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DA: Money for Zim F&M 'wasted'
14/04/2003 23:11 - (SA)
Johannesburg - The South African government's decision to donate R13m for vaccines to Zimbabwe for the control of foot and mouth disease "without exercising control over its application was to throw good money after bad," the Democratic Alliance said on Monday.
Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs spokesperson Nana Zenani said the announcement was made verbally by the president's spokesperson Bheki Khumalo last week.
In a statement on Monday, DA spokesperson Andries Botha said: "The Zimbabwean government has demonstrated its inability to control the incidence of foot-and-mouth disease, not least because of a breakdown in administrative capacity.
"The chaotic fast-track land programme has rendered control over the movement of livestock and game near impossible. To donate any amount of vaccine without exercising control over its application is to throw good money after bad."
Botha said even if only a small number of cattle escaped the vaccination "net" and crossed the border into South Africa, "we will have lost the battle. This is an 'all or nothing' situation."
He said that under current circumstances, the best hope of meaningful intervention would be if South Africa took direct control of an inoculation programme.
"If the foot-and-mouth outbreak is not contained and brought under control in Zimbabwe, it could - and very likely will - spread across the border to affect South Africa as well as other nations in Southern Africa.
"The Transfrontier Park would surely be dead in the water if an outbreak of foot-and-mouth is not prevented from spreading through the entire region. It is therefore in everybody's best interest that the disease be beaten," Botha said.
- SAPA
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