British newspapers The Guardian and The Sunday Telegraph are reporting that South Africa is imminently to be removed from the UK’s ‘red list’ and that fully vaccinated travellers from South Africa will be permitted to enter, presumably subject to the normal visa rules.
The red list obliges UK citizens to take up 10 days of hotel quarantine when returning from a red-list country, like South Africa, and limits the possibility of travel from South Africa to the UK to British residents and essential travellers only. These travellers too have to enter 10 days of hotel quarantine on arrival, at an average cost of R46 000. These restrictions have been applied, regardless of the fact that they are also required to show negative PCR tests.
Some sources say the removal from the list could happen during the coming week, October 4-10, and others say “later in October”.
The Guardian says the list of 54 countries currently red-listed will be slashed to nine, but doesn’t state which nine will remain on the list. It does venture to say that Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and South Africa will be removed.
But the fate of other Southern African countries on the red list is still unknown. Many of them are significantly dependent on foreign tourism, with the UK market extremely important to their tourism economies. Southern African red-listers, as well as SA, are currently, Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Other African countries on the UK red list are: Burundi, Cape Verde, DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda.
