-mouth disease response,” Cronje said.
He added that Steenhuisen’s performance was so poor that most ANC ministers would have been better.
“The new DA leader, Geordin Hill-Lewis, should have fired him on day one for this because it was such an abomination,” Cronje said.
“If Steenhuisen survives the pending cabinet reshuffle, it will be a terrible blight on Hill-Lewis.”
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Dual standards because, as armchair critics, you can?
The real problem in South Africa remains the ANC. The public, podcasters and even many police officers are so exhausted by the ANC’s corruption and incompetence that they now focus their attacks on DA leaders who, while far from perfect, at least demonstrate a degree of honesty, moral standards and accountability. Compared with the ANC, EFF and MK, they are saints.
Mr Cronje, yes, John Steenhuisen mishandled aspects of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease crisis and was arguably not the ideal choice for Minister of Agriculture. However, he neither created nor designed this disaster. The roots of the crisis lie in years of ANC mismanagement, corruption, poor planning, the collapse of vaccine production at Onderstepoort, and the absence of contingency plans. Antiquated international regulations that restrict farmers from importing their own vaccines only compound the problem.
So where do these double standards lead us? Blaming Steenhuisen for a crisis he inherited ignores the systemic destruction of state capacity that left his hands tied. He may have underestimated the complexity of the portfolio, but Foot-and-Mouth Disease is one of the most difficult livestock diseases to control.
To single him out for political crucifixion while ignoring the decades of ANC failures that created the conditions for this crisis is not objective analysis. It is political expediency and a clear example of double standards in a country already burdened by corruption and deliberate incompetence.
The investigation of the ANC corruption will be a real point of cantention untill it is investigated – clarity on this is imperative or the questions of why it is not answered will keep flooding his days. But he was never complicit in the crimes against this country committed as ANC ministers and BBBEE corruption in this regard.