Today the EU leaders get together to reconsider the travel ban. What's there to reconsider? they NEED to stop it, It is unfair and unfounded. Nothing good has come out of it and it is Extremely Discriminatory. Since Nov 26 the world went into a frenzy about a new Covid variant that South African scientists discovered, the world reaction was to impose a travel ban on 6 countries in Southern Africa, This comes to all of us in the travel industry as a kick in the balls, we spent the last 20 months struggling, trying to keep our business afloat and hoping and waiting for travel to resume, in October the UK finally takes South Africa of the red list and travel starts to pick up very nicely, we have lots of bookings for our peak season, (December, January) some places are fully booked the industry starts seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, with this hope, restaurants, hotels, bars. etc are starting to hire more staff, people can return to their jobs, etc. Then the UK imposes a travel ban and the world follows, with no real reason, no explanation, it was supposed to be for a couple of days in order to prepare for the 4th wave but guess what they did, they put us back on their red list. WHY?! 

Quick story about my business, I started a small travel planning company in March 2017 the first year went very well, the second year, I doubled the amount of clients and on the 3rd year it even grew by three times, things were going very well, and then Covid happened, for 20 months we had not one client, the government did not help us in the industry, lots of people had to close their offices, Hotels and guest houses were closed, Restaurants, closed, lots of travel agencies had to fire 90% of their staff, luckily for me, my company survived, not without its ups and downs and a lot of drama,  now, bookings for December were great, things were looking very nice, until Nov 26 when The UK announces a travel ban on southern frica, and the rest of the world followed, there's really no reason for it, there's no right excuse to impose a travel ban to southern Africa, it's been proven that the variant was already in Europe and it didn't come from Southern Africa, least fo all from South Africa, It's been proven that the variant is very mild and that the cases that have it have very mild symptoms, The 4th wave started in Europe way before this new Variant was found and we all know that the waves come with new Variants, so why is South Africa on a red list and why is Souther Africa ban from international travel? This is very unfair and discriminatory, it makes no sense and it is affecting not just my business but the entire South African tourism industry. 

Please help us demand that the ban gets lifted and that South Africa gets erased from UK's red list together with every other country in it.