KwaZulu-Natal premier defends response to DA's Foot-and-Mouth Disease criticism
South Africa has been hit by a devastating Foot-and-Mouth Disease.
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KwaZulu-Natal Premier Thamsanqa Ntuli has dismissed the DA’s criticism that he has failed to declare the province a Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) disaster area to allow a smooth mass vaccination campaign.
In a statement issued by the DA provincial spokesperson on Agriculture in the legislature, Sakhile Mngadi, on Wednesday, the party lashed out at Ntuli, calling his behaviour irresponsible.
Mngadi said there are measures that need to be taken by national governments, such as funding and deployment of the army to enforce restrictions on livestock movement, but that can only happen once the province has been declared a disaster area.
However, this was refuted by the Premier’s Office, which said since the president has declared all affected provinces disaster areas, there was no reason for provincial governments to do the same.
“The premier is treating the outbreak of FMD with utmost seriousness and has formally requested that it be declared a provincial disaster. It is this decisive intervention that prompted the national executive, under the leadership of His Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, to classify the disease outbreak as a national disaster.
“The classification was formally announced during the State of the Nation Address on 12 February 2026,” read the statement.
Furthermore, the Premier's Office said that a separate provincial declaration is neither legally permissible nor practically necessary.
“In terms of the Disaster Management Act, a premier may declare a provincial state of disaster only where an event has been classified as a provincial disaster. Once the National Disaster Management Centre classifies an event as a national disaster, as is the case with FMD, primary responsibility for coordination shifts to the national sphere of government.
“Therefore, it would be legally incongruent for a province to declare a separate state of disaster for an event that has already been constitutionally classified as a national crisis,” emphasised the Premier’s Office.
The province has been categorised as the epicentre of the disease with 17,000 farms and 2.4 million cattle infected by the disease.
The province has announced a mass vaccination rollout set to begin next week. Although the target is cattle, especially beef and dairy, pressure is mounting on the government to also vaccinate other animals, such as pigs.
willem.phungula@inl.co.za