Masisi faces stiff SADC tests
The emerging crisis in eSwatini is adding to SADC politics, defence and security chair, President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s headaches. Even as battles rage in Mozambique and eSwatini, Masisi has launched a new ‘war’ for the region, this time aimed at squeezing COVID-19 vaccines out of rich countries
The Islamist insurgency in Cabo Delgado dominated last week’s SADC heads of state summit in Maputo where leaders finally agreed to a ‘boots on the ground’ intervention. However, as Staff Writer, MBONGENI MGUNI notes, another ‘war’ was also declared, one President Mokgweetsi Masisi is championing
The murderous terror campaign by insurgents in northern Mozambique has killed an estimated 700,000 people and triggered numerous engagements by Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders aimed at supporting that government’s fight. Since the beginning of the year, President Mokgweetsi Masisi, as chair of SADC’s defence organ, has shuttled frequently between Gaborone, Maputo and other regional capitals engaging on the region’s response to an insurgency that threatens regional stability.
Last week at a summit in Maputo, SADC leaders paid tribute to Masisi calling his efforts “outstanding leadership” as he finally managed to secure regional consensus on interventions to assist Mozambique.
Regional states are currently assessing their resources, including budgets and military personnel, with a view to deploying a Standby Force “in support of Mozambique to combat terrorism and acts of violent extremism in Cabo Delgado”.
As high on the minds of SADC leaders as the Mozambique agenda was, another crisis also dominated discussions in Maputo, both on the official agenda and on the sideline discussions between senior officials, ministers and heads of state.
The matter’s importance can be realised in the fact that while the deployment of a Standby Force took up only one clause in the communique issued after the summit, this particular crisis took up six clauses and in some instances used blunt language uncharacteristic of SADC’s vanilla approach.
“Summit called for the end of vaccine nationalism and for equal access to vaccine by all countries,” reads the communique.
“Summit called upon countries that are limiting SADC residents to travel to their countries based on origin and type of vaccine they received, to reconsider their positions.”
The issue of vaccine nationalism and inequality was apparently high on the minds of SADC leaders, representing the other “war” the region is battling with, over and above the Mozambique conflict.
Thousands of SADC citizens have succumbed to the virus since its onset last year and behavioural change interventions are reaching the limits of their effectiveness. Other interventions such as closures of borders, lockdowns and curfews are increasingly ineffective and unpopular due to their adverse impact on economies and livelihoods.
The solution lies in quickly providing vaccines to the region’s citizens, which would reduce hospitalisations and deaths and allow the entire region to once again become competitive in a global economy where other rivals have already reopened and are thriving.
However, the global race for vaccines and pre-existing geopolitical power games have meant that just one percent of Africans have thus far been vaccinated, while other developed countries have secured enough doses to vaccinate their populations even three times over.
Frustration and outrage are growing in the region as expressed recently by President Masisi, who said the behaviour of powerful vaccine hoarders in the developed world was causing other countries to question long-standing principles of global relations.
“Not only am I concerned but deeply disturbed because this behaviour that must be condemned in the strongest of terms, causes us to reflect deeply and ask ourselves existential questions on the meaning of multilateralism, of the meaning of global commitment to peace and security, the meaning of humanity,” Masisi told Bloomberg after a state visit to Tanzania early last month.
“What do these concepts now mean in the face of COVID-19?
I have never seen a crisis that divides us so sharply and I am totally opposed to the conduct and behaviour of those countries that hoard COVID-19 vaccines.”
Masisi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and other regional leaders are leading a political push for the opening up of COVID-19 vaccine intellectual property rights that will enable countries in the region to produce their own vaccines.
Three of the six clauses on vaccine equity contained in the Maputo summit communique specifically speak to the property rights debate presently being fought for by countries with the least vaccinated populations.
Ramaphosa, in fact, has been charged by the region with fighting for the waiver of intellectual property rights that will enable more countries to produce COVID-19 vaccines. South Africa’s comparatively weightier geopolitical power and access to groupings such as the G7 make Ramaphosa the natural leader of the campaign.
“Summit urged SADC member states and the international community to support the proposal for a temporary waiver of certain provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to allow more countries to produce COVID-19 vaccine, for more efficient response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Summit called upon the World Trade Organisation to finalise negotiations on the waiver of certain provisions of the TRIPS and expedite its operationalisation,” reads the communique.
In this regard, Masisi, Ramaphosa and the region are up against powerful global forces. Billionaire Bill Gates, ironically a renowned philanthropist and financier of global health access, has come out against opening up the intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines. The billionaire’s Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the key funders of the World Health Organisation’s COVAX scheme under which about 180 countries, including Botswana, have grouped themselves to approach vaccine manufacturers as a bloc and share doses. While Gates has since reversed course on his stance, now agreeing to a “temporary waiver” of intellectual property rights, his influence and initial position appears to have fortified other countries presently at the front of the queue for vaccines, while also strengthening producers’ arguments.
Quite critically, World Bank president, David Malpass came out early last month saying the Bank does not support waiving intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines as this would “hamper innovation in the pharmaceuticals sector”. Masisi used an analogy to describe the situation.
“If you have a glass of water to survive, I expect that when you take your sip, you don’t keep that glass anticipating that you will need more water in a month’s time,” he told Bloomberg.
“You share with another human.
This issue could take the form of sharing property rights or actually sharing the vaccines.
It’s not an issue of trade or dealing with vehicles.
This is not a want, but an existential need of the human race.”
Masisi continued, adding another angle to his arguments: “Those who hoard still threaten themselves by not ensuring that the others who do not have are protected. It’s not a threat but it’s just the way the virus seems to operate.”
Masisi ally and Zimbabwean billionaire, Strive Masiyiwa, who is also the African Union’s special envoy on COVID-19, recently came out guns blazing against rich countries, vaccine hoarding and equity, also using an analogy to describe the situation.
“Imagine we live in a village, and there is a drought. There is not going to be enough bread, and the richest guys grab the baker and they take control of the production of bread and we all have to go to those guys and have to ask them for a loaf of bread,” he said in remarks that went viral on social media recently.
Masiyiwa, who met with vaccine producers last December on behalf of the AU pleading with them for doses, was even blunter than SADC leaders on the real reasons behind the vaccine supply crisis facing Africa.
“This was a deliberate global architecture of unfairness,” he said.
The people who bought the vaccines and the people who sold them the vaccines knew that there would be nothing for us.
We had money, we were willing to pay upfront, in cash, we weren’t asking for donations. And they said that all capacity for 2021 had been sold.”
The debate over waiving vaccine patents is ongoing at the World Trade Organisation and while Africa is receiving support from even within the developed world, sceptics are doubtful a positive resolution will be possible for the continent.
SADC, meanwhile, has resolved to enhance regional and national capacities in researching and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and other essential drugs and medicines in the meantime, a long term plan that, while noble, does not answer the urgent call for vaccines to be made available.
Masisi, Ramaphosa, Masiyiwa and others leading the “war” will be expected to use every opportunity to ramp up the demand for greater equity, an effort made even more urgent by the surge of cases in the third wave of the pandemic.