WeeklySA_AdminJUSTICE: Children are most at risk of death and acute chronic poisoning from street pesticides
By Monk Nkomo
The South African government – in a historic development – will be put on trial in the court of opinion when farm workers share their harrowing experiences of how the regime had, for decades, failed to protect them and their families from the catastrophic consequences of exposure to the highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) including the notorious Terbufos.
The trial, initiated by the South African People’s Tribunal on AgroToxins (SAPTOA), started at the weekend in what has been described as the heartland of white hegemony – Stellenbosch – in the Western Cape, to break the isolation and invisibility of farm workers and expose the inhumane and slave-like working and living conditions they endured.
According to SAPTOA, farm workers are expected to share their tormentous testimonies of working in deeply inequitable and toxic wine and fruit farming systems. They will also testify about the government that, for decades, had failed to protect them and their families in low -resource communities, especially children and those living in urban areas against HHPs. The Tribunal would also hear testimony from experts on the issue.
These pesticides included the notorious Terbufos, a neurotoxic insecticide, which was implicated in the deaths of six young children in Naledi, Soweto in October last year who had eaten snacks bought from a local spaza shop.
Many farm workers are due to testify how they were forced to work with poisons that had been banned in Europe and many other countries in the Southern African Developed Community (SADC) region. The court of public opinion would also hear testimonies from community members whore bore the brunt of the devastation that was unleashed when a chemical warehouse was torched in Cornubia in KwaZulu-Natal in 2021.
‘’ This has led to the loss of life, chronic illness, loss of livelihoods and widespread environmental degradation and pollution. Abject regulatory failure was at the heart of this disaster. Similarly, regulatory failure routinely results in toxins that are restricted for agricultural use in South Africa finding their way into domestic urban settings when people buy ‘’ street pesticides’’ to deal with pest infestations resulting from chronic lack of service delivery and food systems collapsed.
Children were more at risk of death and acute chronic poisoning from these street pesticides.
The hearings would be adjudicated by a panel of three influential South African women who have remarkable track records in ensuring justice for the voiceless – Judge Navi Pillay, Dr Sophia Kisting-Cairncross, and Human Rights Commissioner, Philile Ntuli.
SAPTOA noted that South Africa was the largest consumer of agrotoxins in Africa, with over 9,000 toxic chemical compounds registered for use in our chemically – based industrial farming.
The Tribunal coordinator, Haidee Swanby said : “We see a complete regulatory breakdown and a ‘free-for-all’ for the agrochemical industrial complex that is symptomatic of a dismantled and dysfunctional state. It also links back to a long history of extraction and colonisation in South Africa, resulting in gross human rights violations and environmental calamity.”
Farm workers would give testimony at the Tribunal of their lived experience of working in the sacrifice zone of South Africa’s deeply inequitable and toxic farming systems.
The Commercial, Stevedoring, Agriculture and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU) in a statement said : “Many farm workers are forced to work with poisons that have been banned in Europe and many countries in the SADC region. It is difficult to live on our wages or access good health care. If we get ill then we must hear it is because of alcohol and drugs. When we become too ill to work, we can just be evicted from farms where we have been working and living all our lives”.
Expert testimonies are expected to be given by Mr. Wisdom Basera, Prof. Leslie London, Prof. Rajen Naidoo, Prof. Saloshni Naidoo, Prof. Andrea Rother, Dr. Cindy Stephen, Paola Vigletti and Rico Euripidou.
Commenting on AgroToxins, the SAPTOA said : “As our turbulent world is plunged into greater chaos, there is also great momentum and impetus amongst us in our collective struggles to reclaim our sovereignty and dignity. For many years, farm worker organisations, unions, civil society and academics have been calling on the government to phase out HHPs and update our antiquated regulatory framework.
‘’This has been done through sharing current science and research, commenting on policy, letters of demand, objections, petitions, protests and campaigns. Having reached exhaustion of remedies, we decided to host the Tribunal as part of our ongoing and collective solidarity struggles.”
According to SAPTOA, examples of other highly hazardous pesticides included :
* Mevinphos, which is linked to neurological defects leading to long-term health complications and
* Carbofuran, associated with reproductive and developmental defects.
THE PESTICIDE STORY
THE JUDGES
• Judge Navanethem “Navi” Pillay is a South African jurist who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. Pillay was the first black woman judge of the High Court of South Africa. She has also served as a judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Her four-year term as High Commissioner for Human Rights began on 1 September 2008 and was extended for an additional two years to 2014. In April 2015, Pillay became the President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty.
• Commissioner Philile Ntuli is full-time at the South African Human Rights Commission with a focus on women’s relationship with the State. She is particularly interested in exploring how and whether South Africa’s project of democratisation can disrupt historical gendered hierarchies. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and English Literature as well as a post-graduate Diploma on Public Policy Development from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She further obtained an Honours Degree in Sociology (Gender Studies) and a Master’s Degree in Social Science from the University of Pretoria. Ntuli has also graduated from the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute on the topic of the African Political Economy.
• Dr Sophie Kisting-Cairncross is the former director of the National Institute for Occupational Health, South Africa and formerly, she led the International Labour Organisation’s global Programme on HIV/Aids and the World of Work. Prior to that, she practiced occupational health and medicine at the University of Cape Town and spent nearly 20 years in public health hospitals in various countries in Africa. She was medical advisor for the Parliamentary Committee coordinating the ground-breaking Parliamentary Asbestos Summit in 1998, with extensive worker and community participation. She is currently working tirelessly toward the prevention and elimination of Tuberculosis among health workers and miners. She led the team on the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) position paper on TB among Health Workers and she represented ICOH at the Africa Union side event on TB prevention during the United Nations General Assembly High level TB meeting in New York, 2018.
PARTICIPATING EXPERTS
• Wisdom Basera, a research/clinical scientist at the South African Medical Research Council, has experience in clinical and public health related to environmental exposures, adolescent health and both communicable and non-communicable diseases.
• Prof. Leslie London is the Chair of Public Health Medicine in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town . He leads research on pesticide hazards and chemical neurotoxicity, farm worker occupational health, and occupational and environmental epidemiology.
• Prof. Rajen Naidoo is the head of Occupational and Environmental Health, within the School of Nursing and Public Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His research interests are occupational and environmental respiratory diseases and dose response models.
• Prof. Saloshni Naidoo is the Head of Public Health Medicine, in the School of Nursing and Public Health in the College of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Among her research interests she focuses on healthcare workers and the risk of their work environments, and environmental impacts on women and child health.
• Prof. Andrea Rother is the Head of the Environmental Health Division and Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at UCT. She is also deputy director of the Centre for Environmental and Occupational Health Research in the School. She is extensively involved in national and international policy development around reducing chemical and pesticide health and environmental health risks, and leads the development of a FAO guidance document on HHPs.
• Dr. Cindy Stephen is the director of the Poisons Information Centre at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town. She is also a clinical staff member of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at UCT, and contributes to AfriTox, a South African poisons information database, as well as the 24/7 Poisons Information Helpline.
• Paola Vigletti is currently pursuing a Ph.D at the University of Cape Town to investigate the impacts of pesticide exposure and socioeconomic factors on child neurodevelopmental outcomes in agricultural communities.
• Rico Euripidou trained as an Environmental Epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom and is a toxicologist. He is the Chemicals and Campaigns Support Coordinator managing strategic alignment of groundWork’s six campaigns. He works on issues of energy, chemicals policy, climate change and public health, all of which are closely interrelated.
