Holidaymakers who were looking forward to spending some time in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape have cut short their trip to rush back home. This follows the announcement made by Britain and several other countries to ban South African flights after the announcement of the Omicron COVID-19 variant that has been found in the country.
Anxious-looking travellers are standing in queues at the Dawid Stuurman International airport in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape, desperate to squeeze onto the last flights to countries that had just shut their doors to South Africa.
A tourist from the UK, Jacky Cumming, was looking forward to a holiday in South Africa, but now has to find her way home.
“My return flight was a KLM flight. UK citizens cannot transit through Schiphol Airport anymore, so I cannot get back without booking a new flight. And I will have to go to a hotel quarantine in the UK, which is gonna cost R50 000. So I don’t know what we are gonna do, I don’t know.”
Travellers avoid being stranded as South Africa experiences a spike in COVID-19 cases:
Mapisa-Nqakula slams travel ban on SA
National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has described the travel ban on South Africa and other Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries as annoying and irritating.
She says this is despite the fact that South African scientists were the ones to detect the new Omicron variant.
Mapisa-Nqakula was addressing the 7th BRICS Parliamentary Forum at the 143rd Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly (IPU) at Madrid in Spain on Saturday. She is leading the South African delegation at the IPU.
Mapisa-Nqakula says the ban will have an impact on SADC, which is the strongest and most influential region on the continent.
“What that basically means is that in the near future and other meetings which we may hold, of course, it means the African continent will be weakened because the SADC region will not be participating of course except for the virtual platform. I just thought I should say this because it is actually irritating. It is annoying because we are the ones who have come out and said there is this (Omicron variant) and now we find ourselves in a situation of isolation,” says Mapisa-Nqakula.
