Ramaphosa owes SA an apology for buying AstraZeneca vaccine – ACDP’s Kenneth Meshoe
'The buck stops at the president’s door. His team, including those who did the purchasing and negotiations, must take responsibility for what happened.'
African Christian Democratic Party leader Kenneth Meshoe. Picture: David Ritchie
African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) leader Reverend Kenneth Meshoe says he is disappointed that President Cyril Ramaphosa did not apologise during his State of the Nation Address (Sona) for government’s recent decision to halt the rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.
“We expected him to apologise for bringing in a million vaccines that cannot be used now because they did not check when the expiry date would be or whether they would be relevant for the variant that we have in South Africa,” Meshoe told SABC News on Thursday evening outside the steps of Parliament.
“To hear that they only have 22% efficacy is a real disappointment. We are not sure whether that money is going to be thrown down the drain or whether they are going to recover that money. We expected him at least to say something like that.”
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On Sunday, government announced it was temporarily halting the rollout of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to the country’s 1.2 million healthcare workers. This after preliminary data from a clinical trial found it gave minimal protection against mild-to-moderate infection caused by the dominant 501Y.V2 variant discovered in South Africa.
To make up for this, Ramaphosa confirmed in his Sona that the first batch of 80,000 Johnson & Johnson vaccination doses would arrive in the country next week. He said further consignments would arrive over the next four weeks, totalling 500,000 vaccines. In total, South Africa has secured nine million doses of the J&J vaccine.
But Meshoe was not impressed, saying the nation deserved an apology.
“The buck stops at the president’s door. His team, including those who did the purchasing and negotiations, must take responsibility for what happened.
“The president should have at least apologised that they made a mistake. If he would have apologised, people would have accepted that. But the fact that he just kept quiet about it, it’s a disappointment to us,” he said.
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