BEFORE THE CHEMICALS, WE HAD THOUSANDS. “The people who designed these programmes knew exactly what they were doing.” Before colonisation, our people had thousands and thousands of cattle. Cattle were our bank, our social foundation. And we took care of them using only herbs, trees, bark, smoke, ash, and the knowledge passed down from our ancestors. No chemicals. No dip. And our herds were thriving. The reason our cattle survived and multiplied is because of the breed. Nguni cattle developed over thousands of years on African soil. They built a natural resistance to ticks and immunity to tick-borne diseases. The cattle and the ticks existed in balance. Our ancestors understood this, and they managed everything through indigenous knowledge, strategic movement of herds, and plant-based treatments that worked in harmony with nature. Now here is what they never taught us in school. The most devastating tick-borne disease in Southern Africa, East Coast Fever, was not here before colonisation. It was brought to Southern Africa with cattle imported from Tanzania in 1901. Within three years it devastated our herds. Before that, another disease called lungsickness was brought through the harbour in Mossel Bay in 1853 by a Dutch ship carrying Friesland bulls. These diseases did not come from our land. They came with the colonisers and their cattle. Our animals had no immunity to foreign diseases they had never encountered before. Then after introducing these diseases, the colonial government forced a compulsory cattle dipping programme on our communities starting in 1911. It was not offered as help. It was forced. Our people resisted it. The Bambatha Rebellion gained momentum partly because of protests against this forced dipping. Our ancestors were taking to the hills with weapons to fight it. People destroyed dipping tanks during rural protests in the 1950s and 1960s. Our people were not ignorant. They were watching their animals get sick and they knew something was wrong. The first chemical used in the dip was arsenic. Pure arsenic. And research has confirmed that high levels of arsenic contamination are still found deep in the soil around old dip tanks in places like Limpopo today. Arsenic is a cumulative poison. Every time your cattle were dipped, that chemical absorbed through their skin and built up in their bodies over time. Chronic arsenic poisoning causes weight loss, liver damage, weakened immunity, and an animal that cannot gain condition no matter how much grass it eats. This is why our cattle looked thin and weak even on good pasture. The problem was not the grass. The problem was what was inside their bodies. Then they moved to organophosphate chemicals, and research has confirmed that regular exposure to these compounds affects fertility in cattle, particularly in female animals. These chemicals are endocrine disruptors, meaning they interfere with hormones. They cause irregular reproductive cycles, reduced conception rates, failed pregnancies, and compromised calf development. So your cow is eating, she looks alive, but she is not falling pregnant the way she should, or she loses calves. Your herd cannot grow. You stay at fifteen cows for twenty years. This is not bad luck. This has a chemical explanation. And the people who designed these programmes knew exactly what they were doing. Veterinary policies during the colonial period were mainly aimed at protecting settler livestock interests, not ours. By weakening our herds through introduced diseases, toxic chemicals, forced crossbreeding with inferior European cattle that could not survive our conditions, and by confining us to small reserves through laws like the Natives Land Act of 1913, they systematically dismantled our livestock economy. A man with three thousand cattle is an independent and powerful man. A man with fifteen sick cows is dependent, controllable, and poor. They also pushed crossbreeding, telling us our indigenous cattle were inferior…