Waiting for the sms from the vaccine authority seems rather like standing in an orderly queue for a lifeboat on the Titanic. Admirable, but unwise.

Completing the process at the DisChem headquarters in Midrand took five hours.

Sure it was a Ben Hur, but without exception every Dischem employee I encountered – from the guard who showed us our place in the queue to director Stan Gates who walked into the “recovery room” to ask recipients how things were progressing  – was obviously bent on being helpful.

It was one of the seminal new South African experiences: along with the first democratic election in 1994 and hosting the Football Word Cup in 2010.

We were in this fight against COVID together, and determined to beat the lurgy.

On social media I learn that many friends have received their vaccine must quicker and more efficiently. Good luck, I say to them. We are in this fight together.

It seems that all of us now have to wait 42 days to get the second jab.

There is a bid to tell us this is the most efficacious application of the vaccine. I don’t believe it.

We are being made to wait so that more people can get the first dose of the limited supplies of  vaccine available.

Remember the people now telling us about the need to wait are the same people whe were telling us 14 months ago that we did not need masks because they were afraid we would gobble up the available masks to the detriment of the health workers.

So wait I will.

Not at all sure where I will go to get the second jab. It would be great to avoid the five-hour process at GenChem, even if this means missing another chance to see  my new-found pandemic friends.

Discovery boss Adrian Gore has written a letter saying members should try the sites being set up by his medical aid society.

He seems confident there will be enough Pfizer to dispense the second injections.

From his mouth to God’s ear!

President Cyril Ramaphosa just tightened a band of cold steel around my testicles – metaphorically speaking, of course – telling us that South Africa would chuck out two million does of Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

He’s blaming a contamination scare at its source in the the United States.

To his credit, Ramaphosa acted swiftly, decisively and courageously locking down South Africa early on in the pandemic.

However his government’s record in dispensing the vaccine this year as been less than impressive. Plainly speaking it has been marked by dithering and, by all accounts, corruption.

That is the antithesis of the British experience where Boris Johnson fiddled at the start of the pandemic, costing thousands of lives, but has done a sterling job of getting vaccine into Britons’ arms.

Could the G7 come to our aid?

At their summit in Cornwall last weekend, the leaders of Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy committed themselves to providing a billion doses of vaccine to poorer countries within the year.

Critics say this is a drop in the ocean for the developing world that needs at least ten times that amount.

We can talk about lifting the intellectually property rights to allow vaccine to be manufactured in South Africa, Senegal and other countries ready and able to do it.

If successful, that would be months away.

We need a quicker solution if we are to achieve the much vaunted herd mentality and avoid the plethora of variants to which we no longer may attach a national appellation.

Away with the political correctness and down with the blame game, I say with unashamed selfishness as I prepare to line up for my second dose.

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The meeting, which will include international economic groupings, is unashamedly a French bid to solidify and broaden relations with African nations.

Macron wants to move beyond the former French colonies to countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

It takes place against a backdrop of waning French public support for France’s gendarme role in Africa and leaders of the continent questioning the value of a series of summit meetings with Western development  partners.

Nevertheless they will fly to Paris – the only Western capital from which large quantities of COVID vaccine have been shipped by a  donor country to developing countries.

In week where we learn that 140 million doses of that vaccine supposed to go to the poorer countries via the COVAX programme will be retained to deal with India’s surge of infections, the summit participants know they will be talking to representatives of the largest vaccine financiers.

The summit will see a rare visit to France by Rwandan President Paul Kagame. This means the still smoldering issue of France’s role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is unavoidable.

Important as it is, other African leaders will also want to move beyond making up the $300-billion shortfall caused by the pandemic.

They want to leave the summit with heartening news for their people about addressing critical shortfalls in potable water, schools and healthcare facilities.

Even though the leaders of countries with which France has active disputes, such as Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso have not been invited, Macron cannot expect to escape pointed question about colonial legacies like the Central African franc, which Africans say binds currencies of former dependencies  too tightly to the French economy.

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A meeting this week between the farmers in the region and Chinese developers backed by the Limpopo provincial authority was cancelled.

The environmental impact assessment for what is South Africa’s largest special economic zone has been thrown back to the would-be developers as incomplete.

They will not be able to complete this within the legally required 103 days from declaration of their plan.

This involves 20 industrial steel and ferrochrome components and a 3 300 megawatt coal-fire power station.

Any future decision on this development will involve Environment Minister Barbara Creecy and Trade Minister Ebrahim Patel.

There might appear some conflict of interest between one minister determined to protect a hot spot of water stress, climate change and biodiversity; and another set on creating jobs and boosting the economy in the nation’s second-poorest province.

The project has been fraught with such contradictions.

Limpopo’s environment department has had to objectively assess the plans. Indeed it is this department that rejected the environmental impact assessment and incomplete.

The study was conducted among English-speaking respondents, thereby omitting those reliant on the local languages.

Meetings with respondents were conducted at short notice and were severely limited by the COVID lockdown.

Against this, the Limpopo Development Agency is championing the zone.

Chief executive of the project Lehlogonolo Masoga is on record saying it is too big to fail and anyone standing in its way will be replaced by an enthusiast.

The impact study contains contradictory findings. The project will have very dire economic consequences, it says on the one hand. 

On the other it asserts that the project is sustainable.

Environmental and conservation groups opposed to the project maintain the near pristine and water-scarce character of the environment will be fundamentally altered by the proposed development.

One of the projects includes a dam across the dry Sand River.

It is hoped to pump water from underground aquifers in the Limpopo.

A R300-million feasibility study for this project has been put on hold.

Civil engineers who have had an initially look at say the international waterway cannot be tapped without permission of users and countries downstream.

Even if this were obtained, the pumped water would be three times as expensive and water ordinarily sourced from rivers.

Environmental lawyer Christo Reeders says Limpopo unarguably requires an economic boost.

But it has to be an agricultural development in that part of the country that provides 80% of South Africa’s fresh produce.

Apart from the irredeemable damage it would do to the local environment, an industrial project in Musina -Mukhado is impracticable and prohibitively expensive.

He says the provincial agency should urgently begin looking at an agricultural development for Musina-Mukhado.

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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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