South Africa allowed five CCL-Carnival Cruise Line ships to dock at Port Durban, South Africa, this week. The liners have been given permission to make technical stops for refuelling and provisioning under strict COVID safety protocols.
The vessels are passenger-free and carrying crew for repatriation to India and East Asian countries.
According to Sabelo Mdlalose (Port's Chief Harbour Master), the cruise shipping industry has been left in limbo by the pandemic. He added they would like to assure the public that passenger ships coming into South African ports were not there for any activities that had been banned.
However, as an international community, they were only allowing those passenger ships to dock in their ports "in order to be able to access essential services such as bunkers the replenishment of stalls."
As of today, CruiseMapper's ship tracking map shows only 3 CCL ships in or en-route to South Africa's territorial waters - Carnival Fascination, Carnival Ecstasy and Carnival Liberty.