JOHANNESBURG – Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera yesterday accused Western countries of “Afrophobia” for shutting their borders to his and other neighbouring nations after South Africa flagged a new coronavirus variant last week.
Dozens of countries have barred flights from southern African nations in a bid to keep the variant, named Omicron, off their shores.
Chakwera is currently chairing the 16-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), which has seen most of its members blacklisted, sparking outrage.
“We are all concerned about the new Covid-19 variant and owe South Africa’s scientists our thanks for identifying it before anyone else did,” Chakwera posted on his Facebook page.
“But the unilateral travel bans now imposed on SADC countries by the UK, EU, US, Australia, and others are uncalled for. Covid-19 measures must be based on science, not Afrophobia,” he said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has designated Omicron a variant of concern and is assessing its impact.
Omicron is thought to be behind rising infections in South Africa, the continent’s worst-hit country.
Several governments deem the travel bans rushed and unjust, and South Africa said it felt “punished” for sounding the alarm.
The WHO has called for borders to remain open.
“We must work in solidarity,” Botswanan International Affairs Minister Lemogang Kwape said at press briefing yesterday in the capital Gaborone.
“We are not going to be geo-politicising this virus,” he added, when asked to disclose the provenance of Botswana’s first detected Omicron cases, dating to November 7.
Botswana has since picked up 19 cases of Omicron. – AFP, November 29, 2021
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