Madagascar extends indefinitely the suspension of flights with South Africa
Since December 2020, Madagascar and South Africa have been at loggerheads, due to a case linked to illegal gold trafficking between the two countries. A diplomatic problem that led the Malagasy authorities to suspend its air links with the Rainbow Nation.
Suspended since March 2020 (first because of the health crisis, then because of a diplomatic dispute), flights between South Africa and Madagascar will not resume immediately. Indeed, the Malagasy government has indefinitely extended the ban on flights between the two countries. This is what the South African ambassador to Antananarivo, Sisa Ngombane, revealed in an interview with the South African newspaper Daily Maverick on 15 October 2022.
The cause of this extension is the diplomatic dispute that remains between the Malagasy and South African authorities. At the origin of this quarrel, the arrest in South Africa, in December 2020, of three alleged traffickers, in possession of 73.5 kilograms of gold (an estimated value of 4.5 million dollars), which would come from Madagascar. Since then, Antananarivo has demanded the extradition of the three men and their loot. But Pretoria refuses, claiming to be competent to judge them, as the crime was committed on its territory.
But even before this diplomatic problem, flights between South Africa and Madagascar had been suspended since March 2020, because of measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Airlink, the private South African airline, which was the only one connecting the two countries, has not been doing so. Its chief executive officer, Rodger Foster, has repeatedly called on the two parties to resolve their differences so that his company can resume operations.
A resumption appeared to be on the cards in July after a meeting between South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Malagasy ambassador to Pretoria, Richard Randriamandrato. The Malagasy Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that "the resumption is imminent". Unfortunately, this announcement did not materialise, until the ban was extended indefinitely.
