Foreigners hail SA govt on inclusive COVID-19 vaccination
ZIMBABWEAN immigrants in South Africa have hailed the government in the neighbouring country for disclosing that its COVID-19 vaccination policy will not discriminate against foreigners.
This was said by the Zimbabwean Immigrants Association in South Africa after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last week announced that foreigners, who wanted to benefit from the voluntary inoculation against the coronavirus, would benefit from the vaccination programme.
South Africa National Treasury director Dondo Mogajane also said even illegal immigrants would benefit from the programme during a virtual meeting with the South Africa National Editors Forum.
MWA-SA chairperson Butholezwe Nyathi, a Zimbabwean nurse based in that country, said: “The migrant community is encouraged to remain calm and closely follow the roll-out plan by the government that is using the phased approach starting with high priority groups. The MWA-SA nurse’s wing has managed to attend the recent training by the National Department of Health on the vaccination programme and will be able to assist to tackle some of the issues regarding the process.”
Vusumuzi Sibanda, a Zimbabwean doctor based in South Africa, said they were happy that the government included foreign citizens in the vaccine programme.
He, however, said that many Zimbabweans in the diaspora were facing survival challenges due to lockdowns.
“What we are doing for the Zimbabweans is that people register for interventions such as food parcels. There is need to ensure that Zimbabweans in South Africa do not starve,” Sibanda said.
He said some Zimbabweans were struggling to pay school fees for their children after they were laid off.
South Africa received one million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from India, and is rolling out a vaccination programme starting with the frontline workers.
According to the South African government website, it will begin by vaccinating the country’s estimated 1,25 million healthcare workers.
The first batch of AstraZeneca doses arrived at Oliver R Tambo international Airport from India on Monday last week.
EAST Africa’s rapidly expanding airline, RwandAir yesterday suspended flights to four southern African cities, including Harare, citing a deteriorating health crisis in a region where a dangerous variant of COVID-19 has been discovered.
The suspensions will hurt southern African economies following an exodus of key international carriers since the pandemic broke out in China at the end of 2019.
“In view of the global concerns on COVID-19 variants prevalent throughout southern Africa, RwandAir announces the suspension of its flights to Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lusaka and Harare, effective February 8, 2021,” the airline said.
“Scheduled flights will resume as soon as there is more clarity on the situation. Affected customers can rebook and fly at a later date at no additional cost — or request a refund.”
Johannesburg and Cape Town are South African destinations, while Lusaka is the Zambian capital.
The two countries are some of the region’s most affected destinations by COVID-19.
The World Health Organisation at the weekend said total South African
and Zambian COVID-19 cases stood at 1 473 700 and 61 427, respectively.
On Sunday, Zimbabwe’s Health and Child Care ministry said total COVID-19 cases had reached 34 552, with 28 551 recoveries.
So far, 1 326 people have been killed by the scourge.
But there have been fears that the country could be hit by a third wave of the pandemic, unless government soon moves to vaccinate at least 80% of the population.
RwandAir’s move will be a huge drawback to its Zimbabwe strategy, where it has been looking at how to increase tourist traffic from its east African hub in Kigali following a tremendous rise in load factors since
introducing connections in April 2016.
Twinned with this ambition, said RwandAir country manager for Zimbabwe, Ada Magezi in 2019, was a plan to expand the airline’s network into the resort town of Victoria Falls.
Zimbabwe’s premier resort has been a magnet for major African airlines since government completed the US$150 million expansion of the Victoria Falls International Airport in 2016, reconfiguring it to handle intercontinental jetliners.
While this plan may have been affected by the COVID-19 crisis, RwandAir has been one of the continent’s major airlines still offering services into Harare.
“We have been pleased with the
levels of business on RwandAir services to Zimbabwe to date and we are hopeful of sustained business and increased levels of support in the coming months and years,” Magezi said then.
“We are very much part of the effort to increase the levels of business and leisure tourism into Zimbabwe, and it is our hope that the growth in interest in this destination will maintain its upward momentum during 2019 and beyond. We are hoping to expand in Zimbabwe. We are hoping to expand into Victoria Falls as well, although we are still a new airline in Zimbabwe,” he added.
With only two months into 2021, Zimbabwe’s fortunes have been missed on the aviation front.
Regional airline, Airlink said two weeks ago it would be launching Harare-Cape Town flights to March following new changes to Johannesburg’s lockdown regulations, and as a fresh wave of infections shook Zimbabwe.
“We will launch with three return flights a week, increasing to daily flights from April 1, 2021 to provide customers with more choices and greater convenience,” said chief executive officer Rodger Foster.
“Airlink had intended to commence the service in mid-January, but changes to South Africa’s curfew obliged us to revise its schedule, which unfortunately also pushed back the launch of the new service to March 3. We apologise to ticketholders for the postponement and any inconvenience or disruption to their business and travel plans.
“We have been looking forward to launching this important new route, which will provide convenience to business and leisure travellers, saving them precious hours transferring via Johannesburg and also limiting their exposure to potential touch-points, which is a key consideration as we adjust our travelling habits during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
WHERE persuasion does not work, the big powers continue turning to sanctions. The imposition of sanctions against perceived powerful individuals in “undemocratic regimes” like Zimbabwe has been overplayed as much as it is misapplied. Recently, Britain sanctioned four members of Zimbabwe’s security establishment over human rights abuses. The August 2018 post-election violence and the January 2019 protests claimed 23 lives at the hands of the security forces and no one was held accountable.
The issue of sanctions should be assessed based on rationale rather than emotions. The members of Zimbabwe’s “new dispensation”, who have been sanctioned have had access to perks and luxuries from the previous to current administrations because of their loyalty. Their economic status and wealth has increased because of the extractive institutions they benefit from by predatory and parasitic means. A cross-section of Zimbabweans welcomed the British sanctions on the quartet. However, history has shown that these sanctions do not always achieve set goals but are likely fuel a humanitarian crisis and impede democratisation.
The regime of the Castro brothers in Cuba has survived not only sanctions, but an economic embargo imposed by the US in February 1962, three years after it came to power.
In a little over six decades in Cuba, power has been transferred from Fidel Castro, his brother Raul and current president Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The goal of sanctions against Cuba and its top officials has been to cripple the island’s communist regime after it nationalised American businesses and for alleged human rights abuses.
Since then, the Castro regime survived sabotage, insurrection and the assassination attempts of top government officials. Under the embargo, the country does not receive even an “aspirin” from the US, but its leadership accesses good healthcare services.
During the Donald Trump presidency, events in Venezuela necessitated then national security adviser to the administration, John Bolton, to conclude that “sanctions in Venezuela will help us, regime change in that country is a low hanging fruit.” Propping opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate ruler, the military establishment came to the incumbent’s defence. Last June, the Council of the European Union imposed sanctions on eleven Venezuelan officials. In response, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro expelled the EU envoy, Isabel Brilhante Pedrosa, ordering her to leave the country in 72 hours.
In recent years, academics have concluded that economic pressure by sanctioning individuals or pariah regimes tends to be counterproductive when it comes to achieving political goals such as democratisation and stronger compliance with human rights norms. The case of the Islamic Republic of Iran is key to understanding these developments.
The 2015 nuclear deal was an opportunity for Western powers to deal with the Persian country amicably on its “pursuit of a nuclear bomb” as noted by the West. The decision by the Trump administration to pull out of the deal and impose sanctions on Iran’s top officials further deteriorated the situation at home and abroad.
Should ED change tact?
The solidarity the Emmerson Mnangagwa-led administration has received from Sadc countries gives it the urge to dig in. Mnangagwa and his counterparts set aside October 25 as an anti-sanctions day. Now in its second year running, the platform has provided political expediency to a leadership in a distressed nation.
The January 6 events in the US when protestors stormed Capitol Hill have been used as an excuse by enablers of the Mnangagwa regime to highlight the deficiencies of American democracy. The events have become an excuse to making things right because “the beacon of democracy” has stumbled.
Political analyst and media scholar Trust Matsilele said sanctions against the security sector officials did not come as a surprise, but an opportunity for the Harare administration to honestly engage with the “return agenda and not empty rhetoric” that was paraded during the November 2017 coup period.
“This should serve as a sign to all autocrats that at some point, self-respecting nations will demand results and not cheap rhetoric. Zimbabwe has never made any attempt to break from its undemocratic culture and violent behaviour which has been the main feature,” Matsilele noted.
The country’s next top diplomat after Sibusiso Moyo will have a difficult task. It will be difficult to balance national interests, the image of the country abroad and pleasing the agenda of hardliners in the ruling Zanu PF party. Despite enjoying solidarity among regional peers, their rhetoric has not changed the fortunes of the country. The Mnangagwa administration knows it has not done enough institutional reforms to warrant the democratisation and transformation of the country. Corruption and impunity need to be addressed.
Are ordinary citizens biggest winners?
In its pronouncement, the UK said it was standing up for human rights and the Zimbabwean people. This has been the norm since the 2002 EU sanctions.
Those who have committed egregious violations have been rewarded while the victims have not been compensated. Sanctions can backfire, making repression more likely and diminishing the probability of reforms, accountability and democratisation in Zimbabwe.
At the same time, the UK is showing how two-faced it can be when dealing with Zimbabwe.
As warnings of a “moral catastrophe” over the availability of coronavirus vaccines in poorer countries grow, Zimbabwean psychiatrist Dixon Chibanda describes how it would help him and the special team of grandmothers he works with.
It has been five weeks since I contracted COVID-19, even though I was doing everything not to get it: masking, sanitising and distancing.
The sense of helplessness associated with not being able to breathe as I watched my oxygen saturation fluctuating was profound, even for a medical doctor like myself.
I also had the added knowledge that the likelihood of getting oxygen if or when I needed it was next to zero in our resource-strapped country.
Struggling with extreme fatigue and intermittent shortness of breath, I realised on day three that I could die.
While anybody can die from COVID-19, the risk is higher in a place like Zimbabwe, where the health system is extremely compromised.
Indeed, during the same period that I was sick, five doctors I have worked closely with over the years died from it. They had access to medical care and they still died.
These individual deaths are devastating. But also, the impact of losing five experienced doctors within four weeks for a country like Zimbabwe represents a significant communal loss.
Fortunately for me, on day five of my illness, my oxygen saturation started to pick up.
It is not clear why I recovered while some colleagues with similar backgrounds to mine died.
There is much to learn about this virus.
As I gradually began to improve, my concern shifted to the organisation I have been running for over 10 years, the Friendship Bench.
This is a community-based psychological treatment programme delivered by over 700 trained community grandmothers in over 100 communities in Zimbabwe.
In a country with just 13 psychiatrists for a population of 16 million, this model has helped expand mental health outreach.
It has taken years to build the Friendship Bench model and show that through talk therapy, trained grandmothers can treat depression, anxiety and alleviate suicidal thoughts across communities in Zimbabwe and beyond. ‘Grandmothers are vulnerable’
This past year, these grandmothers have become key frontline workers addressing the high rates of mental illness linked to the COVID-19 crisis.
But as the virus spreads faster and as the number of deaths exponentially rise in Zimbabwe, these grandmothers, just like the frontline medical doctors, have become vulnerable.
One day I called grandmother Kusi Kwenyu, who has been with Friendship Bench for over 10 years, to find out how the grandmothers are doing in Mbare, the place where Friendship Bench first started.
I had not been in touch with any of the grandmothers since I fell ill.
As the phone rang, I found myself anxious with a negative premonition. Finally, she picked up the phone.
“I’m so happy to hear your voice,” I remarked with relief.
“I’m happy to know you are recovering. We have been praying for you,” grandmother Kusi replied, sounding equally relieved.
“How are you and all the other grandmothers, is everyone OK? Are you all at home, selfisolating?”
There was a long pause before she responded.
“We have lost one grandmother.”
‘We can’t self-isolate’
Another pause followed, and she cleared her throat before responding to my second question about precautions she was taking.
“Self-isolate in Mbare? That is not possible. Besides, the community now needs us more than ever.”
“But you could provide services through your mobile phone from home as was previously recommended,” I said.
She interjected before I could carry on.
“The other day, a young man whose father died from COVID-19 got in touch to talk. He was extremely distraught and needed to see me in person.
“I couldn’t tell him to go home and talk to me over the phone — he has no phone. I talked
to him because he is a high-risk client. I tried as best I could to distance while we spoke.”
She added: “We have a crisis.”
She was right — more people than ever needed the services of the Friendship
Bench, and those services could best reach people through in-person conversations.
“Is there anything you think can be done to protect you and the 700 grandmothers doing the Friendship Bench?” I asked glumly.
In her usual thoughtful pause, she cleared her throat and said: “We need a vaccine. A vaccine for every grandmother.”
Later that day, I read in the news that close to 40 million doses of vaccines have been distributed globally, but very few have been distributed to Africa.
And over 7,25 billion doses of vaccines have been pre-purchased by Western countries.
The next day, I was following a virtual memorial via Zoom for a medical colleague who succumbed to COVID-19.
As the service ended, I wondered how many health professionals and grandmothers will have to die before a vaccine is available here.
How many frontline workers like them will suffer as they try to ease the suffering of others?
Later, I received a WhatsApp message from a colleague: Another doctor had died from COVID-19.
We need the vaccine to come to Africa.