Pesticide poisons on farms, poisons in the streets: People’s Tribunal puts government, agrarian feudalism on trial in South Africa

People’s Tribunal on AgroToxins to expose agriculture’s ugly secrets 

Press Release

18 March 2025

On Human Rights weekend, the South African People’s Tribunal on AgroToxins will put the government on trial in the court of public opinion for gross dereliction of its constitutional duties to protect the right to life. Farm workers and community members will share truly harrowing testimonies. They will attest to how the government has persistently, decade after decade, failed to protect farm workers and their families, especially children living in low-resource communities in both urban and rural areas, from the catastrophic consequence of exposure to highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs). These HHPs include the notorious pesticide, Terbufos, implicated in the deaths of primary school children at the end of 2024.

The Tribunal will 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.

It takes place this week in the heartland of white hegemony in the Western Cape and the export agriculture sector –  Stellenbosch – from the 21st to 23rd of March 2025, to break the isolation and invisibility of farm workers and expose the inhumane and slave-like working and living conditions they endure.

South Africa is the largest consumer of agrotoxins in Africa, with over 9,000 toxic chemical compounds registered for use in our chemically based industrial farming, including approximately 192 HHPs  – many of which are banned in the European Union.

According to People’s Tribunal coordinator Haidee Swanby,

“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 will give testimony at the Tribunal of their lived experience of working in the sacrifice zone of South Africa’s deeply inequitable and toxic wine and fruit farming systems. The General Secretary of the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agriculture and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU) explains that,

“many farm workers are forced to work with poisons that have been banned in Europe and many countries in the SADC [Southern African Development Community] region. It is difficult to live on our wages or access good health care. If we get ill then we must  hear its 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”. 

The judges will also hear testimonies from community members who bore the brunt of the devastation that was unleashed when a chemical warehouse was torched in Cornubia City 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 collapse. Children are most at risk of death, and acute and chronic poisoning from these street pesticides. The Tribunal will hear both community and expert testimonies on these issues.

Expert testimonies will be given by Mr Wisdom Basera, Prof Leslie London, Prof Rajen Naidoo, Prof Saloshni Naidoo, Prof Andrea Rother, Dr Cindy Stephen, Ms Paola Vigletti and Mr Rico Euripidou.

According to the South African People’s Tribunal on AgroToxins,

“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.”