Did Ramaphosa mislead the nation on vaccine acquisition?
13 Jan 2021 in News
In his address to the nation on Monday night, President Ramaphosa claimed that his government has been working on vaccine acquisition for six months, which would have been since July last year. Yet there is much evidence to suggest this is simply not the truth.
We cannot fully discard the risk that government’s reluctance to secure a full supply of vaccines from reputable suppliers is because the politically connected are hoping to score kickbacks from Chinese and Russians suppliers.
The DA has been reliably informed that calls to the reputable vaccine manufacturers only started this year once the political pressure ramped up, even though some of them stopped taking orders in June last year already.
Professor Salim Abdool Karim, co-chair of the government’s Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC), stated yesterday in an interview on SAFM that South Africa did not join the vaccine race, that we did not pay the necessary deposits to secure vaccines in large numbers as other countries did.