Photo: EFF / Twitter
Photo: EFF / Twitter
Love him or hate him, the guy is absolutely box office when it comes to petty squabbles: Julius Malema has, somewhat begrudgingly, shared his two cents on the ‘red list issue’ that is currently driving a wedge between SA and the UK.
Why is South Africa on the UK’s red list?
Britain’s restrictive COVID-19 travel rules remain in place for visitors from South Africa, and our nation remains on their red list. People arriving from any country in this group must pay tens of thousands of rand to stay in a ‘quarantine hotel’ upon arrival, before they can officially enter the UK freely. The system, however, is pathetically flawed.
Case numbers in Mzansi are low, vaccination rates are rising, and what is more, we are both fighting against the same dominant variant (Delta). However, the people who brought us ‘Brexit’ and ‘freezing cold summers’ are having another shocker here, after revealing that most of their fears came from the Beta strain ‘spreading across the nation’.
As any epidemiologist worth their salt will tell you, the Beta variant is no longer a threat in SA. In fact, Delta is so dominant, the original mutation found on our shores barely exists here anymore. Nonetheless, Julius Malema doesn’t really care about any of that – he’s got a few historical issues on his mind instead.
Julius Malema calls for retaliation
The EFF leader has suggested that the ANC government should create its own red list, by flagging countries with a history of colonialism. This would then allow South Africa to put the UK in its own exclusionary category, as a tit-for-tat response to the travel restrictions in place.
It’s petty, it’s cheeky… and you know what? It’s a good bit of shithousery, too:
“I don’t have anything to do with the UK. We don’t want to be the subjects of our colonial masters. Why should any of us try to go to the UK, and why doesn’t the ANC government put the UK on a red list themselves? They have been red from colonial times. Put them on a red list, ask them for the same visas, because we are EQUALS.”
Julius Malema
[WATCH NOW ????]: CIC @Julius_S_Malema reacting to the news that the UK has put South Africa on a red list. #VoteEFF pic.twitter.com/zycfw6qKlE
— Economic Freedom Fighters (@EFFSouthAfrica) September 27, 2021
