EDITORIAL: Municipalities must shoulder some blame for child deaths

In all the sorrow and outrage over the children who have recently died or fallen ill after eating contaminated food, far too much attention has been directed at the nationality of spaza shop owners. Far too little attention has been paid to the reasons why so many people try to keep pests at bay with illegal and unregistered chemicals that inadvertently end up in the food chain.

In his address to the nation on Friday, President Cyril Ramaphosa rightly emphasised the culpability of local government in the tragedy that has unfolded. When municipalities are swimming in debt and crippled by political infighting, the garbage piles up, sewage runs in the streets, and the rats and cockroaches thrive. 

In such conditions, poor households and small business owners reach for whatever chemical they can afford to fend off the vermin. And as Ramaphosa pointedly reminded his audience, locally owned spaza shops are just as likely to use illegal “street pesticides” and fall short on basic food safety measures as those run by foreign nationals.

Acknowledging the problem is the easy part. Ramaphosa now needs to quickly make informal settlements and townships less attractive to pests. Here’s one idea to get him going — direct some of the participants in the presidential youth employment scheme to pick up rubbish and repair basic infrastructure in impoverished communities. That would immediately create a more dignified living environment for people and a far less welcoming one for disease-carrying pests.