Journey bans expose continued enforcement of colonialism

On November 26th, last Friday, Canada suspended travel from South Africa and six of its neighboring countries. The suspensions sparked a heated debate, with South Africa feeling “punished” for identifying the Omicron variant. There is reason to feel punished. Travel restrictions are just the latest symptom of a colonial approach to COVID-19. The ban will devastate the region’s economy while passengers from the UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium and other countries where Omicron was discovered continue to fly.

Two days later, on Sunday, Omicron was discovered in Ontario. On Tuesday, however, Canada extended the ban and added three more African countries – Malawi, Nigeria and Egypt – to the red list. This is despite the fact that public health officials agreed that travel bans were ineffective in this case.

History has taught us that colonialism is about power and the marginalization of those who are considered “less than” and “different”. So far, all major policy responses – from travel bans to bans to vaccines – prioritize countries and citizens of the global north, while countries in the global south are systematically depriving access to the resources necessary for their own protection.

The region has sufficient intelligence and capacity to manufacture cans if licensing were allowed. South Africa alone has a robust research infrastructure. But giving resources and authority to southern Africa would undermine the power dynamic: it would destroy the illusion that public health expertise resides in the north and that vaccine equity is a matter of goodwill. It would diminish the sense of missionary benevolence gained by donating (often soon-to-expire) cans. And it would make it clear that these bans are not logical but psychological, as epidemiologist Farhad Razak said on CBC’s Metro Morning.

To decolonize COVID-19; Taking local solutions seriously to local manifestations of a global virus is not a matter of selflessness. It pays tribute to the historic extraction of the continent and takes seriously what the supply chain and climate change have undeniably made clear: the whole world is connected. A just, global solution is required to manage COVID-19.

Although we have long known that widespread vaccination could have prevented an omicron, countries of the global north are hoarding vaccines.

On January 31, the New York Times reported: “While more than 90 million people have been vaccinated worldwide, only 25 have received doses outside of drug studies in all of sub-Saharan Africa, a region of approximately one billion people. according to the World Health Organization.

Again not 25 million, 25 people. The entire South African region thus serves as a viable test site for the vaccine, from which the global citizen ultimately benefits. If testing is appropriate for the south, why not vaccine labs that enable a locally brewed but internationally distributed solution to the virus?

To balance the vaccine field and achieve fair distribution, the global COVAX initiative was launched in April 2020. Even today, nearly 80 percent of Canadians are fully vaccinated, and rates in Africa are still low. Only 24 percent of South Africans are fully vaccinated, while in Malawi, another country where the ban applies, only 3 percent received two doses.

This is an ethical failure. But it’s not surprising. According to the WHO’s Vaccine Equity Campaign, high-income countries must increase health spending by 0.8 percent in order to vaccinate 70 percent of their populations. For low-income countries, that would require a staggering 56.6 percent increase. South African governments simply don’t have the resources to compete for shots in a global market where, at the start of mass adoption, rich countries outbid each other and reportedly exceeded $ 50 for a full two-shot dose of Pfizer.

The debate today revolves around the travel ban, but let’s get that exposed now. If the spread of COVID via air travel were in any way the primary concern, the bans would extend to other countries where Omicron was first discovered. It would cover the United States, a country on the cusp of a staggering 800,000 COVID deaths, allowing people to fly unvaccinated and untested while the Delta variant rages. This is the colonial part: it’s about who tells whom not to travel. As it stands, Canada’s travel policy is arousing age-old and racist fears of Joseph Conrad’s dark continent.

Rather than focusing on the restriction on travel, which, if effective, should be applied consistently, the debate should highlight the effects of the colonial gaze. Resources should be made available to recognize and give credit to the southern African experts in identifying the variant. These resources can also be used to support the development of solutions to the virus expertise that could be spread globally between North and South. Just like all of these planes, solutions would move freely in either direction.

Rachel Silver is an Assistant Professor at York University. She is studying power relations in international development and has lived and worked in Malawi. S. Nombuso Dlamini is a native and a graduate of the South African region. Nombuso is an associate professor at York University. Her main areas of work are youth culture and post-colonial studies. Nathan is Englander Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. His latest book is “kaddish.com”.