Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni has announced the banning of Terbufos in South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Luba Lesolle) 
Speaking on Thursday, 12 June 2025, at a post-Cabinet media briefing, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni announced: “Cabinet has approved the ban of Terbufos in South Africa, a chemical compound classified as an organophosphate, commonly used as an insecticide and pesticide.”
The minister said the Cabinet had received a report from the inter-ministerial committee on food-borne illnesses, with “a special focus on organophosphate pesticides”.
In 2024, six children in Naledi, Soweto, died after consuming Terbufos, a pesticide commonly used within the agricultural sector in South Africa but that is commonly sold illegally for home use at informal stores. More than 20 children died in Gauteng in 2024 in incidents believed to be linked to spaza shops and illegally sold pesticides.
Earlier in February, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) lobbied Parliament for the banning of Terbufos.
Read more: SAHRC calls for banning from agriculture of highly toxic pesticides that have killed many children
As Daily Maverick reported in March, despite a public outcry and a promised crackdown on Terbufos, it is still sold in spaza shops and on street corners in Johannesburg.
Details unclear
It’s not clear yet when the ban will come into effect.
On Thursday night, Joylene van Wyk, the spokesperson of Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, said: “We note the Cabinet decision, and we are working on the legal notice to implement the decision.”
Mariam Mayet, the director of the African Centre for Biodiversity, said banning the product would be challenging for the government.
“They have to get their act together and ensure that Terbufos is removed completely from our country, from urban areas, from the streets, and from the farms.”
Mayet said she remained concerned “because the ban needs implementation and our government has not been seen to be able to control and exercise proper enforcement around it”.
She described the announcement as bittersweet. The African Centre for Biodiversity was part of a collective of organisations and civil society groups that wrote to Steenhuisen in December 2024 to demand the ban of Terbufos as well as other hazardous pesticides.
“I was feeling very sad yesterday because I felt that, did it mean that our children had to die first?” she said.
Spaza shops
During Thursday’s briefing, Ntshavheni said: “While specifics to determine the exposure by the children remain uncertain, the possibility that the children consumed food contaminated with Terbufos purchased from a local spaza shop remains the most viable explanation.”
Mayet suggested the minister was scapegoating the spaza shops while the government had failed to enforce its regulations.
She said Ntshavheni “still insists that there’s a link between the poisoning in spaza shops. So they still haven’t given up on the issue of spaza shops because we know that the proliferation was illegal because it was registered only for agricultural use and it landed up in urban areas.”
Read more: Blame for deaths of children from spaza shop food lies squarely with government
According to the civil society groups’ earlier calls for the ban, Terbufos has been banned for use within the European Union (EU) since 2009, but some countries within the EU region “apply double standards and continue to allow the production and export of Terbufos, especially to developing countries”.
Terbufos has been banned in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) by Angola, Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, the Seychelles, Tanzania, and Zambia. Botswana’s ban came into effect in December 2024. Zimbabwe has not imported any Terbufos since 2002. DM