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 disagree.
Why spend $5 for something that nature will solve anyway. Let the woman be fertile. Fertile females and high birthrates are nature's way of dealing with high mortality. Squirrels have lots of squirelettes, mice have lots of mice, etc. Nothing new here.
The way to fix is the problem is by letting them be. The problem will fix itself to something sustainable, instead of importing food into the area, let the population go down to where the land that the population is living on can sustain it. Or let the population increase their agricultural output in order to sustain its current level.
Ever see the program called Cellular Automata? Where you put in variables for life expectancy, beginning population, food, and space? The food isn't there, so the population has to decrease.
Because the decisions are hardly ever made freely. Rather they are influenced by UNFPA and IPPF operatives who have quotas to meet for sterilized women. There are endless cases of women who have been coerced into undergoing these procedures and giving up one the most meaningful aspects of their lives.
Many of these population control efforts have quickly degenerated into outright coercion. The clearest instance of which is China's forced abortion policy- which has never been condemned by the population control hierarchy.
I would also add that the whole thing stinks of eugenics. Nobody is talking about population control in far more populated areas that are wealthy- only in poorer countries in Asia, Africa and South America. It couldn't be much more racist.
Furthermore, the whole idea that there is a overpopulation problem is absurd. Population decline will be a far greater problem in the 21st Century than overpopulation. These kind of scare tactics by the population controllers turn out to by myths again and again. For instance Paul Ehrlich's prediction that hundreds of millions would die from hunger in the 70's.
Actually there is everything wrong with eugenics. It assumes we can know the value of a person according to some kind of quantifiable test. It assumes we can engineer better persons. There is nothing wrong with eugenics only if one is enough of a fool to believe that better breeding makes better people- as better breeding makes better horses. It's a bunch of crap. There are good people who come from horrible backgrounds and horrible people that come from good backgrounds.
The bottom line is there is no quantifying the value or dignity of a human life. Once you do we are all ranked on somebody's scale of eugenic dignity. It is a short step to the elimination of inferiors. Pray that you never end up on the wrong side of somebodies list of what qualifies a worthy human person. It's not all that uncommon as the slaughterhouse that was the 20th Century proved.
If I speak about Africa, and am not black, I'm a racist. If I speak about anyone's lack of culture, or lack of ability to take care of oneself, I'm a racist. If I speak out against despotic dictators, and cruel governments run by thugs and warlords, I'm a racist.
Yeah, I guess if speaking the truth about a country that hasn't evolved in 250 years, with all of the people in America and other countries piling money and resources into it makes me a racist, so be it. I guess being honest isn't the way to be, let's just lie to ourselves and pretend like these people are so impoverished because they haven't been given a fair shake.
Take your racial diatribe somewhere else. There is no racism on my end, and frankly I find your kind offensive. You take snippets from other people's quotes and then paste them where they don't belong, in order to create a divisive environment, one that screams about things that aren't even there. Booker T. Washington said that there would always be people using racism to further their agenda.
Here's an agenda that you pinkos and globalists can identify with. Here's a country with all kinds of different people in it. It's a wealthy nation, full of industrious people who made it something great. Everyday boatloads of immigrants come to it, wanting a better life. We get a lot of them from Africa. Do you know why? Because Africa is nothing more than a rotten hellhole that these people want to escape from. Do you know why? Because they aren't working hard enough to fix their problems, and they have a despotic government that is oppressing them all. Every single country in Africa that is messed up, has this same problem. What do these people then do? They come here, and bring their tribal warfare bs to our country. We have Somalis here who hate other somalis and they have fights over it.
You want racism, try being a white guy who happens to be bald. See how you're treated and then tell me that white people are the only ones who are racist. Your racism argument is total BS. Racism works both ways, and I've had enough of it. Take your Racial nonsense someplace else. Telling the truth is more important than your feelings. Africa is a hell hole because they have bad governments, and undereducated people, and no amount of food, aid, or manpower is going to fix Africa's problems.
Remember - all cultures are equal, and should be respected in fact and in results..
We horrible benefactors of slavery, should stay the hell out of Africa...
Let Africa finally become Africa as the Africans make it.
Semper Fi
Er excuse me, Oh ignorant one, but I believe that the first European settlers came to the new world for the same reason. Namely, their governments were, as you so eloquently put it, "screwed up".
So what are you "hypocriting" about now?
That must really burn your biscuit.
Yet our proud African-Americans on US soil are so caught up ... to pay attention to the "real" Africans.
African-Americans are Americans not Africans, so why should they pay any more or less attention to Africa than any other segment of our society?
By that logic only Jewish-Americans should be concerned about attacks on Israel and only Asian-Americans should be concerned about foreign policy on Asia and .
Yeah me either. After all, its not like Africans are real human beings or something
True. If Mugabe weren't such a psychotic racist maniac, he'd still have a viable agricultural sector. But his hatred of whites has led him to the brink of chaos.
Glad you brought this up, it needs to be acknowledged.
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