Solidarity asks WHO to intervene in SA’s race plan with vaccines

26 January 2021

Solidarity today addressed a letter to the World Health Organisation (WHO) informing this body that the South African government’s vaccine plan is based on race. Solidarity also asked the WHO to intervene in this matter and to stop such discrimination.

According to Solidarity, a pandemic in which human lives are at stake, is not the time to play the race card and to discriminate against anyone. However, the state is exploiting the crisis. Solidarity also contends that the government is race-obsessed and does not consider all people in South Africa to be equally important.

“The President’s announcement that BEE would be used to roll-out the vaccine can in no way be justified,” Dr Dirk Hermann, Solidarity Chief Executive said. “People’s lives depend on this, but as far as the government is concerned, it is more important to promote its ideology of race rather than to save lives. The president apparently also discarded his view to put a stop to opportunism at the time of the pandemic and to serve the self-interest of the ANC government.

Solidarity also requested the WHO to intervene and to draw the South African government’s attention to its short-sightedness and its serving of own interests. All lives matter, and the lives of every person, regardless of race or gender, must be considered as equally important. Racism and racially driven ideologies should have no place in the fight against the pandemic,” Hermann concluded.

Read the letter here.

Issued by Anton van der Bijl, Head: Legal Matters, Solidarity, 26 January 2021