A zone too big for its own good
Innocent Selatlhwa - Mbongeni Mguni | Monday June 1, 2026 06:00
MOKATAKO: As Parliament wrapped up its sitting last month, legislators approved a critical motion. Boteti West Member of Parliament and Chief Whip, Sam Digwa, successfully requested his colleagues to “urgently re-demarcate existing veterinary disease control zones, particularly Zone 11, 3B”.
Digwa argued that, together with the re-demarcation, the maintenance of all zonal fences across the country would enhance livestock disease management and improve farmers’ livelihoods.
The motion came 15 days after the official confirmation of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in Zone 11, the first outbreak in the zone in more than 50 years.
Spanning several southern districts, Zone 11 has been an official FMD-free region for decades, a state that possibly lulled authorities into a sense of comfort. In the FMD-troubled North and West, where the virus breaks out every few years, disease control zones were long broken down into smaller areas for closer management and containment.
On the ground, what this means is that neighbouring villages in the North and West can experience vastly different levels of disease control measures, simply because they lie in different zones. One village may allow livestock movement and slaughter, with accompanying weddings and merriment, while another may impose strict restrictions that even prohibit milking cattle for consumption.
In Mokatako, in the troubled Goodhope district, a veterinary officer explained the dilemma to a Mmegi news crew that toured the area on Monday.
Mokatako villagers sprang into action even before FMD hit Zone 11, galvanising their mophato to maintain a 24-hour patrol of the border. After the outbreak was confirmed elsewhere in the Zone, Mokatako villagers faithfully herded their 3,000 cattle for vaccination.
Not a single case of FMD has been picked in the village, and neither have any of their livestock been killed for straying too close to the border fence.
“We cannot say people here are close to eating meat because the issue is about the whole of Zone 11,” the veterinary officer told Mmegi, as farmers milled about a vaccination point.
“If the FMD is under control in Zone 11, then people here will be closer to eating meat.
“The disease will be said to be controlled when we have no more cases of FMD after we wrap up vaccinations in the whole zone.”
The officer agreed that Zone 11 is inordinately large, describing it as a factor hindering disease control.
“They actually wanted to demarcate it further recently.
“There was a fence that had started along the line along Gathwane, Lorwana, Digawana and that would have been able to contain the disease where it is.
“However, it happened that FMD jumped in; we got that fence up, and it crossed to Banyana recently.
“Redemarcation would still be a very important thing to do, even if not now, but in the future.
“A zone should not be so large, so that these diseases struggle to be controlled.”
Further fanning farmers’ frustrations in Zone 11 is the fact that FMD first broke out in seemingly secure, restricted areas. The virus was first detected at the secure National Artificial Insemination Laboratory in Ramatlabama on April 2. Later, it was confirmed at Banyana Farms, a generally restricted area for commercial farming.
Since then, cases have popped up in commercial farms as well as crushes in the zone.
Communal farmers in areas such as Mokatako, who defended their border and toed the line to prevent an outbreak, feel unfairly lumped together with other parts of the large Zone.
Mephato members are waking up at the crack of dawn every day to relieve their fellow members who have spent the night patrolling the border, preventing vandalism and livestock incursions.
The mophato members do all this with no financial support, self-sourced “uniforms” and rudimentary “weapons” and tools. Only recently were some of them incorporated under Ipelegeng program, but remuneration there is a rotational affair.
“We are appealing for assistance for our mophato, to help them in the work that they do for this community and the fight against FMD,” said Mokatako-Molete Kgosi Omphitlhetse Manyeneng.
Villagers are hoping to see faster action on the re-demarcated zone, once the area has been cleared of FMD.