AFRICA NEWS DIGEST
African Leaders Support Arafat, Palestine
The government of South Africa defended President Yassir Arafat, and the elected Palestinian leadership against George W. Bush's threats, in the strongest possible terms.
"It is up to the Palestinians to choose their own leaders; that's the essence of democracy," declared South Africa's Middle East hand, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad, on June 26 from Johannesburg International Airport prior to departing for Israel and Palestine. Leaders cannot be imposed, Pahad said, directly reacting to the Bush Administration's decision to abandon Yasser Arafat and to call for a new Palestinian leadership.
Pahad was to visit the Palestinians and Israel on June 27, to hand over a consignment of medicines, hospital equipment, and food to the Palestinian people on behalf of the government and people of South Africa. Donations collected by "Gift of the Givers," and supported by many other civil society organizations in South Africa, were used to purchase the supplies. Additionally, the South African government was to hand over to the Palestinian Ambassador in South Africa, a check for 4 million Rand to be used to provide medical assistance to the Palestinian people.
During his visit, Pahad will meet was to meet with key Israeli and Palestinian figures, including Yasser Araft and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. "I will take the opportunity to share our own South African experience of national transformation and try to offer a glimmer of hope to all peace-loving Israelis and Palestinians who want an end to war and injustice. I again reiterate, there can be no military solutions to political problems."
Similarly, from Khartoum, Sudan, the Foreign Ministers of 57 Muslim nations and other high officials representing the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) passed a resolution at their meeting on June 27, to provide support for the Palestinians. In the resolution of support, the OIC reiterated its backing for Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's peace plan, first floated last February, which promises normalized relations of Islamic states with Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and the creation of a Palestinian state. The OIC ministers also condemned the Israel Defense Force for committing "war crimes, crimes against humanity and massacres."
There was no mention of President Bush's Middle East "policy," in order, according to Palestinian chief delegate Farouk Khaddoumi, to allow other Arab nations (particularly the Saudis) to have time to get further information from Washington. However, the OIC did pass a separate declaration that said that Muslims stood by the "Palestinian people under the leadership of the gallant President Yasser Arafat."
Colonial-Inspired Wars Destroy African Food Production
In the midst of a grave shortage of food, large tracts of Africa's arable land cannot grow food because of wars and free-market economics, wrote John Mbaria in an op-ed in the June 24 issue of Kenya's The East African. The Democratic Republic of Congo, "a country that holds more than a quarter of the freshwater resources of Africa," he said, can no longer grow any food because of the ongoing war. Countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, and Somalia have similar conflicts. Where there are lesser conflicts, food production is confined to good soils and arable land that is watered either by natural means or artificially through irrigation. Unfortunately, such soils comprise only 22% of Africa's total land surface. Of the rest, 66% is in areas with hostile climatic conditions, while 21% is covered by forests. This means that there is a scarcity of good arable land all over Africa.
Globalization and the "free market" compound the problem, Mbaria added, with "the whims of the market," and the "tyranny of Western capital," hurting the farmers' ability to rely on a stable crop.
"In addition, a disproportionate share of land in Africa is held not by the hungry poor but by well-fed rich people to whom food production is not a priority."
Zimbabwe: June 24 Deadline Affects 2,900 White Farmers
Zimbabwe's Land Acquisition Act has now come into force, ordering 2,900 white farmers to stop farming by midnight June 24, according to the amendments to the act that were effected May 10 by the government of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. The changes ordered farmers "whose property has been earmarked for acquisition to stop farming 45 days after a notice of acquisition has been issued and vacate their property within 90 days." The affected white commercial farmers, according to the Commercial Farmers Union, represent about 70% of the white farmers who held about 4,800 title deeds before the land reforms were enacted two years ago. Most of the 2,900 who were ordered to stop, are still farming and are seeking a court ruling to stop the order.
Agriculture Minister Joseph Made told Zimbabwe state radio that the government was moving to finalize the farm seizures, and agricultural officials would soon be subdividing the targetted farms for redistribution to blacks. A senior agricultural official noted that "a lot of these farmers were notified two years ago that this was going to happen. We are not going to accept again a situation where the indigenous people of this country are denied land and just work for the whites." The official noted that many of these farmers have more than one farm and very large tracts of land.
Europeans, U.S. Accused of Using Food as a Weapon
European nations and the U.S., which have failed to dislodge the Zimbabwe government, are now using the food shortages there to achieve their aim, says a June 25 editorial in The Herald (based in Harare); the editorial is titled "Donors in Bid To Cause Mayhem in Zimbabwe."
Part of the operation, is a propaganda line that the land reform program is responsible for the food shortages that have hit the entire southern African region. "Racist assumptions that whites are the only competent farmers should be dismissed," notes The Herald. More than 400,000 landless peasant families have been resettled on land acquired from white commercial farmers by the government. More than 4 million people in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are currently threatened by food shortages due to the drought. The worst-hit country is Malawi, where about 300 people are believed to have died already of hunger.
Western "concern" over who in Zimbabwe is going to distribute food aid is misplaced, says The Herald, noting the accomplishments during the 1992 and 1994 drought crises. ZANU-PF Secretary for Information and Publicity Cde Nathan Shamuyarira, who chaired the drought relief committees in 1992 and 1994, says that local committees including chiefs, village herdsmen, and officials from the district administrator's office can take responsibility.
HIV Horror: 28 Million Africans Infected
More than 28 million Africans are living with HIV/AIDS, and in some countries over 30% of the adult population is infected, according to Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, in data released on the eve of the Group of Eight summit in Canada. Overall, labor productivity has been cut by up to 50% because of the disease in the hardest-hit countries. About 7 million farmers are thought to have died as a result of HIV/AIDS, severely damaging agricultural production on the continent. The report cites the example of Burkina Faso, where one-fifth of rural families are thought to have abandoned their farm work because of the disease. In Zambia, more than two-thirds of deaths among managers have been attributed to AIDS, while about three-quarters of deaths among Kenya's police force are caused by the disease. With respect to national security, a prerequisite to effective development of African nations, between 20% and 40% of soldiers have AIDS. In countries where HIV/AIDS has been present for more than a decade, 50-60% of soldiers are believed to suffer from the disease.
U.S. Chooses New Leader of Madagascar
[Source: AllAfrica.com, June 27, 'US Recognizes Ravalomanana; Unfreezes Assets']
While the Organization of African Unity continues to attempt to broker a political settlement in the southern African island-state of Madagascar, the United States has issued a statement defining Marc Ravalomanana as the new head of government. Writes AllAfrica.com (June 27): "In a surprise move, the United States became the first major world power to formally recognize the government of Marc Ravalomanana in Madagascar. A letter to that effect from President George Bush was presented by the American ambassador Wanda Nesbitt in Madagascar on Wednesday.... Whether or not other industrial nations follow the U.S. leadand there have been indications that at least some willthe decision is more than a political victory for the new Madagascar government. The majority of the island's foreign reserves are held by the U.S. foreign reserve bank in New York and were frozen during the Presidential dispute."
Ravalomanana, the opposition candidate and major of Antananarivo, for some months has been the self-proclaimed President of the country, fighting a Philippines-type "people's war" from the streets. He is a self-made multimillionaire. His company, TIKO, is the largest non-foreign-owned company in Madagascar. The company, set up through a World Bank loan, has a monopoly on all dairy and oil products sold on the island. He has the support of the urban population, but not the rural.
The incumbent President was Didier Ratsiraka. Madagascar was seen by Western powers as a test-case scenario for ways of replacing the Mugabe government in Zimbabwe, which the U.S. and Europe would dearly love to do.
|