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AGRICULTURAL PESTICIDES: BLANKET TERBUFOS BAN IMMINENT?
- 15 January 2026
- Agriculture, Land Reform & Rural Development
- SA Legal Academy
The Department of Agriculture has gazetted a notice calling for input by 27 February 2026 on the proposed prohibition of selling, acquiring, using or disposing of agricultural remedies containing terbufos. The intention is that the ban would be effective from 28 February 2026. Contrary to a recent News24 report, the notice was not backdated. However, it does replace one issued on 1 December 2025, when stakeholders were allowed 14 days to comment.
In March 2025, the Health Department published a report prepared by its ministerial advisory committee on food-born illnesses recommending the ban. As an agricultural pesticide, despite not being registered for domestic or community pest control purposes terbufos is nevertheless ‘illegally sold in informal street markets and from spaza shops in the poorest communities’, where residents contend with rat and pest infestations as a result of inadequate garbage removal at municipal level’.
The investigation underpinning the report appears to have been triggered by the October 2024 death of six children in Naledi, Soweto. Suffering from acute organophosphate poisoning, the children’s unfortunate demise was attributed to terbufos exposure. National forensic chemistry laboratory records have since pointed to an ‘epidemic of fatal poisoning … largely hidden from the public eye’. Apparently, a ‘significant number’ of people in South Africa (especially children) ‘die before reaching a health facility following terbufos poisoning.
Three months after the report’s release, a media statement on Cabinet’s 11 June 2025 meeting committed the Department of Agriculture to a ‘consultation process on the ban in line with its 2010 Plan to eradicate poisonous insecticides and pesticides over a period of time’. Reference was also made to ‘work on identifying safer alternatives to terbufos’.
The children’s death also prompted a spaza shop registration drive, although there have been no official statements on its outcome.
- Government Gazette replacement replacement notice
- original notice
- Health Department ministerial advisory committee report
- media statement on 11 June 2025 Cabinet meeting
- News24 report
Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch
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