Diplomats were among the first people known to be infected with the Omicron variant in Botswana last month. Yet, ironically, the travel bans following SA’s announcement that it had sequenced the new strain of the virus unleashed a diplomatic storm.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has been particularly vocal about the bans, as SA needs tourism from abroad during the festive season to help rescue its lockdown-damaged economy.
"They are practising a new form of travel apartheid," Ramaphosa told leaders and experts at the Dakar International Forum on Peace & Security in Senegal on Monday to applause, referring to the countries that had implemented travel bans.
The bans appear to run counter to pronouncements at the October G20 summit, where countries agreed to take collective action against Covid.
"This is hypocrisy of the worst sort, and they must stop it," Ramaphosa said.
He contrasted the "patronising" behaviour of Western leaders — who call him only to say "We banned travel, goodbye, see you next time" — to the way the presidents of Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ghana welcomed him during his week-long tour of West Africa, which ended on Tuesday.
There were some diplomatic wins from the trip. Nigerian foreign minister Geoffrey Onyeama, for example, said Ramaphosa’s visit to his country has "brought the two sides closer again".
This was after President Muhammadu Buhari expressed solidarity with SA despite apprehension in the local media and among some government officials over the possibility of the South Africans bringing the Omicron variant with them.
At least two members of Ramaphosa’s forward security detail tested positive and were evacuated on a special flight after complaining about quarantine conditions in Abuja.
Days after Ramaphosa’s visit, Nigeria followed SA onto the UK’s travel red list. This came after almost two dozen Nigerian travellers into that country tested positive for Omicron. It is second only to SA in infections — and by a large number — but the UK expressed concern about evidence of community spread in both countries.
Ghana, too, showed solidarity. President Nana Akufo-Addo even cracked a grim joke about how US philanthropist Melinda Gates had warned that "the streets of our continent were going to be littered by the bodies of Africans [who died of Covid]", but that the US itself has been facing a Covid crisis. "The way that God works," he chuckled.
The Southern African Development Community (Sadc), through its chair, Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera, said in a statement that it stands with the countries in the region affected by the travel ban. These are Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, SA and Zimbabwe.
"It is now known that the new variant was already present in various Western countries before its discovery by SA," Chakwera said.
In Sadc, Angola and Mauritius have closed their borders to travellers from SA; Egypt and Rwanda have done the same.
Ramaphosa has called this "unfortunate", but rather than condemning these countries, he’s hinted that the matter will be dealt with behind closed doors.
Internationally, both the World Health Organisation and the UN have called for countries to keep their borders open. It’s reminiscent of the call issued in relation to China when Covid cases were first identified there two years ago. China has ironically now closed its own borders to external travellers as part of its "zero tolerance" approach to fighting the pandemic.
President Xi Jinping himself hasn’t left the country since 2019.
Though China supports Ramaphosa’s view on the Omicron travel bans, it’s largely a symbolic show of solidarity, not because China is willing to open its own borders soon.
A highly placed SA government official tells the FM that the reaction of developing countries to the discovery of the Omicron variant provides the continent with a chance to discuss the security concerns these same countries have about borders and migration from Africa in a more "introspective" manner.
At the same time, international relations minister Naledi Pandor believes the pandemic has provided Africa with an opportunity to become more self-reliant. "I think we should build on that pan-African unity, and we should put it to good effect on other initiatives that could lead to development," she told the Dakar forum on Monday.
Meanwhile, Ramaphosa, who is the AU’s champion on Covid, has used opposition to the travel bans as an opportunity to rally African countries behind the call for the World Trade Organisation to waive intellectual property rights to allow for vaccine manufacture on the continent.
In Dakar, he slammed Western countries that have hoarded vaccines and given Africa "the crumbs from their table". He added: "It is disappointing particularly because they’re saying they are our partners."
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