Alarm as SA stays on UK tourism red list

• Decision comes despite intense lobbying • Quarantine rules cost travellers a fortune

The government and the tourism sector have reacted with dismay after the UK decided to maintain tough restrictions on travel between the two countries, despite easing them on others such as Kenya and Pakistan, warning the spat could cause long-term damage to both countries.

SA’s tourism sector, which before the outbreak of Covid-19 was a rare outperformer in an economy that failed to grow, has been devastated by lockdowns and travel bans. Being on the UK red list means a British traveller to SA would on their return need to spend 10 days in a quarantine hotel at a cost of about £2,000 (R40,000), making visiting SA too expensive for most Britons.

The SA government, which has drawn criticism for being largely passive and silent on the bans that have led to the tourism industry losing close to 500,000 jobs, said it would intensify efforts to get SA off the list.

“There is no reasonable basis for keeping SA on the red list and I am very disappointed,” international relations & cooperation minister Naledi Pandor said on Sunday, citing SA’s declining infection rate and a vaccination programme that is gathering pace.

She said “thousands” of families and business people in SA and the UK were “shocked” at the continued exclusion. The government will “intensify efforts to have SA removed from the list and is optimistic that the government of the UK will finally realise that their decision is not harming just the tourism industry but other” businesses from both countries .

The UK is traditionally among the most important tourism markets for SA, with 430,000 people having visited in 2019, the year before the pandemic brought the industry to a standstill. Britain started restricting travel from SA late in 2020 after local scientists discovered the Beta variant, which was then referred to internationally as the “SA variant”. This was not helped by a study indicating that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is widely used in the UK, might not be effective against the Beta variant. The industry has pointed

out that Beta has long been surpassed by Delta, which also accounts for most cases in the UK. India, where Delta was discovered and where it drove a devastating wave of infections, has been off the red list since early August.

The UK’s decision, which was communicated late on Friday, came despite weeks of intense lobbying by the industry. Some of the world’s bestknown companies that have a presence in SA last week signed a Business Leadership SA letter calling on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to intervene.

Signatories included the local divisions of Citigroup, BMW and JPMorgan Chase, and they noted the restrictions threaten the UK’s competitive advantage in Africa.

Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO of the Tourism Business Council of SA, called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to intervene.

“We need all hands on deck. We need political and diplomatic intervention at the highest level

and urgently to prevent further potential job losses. For us, we will continue to lobby until SA is removed from the Covid19 red list,” Tshivhengwa said.

UK transport secretary Grant Shapps announced on Friday that Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan, Turkey and Bangladesh would be removed from the red list.

David Frost, CEO of the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association, said the UK’s decision to keep SA on the list was “offensive not only to the tourism sector, but to all South Africans”.