Posted on 02/08/2002 2:05:56 PM PST by AdrianZ
Africa's coming hunger
By Robert I. Rotberg
ZOMBA, MALAWI
Hunger is again stalking Southern Africa. Throughout the length of the already-impoverished nation of Malawi, there is no maize, the staple food. Cassava, a substitute stomach filler, is also hard to find. So are yams. Moreover, no one seems to be doing anything to avert the coming starvation. Officials deny the seriousness of the situation.
Here, on the rainy slopes of towering Mt. Zomba in Malawi, I purchased small white potatoes and could have bought dead and live animals that were dangled from outstretched arms, a scattering of vegetables, and a variety of herbs and charms. But nothing was on sale to fill the belly in the local African manner.
Neighboring Zambia is also bereft of maize and cassava. So is Zimbabwe, traditionally a much wealthier land that usually exports maize and whose people disdain cassava and yams. In Zimbabwe, too, cooking oil and sugar (both of which Zimbabwe usually provides in abundance) are hard to find. Bread was unavailable last week.
In these three countries, up to 30 million people are at risk of going hungry by July, and millions of children are certain to become even more malnourished than they already are.
The shortages have three causes: a severe drought in the 2001 growing season, heavy rains that destroyed crops, and official mismanagement and inattention. Despite independent warnings, governments in two countries, Malawi and Zambia, have been slow to accept the extent of the maize and cassava shortfalls. Both countries have also lacked the foreign exchange with which to purchase maize from South Africa or more distant exporters.
The growing hunger in Zimbabwe has more directly man-made causes. By attacking commercial farmers steadily since 2000, President Mugabe has destroyed agricultural productivity. In recent months, too, Mugabe's thugs have confiscated maize being stored on farms to feed loyal farm workers, adding to the spread of rural famine. Despite forecasted maize shortfalls, the government sold its existing inventory of maize to the Congo and Kenya in October. High-placed individuals profited.
In order to feed Zimbabwe from February to July, when this year's maize crop will have been harvested, transported, and milled, the country will have to import about 750,000 metric tons of maize. That means moving 150,000 tons a month along congested rail lines from South Africa, or receiving the equivalent in US surplus maize directly or from the UN World Food Program via Dar es Salaam in distant Tanzania.
All of this is tortuous, late, expensive (if purchased from South Africa), and politically volatile. Yet Zimbabwe, unlike Zambia and Malawi, is virtually bankrupt because of Mugabe's troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and official corruption. Zambia and Malawi are poor and lack funds to invest in their people's welfare.
Indeed, Zambia's long-nationalized, mismanaged, and patronage-ridden copper industry, which provides 75 percent of the nation's export earnings, is about to collapse. By the end of 2002, Zambia may lose its main source of employment.
Malnutrition will hardly help the millions who are HIV-positive fight off AIDS. All three countries have adult HIV-positive rates approaching 30 percent. Malawi, with one physician per 60,000 persons, has the weakest health- care system, but the other two, especially cash-starved Zimbabwe, are also desperate.
Zambia has a new government, but the recent regime of President Frederick Chiluba was notoriously corrupt and magnificently neglectful of its people's welfare.
Once-tranquil Malawi has also been going through a crisis of governance and alleged corruption. Judges have been impeached, a tough and honest finance minister sacked, university students shot, and democracy made more precarious.
In a country where donors provide up to 15 percent of the annual gross domestic product, Denmark has recently withdrawn its mission in disgust, Britain is withholding balance of payments support, and the US has reduced aid.
Even if Mugabe is ousted in next month's election in Zimbabwe and President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia revamps his predecessor's policies, the specter of hunger will still hang over their two countries, and even more unfortunate and beleaguered Malawi. Massive outside humanitarian aid is required immediately. It should be coupled with outside insistence on governmental probity, but that may be asking a lot.
• Robert I. Rotberg directs Harvard's Program on Intrastate Conflict and is president of the World Peace Foundation.
I write cohernt refutations. You reply with factless, " feeling " posts. Answer my question ... WHAT ARE YOUR SOURCES ?
If the current black government is treating other blacks inhumanely, doing things to them, that were NOT done by whites, for more than 300 years, how is THAT the fault of the whites ?
Yes dear, I am a very great deal smarter and informed, than you are.
Yes dear, I am a very great deal smarter and better informed, than you are.
Cuz if you are then you fit in with the Holocaust deniers, and the people who used to say that American slaves enjoyed being slaves.
And by the way, I don't have to state my "sources" or my "credentials" (though you've clearly stated yours), to a damn fascist who supports a system that considered blacks (or bleks as you Afrikaners pronounce it), and other ethnic groups as being inferior to themselves.
In short it's as pointless arguing with an Afrikaner as it is with a Holocaust denier or a Japanese who says Korean comfort women volunteered their services.
Your basic lack of understanding of African history is astonishing in light of your responses on this thread. Go get a little book-learnin', there, buckeroo...........then come back and play.
Having said that, I don't support any aid or asylum to the billions of down trodden in Africa. We will set the continent up for further famine in the future, and we don't have room for more uneducated immigrants.
We can, however, support governments with the potential to bring stability and thats about it.
It's because they've never considered Africans as people (something like the "Slave = 3/5 of a man" rule).
Much like the Nazis didn't considere Jews to be "up to their level" of civilization.
But hey!
Before the outbreak of WWII Germany had a damn strong economy, so everything else can be forgiven. /sarcasm
Of course we should. Nothing else works. I wish it weren't so, but it is what it is.
Is English not your first language?
I keep saying that not just the "whites" and not just the "blacks" are alone responsible for making a mess of things in Africa.
I keep saying that there is a lot of blame to go around.
Read my posts before you make an ass out of yourself.
You and what's-her-name keep insisting that only one particular group is responsible.
In other words, as you put it,
You and especially what's-her-face:
You're a "blame the black African guys for everything" type
Africa's a large and old place.
Specifically what history are you refering to?
Here's some of what I know that's relevant to the thread:
Africans had there own system of managing themselves, much like any people on the planet.
This system had its bad and good points, much like any other system on the planet.
Technologically advanced Europeans took it upon themselves to "enlighten" the dark continent and drag the "savages" into whatever century it was.
Eventually they arrived at the conclusion that because the African culture was different and strange (and African technological level was inferior) the Africans themselves must also be inferior.
And that the simpering natives should swallow any condecension and 'abuse', and be grateful for this once in a lifetime opportunity to leave the "Stone Age" behind.
After gaining (yeah right, being granted) their countries' independence, African rulers resorted to treating their own people much like the Europeans had treated them.
The Europeans for their part, were suprised by this babarity, and corruption and wondered to themselves: "Where could they have picked these bad habits from?"
And now as we go through the present century each cook blames the other exclusively for a basket case to whose recipe they both contributed to.
It's a Stanford site.
I don't know if the author is biased or not, but what is printed is pretty much what has been printed by the international media and history books so I know its accurate.
In other words I don't like Hitler, but I don't mind riding in a Benz or VW (if you can understand the analogy).
Night y'all.
So when you say I'm not a true freeper, it doesn't hurt me. At least I'm not some pinko liberal who is bent on a global agenda.
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