In December I travelled to the UK, around about the time that reports had started to emerge about more infectious variants of Covid-19 driving a surge in infections there.
There was already much social media chatter in SA about this new “UK variant” and questions were being raised about why SA wasn’t banning British travellers. That sounded ludicrous even to a layperson such as myself — surely viruses and their variants do not respect borders. It seemed rather pointless to just pick on one country as, even if indeed that variant had originated in the UK, it had most likely spread elsewhere before it was detected.
How quickly the tables turned. Within a couple of days, SA was the new pariah, and UK politicians and headline writers were blamed for pushing a misleading narrative about the country. While doing much damage to SA, it had the effect of helping deflect from the UK’s own disastrous handling of the outbreak.
What was always striking about the UK was its leaders’ reluctance to confront the problem head-on, leading to mixed messages and confused policy throughout. Back in March, before he ended up in hospital himself, Prime Minister Boris Johnson boasted about shaking people’s hands. When infections eased in the northern summer, he and his chancellor of the exchequer encouraged people to congregate in crowded restaurants by subsidising their meals. As a new surge was devastating the country in December, he announced a new lockdown but left room for much confusion with a plan to ease restrictions to allow families to meet over Christmas.
That was despite advice from his own experts that such gatherings were likely to turn into super-spreader events. And when he did relent, the message was as clear as mud. In the week before Christmas, Johnson told people the final decision was theirs, while also urging them to keep reunions small and short. Within a few days he changed his mind and closed down large parts of the country, sparking fury for “cancelling Christmas”. This, of course, would have created its own super-spreader events, as shown by newspaper front pages dominated by pictures of people crowding at major train stations as they scrambled to leave London before the new restrictions kicked in.
While all of this was happening I was in my mandatory period of self-isolation, and it was rather odd to see SA featuring so prominently. It seemed clear to me that the crisis was home-made. While health secretary Matt Hancock was announcing a ban on SA-UK flights, this South African was quietly terrified of coming into contact with British people.
The message about wearing masks was also one that was always clouded in confusion in the UK. The official advice is to wear them at shops and when taking public transport. People seemed to interpret that as saying they should only wear them at such settings. So if, for example, you take children to the park, you are unlikely to see anyone wearing masks.
While the risk of infections is greatly reduced outdoors, it was clear from observing people meeting maskless outdoors that some believed being outdoors eliminated the risk completely, so they were not strict about adhering to social distancing. Around about this time the Guardian newspaper’s Covid-19 dashboard was showing something like 60,000 new infections a day. At that time SA was approaching its peak at about a third of that.
It seemed extremely unfair that SA was dominating the headlines in the UK considering that only two cases of the variant had been identified and linked to recent travel to SA. Late in January, I attended a virtual session of the World Economic Forum in which John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, stressed that there is no evidence the so-called SA variant originated in this country.
Unfortunately, this is not a message that is reaching the UK press, including the liberal newspapers that berated former US president Donald Trump when he spoke about “the China virus”. At the time, the World Health Organization rightly advised against using language that linked the virus to China or Wuhan, where it was first identified, saying that would lead to discrimination or stigmatisation.
The Chinese government was aggressive in countering that narrative. And when one reads about China and the virus now, the focus is on its impressive efforts to curb its spread rather than it being the site of its origin. SA’s government has come in for some criticism for not doing the same.
While a week of headlines in the UK dominated by a link between Africa and disease might stir up emotions about old racist tropes about Africans and the spread of disease, this is likely due to laziness and a particular challenge posed by the English language. News organisations were also writing about a “Kent” variant, and it would be hard to make a plausible argument that the London press was racist towards its neighbours down the road.
The recent study casting doubt over the efficacy of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines against the 501Y.V2 variant (no wonder headline writers take the SA shortcut) means there’s probably going to be more panic. As for SA doing something about challenging the narrative, it’s doubtful it has many options. In a democracy like the UK, the prime minister isn’t in a position to tell newspaper editors what should be in their headlines. And he has no incentive to if the focus on SA means less scrutiny of his own performance.
With new variants and the danger they pose — even to those countries that have made impressive strides with vaccinations — SA can keep making the case that no-one will be safe from Covid until everyone is. Closing borders and stigmatising others can only go so far.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.