Steenhuisen Strikes Back

A week ago, this newspaper ran an editorial that called on both President Ramaphosa and the Democratic Alliance to axe Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen for what the editorial argued was his mishandling of the pandemic, attacks on farmers, and generally wrongheaded approach to policy. The minister was quick to contact the newspaper to object, saying that the editorial was ill-informed and unfair. In response The Common Sense’s YouTube host, Gabriel Makin, got Steenhuisen onto the Talkin Sense podcast to state his case.

You can watch that interview here.

Steenhuisen’s central defence was that foot-and-mouth disease did not begin under his watch. He says it had been a recurring national problem since 2019 and that when he took office he inherited about twenty years of collapse in South Africa’s biosecurity system, including the loss of local vaccine production.

He argues that the claim that he handled the crisis in an overly state-centric manner is the opposite of the truth. He says he brought the private sector in more deeply than any of his predecessors had done and created a ministerial task team split between state experts and private sector experts, set up an advisory structure with organised agriculture, allowed private vets to vaccinate cattle, allowed industry bodies to buy vaccines, and opened the door to private imports. A core message is that he actually oversaw the liberalisation of animal vaccine access in South Africa.

Steenhuisen says that the strict controls around the vaccines are necessary for technical and legal reasons. He argues that the vaccines are not yet registered locally, that emergency approval had to be used to get them in quickly, and that trained professionals must administer them so the state can track and document every dose.

On the vaccine sourcing itself, he says government acted, procured two million doses in 2025, and only ran into trouble when Botswana’s vaccine plant had a shutdown. He says his department subsequently moved quickly to source alternatives from Argentina and Turkey.

On his rows with farmers and the Southern African Agri Initiative’s (SAAI’s) Theo de Jager, the minister pushed back strongly.

He says he never accused farmers of wanting to use vaccines as a bioweapon. What he meant, he says, is that these vaccines are tightly controlled substances and that is why they cannot simply be sold like ordinary livestock medicines.

He also says Theo de Jager has a personal vendetta against him because he blocked his appointment to the Land Bank over previous fraud findings. From there, he says, De Jager spread false claims about vaccine prices and government profiteering.

When Makin pressed him on whether he should be held to a high standard because he is, among other things, the DA leader and the party is vying to position itself so much better at governing than its ANC rival, Steenhuisen agreed. He accepts that he and the DA are judged more harshly than other ministers. But he says that is only acceptable so long as the judgement is fair and evidence based.

When asked whether he believes there are people trying to undermine him politically, he more or less says that is “just politics”. He says enemies and opportunists are always looking for weaknesses to exploit.

In the final part of the interview, when he reflects on his time as DA leader, he says he is not leaving politics, only making space for a new leader. He argues that he took the DA from the ashes of the 2019 election, prepared it for the coalition era, and became the first DA leader to take the party into national government. He says he leaves the leadership with a full heart and believes he delivered on what he promised.

The Common Sense has made many of those points at length.

Where does this newspaper now stand on the question of Steenhuisen’s future as agriculture minister? It stands where all good media platforms should. It has argued the case for the minister’s axing and has then allowed him free rein in his defence. South African public opinion is shrewd and intelligent. Readers can read the original editorial and then listen to the minister’s response and make up their own minds. That is exactly how it should be.