Virologists are calling it the most evolved COVID strain ever, and fear it could be worse that the Delta strain.

A COVID expert says what has been dubbed the Botswana strain may have emerged from an HIV/AIDS patient.

A relatively small number of cases of the strain called B.1.1.529 have been detected following genetic sequencing collaboration between the NICD and private laboratories. 

These cases have been in South Africa, Botswana and Hong Kong.

Scientists are warning it could be worse than nearly anything else about.

The 32 mutations suggest it is highly transmissible and possible vaccine-resistant.

It has more alterations to its spike protein than any other variant.

Geneticist Professor Francois Balloux of University College London is quote in the Daily Mail as saying it likely emerged as a lingering infection in an immunocompromised patient, possible someone with undiagnosed HIV/AIDS.

Dr Tom Peacock a virologist at Imperial College, has described the variant’s mutations as “horrific”.

It was Peacock who first picked up on the spread of the variant.

The World Health Organisation is meeting in emergency session Friday to investigate the 100 cases of B.1.1.529 in Southern Africa.

South Africa’s Health Minister Joe Phaahla calls the variant a major threat and says it is behind the “exponential” increase in cases across the country.

There has been a quadrupling of COVID cases in South Africa to 2 500 daily. No fewer than 2 000 of these are in the heartland province of Gauteng.

,Professor Tulio de Oliviera, directing COVID surveillance in KwaZulu/Natal province says the variant has been spotted in nearly every corner of South Africa.

While he still uncertain  about its impact, other scientists are saying the variant might be so evolved that it becomes unstable.

De Oliveira  says it might be better at infecting vaccinated people than the world dominant strain.

In Gauteng Professor Bruce Mellado says this is the first sign of a fourth wave of COVID in South Africa

There are calls from medical experts in South Africa and Europe for the reinstatement of the so-called red list which would entail reimposing travel restrictions.

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Social distancing was enforced as the envoys made short speeches expressing wishes of broadening and deepening bilateral relations with South Africa before presenting the president with the letters from their heads of state.

Some of the ambassadors managed to make powerful use of the two minutes allotted to them.

Sweden’s Håkan Joholt recalled how he’d become an anti-apartheid activist at age 25 before serving 23 years as a member of parliament.

“I have come here to build bridges and to forge people-to-people ties between Swedes and South Africans,” he said. “What we can do together is fight for democracy, human rights, peace and a sustainable environment,” he said.

Entering his second term as ambassador of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, Mohammed Beissat said Polisario and the ANC forged ties as liberation movements at the most difficult times for their countries.

He recalled how Oliver Tambo visited the Western Sahara and returned to South Africa with apartheid-built tanks captured by the Saharawi from the Moroccan.

“Now Mr President the Western Sahara faces fresh aggression from Morocco,” he said referring to the kingdom breaking the 30 year old truce signed under UN auspices that ended the war that followed Morocco’s 1975 invasion of the former Spanish colony.

“We are confident we can overcome yet another challenge from the illegal occupier, especially since we are assured of your support and the solidarity of your government and people,” said the ambassador.

Braving a heatwave that took the mercury into the thirties, the ambassadors were greeted by a guard-of-honour before entering the guest house to have their exchange with the President.

In addition to the Western Sahara and Sweden, Ramaphosa received credentials from the ambassadors of 

Vietnam, North Korea, Iran, Botswana, Cote’Ivoire, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Egypt, China, Sweden, Mauritius, Pakistan, Sudan and South Sudan, Slovenia, Finland.

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Many of them had small babies which were subjected to the cold night air.

ends intro

The returnees, mostly deported from Botswana, were accommodated at a college in Bulawayo for an obligatory 21 quarantine against COVID 19.

When they were declared coronavirus-free, public busses were hired to transport them home.

Deputy Public Services Minister Lovemore Matuke says some of the returnees refused to board the busses, so they were given bus fare.

The returnees say they were ordered immediately to vacate the dormitories and the blankets they’d been given were taken.

Their pleas to be allowed to remain overnight until their busses arrived today were ignored.

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He was speaking at a fund raising event for the trust he and Prince Seeisa set up 14 years after Harry spent a gap year in Lesotho.

Prince Harry was explaining why he and his wife Meghan had no option but to step back from front line Royal duties.

He says he’ll continue with a life of service and maintains utmost respect for his grandmother Queen Elizabeth whom he calls my commander in chief.

Harry says he’ll continue to live in Britain, the land that that he loves.

To the Sentebale beneficiaries in Lesotho, Botswana and Malawi he promises: I not going anywhere.

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The United States joined Zimbabwe, the world’s largest exporter of elephants,

in voting against the measure that will severely restrict trade in this endangered species.

Conservationists are disappointed that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, known as CITES, has left a loophole for the sale of baby elephants by Zimbabwe and Botswana to approved destinations but only with international approval.

Zimbabwe’s sold more than 100 elephant calves in the past seven years mostly to Chinese zoos.

In the fierce debate lasting several days, Zimbabwean delegates unsuccessfully argued that the healthy state of their elephant population made any restrictions on their selling the animals unnecessary.

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Sometimes, though the country’s animal wealth strikes with red-toothed and massive strength that can only serve to remind humans  of their vulnerability.

In the past week there have been at least two fatalities attributed to the Big Five – once the goal of big game hunters now reduced to the aspiration of game viewers.

And the King of Beasts has reminded South Africans why Lions dominate that quintet.

The incidents all centered on the Kruger National Park, a 19,485 square kilometer  game reserve the size of Israel stretching up South Africa’s north east along its borders with Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

It began with a 33-month-old toddler being mauled to death by a leopard at a workers compound in the south of the park.

Courtney Ntimane followed his father who went into his hut, leaving his son outside playing with his mother’s telephone.

The leopard climbed a tree and dropped into the compound where it grabbed Courtney and tried to jump back over the fence.

The horrified screams of the family caused it to drop the boy and flee.

Courtney’s father Isiah rushed him to hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Rangers tracked and shot two leopards near the camp. They were an adult female with an empty gut and sub-adult female that had recently eaten an impala.

This raises the likelihood that the opportunistic attacker is still at large.

Leopards are rarely known to  attack adult humans but they will take their chances with children.

Last weekend a pride of 14 lions escaped from Kruger and took up at the Foskor Mine in Phalaborwa which is halfway up  the reserve on his western border.

The South African Parks Board at first denied that the lions had come from Kruger.

However, environmental specialists said there was no doubt about the origin of the big cats.

Local residents were not comforted by assurances that they were in no danger if they stayed inside until the lions returned to their normal habitat.

Eric Kgatla, a 45-year-old nightwatchman at the  Foskor Mine, was not able to find security behind a bolted door.

With the lions on the premises, he and his colleagues redoubled their vigilance.

On high alert, they were patrolling the area in the dark when he stumbled across a bull elephant that had come through the fence from Kruger.

Kgatla was trampled to death by the pachyderm.

Elephants have  been in the news in South Africa’s north-western neighbour of  Botswana where President Mokgweetsi Masisi has reinstated the right to hunt tuskers.

This has  incensed Mokgweetsi Masisi’s conservationist predecessor Ian Khama who banned the hunting and culling of elephants five years ago.

He maintains trophy hunters stimulate the  market for ivory that drives crime syndicates to poach more than 30,000 elephants a year for their tusks

Mokgweetsi argues that the national herd has grown above 130 000, which is a third of the elephants left on the African continent.

He says elephants have done millions of euros of crop damage and more importantly have killed at least 50 Botswana these past years.

There is weekly social media footage of ill-tempered elephants damaging the vehicles of game viewers in several national parks that have come too close, particularly to young bulls or males in must.

The elephant ranks fifth on the list of deadly African creatures.

That  roll is easily dominated by the anopheles mosquito that carries  death by malaria  to more than  more than 400 000 Africans a year.

The puff adder is second, killing 32 000 humans.

The giant hippopotamus kills the third-highest  number of  people in Africa followed by the lion, crocodile and buffalo.

Leopards  barely make the top ten.

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In talks with King Mswati III they discussed ways of clearing up backlog in border boast between South Africa and kingdom it surrounds.

In the process of getting to know his regional counterparts better, President Cyril Ramaphosa has visited Angola, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique.

In eSwatini he discussed regional, continental and world affairs with King Mswati III.

South Africa and the Kingdom have a joint bilateral commission and the 21 agreements between the countries cover cross-border movement of goods, trade and industry, health, defense and policing.

South Africa is Swaziland largest trading partner. Two-day trade of 33-and-a-half billion rand is roughly evenly split.

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 Of course King Mohamed VI and his Moroccan officials will say that their record-breaking five-time losing quest to host the football World Cup has nothing to do with his father annexing the Western Sahara 42 years ago.

They would, wouldn’t they?

The late King Hassan refused to acknowledge that his illegal occupation of the former Spanish colony put Morocco beyond the pale of international respectability.

He jailed any of his subjects who dared even to suggest this.

Whatever he says about presiding over a more liberal system, his successor , known as M6, has enforced this official myopia with equal vigour and cruelty.

I recall attending an editorial conference of a so-called independent Moroccan newspaper.

“Could you possibly conceive of ever publishing the views of a respected academic arguing for granting the Saharawi people self-determination?” I asked.

The l meeting ended right there as the terrified editor and journalists left the room.

I am waiting to see how the Moroccan media explains the harsh reality that the country’s  defiance of international opinion caused no fewer than 11 African countries – nearly a fifth of the  continent – to vote against the kingdom’s bid when FIFA took the decision in Moscow yesterday about who should host the 2026 football World Cup. 

South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe were open about rejecting the last colonial vestige in Africa and their  support for the occupied Saharawi people.

Others said it was a straightforward business decision: the so-called united bid by the United States, Canada and Mexico guarantee a profit of $11 billion for FIFA. That is money that will trickle down to them.

Morocco indicated  it would make $5 billion, which is more than Brazil earned from its 2014 World Cup and certainly more than South Africa raked for World Cup 2010.

The point not being made by the sporting diplomats is that Morocco has shown time and again that it cannot be taken at its word.

It has lied internationally with promises like allowing the Saharawi people a referendum to determine their own future.

And it has lied to its own people about economic plans that have done nothing to reduce unemployment and spur economic growth.

Meanwhile it spends billions keeping 120 000 soldiers guarding the 2 700 km sand wall, or berm, between the occupied and liberated zones of Western Shara.

Morocco can barely maintain this.

It relies on financial support from France and the United State who hold their noses about Morocco’s lamentable human rights record because they see it as a bastion against militant Islam in North Africa.

Nevertheless Morocco has actually become one of the most dangerous breeding grounds for Islamist terrorists.

So how could the country that relies on aid, tourism – particularly European sex tourism, exploiting the dagga trade, growing oranges and raking in profits from stolen Saharawi phosphates possible afford to stage a World Cup?

The Rabat authorities managed to cobble together a pitch, but Morocco’s neighbours and fellow Africans clearly did not believe it.

If M6 and his men really plan to make yet another bid in 2030, they have their work cut out if  they plan to avoid another humiliation.

Ending their occupation of Western Sahara would be an excellent start.

But that is all it would be: a start.

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Ramaphosa’s the current chair of the regional Southern African Development Community.

Angola currently heads SADC’s Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation. So Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Joao Lourenco have a heavy schedule of regional priorities to cover  in Luanda tomorrow.

The South African President has first hand experience as regional mediator in Lesotho’s protracted political miasma.

Ramaphosa moves on to Windhoek for discussions with Namibian President Heine Giengob.

On Saturday, Ramaphosa will be in Gaborone, the site of the secretariat for the 15-nation grouping,  for talks with Botswana President Ian Khama.

He’ll be accompanied by his new Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Lindiwe

Sisulu and Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa Nqakula

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They are at the bottom of the list of 127 countries drawn up by the World Internal Security and Police Index.

The list is a collaboration between the Australian headquartered Institute for Economics and Peace and the International Police Science Association which is based in the United States.

Nigeria is bottom of their latest World Internal Security and Police Index.

That puts it just head of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Uganda.

They are judged to have least and worst used police resources, and the poorest public view of police.

Botswana is adjudged to have the best police force in Africa.

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