DURBAN - A TEAM of six parasurfers will no longer be taking part in the sixth ISA World Parasurfing Championships to be held in California this month after a travel ban against South Africa was put in place following the discovery of the Omicron coronavirus variant.
The surfers, backed by Made For More, a non-governmental organisation, campaigned for months for sponsorships.
“We are disappointed because Team SA invested a lot in this trip including time, effort, commitment. But at the same time I’m glad that we are stuck at home rather than somewhere else.
“This is also a great learning opportunity that no matter how much planning or sacrifice you make for something there’s always a chance for it not to go accordingly. I’m not extremely upset or depressed about it, I have taken it with understanding and acceptance,” said Sabelo Ngema, a visually impaired student who lives with albinism.
Ngema said South Africans needed to become more aware of the sport and get behind the team leading up to next year’s championships.
“We would like to urge the country to help us get into next year’s championship and become more aware of the parasurfing sports,” said Ngema.
The manager for the South African parasurfing team, Erika Hendrikz, said the restrictions imposed on the country were all the more disheartening because they had spent months raising funds to ensure that all their athletes competed in the championships.
“After months of planning and preparation, a tremendous amount of fund-raising with our partners, Made for More, and intense training programmes, it is understandable that our team feels quite helpless, some angry and some sad. But the fact that we currently find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic also means that we need to be responsible.
“If this new variant can be contained in some way and if South Africa poses a threat to other countries, then it’s a necessary sacrifice for us to protect them.
“We hope that all South Africans will realise that being vaccinated allows us as a country to participate in sporting events such as these and will allow us to reopen the economy at large,” said Hendrikz.
She said the team was now focused on training for next year.
“Our team is now focused on the future and remains positive, grateful, and blessed and will continue the momentum of world parasurf training in preparation for next year. We would also like to thank all of our sponsors for their support and for allowing us to re-allocate the funding to next year’s world championships.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his address on Sunday, criticised countries that had imposed travel restrictions on South Africa following the identification of the Omicron variant.
“The prohibition of travel is not informed by science, nor will it be effective in preventing the spread of this variant …
“We call upon all those countries that have imposed travel bans on our country and our southern African sister countries to urgently reverse their decisions and lift the ban they have imposed before any further damage is done to our economies and to the livelihoods of our people. There is no scientific justification for keeping these restrictions in place,” he said.
The US government said that upon advice from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention it would refuse entry for non-citizens who were “physically present” within the eight countries in the southern African hemisphere “during the 14-day period preceding entry or attempted entry” into the country.
Daily News