“Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Nigeria, Malawi, South Africa, Zimbabwe. This red list is suspiciously very black to me.”
Adesayo Talabi’s spoken word poem titled ‘Black List’ has had almost 3.5 million views on Instagram.
The 24-year-old felt “frustrated” over the government’s reaction to the Omicron variant and the travel red list that only contains African countries.
She mentions at the start of the pandemic the government were “dragging their feet” deciding on what the travel rules would be, but this time around the decision was made quickly over the countries to put on the red list.
“It’s very interesting, the immediacy in locking off and putting African countries on the red list. Is it you learning from your mistakes or is it that you have this irrational fear of this association between diseases and Africa?”
Her viral poem speaks to similar sentiments felt by the African community around HIV.
“HIV has been used to detrimentally stigmatise and shame African countries, in particular South Africa. That was what was being provoked in the way that this new…
