Support Call For Trump-Putin-Xi Crisis Meeting

Demand Global Mobilization Now! Save Africans Threatened with Pandemic and Starvation!

by Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane, leader of LaRouche South Africa

[Print version of this article]

Feb. 15—As leader of the movement in South Africa of the late American statesman and economist, Lyndon LaRouche, I hereby issue a call for an emergency global mobilization to save as many Africans as possible from the combined existential threats of the emerging coronavirus pandemic,[fn_1] the Desert Locust upsurge in East Africa, and the starvation conditions developing in Southern Africa as the result of intense poverty and the worst drought in decades, perhaps in a century, which began in 2018.

I lend my support, and urge others to do so as well, to the call for an emergency summit of the leaders of the world’s three most powerful nations—President Donald Trump of the United States, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and President Xi Jinping of China—issued by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche.[fn_2] Mrs. LaRouche issued that urgent, January 3 call for the three leaders to meet to seek a de-escalation of tensions that have sent the world careening toward a potential thermonuclear confrontation. The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic threat makes such a meeting even more urgent.

I have recently seen reports of the starvation conditions developing from the drought in Southern Africa, including in economically ravaged Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and other nearby countries; this has led, according to reports, to a sharp rise in child prostitution, as youngsters offer sex in exchange for as little as R4.60, or U.S. 31 cents, in an attempt to secure bread for their starving families.[fn_3] Such reports should, in themselves, sadden the hearts of caring people around the globe. But when these conditions in Southern Africa are concurrent with the obliteration of crops in East Africa by the Desert Locust upsurge, the combined effects are even more alarming. The locust upsurge may rise to the plague level, and the locusts may spread to the Sahel, and West and North Africa.[fn_4]

I strongly support the call of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for action against the locust invasion and support his leadership by example. President Museveni’s government is hiring civilians to work on the ground in spraying teams led by soldiers, and is buying airplanes for aerial spraying.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) reported on January 16 that “A record 45 million people . . . in the 16-nation Southern African Development Community are gravely food insecure following repeated drought, widespread flooding and economic disarray.” Lola Castro, WFP’s Regional Director for Southern Africa, added, “This hunger crisis is on a scale we’ve not seen before and the evidence shows it’s going to get worse.”[fn_5] The number of people under threat is much more than the WFP’s 45 million figure of those currently suffering. Indeed, that figure may itself be a serious understatement.[fn_6]

Add Coronavirus to Malnutrition

Malnutrition, while less intense than starvation, stunts the physical and mental development of the very young, permanently. It weakens the immune systems of all, contributing to the spread of disease and an increased death rate from disease.

When malnutrition is then examined in the context of Africa’s woefully inadequate healthcare systems, it is easy to see that when the coronavirus reaches our continent—which it soon will—the pandemic will have the potential to quickly spread death. Unless there is a major intervention of a fully mobilized global community, it will happen, even in a more advanced economy like my own.

Again, it is impossible to envision for Africa the type of heroic public health measures undertaken by China to try to limit the spread of the virus in that country without massive, coordinated external input. Yet, were we to start immediately to seriously address the crisis, we could save the lives of an enormous number of my fellow Africans.

It is no surprise that I have heard nothing from the global environmentalist movement about this crisis that threatens so many millions of lives here in Africa and elsewhere. Perhaps these immoral Malthusians—like His Royal Virus Prince Philip, the consort of the Queen of England—actually welcome these scourges as a way to “cull the human herd,” for they have argued in favor of genocidal population reduction. Had this health emergency threatened only animals instead of both human beings and animals, Prince Philip’s Worldwide Fund for Nature would no doubt have already issued a call for global action. Instead, silence.

Prince Philip made his view clear in August 1988, when the German Press Agency reported his statement that, “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”[fn_7]

To those who might say I am being alarmist—that we should delay, and wait and see what transpires—I say: You are playing dangerously with the lives of countless numbers of Africans who are either currently productive and otherwise useful citizens, or could become so, whose survival—by prompt coordinated actions, on many fronts—might be ensured. How would their (avoidable) deaths help Southern Africa?

I especially appeal to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has professed to be a friend of Africa:

Mr. President: We urgently need your leadership as a man who knows how to get things done, and who is able get others to go along. The United States, with its vast medical and food resources, is essential to the necessary effort. Your wife, First Lady Melania, has seen with her own eyes the conditions here and has shown great compassion for the plight of our children. We must save them so that they, and the world, might have the bright future they deserve.

I urge action now, not tomorrow. Now! The sooner we act, in an effective, coordinated way, the more people can be saved.

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