There’s a Covid-19 super-spreader event currently under way in Durban, where the Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF) has stumbled out of the blocks with more fits than starts.
As a talk shop about the continent working together as one, it was opened by KwaZulu-Natal premier Sihle Zikalala waxing lyrical about the prospects of lofty trade objectives like “ease of doing business”, as only a public official can.
Among other things, he said: “We believe that all African states must understand that there is no state that will prosper at the expense of another African state.”
On the ground though, there was no ‘prospering’ to be had as registration processes were overwhelmed by attendees, slowing to a snail’s pace and causing more and more people to cram into the capital’s International Convention Centre (ICC).
Save to say that if the IATF 2021 is any indication of the administrative nous of the powers that be, they shouldn’t be entrusted with a passport stamping counter at a backwater border, let alone organising intra-African trade.
One of Freight News’s sources, who first had to stand in a three-hour-long registration queue before she could move to an entrance queue, described the scene as “back-to-back queues and chaos”.
She sent us the following voice note while still waiting for her accreditation.
“Obviously, the whole place is in lockdown and lockdown in the sense that there’s no parking at the ICC.
“Parking at the registration venue was full yesterday so people are parking at Moses Mabida. There is a shuttle that runs from there, I’ve just learned that now.
“Communication has been very poor from the conference. Little communication about how, where and when to register. Overflow parking is at the workshop shopping centre at a charge.
“Yesterday morning, the queues were terrible. When we arrived at 10am the place was packed. No social distancing and hundreds of people queuing in the blazing sun. No water for sale or anything like that.
“They have ambulances parked on site in case of emergencies. There was a queue to come in to do Covid screening, and then queues for delegates, with people waiting for hours.
“The people behind the counters didn’t seem to have authority to do anything when there were problems. Just about every person who went to the front had encountered a problem.
“Some people were losing their cool, threatening to put the bad service on social media, so there was a queue to get a letter or some kind of proof of registration, but they didn’t have a printer it seemed.
“Eventually, they printed these letters and people were sent to another queue, and when I got there, after already queuing for an hour, I was told that the woman at the back of the line had been waiting for three hours already.
“At that point I just thought no, she’s been waiting three hours, it was already 11am. So I decided to leave.
“I came here again today; they seemed to have jacked up a bit, but there’s still a bit of a line outside.”
Intra-African trade?
You can live in hope.
– With assistance from Zoë van Rooyen
