A woman weeds a sesame crop field in South Sudan's Eastern Equatoria state. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Moyiga Nduru
JUBA, South Sudan, Apr 8 2016 (IPS)

Facing an unprecedented economic crisis, South Sudan — the newest nation of the world — has urged its 12 million inhabitants to turn to agriculture instead of depending on declining oil revenues.

Before the fall of oil prices below $30 a barrel in the international market, oil-rich South Sudan used to import virtually all of its basic requirements from overseas.

Chicken came from Brazil. Tomatoes, onions, maize flour, cooking oil, dairy products and beans are still being imported from neighbouring Uganda. China and Dubai export a variety of goods such as soft drinks, smart phones as well as construction materials.

All of this is unsustainable and worries the government. South Sudan has ignored agriculture since it achieved its independence in July 2011. Up to 75 per cent of the country’s land area is suitable for farming.

“South Sudan has virgin land. Yet we import most of our food from neighbouring countries,” finance minister, David Deng Athorbei, complained during a meeting organised in the national capital Juba recently to address the deteriorating economic situation in the country.

Every year, South Sudan spends between US$200-300 million on food imports, according to estimates for 2013 provided by the Abidjan-based African Development Bank (AFDB).

“South Sudan currently imports as much as 50 per cent of its needs, including 40 per cent of its cereals from neighbouring countries, particularly Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia”, according to AFDB.

During the first two years of independence, the country was producing nearly 245,000 barrels of crude oil per day, raking in billions of dollars in revenue annually. As a result, the elite saw no value in labour-intensive activity like farming.

That is now changing. A drop in the oil output, a decline in global oil prices and the devastating conflict in South Sudan, as well as an acute scarcity of hard currency have triggered shortages of goods in the market.

South Sudan, which currently produces 165,000 barrel of crude oil per day, depends on oil revenue for nearly 98 per cent of the total government budget.

“We must diversify. We should not depend on one commodity — oil. We have gold in Kapoeta (on the border with Kenya). We have cattle,” said Gabriel Alak, a senior official of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) on a popular programme, Face the Nation, on the state-owned South Sudan Television recently.

Campaigners are now focusing on food production to mitigate the impact of a devastating conflict that erupted in Juba in December 2013. The violence spread quickly to oil-producing states of Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile.

The fighting has left hundreds of thousands of people in need of humanitarian assistance.

At the height of the oil boom, South Sudanese businesspeople had directed their energy toward trade, ignoring agriculture.

“The business of trade is over. We now need to embark on the business of production. We have to change our ways of doing business. Let’s start with agriculture,” Athorbei advised.

In April 2015, President Salva Kiir donated 1,000 tractors to farmers around the country. He also set up the country’s first food security council headed by himself.

“I am determined to end hunger and malnutrition in the Republic of South Sudan,” Kiir said during the launch of the tractors in Juba.

“We have vast fertile lands, abundant water and climate suitable for production of wide variety of food and cash crops but the country still faces enormous challenges which prevent it from realising its full potential,” he said.

“Experts estimate that up to 300,000 metric tonnes of fish could be harvested on a sustainable basis from its share at the River Nile swamps and tributaries,” Kiir disclosed.

South Sudan produces some food crops, but the food is rotting in the bush due to poor road network to transport the commodities to the market.

Athorbei said he would set aside some money in the financial year 2015/2016 to boost agriculture. He did not say how much he would allocate.

With South Sudan joining the East African Community (EAC) on 2 March 2016, Juba hopes to invite farmers across the region to till the country’s vast lands. “This will cut transport costs and reduce food prices,” vice-president James Wani Igga told a parliamentary caucus of the ruling SPLM in Juba on March 10, 2016.

EAC comprises Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and now South Sudan, with a combined population of more than 157 million.

As South Sudan works out plan to fix agriculture, prices have continued to spiral beyond the reach of the poor. The crisis has prompted parliament to urge government to reduce inflation to mitigate the sufferings of ordinary persons.

“There is urgent need to mobilise up to US $20 million for the importation of food commodities and medicines within a period of one month. The food commodities shall be sold through established consumer cooperative network,” the chairperson for the committee for economy, development and finance in parliament, Goc Makuach Mayol, said in a 14-page report on March 7, 2016.

The parliament has also called for a probe into a US$70 million, which was disbursed by an agency known as “financial auction” to commercial banks and forex bureaux with instructions by the central bank to allocate 50 per cent for importing food commodities, 30 per cent for industrial inputs and 20 per cent for school fees and medical treatment overseas.

The parliament did not indicate when the money was disbursed. But it has demanded for a record showing how the money was spent.

(End)

By Moyiga Nduru
JUBA, South Sudan, Mar 30 2016 (IPS)

A single phone call from an irate security official is enough to shutdown a newspaper in Sudan. Security agents sometimes employ unorthodox methods: they storm the premises of a newspaper or a printing press and confiscate print runs in full view of employees. No reasons are provided. And there is no legal recourse.

Sudan’s widely criticised 2010 national security law enables the country’s dreaded security agents to operate with complete impunity.

The latest journalist to fall into the trap of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) is Faisal Mohamed Salih, who is no stranger to state harassment. Salih said security agents prevented him from travelling to Britain on March 25. “They told me that my name was placed on a travel-ban list and my passport was seized,” he posted on his Facebook page, after he was turned away from Khartoum International Airport.

A fierce critic of the Islamic regime, Salih is the winner of the Peter Mackler Award for courageous and ethnical journalism in 2013. Salih’s predicament is just the tip of an iceberg in a country where journalists and media houses are constantly under attack. Al-Ayam, Al-Mustaqilla and Al-Sudani are the latest newspapers to face the wrath of the security organs.

In one of the most brazen raids, security agents, under the cover of the early hours, tormed a printing house in the national capital, Khartoum on March 15 and seized 20,000 copies of Al-Sudani newspaper, without giving reasons.

Sources within Al-Sudani say the newspaper incurred a loss of 70,000 SSG (US$5,800) as a result of the raid. Such raids weaken newspapers economically and prevent the public from reading what the authorities want to be kept secret, journalists and media watchdog say.

The raid on Al-Sudani happened as journalists at Al-Tayar, another daily that has been closed since December 2015, were staging what has now become a daily open hunger strike to force the authorities in Khartoum to permit the newspaper to resume operations.

Few journalists believe that the hunger strike will work. “Hunger strike may work in the West where the spectre of such an activity always hangs heavily on the conscience of society. But in Sudan, if you go on a hunger strike you may be considered abnormal and your action will be regarded as un-Islamic. Perhaps only human rights groups, friends and members of your family may sympathise with you but not the government,” Victor Keri Wani, author of ‘’Mass Media in Sudan, Experience of the South 1940-2005’’, told IPS in an interview.

This is not the first time that Al-Tayar, a critic of the regime, has been closed by the security agents since it began publication in 2009.

International media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, said eight issues of the newspaper have been seized since the start of 2015, four of them in February 2015 alone.

The watchdog said security agents also briefly shutdown the newspaper in 2012 after it blasted the NISS for illegally using electronic gadgets to spy on opposition groups. In the same edition, Al-Tayar also ruffled the feathers of some of the most powerful Islamists by publishing a report on corruption in local governments.

Reporters Without Border recorded a total of 35 newspaper issues seized by the security agents in 2014 alone. A week never passes without seizure of print runs or closure of a newspaper by security agents.

“The media in the Sudan is heavily censored and strictly controlled by the security organs,” professor William Hai Zaza, the head of the Department of Mass Communications at the University of Juba, told IPS in an interview.

The bad blood between the media and security agents began after the junta, led by Omar al-Bashir, usurped power in a military coup, effectively deposing an elected civilian government, in June 1989.

The junta set up pro-government publications to promote its vision of Islam and Arabism.

Journalists who refused to share the junta’s views were either jailed or fled the country.

It is an open secret in the Sudan that the Islamic government continues to fund some publications to toe its strict policy line. “The newspapers are allowed limited space for mild criticism of the government. These criticisms are used by the government to howcase its commitment to uphold the freedom of expression in the country,” Zaza said.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the closing of Al-Tayar. “We call for Al-Tayar to be reopened at once so that it can continue providing the public with news coverage,” said Clea Kahn-Sriber, the head of the body’s Africa desk, in a statement posted on the group’s website.

In the 2000s, Sudanese journalists had feared that state agents were bent on a policy to eliminate them. This perception was influenced by the 2006 incident in which unknown gunmen kidnapped and beheaded the editor-in-chief of Al-Wifag newspaper, Mohamed Taha, sending a chill in the media fraternity in Khartoum. The case has remained unsolved to this day in a city known for its watertight security network. Then journalist Lubna Mohamed al Hussein, whose case attracted international media attention in 2009, was detained and fined for wearing a pair of trousers, under Sudan’s decency law.

Sometimes local problems tend to override the loyalty of pro-government journalists, landing them in trouble. “For example, people around Katjabas Dam in the north of the country are always protesting against the construction of the dam. And if you happened to be a journalist from that area, surely, you’ll get sympathetic and publish the story, and your paper will be closed,” Wani explained.

That is why Khartoum’s several private FM radio stations have chosen to play it safe by broadcasting entertainment or sports 24 hours a day. Security agents, who don’t pay much attention to them, deem entertainment and sports as less sensitive.

“Journalism is a dangerous profession in the Sudan. Media practitioners must protect their lives,” Zaza said.

Sudan is ranked 174th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

Media experts say they do not see the light at the end of the tunnel soon. “Media space will not open as long as the Islamists are in power in the Sudan,” Wani said.

Zaza agreed: “The repression of journalists will not go away soon. It will take time”.

Too often, government employs dangerous blackmail tactics to scare journalists. The Islamists accuse critical journalists of being Israeli spy, Mossad, or CIA agent, a euphemism for traitor, which is punishable by death in the Sudan, Zaza said.

(End)

While there is a growing desire for change in Sudan – particularly among the younger urban population in the north – there is no atmosphere of heated campaigning or supporters mobbing candidates in the south, as campaigning for general elections concludes.

Upcoming elections seem like the prelude to a more serious contest over the future of Sudan in the months to come. Credit: Peter Martell/IRIN

The absence of excitement and an election mood is partly explained by the fact that many voters here questioned the choice of Yasir Arman, to represent the southern-dominated Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) party as presidential candidate in the April 11-13 poll.

Arman was one of the few Arabs to join the rebellion in the early years of the uprising, but party insiders say this advocate of a united Sudan – some remain within the SPLM – was troubled playing a role that could well see the disintegration of Africa’s largest country.

He would of course have secured SPLM bloc votes in the south, while drawing a significant vote from a northern minority of liberal urban Muslims, but Arman is largely scorned and regarded as a traitor in the north for betraying the cause of Arab Muslims in the Sudan.

The pressure on Arman proved overwhelming, and he withdrew from the race on Apr. 1, citing electoral irregularities and the continued conflict in Darfur.

“(Arman) advocated for his withdrawal. We had tried to convince him for weeks not to do that but he insisted that he wanted it done that way,” Riek Machar, the SPLM vice president of the government of southern Sudan, told journalists in Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan.

The National Congress Party (NCP) of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, which claims to protect the interests of Arab Muslims in the Sudan, has a different view.

Opposition political parties say Bashir is desperate to cling to power by legitimising his mandate via internationally-monitored elections and thus to escape the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“The election has been designed for one man, not for democratic transformation,” Arman told a news conference in Khartoum following the announcement of his withdrawal. He said the NCP was only holding these elections in order to “deflect” pressure from the ICC on its leader.

The ICC, with its headquarters in the Dutch city of the Hague, indicted Bashir in 2008 for alleged human rights abuses and crimes against humanity in the troubled western region of Darfur. The conflict in Darfur erupted in 2003 after the rebels there took up arms to fight marginalisation. More than 300,000 people have been killed and over one million people displaced by the conflict since then.

Bashir has denied the ICC allegations.

Victory procession

With the SPLM candidate out of the way, the writing on the wall stands out ever more clearly: Bashir will win the presidential election.

Not because the Sudanese leader is popular, but because he controls the key instruments of power – the army and the plain-clothes security organs in the north – which he has been manipulating since he seized power in a military coup in 1989.

Opposition parties began taking claims of rigging seriously after it emerged on Apr. 1 that Sudan’s presidential ballots had been printed in Khartoum, the capital – at a firm controlled by the ruling NCP – instead of in South Africa as agreed earlier.

Bashir also controls the state media – radio and television – and uses state funds and other resources such as helicopters and vehicles for his campaign. The majority of Sudan’s more than 80 opposition political parties have no access to such advantages.

No one is talking about the possibility of a second round any longer with the SPLM candidate out of the way.

Even before the voting begins on Apr. 11, a confident Bashir has already announced his next move. He will start campaigning for the unity of the country immediately after the elections.

“There will be no separation. Our people in the south will vote for unity voluntarily, through their own will,” Bashir said during a campaign in Sinjah, a town in eastern Sudan, on Apr. 1.

Bashir’s imminent consolidation of power is worrying northern opposition parties. With the south disinterested in the elections and focusing on the referendum, they feel let down by the electoral process.

By Moyiga Nduru
JUBA, South Sudan, Jan 18 2010 (IPS)

Sudan is at a crossroads. Its future looks grim. “Only a miracle can save it from disintegrating. The signs are already on the wall,” says Khamis Lako, a petty trader in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

Nursing injuries after an attack on a South Sudanese village: ethnic conflict threatens full implementation of the peace agreement. Credit: Peter Martell/IPS

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), brokered by outside powers, ended a 21-year conflict between the Arab Muslim north and the black Christian south. According to human rights groups, more than 2 million people perished during the 1983-2005 war.

The fifth anniversary of the deal, is being commemorated on Jan. 19 in Yambio, the capital of South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.

Even for skeptics like Lako, the deal CPA has produced some concrete results. “The guns have gone silent,” he said. “People can now move freely, doing their business without harassment or intimidation.”

The south has its own government, flag and a standing army – the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Virtually all northern troops have been withdrawn from the territory. The semi-autonomous region also maintains a string of liaison offices (embassies in all but name) in most key capitals of the world.

Right now, the north and the south only share nationality and currency – nothing else.

Challenges ahead

Despite the progress made, Sudan’s challenges remain enormous. The peace partners, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in the north, have yet to define the north-south border as it stood at independence in 1956.

At stake here is Sudan’s oil which straddles the north-south border, although most of it lies in the south.

Earlier this month NCP’s Ghazi Salaheddin, an advisor to President Omar al-Bashir, warned that the referendum on South Sudan’s independence, which is scheduled for January 2011, would lead to a new war if key issues such as the north-south border, nationality and responsibility for external debts of over $30 billion dollars were not addressed.

The NCP suggested recently that the estimated five million southerners living in the north would automatically lose their citizenship if the south opts for independence in 2011. The same would apply to northerners living in the south.

Oil

Disagreements also continue over the oil revenue which the south shares equally with the north. The south complains of lack of transparency in the distribution of oil revenue. The north has rejected the allegations.

The north fears that an independent south will deprive it of the badly needed oil revenue. “Secession will leave the north in a difficult situation. Oil accounts for 90 percent of the north’s exports,” said John Luk Jok, South Sudan’s minister of energy, at a symposium on ‘Southern Sudan: Preparing for 2011 and Beyond’, in Juba on Dec. 5-6.

The north considers oil as a strategic commodity. “The north want their interests protected in a future independent South Sudan, or they’ll sabotage it,” Elijah Malok, the head of the Bank of Southern Sudan, told the symposium.

Sudan’s foreign friends are encouraging both the SPLM and NCP to start discussing the post-2011 arrangements.

“I believe that we need to come up with a process now so that we can work with the parties and the parties can work between themselves to come up with solutions on citizenship, on the north-south border demarcation, on the sharing of resources – and that includes the oil – grazing rights, the Nile waters,” said Scott Gration, special envoy for Sudan, at a news conference in Washington on Jan. 11.

He added, “There’s so many issues that have to be decided that we cannot wait until the referendum is here, until the people have made their will known. It will be too late at that point. These must be done right now, and we’re encouraging the process to start and we are in constant communication with the parties to help them come up with a process and a methodology to get these talks started.”

Violence continues

One contentious issue which may unravel the fragile peace deal is the growing culture of ethnic conflict in the south. Since 2008, at least 2,500 people have been killed and 350,000 displaced from their homes by ethnic conflict and cattle rustling, according to a January 2010 report compiled by aid groups including the British charity Oxfam.

Prior to the outbreak of conflict in 1983, cattle rustlers used archaic weapons such as spears, and bows and arrows. But now they carry automatic assault weapons, particularly AK-47s.

Recent consignments, confiscated by South Sudanese security agents, are of brand new weapons.

The sources of these weapons remain an open secret, although the north has distanced itself from supplying them. SPLM secretary general Pagan Amum believes “the enemies of peace” are supplying the weapons to disrupt the referendum.

“The referendum must be conducted on January 9, 2011 as stipulated in the peace agreement,” he told journalists in Juba.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 27 2007 (IPS)

‘‘Italians used to think of Africa in terms of safari and animals, especially the Big Five. Now they are realising that there’s business potential in South Africa,’’ says Giovanna Roma, secretary general of the Italian South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Northern, Eastern and Western Cape.

That South Africa is about more than elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo (the Big Five) was clear during the visit of a trade delegation from Italy to South Africa earlier this month (July 9-12).

Headed by Massimo D’Alema, both Italian deputy prime minister and foreign minister, the 150-strong delegation included one of Italy’s largest tour operators, trading under the acronym ASTOI, a few infrastructure firms and eight banks, including UniCredit Bank, Italy’s largest.

‘‘Italian companies have realised that it’s not only in Brazil, China or Argentina that they can do business,’’ Roma told IPS in an interview. ‘‘They see good infrastructure in South Africa.’’

Italy ranks amongst South Africa’s top ten trading partners. Total trade between South Africa and Italy, which picked up after the demise of apartheid in 1994, now amounts to about 5.2 billion dollars, according to figures supplied by the Italian Central Institute of Statistics.

D’Alema believes there’s still room for improvement. ‘‘South Africa represents an emerging power in economic terms. Italian entrepreneurs are convinced that the business partnership with South Africa is a real and attractive opportunity.

‘‘I think that the presence of so many Italian entrepreneurs in our delegation is an important signal that they are confident about the future of South Africa,’’ he said during the visit.

According to Ronnie Mamoepa, spokesperson for the South African department of foreign affairs, South Africa has a negative trade balance with Italy when gold and certain other minerals are excluded.

South Africa’s exports to Italy include iron, steel, alloys, coal, granite, fish, beef and leather as well as chemicals. The exports amounted to 1,108,114 dollars in 2005 and rose to 1,385,178 dollars in 2006, according to South Africa’s department of trade and industry.

In 2005 South Africa imported goods from Italy worth 1,527,520 dollars and the following year 1,395,977 dollars. They include machine tools, vehicles and components, industrial machinery, jewellery and telecommunications equipment.

Issues of concern from the Italian point of view, said Roma, are ‘‘problems with customs duties for products such as wine and spirits. There is too much bureaucracy. They also find certain duties too high. It is also hard to export cold meat to South Africa.’’

Asked whether Italian companies signed any new deals in South Africa during the visit, Roma laughed. ‘‘From my experience, Italian people are not quick to sign a deal. July and August are holidays in Italy. Business will pick up from September after the holidays,’’ she said.

‘‘The companies which came to South Africa will hold meetings, workshops and seminars with their associates in Italy to ‘sell’ South Africa. We’ll find out in a few months whether they are going to do follow-ups,’’ she said. ‘‘The companies were mostly using the visit to network in South Africa.’’

At a one-day (July 9) conference organised by South Africa-Italy Business Forum in the commercial hub of Johannesburg, South African deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, echoed Mamoepa’s statement.

‘‘The challenge is, of course, to narrow the balance of trade which is currently in favour of Italy so as to ensure that our countries benefit mutually from our trade relations. However, this should be done without holding back the current levels of investment from both our countries,’’ she said.

South Africa hopes to benefit from Italy’s experience in the small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) sector.

‘‘I’m told that companies such as Fiat and Parmalat are household names in the Italian business world. These are among the many Italian companies that have also become household names in our country, serving as living examples of the success stories that South Africa can and must tell.

‘‘The number of joint ventures between companies from both our two countries, particularly in our mining sector is, encouragingly, rising,’’ Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

Mamoepa said Italian investments in South Africa amounted to 53.2 million dollars in 2005.

Local companies such as South African Breweries (SAB) Miller, Sasol and Dimension Data have also made inroads in Italy. ‘‘We are beginning to observe encouraging signs that more and more South African companies are following the path charted by companies such as Sasol,’’ Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

South African authorities have been working hard to project their country as a safe destination for foreign investment. ‘‘Ours provides one of the friendliest business environments in the world. South Africa is ranked 28 in the World Bank Investment Climate Survey,’’ she pointed out.

South Africa’s economy is also doing well. ‘‘For the past three years we have been registering an annual growth rate of five percent and creating 500,000 jobs per annum. Government is confident that we will be able to achieve our targeted annual growth rate of at least six percent as of 2008,’’ Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

But challenges remain. One of them is Zimbabwe which D’Alema and his South African counterpart, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, discussed during the visit. Zimbabwe, whose inflation rate has hit 10,000 percent, the highest in the world, used to be the second strongest economy in the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC), after South Africa.

‘‘Clearly a problematic economy in Zimbabwe means that SADC as a region, including South Africa, will feel the consequences. But we have to do all our best to revitalise or restart in a way, regenerate the economy there for the benefit of the Zimbabwean people and the region,’’ Dlamini-Zuma told journalists.

‘‘Of course, Zimbabwe has been one of our biggest trading partners so it’s very important on all fronts that their economy is regenerated.’’

Speaking in Cape Town on July 11, Giuseppe Boscoscure, president of ASTOI, regretted that only 50,000 South Africans, half of them on business, visited Italy last year.

‘‘To sort out the problem, I think Italy should introduce a direct flight to South Africa to boost trade and tourism,’’ Ben Broun, who is researching international trade at the University of South Africa (UNISA), told IPS by phone.

Italian tourists have to take connecting flights from other European countries to travel to South Africa, and South African tourists have to take connecting flights to get to Italy.

The other challenge which worries the business community, including foreign investors, is South Africa’s growing crime rate. The 2006/2007 report by the South Africa Police Service (SAPS) shows a 3.5 percent rise in murders, a 118 percent increase in violent bank robberies, a 25.4 percent escalation in house break-ins and a six percent rise in car hijackings.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 18 2007 (IPS)

Representatives of Sudan&#39s government and rebel groups will meet in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha next month in a bid to hammer out a deal to end four years of conflict in Darfur.

Women returning to a displaced persons camp in Darfur, gripped by civil war since 2003. Credit: Derk Segaar/IRIN

While the Libyan meeting was attended by Sudan&#39s government, the European Union and representatives of 14 other countries, none of Darfur&#39s rebel groups took part.

Korwa Adar, a senior researcher at Africa Institute of South Africa, a think tank based in the capital of Pretoria, says a repeat of this situation must be avoided for the Arusha talks to have any chance of success.

"The Arusha conference…must be inclusive. Rebel groups, civil society organisations, politicians – representatives of all stakeholders – must be included, because you don&#39t want to give an opportunity for others to sabotage the peace process now or in the future," he told IPS.

"It&#39s good to involve all the players in the negotiations for (talks) to have an enduring effect," added Adar, also the co-editor of &#39Sudan Peace Process: Challenges and Future Prospects&#39.

While the guerrilla campaign against Sudan&#39s government in Darfur was initially launched by two rebel movements in 2003, there are now about a dozen groupings. This has complicated peace efforts, says Timothy Otieno, a researcher at the Johannesburg-based Institute for Global Dialogue, also a think tank.

"Khartoum would like to play one rebel group off against the other," he told IPS. "This will not bring peace."

A new rebel coalition called the United Front for Liberation and Development was announced over the weekend in the Eritrean capital, Asmara. The group has been formed with a view to presenting a united front in peace talks with Khartoum; however, it only includes the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance, the Revolutionary Democratic Front Forces and two smaller factions of the Sudan Liberation Army. Major rebel groups like the Justice and Equality Movement and the Greater Sudan Liberation Movement remain outside the coalition.

This is not the first attempt to unite Darfur&#39s rebels. Twice this year, the semi-autonomous Government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) has tried – and failed – to bring the rebels to Juba, the capital of south Sudan. GOSS President Salva Kiir, who is also the first vice-president of Sudan, traveled to Chad and Libya in a bid to persuade the rebels to meet in Juba.

In addition, Kiir&#39s party, the Sudan People&#39s Liberation Movement, has named a special envoy for Darfur, Clement Janda; he is currently meeting with various rebel groups to help them unify their position.

Kiir wants to avoid repeating events of 2006, when a peace deal was reached in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, but signed by only one rebel faction.

Noted Otieno: "The 2006 Abuja deal was accepted by one rebel group out of three. This is why it doesn&#39t hold water. You cannot exclude the major players, whatever disagreement you have with them. They determine what goes on the ground. They can cause havoc."

As efforts to convene the next round of peace talks proceed, the United Nations is putting together a hybrid force of more than 20,000 peacekeepers to monitor and protect civilians in Darfur. The world body says over 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced there since fighting erupted over alleged marginalisation of the area.

Sudan&#39s government responded to the rebel offensive with aerial bombardments, and by supporting attacks by Arab militants known as "janjaweed" – or "men on horseback" – accused of carrying out atrocities in Darfur. Nomadic Arabs have for many years been at odds with settled ethnic groups in the region over control of resources.

The AU has already deployed 7,000 peacekeepers in Darfur, which is approximately the size of France. However, these troops are ill-equipped.

"The U.N. should give financial and diplomatic support to the AU like the AU gave IGAD to resolve the north-south conflict," Adar said, in reference to the mediation of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development in the 21-year conflict between north and south Sudan – which ended with a 2005 accord. IGAD comprises Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

Sudanese President Omar al Bashir has previously made it clear that he prefers peacekeepers under the command of the AU, even threatening to fight U.N. forces if they deployed in Darfur without Khartoum&#39s consent. But the head of state appears to have shifted his stance now.

"Sudan has been forced by the international community to accept the hybrid (U.N. and AU) force," Adar said.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 12 2007 (IPS)

Two years ago, several West African states found themselves in the grip of severe food shortages – with some three million people affected in Niger alone. Children died, aid officials wrung their hands, people marched in Niger&#39s capital, Niamey, to demand food…But were lessons learned – really learned – to ensure that the crisis does not recur?

Meagre harvests in Niger two years ago brought suffering to millions. Credit: IIED/Evelyn Hockstein

&#39Beyond Any Drought&#39, launched Wednesday, was produced by the Sahel Working Group – an inter-agency coalition – and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a London-based non-governmental organisation (NGO).

"People blame locusts, drought and high food prices for the crisis that affected more than three million people in Niger in 2005," notes Vanessa Rubin, Africa Hunger Advisor for CARE International, in a Jul. 11 IIED press statement.

"But these were just triggers. The real cause of the problem was that people there are chronically vulnerable. Two years later, they still are."

In an analysis of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the report notes that this vulnerability results in part from the marginalisation of poor farmers, and women&#39s lack of access to education and property.

As observers have also indicated, the Sahara&#39s encroachment southwards into the Sahel is compromising the quality of soils, putting rural communities in an even more precarious situation. "History will repeat itself unless governments in the Sahel and donor agencies adopt an entirely new strategy for the region," says IIED Director Camilla Toulmin in the Jul. 11 statement.

"This needs to build on the knowledge, skills and priorities of local people, strengthening local rights to land, soils and water, and giving people a voice in how decisions are made. Building local resilience is key to reducing vulnerability."

Accordingly, the report calls for increased aid to the Sahel, and better co-ordination between development and emergency relief efforts – an appeal echoed by others.

"The Sahel governments can support economic activities like beekeeping and ecotourism. The people can make small things like handicrafts to earn some money," Frank Musasiri, chairman of the National NGO Co-ordination Committee on Desertification in Kenya, told IPS by phone from the capital of Nairobi.

But, he noted, "Combating desertification in the Sahel will not be easy."

According to Richard Worthington of Earthlife Africa, an NGO based in Johannesburg, South Africa, "What&#39s clear is that Africa will have a reduced water supply. There&#39s already less water in the Sahel."

"The consequences for people living in sub-Saharan Africa will depend on the response of the international community," he said in an interview with IPS.

Sahelian food shortages of two years ago can be traced back to August 2004, when the rains failed. Those crops that survived the drought were consumed in large part by locusts that swarmed across West Africa later in the year.

Small harvests in October were followed by an initial United Nations appeal in November; however, virtually no aid was pledged.

The need for more investment in rural areas was also highlighted in the 2006 issue of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation&#39s annual report, &#39The State of Food Insecurity in the World&#39.

"Public investment in infrastructure, agricultural research, education and extension is indispensable for promoting agricultural growth. Actual public expenditures on agriculture in many poor countries do not reflect the importance of the sector, particularly in those with high prevalence of undernourishment," the document states.

"External assistance to agriculture and rural development has declined compared with the levels of the 1980s," it adds.

"Climate change and degradation of ecosystems will pose new challenges for expanding production and conserving natural resources."

Environmental groups like the Greenbelt Movement of Kenya, founded by 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, encourage tree planting to combat desertification.

Musariri cautions that this approach has its limitations, noting that "when seeds come up, the plants are destroyed by goats, sheep and cattle, and there&#39s no replenishment".

An NGO active in Burkina Faso has shown that attempts are being made to address this problem, however.

&#39newTree-nouvelarbre&#39 enters into partnerships with community groups to ring-fence areas that are designated by locals for reforestation, to ensure that plant life is protected, and that reclaimed areas provide communities with a source of income (see: &#39Q&A: "The Sahel Should Already Have Been Green"&#39).

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 10 2007 (IPS)

What is a common factor in ensuring that women do not marry too young, do not have more children than they can cope with, do not die giving birth – and contract HIV in smaller numbers? Men.

A large family at a Uganda refugee camp. Credit: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

"Experience shows that men&#39s involvement and participation can make all the difference," notes Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in a statement for World Population Day.

"By discouraging early marriage, promoting girls&#39 education, fostering equitable relationships, and supporting women&#39s reproductive health and rights, progress is made."

The difficulties of breaking down gender stereotypes to free men to play a more positive role in the lives of their partners are well known.

But, to what extent are institutions being reformed to assist men?

According to Bafana Khumalo, co-founder of the Sonke Gender Justice Network, a non-governmental organisation based in Johannesburg, there is some way to go.

"When you talk about sexual reproductive health, for example, and you go to the hospital, you find that the system targets women. The environment is not friendly to men. The majority of the nurses are women," he told IPS.

"Some of the men come back complaining that they have been chased away by nurses. The nurses tell them that it&#39s not a man&#39s place."

In a bid to improve gender relations, the network holds regular workshops around South Africa.

"We encourage men to accompany their women to antenatal clinics. We tell them to continue with the process until their partners give birth," Khumalo said.

"We need to change the system and the mindset."

Women on the front lines of changing mindsets may face obstacles, however, says Lisa Vetten: a researcher at the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre to End Violence Against Women, also based in the economic hub of Johannesburg.

"It&#39s difficult talking to men, especially when you are female," she told IPS. "But of course, men are not all the same. One can sometimes have success with older men. This is because older men fear losing their partners, children and property."

That progress is being made is shown by the Sonke Gender Justice Network&#39s initiative in a rural farming community in the northern Limpopo province.

"They (male farm workers) are now helping with dishes. They clean the house – and more men want to join their group. As a result, women from that community have been calling us and asking what we have done to their men," Khumalo said, laughing.

The network is also trying to include traditional leaders in its work through invoking the concept of "ubuntu" – a term used in a number of South African languages that can be loosely translated as "humanity". More broadly, it refers to a traditional belief that a person&#39s humanity is determined by the extent to which the humanity of others is upheld.

But, the NGO has found that approaching the leaders requires considerable tact.

"You don&#39t start by criticising their way of life as being backward. They will close ranks and refuse to talk to you. It&#39s safe to talk to the elders, for example, about the problems of women who have been kicked out of their matrimonial homes. Kicking out women goes against the spirit of ubuntu," Khumalo said.

The theme of this year&#39s World Population Day echoes that of the UNFPA&#39s annual &#39State of World Population&#39 report for 2005, titled &#39The Promise of Equality: Gender Equity, Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals&#39.

"Partnering with men is an important strategy for advancing reproductive health and rights, which are so closely linked to the MDGs," notes the document.

"Husbands often make decisions about family planning, their wives&#39 economic activities and the use of household resources, including for doctors&#39 and school fees. These decisions influence the well-being and prospects of the whole family," it adds.

"The care and support of an informed husband also improves pregnancy and childbirth outcomes and can mean the difference between life and death in cases of complications, when women need immediate medical care."

According to the 2006 Human Development Report, produced by the United Nations Development Programme, 84 percent of deliveries in South Africa occur in the presence of skilled health workers – the personnel who can ensure that complications do not result in maternal death.

This figure rises to 98 percent for deliveries in the richest 20 percent of the population – and sinks to 68 percent for the poorest fifth of society.

The fact that many women give birth under dangerous conditions is reflected in maternal mortality statistics. The Human Development Report notes that 150 female deaths are reported annually for every 100,000 live births in South Africa – compared to six for Norway, the state that ranks top of the report&#39s Human Development Index (HDI).

The HDI lists countries around the world according to how they succeed in providing their citizens with a long, healthy life; knowledge – and respectable living standards.

Contraceptive prevalence for South African married women aged 15 to 49 is 56 percent, while in Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United States – countries that rank in the top 10 of the HDI – it is 82 percent, 79 percent and 76 percent, respectively.

South Africa was placed at position 121 of the 177 countries evaluated for HDI 2006.

However, in the report&#39s Gender-related Development Index, where HDI rankings are adjusted to reflect inequalities between women and men, South Africa ranks at 92.

This does not appear to compare positively with figures released just five years previously.

In the 2001 HDI, which listed 162 nations, South Africa came in at 94 – and 85 on the Gender-related Development Index.

Of the 5.3 million adults living with HIV/AIDS in the country, more than half – 3.1 million – are women, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 10 2007 (IPS)

Pius Ncube, the outspoken Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe, has urged President Robert Mugabe to step down – this as the country faces deepening political and economic woes.

“Mugabe is a man who is a megalomaniac. He loves power, he lives for power. Even his own party is appealing to him to step down. Zimbabweans are desperate to offer him anything (for him) to relinquish power,” he told journalists in South Africa’s commercial hub, Johannesburg, Tuesday.

Ncube was launching a report titled ‘Destructive Engagement: Violence, Mediation and Politics in Zimbabwe’, published by the Solidarity Peace Trust. He chairs this church-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), which aims – in part – to further justice and peace in Zimbabwe.

In the 44-page document, the trust accuses the Mugabe regime of continuing to use violence against its political opponents in order to cling to power.

“Out of 414 individuals interviewed, 30 percent or 122 reported torture between March, April and May 2007. This is a shockingly high figure, yet it represents the tip of the iceberg in Zimbabwe. Apart from politically motivated torture, torture of those arrested on suspicion of having committed a criminal offence is routine in Zimbabwe,” notes the report.

“In 90 percent of the attacks…government agencies such as the police, Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and army” were involved, it adds. More than three-quarters of reported cases were in the capital, Harare – “one of the two major urban areas considered to be opposition territory”.

Recent years have seen Zimbabwe plunged into a crisis caused by a variety of factors, including increased repression and politically-motivated farm seizures. Mugabe accuses the West of plotting to unseat him, and of opposing land reform in Zimbabwe because it has caused minority white farmers to be dispossessed.

Tuesday’s launch came as the president, in power since 1980, had ordered price cuts, this amidst runaway inflation and widespread shortages of essential goods.

“Inflation is now 5,000 percent. But economists say it’s (actually) 10,000 percent,” Arnold Tsunga, executive director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, an NGO based in Harare, said in an interview with IPS.

More than 1,300 supermarket managers and owners have been arrested for refusing to sell their merchandise at the lower prices.

“I think Mugabe is trying to impress and woo voters for next year’s elections. Unfortunately his ploy isn’t working,” Ken Tandare, a youth activist with Zimbabwe’s main opposition group, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told IPS on the sidelines of the launch.

“All basic items such as cooking oil, salt, sugar and mealie meal (maize meal, a staple food) have disappeared from the supermarket shelves and resurfaced in the thriving parallel market. The goods are now being sold for more than triple their original prices in the parallel market. This has made people very angry.”

Noted Brian Raftopolous, a Zimbabwean academic and veteran political analyst who is now based in South Africa: “The price cuts are not going to deal with shortages. Shortages will continue. There’s no way out for the economy. It’s going to affect the region, especially South Africa.”

The foundering economy has forced Zimbabweans to take desperate measures.

“Watchmen now live at the premises where they work. They can’t afford the 50,000 Zimbabwe dollars (about 35 U.S. cents) for a one-way fare on public transport. A watchman gets 1.5 million Zimbabwe dollars (about 11 U.S. dollars) a month,” said Jonah Gokova of the Christian Alliance of Zimbabwe, in response to a question from IPS about how low-paid workers in the country were making ends meet.

“They also need money for sugar, cooking oil, salt and bread. The price of a loaf of bread, which used to cost 40,000 Zimbabwe dollars (about 28 U.S. cents), has now been slashed to 22,000 Zimbabwe dollars (about 16 U.S. dollars) under the ongoing price cuts.”

Professionals are also feeling the pinch.

“For example, junior lawyers get about 70 U.S. dollars a month. This means they can’t afford a car and they have to use public means. A seven-seater commuter bus crams around 15 people. A lawyer has to cram himself or herself in there. Since work starts at eight AM, he or she has to wake up at around 5 AM and wait for an hour to catch public transport,” recounted Tsunga.

“Usually there’s a queue of 30 to 50 people waiting for public transport.”

Concerned over events in Zimbabwe, the 14-nation Southern African Development Community, of which Zimbabwe is a member, asked South African President Thabo Mbeki to mediate in the crisis earlier this year – this after Zimbabwe experienced another spike in violence. Millions have fled the state, mainly to neighbouring South Africa.

Various media sources report that the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the two factions of the MDC are already meeting in the South African capital, Pretoria, to engineer a way out of the current impasse.

However, the confinement of reported talks to ZANU-PF and the MDC has enraged Zimbabwe’s civil society.

“We hear that they are meeting in Pretoria. But we don’t know how much the MDC will be prepared to compromise. The MDC has quietly and quickly gone to the negotiations without consulting its structures,” Nicholas Mkaronda, co-ordinator of the South African branch of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, an NGO, told IPS.

Asked whether he was optimistic about the SADC initiative, Mkaronda replied, “One must have hope.”

But hope may be beyond the reach of many in Zimbabwe.

“The political and economic situation in Zimbabwe has now reached life-threatening proportions,” observed Ncube.

“The rapid decline of the economy and the commandist response of the state indicate a government that has neither a strong sense of responsibility towards its citizens, not any substantive plan to move Zimbabwe out of its deepening crisis.”

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 1 2007 (IPS)

The final leg of the 2007 African Union (AU) summit kicked off in the Ghanaian capital of Accra Sunday, with a three-day gathering of the AU Assembly – comprising heads of state and government.

This year&#39s summit is devoted to talks on setting up a continent-wide government to create a "United States of Africa", in the hope of spurring development. The notion of a pan-African government was first advocated by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana&#39s founding president, who helped establish the Organisation of African in 1963. The AU succeeded the OAU in 2002.

"Africans want unity. They want the removal of borders and the removal of customs and any restrictions. They want one identity and they want to move freely across the African continent. They want to be strong in the face of Europe, Asia and America," said Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, a leading supporter of continental government – this in a message to a conference held in South Africa&#39s capital, Pretoria, ahead of the assembly.

The Jun. 29 event was organised by the Centre for International Political Studies at the University of Pretoria, and the Libyan embassy. Similar gatherings have taken place in Uganda, Senegal and Libya.

Gaddafi rejects the argument that deepening regional integration is a necessary precursor to continental government.

"Imagine when North Africa will become one state from Egypt to Mauritania. This will not happen…Even Algeria and Morocco which are sisterly countries are in a state of war and will never meet. Libya and Egypt will not unite. Impossible!!!" he noted, also pointing to disunity in the Horn of Africa.

"There have been thousands of casualties in Ethiopia and Eritrea as they fought one another. They used to fight until recently. Up until now they are in a state of war."

Ethiopia and Eritrea engaged in a bitter, two-year border war that ended in 2000.

Ongoing instability in Somalia has aggravated matters. While a weak transitional government has been installed in the capital, Mogadishu, two parts of the north – Puntland and Somaliland – have declared themselves autonomous and independent, respectively.

"People want us to wait until Somalia unites and ends its problems. Somalia has split into three or four countries. Uniting Somalia is a challenge and it might not unite," said Gaddafi.

In light of this, it was easier to have pan-African government than first bring neighbouring states together: "All these countries will converge immediately in African unity…Africa&#39s unity will unite them without any problems."

Delivering a keynote speech at the Pretoria gathering, former Mozambican president Joachim Chissano called on Africans to "join the express train to union government or risk remaining in perpetual oblivion in the world of globalisation and proliferation".

"The time is now. Tomorrow will be too late. It&#39s now or never."

A 2006 AU study proposing the functions and responsibilities of a pan-African administration, &#39An African Union Government: Towards the United States of Africa&#39, lays out a three-phase process that would enable continental government to be in place by 2015.

Activities to be carried out in the years leading up to this deadline include reaching agreement on how to fund the government, drawing up a constitution for it, and holding elections for posts in the administration.

But, "It&#39s not clear what sovereignty each state would be willing to cede to the continental body," said Che Ajulu, a researcher at the Johannesburg-based Institute for Global Dialogue, a non-governmental organisation, in reference to the 53 AU members.

Andre Thomashausen, director of the Institute of Foreign and Comparative Law at the University of Pretoria, does not hold out much hope for this week&#39s gathering in Ghana. "I&#39m afraid that the Accra summit will degenerate into protocols…" he said.

Since Africa&#39s embrace of multi-party democracy, Thomashausen added, "the living standard of the people has not improved. Some think that Africa should follow the China model of pursuing development before democracy."

Gaddafi called on Africans to throw their weight behind the project for continental government.

"Africa has huge potential which could enable it to become a super power if it is united. We do not want the historic and fatal resolution of unity to be hostage to the will of those meeting in a small hall in the so-called African summit which is attended by scores of presidents. Such historic fatal resolutions have to be the will of millions of Africans and not just a score of presidents."

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 1 2007 (IPS)

The late activist and economist Jose Negrao, who posthumously won the Southern Africa Trust’s Drivers of Change Award last year, is featuring again at this year’s awards. His brainchild, Mozambique’s Group of 20 anti-poverty civil society organisations, has been nominated for the 2007 award.

Nominations for this year’s Drivers of Change Award close in five days’ time on Friday July 6. It is only the second year that organisations and individuals in the categories of civil society, business and government can be nominated for the award.

The award is not monetary but aims at acknowledging initiatives in the Southern African region which contribute to overcoming poverty and succeeds in making a real and lasting difference to poor people’s lives.

When one mentions Jose Negrao’s name, colleagues and friends remember him as a selfless person who devoted most of his life to fighting poverty in Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony situated along Africa’s south-eastern coast.

Negrao, a professor of Development Economics at Mozambique’s University of Eduardo Mondlane, was a champion of the poor and of social change. He sadly died in 2005, aged 49, leaving a formidable legacy.

‘‘He was on the poor people’s side, unlike most academics. He made sure poor people’s voices got into the country’s national poverty index,’’ Graig Castro of international human rights organisation Oxfam told IPS. Oxfam nominated Negrao for the 2006 Drivers of Change Award.

‘‘One of his qualities was to bring different opinions together without any antagonism. He had a rare quality not found in most people,’’ he said.

Negrao was known for his passion to reduce poverty in rural areas where 70 percent of Mozambicans live. In the 1990s he stayed in Zambezia province on the border with Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, working on his PhD thesis titled ‘‘Economic behaviour of the rural poor’’.

‘‘His argument was that poor people are poor because they don’t have opportunities. If they access opportunities through economic and political power they will be able to improve their conditions,’’ explained Pomash Manhicane, executive director at the Cruzeiro do Sul Jose Negrao Institute for Development Research, a think tank established by Negrao in Maputo, Mozambique.

‘‘He used to travel a lot around Mozambique with his students to talk to poor people and conduct research on poverty.

‘‘He will be remembered for leading the land reform campaign in Mozambique. He coordinated 15,000 volunteers to campaign against the privatisation of land,’’ said Manhicane told IPS in an interview.

‘‘He made sure that the poor, especially women, had a voice in the formulation of the land law. Negrao will also be remembered for helping to set up the Group of 20 civil society organizations, or G20, to fight poverty in Mozambique,’’ said Manhicane.

No stranger to awards, Negrao received former Anglican Archbishop and anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu’s Footprints of Legend Leadership Award in 2002. He was named personality of the year by the Mozambican weekly newspaper ‘‘Savana’’. The Danish also honoured him for his work.

In January, Mozambique’s National Union of Peasants commemorated the death of Negrao, Manhicane said.

Negrao’s commitment to fighting poverty was well-founded. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) put the country’s per capita income at around 210 US dollars per annum and life expectancy at 41.9 years, among the lowest in Africa.

This is mainly due to HIV/AIDS which also fuels poverty. Around 1.8 million Mozambicans are living with the virus, according to a 2007 Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) report.

The Southern Africa Trust initiated the Drivers of Change Award because ‘‘there is so much happening at grassroots level which is not known. Some projects are working. We want to bring them to the fore,’’ said Petronilla Ndebele, communications and partnerships manager at the Southern Africa Trust.

Apart from recognition, the award ‘‘has great potential to provide a platform for sharing experiences, learning and linking similar initiatives,’’ Ndebele explained. The Southern Africa Trust is a non-governmental funding organisation based in South Africa’s commercial hub of Johannesburg.

The Southern Africa Trust is looking for individuals and organisations which have demonstrated innovation in strategies to develop and implement better public policy for ending poverty and inequality in Southern Africa.

‘‘For the business award, we look at corporate social responsibility to empower people. We also look at the nominee’s labour policy and whether it is employing people from the area,’’ Ndebele said. The winner will be announced at a gala event in October 2007.

She pointed out that 40 percent of the people in the Southern African Development Community, with its combined population of 230 million, live below the poverty line of one dollar a day.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 1 2007 (IPS)

Population issues are in the spotlight at present with the recent release of the United Nations Population Fund&#39s annual report – and World Population Day, to be commemorated Jul. 11.

&#39The State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth&#39, issued Jun. 27, notes that innovative approaches are needed to address an expected doubling of populations in urban areas of Africa and Asia by 2030. "Poor people will make up a large part of urban growth…" it states.

One of the recommendations for dealing with this growth successfully is for governments to "accept the right of poor people to the city".

Is any progress being made in this regard in Johannesburg, South Africa&#39s commercial hub, which grapples with poverty and migration on large scale?

Stuart Wilson, a researcher at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies – based at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg – says the picture is mixed.

"One, we have an influx from outside the city; there is no plan to provide shelter for the newcomers in this category. Two, we have informal settlements, which the city authorities are trying to formalise now. Three, there&#39s the inner city. Here, the city (local government) is moving very slowly to provide accommodation…But they are not evicting people now," he told IPS.

These words are echoed by Neil Fraser, who runs a consultancy dedicated to the revitalisation and regeneration of the inner city.

"As the mayor said recently, we don’t evict people. We have to provide them with alternative accommodation before eviction," he told IPS, noting that the places where some lived were nonetheless cause for concern. "There are a lot of bad buildings unfit for human habitation. Some of the people in the inner city live in dangerous places."

The inner city has about 67,000 people living in 230 buildings, according to Wilson – while there are 190 informal settlements around Johannesburg, with a population of about 800,000.

Fraser believes that there is currently a small number of people who are homeless in Johannesburg: "Between 1992 and 1993 there were about 6,000. I think the figure has gone down considerably. I guess there are about 1,200 people now."

South Africa&#39s last census, in 2002, put the population of the city at 3.2 million; but Fraser estimates it may have grown to about four million.

Jean de Plessis, co-ordinator for the South African branch of the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Eviction, an international non-governmental organisation, notes that there is little to be achieved in fighting urban migration – a view also put forward by the UNFPA report.

"Our philosophy is that it does not work to try to reverse migration. You cannot keep people away from settling in cities. It has never worked anywhere," he told IPS.

The demand for low-cost housing extends beyond Johannesburg, across South Africa, presenting additional challenges.

"Although we appreciate the increase in the housing budget…our projections indicate if we are for instance to eradicate our backlog by 2014, a funding shortfall of 102.5 billion rand (about 15 billion dollars) would exist, while if we attempt to eradicate the backlog by 2016 the funding shortfall would increase to 253 billion rand (about 34 billion dollars)," Housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu told parliament last month.

According to the UNFPA report, over half the global population (of 6.7 billion) will be city-dwellers from next year.

"This wave of urbanization is without precedent. The changes are too large and too fast to allow planners and policymakers simply to react…" a Jun. 27 press release quoted UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid as saying.

"What happens in the cities of Africa and Asia and other regions will shape our common future," she noted. "We must abandon a mindset that resists urbanization and act now to begin a concerted global effort to help cities unleash their potential to spur economic growth and solve social problems."

World Population Day will this year be commemorated under the theme &#39Men at Work&#39.

The UNFPA website notes that men are central to effective family planning, and decisions that affect the health and education of women and girls – all significant matters for population and development.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
ST LUCIA, South Africa, Jun 14 2007 (IPS)

A section of the world heritage site the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, Africa’s largest estuary, has been returned to its rightful owners, who have in turn undertaken to manage the land in accordance with the country’s environmental laws.

The park, situated in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province adjacent to the Indian Ocean, was proclaimed in 1999 as a world heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). It has five unique ecosystems that include species such as black rhino, wild dog, elephant, cheetah, whales and coelacanths.

The department of environmental affairs and tourism has returned 12,000 hectares of the park’s total area of 220,000 hectares to the 9,135 people whose ancestors were driven out of this area.

The park’s importance was reflected upon in a speech by the minister of environmental affairs and tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk. The event was held near the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park, about nine hours’ drive from South Africa’s commercial hub of Johannesburg.

In a message read to assembled guests on June 9, van Schalkwyk said: ‘‘South Africa has a duty to both ensure the wetland park has the highest level of protection and to restore the title to its original owners.

‘‘The new land owners will have the title to the land but have agreed that the land will not be used for any other purpose than for conservation and its associated activities, in perpetuity.” Balancing his speech carefully, van Schalkwyk also noted the need to redress the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.

‘‘It is fitting that I acknowledge the history of suffering associated with conservation in this country. Along with many of our protected areas, the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park was an area where people once lived. We can trace the story of occupation of this area back to the early Stone Age people between 500,000 and one million years ago.

‘‘Ironically and unfortunately, conservation and forced removals went hand-in-hand,” he said.

This claim settlement follows on the heels of another where land has been returned in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi National Park. The recipients undertook to adhere to the country’s environmental laws and regulations in their management of the land. The first claim of this kind was when land in the Kruger National Park was returned to the Makulekes in the late 1990s.

The onus to protect their section of the St Lucia Wetland Park now falls on the new owners. Speaker after speaker emphasised that they will co-manage the property with the park authorities.

‘‘Animals and communities have been living together since time immemorial,” Amon Sithole, chairperson of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Landowners Association, told IPS in an interview. ‘‘I see no reason why people should be sceptical about our ability to protect the animals and the park.”

‘‘Even in the olden days, you would not come across people shooting animals at random. They used to shoot only one animal, even if it was a small one like a rabbit. It was a general norm,” Simon Gumede, the Zulu chief in charge of the area, told IPS.

To reinforce their cooperation, the new owners and the wetland authority have agreed to set up an education trust to help youth gain qualifications in conservation and tourism.

‘‘This model of conservation is evidence of government’s commitment to continuing to fulfil its national and international obligations to protect our natural assets while at the same time providing a framework for economic upliftment and poverty,” van Schalkwyk said.

The community will receive R66 million (about 9.5 million dollars) from the department of land affairs, a big chunk of it for development, according to its minister, Lulama Xingwana. The remaining R14.5 million (about 2.1 million dollars) will be disbursed as financial compensation to the 1,450 households that were forcibly removed by apartheid, she said.

The recipients appear to be prepared for the challenges ahead. ‘‘We have been discussing this issue since 1994,” Sithole said. ‘‘We will not interfere with the environment. And we will make sure that there is no decision taken without the consent of the community.”

Gumede said conflicts between animals and humans are natural. ‘‘There is the potential for havoc when people interact with wild animals. Some of these animals are extra-territorial. When you encroach on their territory there is bound to be conflict. Even cattle that you keep at home sometimes stray and destroy crops,” he said.

During the handover ceremony, a huge banner near the front table captured the thoughts of South Africa’s international statesman, former president Nelson Mandela.

Visiting in 2002, he said: ‘‘The wetland park must be the only place on the globe where the world’s oldest land mammal (the rhinoceros) and the world’s biggest terrestrial mammal (the elephant) share an ecosystem with the world’s oldest fish (the coelacanth) and the world’s biggest marine mammal (the whale).”

The last word comes from the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park chief executive officer Andrew Zaloumis. He said: ‘‘There are still many challenges. The most important is to ensure progress continues towards putting an end to the paradox of poverty amid the plenty of nature. Restitution and sustainable settlement of land claims are key to this.”

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
RICHARDS BAY, South Africa, Jun 14 2007 (IPS)

‘‘Today we are here to say never again shall our people lose their land rights because they are black,” said Lulama Xingwana, South Africa’s minister of agriculture and land affairs.

She was speaking at the handover of a section of land in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi National Park about one hour’s drive from the mining and industrial town of Richards Bay. Richards Bay is about eight hours by car from South Africa’s commercial hub of Johannesburg.

Nelson Masondo is one of the delighted recipients. His ancestral land, seized by the government 67 years ago, has been returned. He is now a property owner.

The 52-year-old Masondo was not even born in 1940 when his parents were evicted from land which was turned into a national park in what is today known as KwaZulu-Natal province. The province, the most populated in South Africa, runs along the Indian Ocean coast.

As Masondo talked outside a tent where the function to return the land was being held on June 8, the interview was almost drowned out by blissful ululation and boisterous Zulu battle cries. ‘‘They are now signing the transfer document,” said Masondo, smiling as noise thundered from the tent.

Several community leaders, representing 6,702 descendents of the people evicted, signed the document to transfer the 24,210 hectares of land. ‘‘Today our hopes have come true. We are excited,” Masondo said. ‘‘We have been campaigning since 1994 to get our land back.”

Outside the tent a dozen or so men, sporting animal skins and carrying knobkerries in a scene reminiscent of the film ‘‘Zulu” about the 1879 Anglo-Zulu wars, were celebrating the return of their land.

Continuing British colonial patterns, hundreds of thousands of black South Africans were uprooted and dumped in undeveloped areas or turned into tenant farm labourers when the whites-only government launched its campaign to seize land in 1913. The Hluhluwe-Imfolozi National Park, where Masondo’s family was evicted from, is a case in point.

‘‘The community was told to vacate the land under the pretext that the government wanted to rid the area of poisonous tsetse flies and buffalo ticks which were allegedly causing cattle disease. The community vacated the area with the understanding that they would return after three years when the situation was back to normal,” Xingwana said.

‘‘Instead the area was fenced off and converted into a game reserve. Through the action of the government of the day, the community lost their right to the land which they had occupied for generations,” she said.

Community leaders, together with the villagers, have agreed not to physically occupy the park and not to disturb the game, which include the big five: elephant, buffalo, leopard, rhino and lion.

‘‘Our aim is to make the park a sustainable business. We are planning to buy rare animals like white rhino and wild dogs to attract tourists,” Masondo said. The government has allocated about R63 million (about 9 million dollars) to develop the park to this end.

Xingwana offered a piece of advice: ‘‘The land that you are receiving today has good potential for eco-tourism development. You are close to the potential trans-frontier park between Swaziland, Mozambique and South Africa. There are great possibilities in terms of local economic development,” she said.

Unlike other parts, this land was not seized for commercial farming by white people. The democratic, black-dominated government inherited the land in the form of a game park.

‘‘It was politics,” grumbled an official from the department of land affairs when asked by IPS why it took more than a decade for the department of environmental affairs and tourism to return the land to the community.

Playing down the delay, the department of land affairs says it is making progress in settling outstanding land claims. By March 2007 it settled 93 percent of the land claims which had been lodged with the state-run Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights since December 1998.

‘‘Only 7 percent of land claims still remain nationwide,” Godfrey Mdluli, spokesperson for the department of land affairs, told IPS.

Xingwana warned that the government would expropriate land from white commercial farmers if they refused to sell their property within six months of negotiations.

‘‘Landowners who make the loudest noise that a number of the restitution claims are not valid must have a serious rethink and rather support our land programmes,” she said.

‘‘The spirit and purpose of our land legislation is to correct the skewed land ownership and to ensure restorative and redistributive justice and equitable redress for the victims of racial land dispossession,” according to Xingwana.

The department seeks to complete land restitution by 2008. If it does, the government hopes it will achieve the 30-percent target of land to be transferred to black people by 2014.

Chris Jordan, the manager of property rights at the Pretoria-based Transvaal Agricultural Union of South Africa (TAUSA) which represents white commercial farmers, told IPS by phone recently that he did not believe that 70 percent of land will remain in the hands of white farmers by 2014.

‘‘They will not stop at 30 percent. Our calculation is that whites will be left with closer to 50 percent of the land they currently own,” he said.

South Africa is trying to balance land distribution and avoid Zimbabwe-style land grabbing. ‘‘If we go the Zimbabwe way we may lose 15,000 farmers out of the total 46,000 commercial farmers by 2008 or 2010,” Jordan said. ‘‘The pressure on commercial farmers to hand over their land has become intensive.”

Some researchers and institutions say the government will not reach the 30 percent target by 2014. One of them, the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE), a Johannesburg-based think tank, said in a 2005 study that only 4.3 percent of white farmlands had been transferred to black hands between 1994 and 2004.

Refusing to accept defeat, Xingwana insists that they will meet the deadline. ‘‘We are going to disappoint our critics. We are not going to fail,” she said.

As researchers and policymakers argue, Masondo’s preoccupation is to get on with the job in the park.

‘‘We are going to run the property together with the park authorities. We do not have the experience. But we have got very good working relations with them,” he said.

The first conservation land transferred to evictees in terms of a land claim happened in the late 1990s when the Makulekes received a section of the Kruger National Park. They have since continued to manage the land and the game in accordance with environmental regulations.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 5 2007 (IPS)

In the final hours before this week’s Group of Eight (G8) summit gets underway in Germany, activists have underscored the need for progress with both climate change and poverty alleviation – key items on the meeting’s agenda – for there to be real improvement in Africa’s living conditions.

“If the threat of climate change is not removed, it will wipe out all efforts to help the poor through commitments such as aid,” said Ciara O’Sullivan, media co-ordinator for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty – an international coalition grouping civic organisations from over 100 countries.

The G8 comprises the world’s major industrialised nations: Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United States – and Germany, hosting the annual summit as part of its year-long presidency of the grouping. Leaders of the eight countries will begin their gathering Wednesday in the Baltic resort of Heiligendamm under strict security, as thousands of protesters who have been barred from the city issue their demands from nearby Rostock.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government hopes to achieve progress during the Jun. 6-8 talks in drawing up a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which will expire in 2012. The 1997 protocol requires leading industrialised nations to reduce their combined emissions of greenhouse gases – linked to global warming – to five percent below 1990 levels, by 2012.

Under the post-Kyoto proposals put forward by Germany, emissions would be cut even more – to 50 percent below 1990 levels, by 2050 – while energy efficiency would need to be improved by 20 percent come 2020.

However, these proposals are said to be running into opposition from the United States, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. President George W. Bush last week suggested, instead, that up to 15 of the world’s largest greenhouse gas contributors negotiate outside the United Nations to cap their emissions in the long term – but did not put forward targets for these cuts.

While former president Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, Bush abandoned the treaty because of fears that it would undermine the U.S. economy, powered by the fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when burned. Bush has long advocated voluntary targets for greenhouse gas reduction, despite widespread demands for mandatory caps.

“We are calling on the G8 to make deep cuts in emissions as soon as possible, 30 percent by 2020 and 50 percent by 2050,” said Annie Sugrue, Southern Africa co-ordinator for Citizens United for Renewable Energy and Sustainability, a pressure group based in the South African commercial hub of Johannesburg.

Failure to address climate change could have dire consequences for Africa.

A report issued in April by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ‘Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’, predicts that up to 250 million people on the continent will experience problems in accessing sufficient water by 2020 because of climate change. Agricultural production could be halved in certain instances during the same period.

Other possible ill effects include rising sea levels towards the end of the century that will take a toll on densely populated coastal areas.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will be attending his final G8 summit this week before leaving office Jun. 27, told a gathering at the University of South Africa last week that climate change might also exacerbate the spread of disease.

“More than 110 million people in Africa live in regions prone to malaria epidemics. Slight changes in rainfall and temperature could increase this figure by up to 80 million by the end of this century,” he noted.

Blair was in South Africa as part of his final official visit to Africa.

“Chancellor Merkel’s decision to put climate change on the agenda of her G8 Summit gives us an opportunity to inject new momentum into the search for a global solution,” he said.

The outgoing premier also indicated that he would use the summit to urge his G8 counterparts to fulfill promises of aid made in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005. The leaders agreed on debt relief, increasing aid to the developing world by 50 billion dollars annually come 2010 – with 25 billion dollars of this money set aside for Africa – and on funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and primary education.

While in South Africa, Blair said 18 African countries had benefited from 38 billion dollars in debt relief: “Zambia used its debt relief to abolish health user fees, giving tens of thousands of people access to free health care.”

“There has also been progress toward universal access to AIDS drugs, (a) 10-fold increase in people on ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs) in sub-Saharan Africa, now totaling more than one million – 23 percent of those needing treatment. In 2005, this saved more than 250,000 lives.”

But, notes global aid agency Oxfam in a May 18 press release, “…recent figures from the OECD show that in 2006 aid to Africa barely changed, and overall aid actually fell.” (The Paris-based OECD, or Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, groups 30 countries – and specialises in economic research.)

Germany announced last week that it was increasing development aid by some four billion dollars between 2008 and 2111, while Bush promised to double U.S. spending on efforts to address HIV/AIDS to 30 billion dollars over the next five years.

While Oxfam has welcomed these pledges, it noted that Germany’s increase would not enable the country to meet its 2005 promise in Gleneagles to increase aid to 0.51 percent of gross national income by 2010.

“Based on figures from the OECD, Oxfam has calculated that the German government would need to find approximately 1.5 billion euro (about two billion dollars) each year between now and 2010 to meet this target – twice what was announced,” said the agency in a Jun. 1 statement.

The interests of the developing world will be further highlighted at the summit by the presence of leaders from Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa – the five strongest emerging markets – and other developing states.

Growth in these five countries is rapidly drawing them into the debate about cuts in greenhouse emissions.

The G8 is also expected to discuss trade with the five, in the hope of jumpstarting global trade talks, stalled over various issues – including agricultural subsidies in industrialised nations that undermine farmers in poorer regions.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jun 2 2007 (IPS)

Opinions appear divided about outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s legacy concerning Africa – this as the leader ended his last official visit to the continent Friday. The five-day trip took him to Libya, Sierra Leone and South Africa.

Blair is popular in Sierra Leone for his decision in 2000 to send 800 British troops to stabilise the West African country, then under threat from Revolutionary United Front rebels.

“When I visited five years ago, Sierra Leone was a failed state, emerging from horrific conflict which saw 60,000 killed; 10,000 child soldiers; a quarter million women and girls raped; others brutally maimed, hands cut off – a war fuelled by the fight for diamonds and other commodities. We all felt despair at the wickedness that a small group of people could inflict on their compatriots,” Blair said in a speech delivered at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in the capital, Pretoria, Thursday.

“Visiting again, I was again struck by the beauty of Sierra Leone and also its enormous potential of human, mineral and agricultural resources, among the richest in Africa.”

But, certain analysts have questioned the extent of Britain’s role in helping to end Sierra Leone’s conflict.

“I think whether Blair was there or not, Sierra Leone was moving towards resolution. The West African bloc ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) was already working on Sierra Leone and Liberia,” Korwa Adar, an analyst at the Pretoria-based Africa Institute of South Africa, a think tank, told IPS.

“Blair’s legacy is in tatters in Africa. He will be remembered as someone who has done worse than any British leader in history – this in terms of making the world, including Africa, unsafe by assisting Bush in the war on terror,” he added, in reference to U.S. President George Bush.

Richard Kamidza of the African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes, a non-governmental organisation based in the coastal city of Durban, sees the situation differently.

“If we insist on Blair’s role in Iraq, we’ll miss the purpose of his Africa trip,” he told IPS.

“Blair has come to say goodbye to his friends in Africa…(He) is also trying to get leaders around resolving the Zimbabwe and Sudan crises,” said Kamidza.

Political and economic difficulties have plagued Zimbabwe over recent years.

At a news conference held in Pretoria, Friday, Blair endorsed the widely criticised policy of “quiet diplomacy” that South African President Thabo Mbeki is pursuing towards Zimbabwe. Opponents of the strategy claim it has had little effect on the Harare government, held responsible widespread human rights abuses in the Southern African country, and for impoverishing its people.

“The solution ultimately will come from this part of Africa. We’ll have to support the process Mbeki has put in motion,” Blair said.

He also tackled the issue of Zimbabwe in his UNISA address: “The world is waiting, wanting to re-engage with a reforming Zimbabwe government…Change before the 2008 elections (is) essential. The international community must be prepared to help build the shattered economy.”

“In Zimbabwe, decades of repression have forced up to one third of the country to flee. Life expectancy has dropped from 60 in 1990 to 37. And South Africa’s economy loses three percent of GDP (gross domestic product) thanks to Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown.”

Zimbabwe, a former colony of Britain, gained independence in 1980. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has accused Blair and other Western leaders of responsibility for the problems in his country, saying they wish to topple its government.

The western Sudanese region of Darfur, for its part, is embroiled in civil war that broke out in 2003 – and in a vast humanitarian crisis involving tens of thousands of displaced people and refugees. Britain has been campaigning with the United States to increase the number of African Union (AU) peacekeepers deployed there from 7,000 to about 20,000.

“No conflict demonstrates the need for action more than Darfur: 200,000 dead; four million dependent on food aid; 2.1 million displaced persons within Sudan – but also over 230,000 refugees (who) have fled into Chad, joining 140,000 internally displaced Chadians, and almost 50,000 refugees from CAR (Central African Republic) fleeing the fighting in their own country,” Blair said during the UNISA speech.

“It is wrong that President Bashir, intent on bombing his way to a solution, is determined to obstruct any effort made to reinforce the AU’s ability to improve security and stability,” he noted, in reference to Sudan’s leader, Omar al Bashir. “We must offer President Bashir a choice. Engage with us on a solution. Or, if you reject responsibility for the people of Darfur, then we will table and put to a vote sanctions against the regime.”

Adar believes that Blair’s trip was motivated more by commercial considerations than humanitarian intent. The premier was paving the way for British multinationals to enter Libya’s lucrative oil sector, acquire mineral rights in Sierra Leone, and clinch business opportunities in South Africa, he claimed.

“Libya kicked out all those multinationals five years after Muammar Gaddafi came to power in 1969. Blair now wants British multinationals to revisit Libya’s oil industry,” he noted.

While in Libya, Blair did announce a 900-million-dollar contract that will return British Petroleum (BP), Britain’s largest oil firm, to Libya.

Blair will step down Jun. 27, and be replaced by Gordon Brown – Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer.

When the outgoing leader and his wife, Cherie, met former South African president Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg this week, the latter described Blair as “a good friend of South Africa”.

On a more humorous note, the 88-year-old also welcomed Blair – 54, and described by Mandela as “a young man” – to “the retired club of former presidents”.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 31 2007 (IPS)

‘‘We have lost a young woman in South Africa. We have raised R3,500 (500 US dollars) but we need R5,000 (714 dollars). We want to transport the body home to her relatives in Zimbabwe. But it is difficult,” Joyce Dube, director of the Southern African Women’s Institute for Migration Affairs (SAWIMA), told a gathering.

She was speaking at a one-day seminar, titled ‘‘Female Migrants and the Impact of Remittances in the SADC Region”, which brought together some 30 researchers and civil society activists from around the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC). The seminar took place yesterday (May 30) in South Africa’s commercial hub of Johannesburg.

Some participants had difficulty containing their emotions as Dube, who seemed tired, explained the circumstances behind the death of the woman, whose name has been withheld as a sign of respect to her relatives.

The gathering was jointly organised by the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) at South Africa’s Witwatersrand University.

‘‘That kind of money can help the parents of the deceased for three or four months. Instead they are sending them a body in a casket,” Steve Shumba, a Zimbabwean migrant in South Africa, told IPS by phone. ‘‘We go through such painful experiences virtually every day.”

Like hundreds of thousands of other migrants from the SADC region, the woman came to South Africa, the continent’s economic powerhouse, to look for greener pastures.

‘‘Conservatively, 49,000 Zimbabweans cross into South Africa every month. Estimates put the percentage of women between 20 and 55 of the total,” Ayesha Kajee, senior researcher at SAIIA, told IPS at the gathering.

Nobody has any idea about the exact number of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa. Dube reckons that the conservative figure of three million being touted by various researchers and civil society groups is an underestimation. ‘‘I think the number is more than that,” she told IPS.

Zimbabweans are not the only Africans coming to South Africa. Wade Pendleton, a professor at the Southern African Migration Project at the Witwatersrand University, took part in a 57-page study ‘‘SADC Migrants, Remittances and Development”.

He told the gathering that, globally, 250 billion dollars are remitted by migrants annually. ‘‘Recent estimates suggest that the value of remittances from South Africa alone may be as much as R6 billion (around 856 million US dollars) annually,” he said. ‘‘But I think this is an underestimation.”

The study focused on 4,700 households in Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zimbabwe and involved 30,000 people. It found that food tops the list of necessities that cause people to migrate and remit money. Others, in order of importance, are school fees, clothing and transportation, Pendleton said. ‘‘Many of the migrants maintain their links with home through money.”

Willie Kachaka, an official at Malawi’s state-owned National Statistics, said eight percent of the country’s population are migrants. Women constitute 46.7 percent of the migrant population, including nurses working in South Africa, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, he said.

‘‘Studies shows that 75 percent of the remittances are use to purchase food,” he said.

Malawi’s giant neighbour Mozambique, once a refugee-producing country, started to produce economic migrants after the 1992 peace deal between the FRELIMO government and RENAMO rebels. Until then, Mozambicans did not migrate, thanks to the country’s socialist system.

All of that changed because of the structural adjustments introduced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). ‘‘That forced people to migrate internally and across the border,” Ines Raimundo, a lecturer of human geography at Mozambique’s Eduardo Mondlane University, told the gathering.

She said an increasing number of Mozambican women now travel to China, Brazil, Thailand, Hong Kong and Dubai to trade. ‘‘The SADC market is saturated. As a result, women travel to other continents,” Raimundo said.

Researchers say remittances still do not move via financial institutions. ‘‘More than 90 percent of the remittances in the SADC region are done informally. The migrants hand money, for example, to a taxi driver to deliver to their children or relatives at home. It is 95 percent reliable and safe,” Sally Peberdy, project manager at the Southern African Migration Project at Witwatersrand University, told IPS at the meeting.

African women have been travelling for decades to earn money. In the 1960s, women constituted 42 percent of migrants in Africa. Nowadays it is 50 percent, Peberdy said. ‘‘It is not a new thing. It has been overlooked by researchers,” she added.

Stringent immigration requirements impede travel. ‘’A lot of women bribe their way through the border posts because it is difficult to get a visa. You need to fill in forms and present a bank statement,” Peberdy said.

This affects researchers’ data collection, as border jumpers or those who bribe customs officials are not documented.

‘‘It is difficult to calculate the amounts involved in remittances. We need to persuade banks to relax the process of opening a bank account for migrants. We also need to persuade them to reduce charges on money transfers for migrants,” Burton Joseph, a director at South Africa’s department of home affairs, told the meeting.

‘‘State departments such as the National Intelligence Agency are interested in formalizing the remittance of funds by migrants to combat money laundering,” he said.

Theresa van der Merwe, a councillor for the city of Johannesburg, said the council has established a desk to deal with migrants’ issues. ‘‘It is to help migrants with information. When women come to South Africa they are exploited and abused. This desk is to provide them with information. Some of the women come here because they do not have a choice.”

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 29 2007 (IPS)

About one million people in need of anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment are yet to receive it in four southern African states, according to Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a global nongovernmental organisation specialising in medical services.

On the African continent, some 70 percent of people who need ARVs do not have access to the drugs.

The campaign to put pressure on governments to speed up the delivery of ARVs to millions of Africans in need of the life-prolonging drugs is gathering momentum, with MSF being the latest to add its voice to the crusade.

While the number of people receiving ARVs in Africa has increased to 1.3 million today, about 70 percent of those estimated as needing treatment in Africa are not getting it, the MSF said.

More than one million people in South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi and Lesotho need AIDS treatment but are not getting it, according to the MSF’s new report, ‘‘Confronting the Health Care Worker Crisis to Expand Access to HIV/AIDS Treatment”, launched in Johannesburg last week.

In Lesotho, only 17,700 people out of 58,000 have access to treatment. In Malawi, 59,900 people receive treatment as opposed to 169,000 people who do not. In Mozambique, a similarly dismal situation exists as only 44,100 people have been covered, out of 237,000.

In the more developed South Africa, only 265,000 out of 983,000 people have access.

This is happening at a time when AIDS drug prices have gone down and global funding for HIV/AIDS has increased from 2 billion US dollars in 2001 to about 8.3 billion dollars, MSF said.

‘‘The main barrier to expanding antiretroviral therapy in these four countries today is the shortage of heath care staff to care for an increasing number of patients,” Eric Goemaere, MSF head of mission in South Africa, told journalists at the launch.

This has resulted in the unnecessary loss of lives. For example, Lesotho with its population of around 1.8 million has 23,000 deaths a year due to HIV/AIDS, MSF said.

The problem is compounded by doctors being overwhelmed by AIDS cases due to the magnitude of the epidemic. Of the four countries surveyed, only Malawi and Lesotho allow nurses to deliver and manage ARVs.

‘‘In Mozambique, nurses do not prescribe ARVs. If they are allowed to provide them, we can save many lives,” Daniel Nhantumbo, MSF medical technician in Mozambique, told journalists.

His colleague, Pheelo Lethola, an MSF field doctor in Lesotho, agreed. ‘‘More people will die if we rely only on doctors, especially in rural areas and in the mountains,” she said.

In the MSF report, Emily Makha, a 70-year old nurse at Kena, a rural clinic in western Lesotho, talks about providing ARVs. ‘‘As the only nurse here, I have to do the work of at least four nurses. I take blood samples, do both ante-natal and post-natal cases and handle curative care for general patients, the delivery of babies and so forth.

‘‘If I have to go somewhere, the clinic remains closed. Most nurses have left for the United Kingdom or South Africa. As a matter of fact, if I was younger, I would also have gone now,” Makha was quoted as saying in the MSF report.

‘‘Providing HIV care in rural clinics depends on nurses, but they cannot cope with the number of patients,” Lethola said. ‘‘Consultation times are too short, and sick patients suffer needlessly. When nurses suffer, patients suffer.”

Presently, ARVs are the only available hope for millions of people living with HIV/AIDS. ‘‘If properly delivered, a patient should feel well and lead a relatively normal life within six months,” Goemaere said.

The MSF’s call for increased access to ARVs follows on a march held a month ago in South Africa’s commercial hub of Johannesburg. Dozens of civil society activists participated, led by the international charity Oxfam.

They were demanding that the 53 African Union (AU) health ministers, who were meeting in Johannesburg at the time, prioritise the World Health Organisation’s 2010 target for achieving universal access to prevention, treatment and support to address HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria on the continent.

Campaigners attribute the delay in providing treatment to a lack of political will. ‘‘Governments need to be pressured to address the issues around ARV delivery and distribution,” Regis Mtutu of the Cape Town-based Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), told IPS in an interview at the time.

‘‘Eight million Africans are dying from HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria every year. We want to stop this,” he said

In 2001 African heads of state met in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, and committed 15 percent of their national budgets to health as part of the African Common Position on Universal Access. ‘‘Six years down the line only two countries – Botswana and The Gambia û have met this promise,” said Mtutu, who took part in last month’s procession in Johannesburg.

In another meeting in May 2006 in Abuja, heads of states agreed to targets for ARV coverage and prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission of at least 80 percent by 2010. Mtutu insisted that individual countries’ targets should be ‘‘be equivalent or greater to the targets set” in Abuja in 2006.

Currently, most countries on the continent have less than 30 percent treatment coverage and only three countries in Africa have greater than 50 percent coverage.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 28 2007 (IPS)

Climate change is threatening the Cape Floral Region, a World Heritage Site in South Africa’s Western Cape province, say environmentalists.

The region occupies 553,000* hectares spread over eight protected areas that form part of the Cape floral kingdom, one of six floral kingdoms around the world identified for their distinctive vegetation.

It is also amongst the most biodiverse localities on earth, being home to over 7,700 plant species, 70 percent of them unique to the kingdom – this according to Gavin Maneveldt of the biodiversity and conservation biology department at the University of the Western Cape. Plant life in the region is commonly referred to as “fynbos” (“fine bush” in Afrikaans).

Notes conservation biologist Gerhard Verdoorn, executive director of Birdlife South Africa, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), “Fynbos will be reduced by half in 50 or so years. We shall lose a lot of species in an area with the highest density of plant species per hectare in the world. There will also be a reduction in the total area of fynbos.”

Other life forms also stand to be affected, notably ants that carry certain fynbos seeds underground – a process essential for their germination. “Ants unique to fynbos will be lost…Without the ants, the survival of many of the plants will be greatly threatened,” Verdoorn told IPS.

Figures from the website for this year’s International Day for Biological Diversity (May 22) indicate that global temperatures have increased by about 0.6 degrees Celsius since the middle of the nineteenth century, with further increases of up to 5.8 degrees Celsius within this century predicted.

Many scientists believe these rising temperatures are due to higher atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, which absorb and trap solar energy.

Greenhouse emissions enter the atmosphere in part through the burning of fossil fuels – something Verdoorn singles out in the four actions he believes are key to saving the Cape floral kingdom: “One, cut down on fuel consumption. Two, reduce water consumption. Three, cut down on electricity use. And four, control alien invasive plants.”

According to NGO Earthlife Africa, South Africa is a leading contributor to climate change: “We get our energy from coal,” coordinator Richard Worthington told IPS. “Coal, coal, coal. It’s coal addiction.”

“This means South Africa is responsible for 40 percent of Africa’s total emissions,” he noted – or some 1.5 percent of greenhouse emissions worldwide.

Cape Town has plans to introduce solar water heating, while an additional nuclear plant is also on the cards. However, the latter has come under fire from environmentalists, who claim it will add to the emissions burden – albeit indirectly – through activities such as plant construction and mining the uranium needed to power the facility.

“Uranium mining is one of the most carbon dioxide…intensive industrial operations, and as demand for uranium grows CO2 emissions are expected to rise…” says the United Kingdom-based NGO, Friends of the Earth, in a statement.

Observes Worthington, “South Africa is trying to justify the nuclear plant in the name of climate change. But it doesn’t wash.”

These words are echoed by Noel Oettle of the Environmental Monitoring Group, an NGO based in the coastal city of Cape Town. “I think we are acting quite irrationally as a country,” he told IPS, in reference to the proposed plant.

Concerning alien invasive species, Verdoorn highlights the threat posed by the black wattle and the “rooikrans” (“red wreath”) species of acacia. “There are people clearing them up. They have to be removed – they cover massive areas,” he said.

Local conservation authorities spent about 2.5 million dollars on eliminating alien plants in the Western Cape between 2005 and 2006.

Verdoorn also took a swipe at developers. “We should prevent things like housing estates and golf course developments if we want to preserve fynbos,” he said. “A golf course uses a million litres of water a day. That is a lot of water. It could help the poor with no access to water.”

Fires also pose a threat to fynbos.

CapeNature, the environmental authority in the Western Cape, notes in its 2005-2006 annual report that “The incidence of uncontrolled fires in sensitive fynbos areas continues to increase from year to year.”

The body ascribes this to population increases, particularly in informal settlements; the warmer temperatures and “longer fire seasons” caused by climate change; and infestation by alien species that provide substantial fuel for fires.

“The fire season of 2005/06 experienced more than 100 uncontrolled wild fires in protected fynbos areas managed by CapeNature across the Western Cape,” notes the report.

“It is generally accepted that fire is an essential part of the natural ecosystem that sustains and evolves fynbos. With the increased incidence of uncontrolled fires, areas are burning repeatedly in much shorter cycles than would occur naturally. Too frequent fires will have negative, and possibly catastrophic consequences for the specialised fynbos ecosystem.”

Verdoorn hasn’t lost hope for the Cape floral kingdom, in spite of the numerous challenges confronting it.

“I think we can save fynbos. But we need a lot of work,” he noted. “We need to get all people involved.”

(* Please note that this item originally contained a mistake in paragraph two. The Cape Floral Region heritage site extends over 553,000 hectares – or 5,530 square kilometres – not 37,000 square kilometres as was first reported.)

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 25 2007 (IPS)

A shortage of health care workers is paralysing the health system in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa, and threatens the lives of millions, particularly in rural areas, warns Medecins Sans Frontieres, a global nongovernmental organisation specialising in medical services.

A new report by the organisation, launched in South Africa’s commercial hub of Johannesburg yesterday (24 May), shows that only South Africa has met the World Health Organisation (WHO) target for an adequate supply of health care workers: 74.3 doctors, 393 nurses and 468 health providers per 100,000 people.

The minimum WHO requirement is 20 doctors, 100 nurses and 228 health providers per 100,000 people. Even if South Africa meets the WHO target, it still suffers from a lack of staff to manage and deliver essential services like anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to prolong the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS.

The study, ‘‘Health Worker Shortage Limits Access to HIV/AIDS Treatment in Southern Africa”, found that Lesotho, Mozambique and Malawi are in desperate situations. ‘‘In Lesotho there are just 89 doctors, and 80 percent of these are foreigners,” Pheelo Lethola, field doctor for MSF in the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho, told journalists in Johannesburg.

The shortage also affects nurses. ‘‘There are only 1,123 nurses for a population of about 1.8 million. Only six of the 171 health centres in the country have the minimum required staffing,” Lethola said.

Malawi is also feeling the pinch. ‘‘Malawi has only 10 percent of the medical doctors and only 40 percent of the nurses recommended by the WHO. About half of the 165 medical doctors working in Malawi are in central hospitals, leaving severe shortages in rural areas. The vacancy rate for nurses in rural areas is 60 percent,” Veronica Chikafa, a Malawian nurse, told journalists.

This places a lot of strain on health care workers in Malawi. ‘‘For example, one nurse in a ward looks after 100 sick patients. A medical assistant sees 100 patients a day. Sometimes a patient has to wait for the whole day to see a doctor. Sometimes the patient is forced to return the following day, if he or she failed to see the doctor the previous day,” Chikafa said.

Mozambique is facing the same predicament, MSF says, as there are only 2.6 doctors, 20 nurses and 34 health providers per 100,000 people.

‘‘About half of the 608 medical doctors active in Mozambique work in the capital city Maputo, leaving the health centres in rural areas devoid of medical doctors,” David Nhantumbo, medical technician for MSF in Mozambique, told the gathering.

Other African sub-regions face the same problem. Commemorating World Health Day last year, the WHO singled out sub-Saharan Africa as facing the greatest challenges.

‘‘While it has 11 percent of the world’s population and 24 percent of the global burden of disease, it has only 3 percent of the world’s health workers,” it said.

‘‘On average, one in four doctors and one in 20 nurses trained in Africa is working in the OECD (the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation Development) countries. Some countries have been hit harder than others. For example, 29 percent of Ghana’s physicians are working abroad, as are 34 percent of Zimbabwean nurses,” the WHO said.

WHO said 57 countries, most of them in Africa and Asia, face a severe health workforce crisis. ‘‘At least 2.4 million health service providers and 1.9 million management support workers, or a total of 4.25 million health workers, are needed to fill the gap. Without prompt action, the shortage will worsen,” it said.

In Southern Africa, most of the health care workers migrate to Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States where they earn more than they do at home.

For example, the doctors and nurses from Lesotho are leaving for South Africa and the United Kingdom for better pay and better working conditions, Pheelo said. ‘‘It is the responsibility of government to increase salaries and improve working conditions. For each day that no action is taken, more people are dying,” she said.

To stop the poaching of health professionals from poor countries, the South African government announced plans last year to reduce the recruitment of foreign doctors. But the plan was criticised by campaigners such as Mignonne Breier, a chief research specialist at the statutory research body the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).

‘‘Policy plans to reduce the number of foreign doctors are particularly difficult to understand when one considers South Africa has less than 7 doctors per 10,000 people whereas the UK has around 21, the United States around 24 and many European countries more than 30,” Breier wrote on the HSRC website.

‘‘Our own doctors emigrate in significant numbers (estimated at 150 per year) and, of those who stay, more than 60 percent work in the private sector where they serve less than 20 percent of the population,” she said.

‘‘There is the assumption that South Africa can make up the shortfall by rapidly increasing its output from medical schools. The aim is to double the number of graduates from 1,200 to 2,400 per year by 2014,” she said.

MSF South Africa believes that the brain drain could be reversed. Steps should be taken such as creating career prospects for nurses through promotion and training.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 24 2007 (IPS)

Environmentalists are readying themselves for another heated round of debate and horse-trading in the continuing international tussle over the issue of ivory sales.

Contradictory proposals have been put on the table for consideration at the 14th conference of the parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in The Hague in the Netherlands next month (June 3-15).

A group of countries, led by Kenya, wants CITES to adopt a 20-year moratorium on ivory trade. Opposing the Kenya position, Botswana and Namibia have proposed commercial trade in raw ivory for themselves, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The third proposal is from Botswana which is seeking a once-off sale of 48 tonnes of raw ivory and pieces in its possession.

Organisations such as the US-based International Fund for Animal Welfare support Kenya in its bid, saying that if CITES allowed southern African countries to reopen a legal trade in ivory, it would give poachers the green-light.

African environmentalists have criticised the claims that legalising ivory trade would open the floodgates for poaching. ‘‘Rubbish. Nonsense,” said Gerhard Verdoorn, executive director of Birdlife South Africa and vice president of the African Hunters and Game Conservation Association.

‘‘The elephants in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia are well managed. There is minimal poaching. In East and West Africa there is a lot of poaching going on, due to poor wildlife management. They put South Africa at a disadvantage. We do not want to be punished for the wildlife mismanagement in Kenya,” he said.

The elephant carrying capacity of reserves in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe has been exceeded. ‘‘We need to control the elephants. The meat can be useful for communities around game parks and the skin and hides can be sold with the agreement of CITES,” argued Verdoorn.

IFAW’s Jason Bell-Leaske, regional director for IFAW Southern Africa, told a press conference in Johannesburg yesterday (May 23) that ‘‘the moratorium proposal comes after a serious increase in poaching and illicit ivory trade. Between August 2005 and 2006, more than 23 metric tonnes of illegal ivory were seized around the world”.

The illicit trade includes the 7,000 kg reportedly seized in Zimbabwe in May 2006 and the 3,000 kg seized in Japan in August 2006, he said.

More than 23,000 elephants, or about 5 percent of Africa’s total population, were likely killed for that amount of ivory, wrote Samuel Wasser, director of the University of Washington’s Centre for Conservation Biology, in the journal ‘‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” in February this year.

Bell-Leaske said ‘‘we support the moratorium proposal and urge all parties to do the same. If efforts are not made to slow down poaching and illicit trade, there is a real chance that elephant populations will suffer the same fate as in the 1980s”.

According to IFAW, the number of elephants in Africa has dropped from 1.3 million in 1979 to 350,000 today. Of these, some 220,000 live in conservation areas across eight southern African countries.

CITES, a global treaty, was drawn up in 1973 to prevent international trade from threatening species with extinction.

In 1997, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe were granted a conditional once-off sale of 50 tonnes of ivory, which were exported to Japan two years later. In 2002 CITES again granted a similar sale of 60 tonnes of ivory for Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.

IFAW blames demand in the East for fuelling the ivory market as ‘‘the trade is motivated by dramatic increases in the price paid for elephant ivory in the Far East, now up to 850 dollars per kilogramme for quality pieces, up from 200 dollars just two years ago”.

The internet is also playing a role in promoting ivory trade. ‘‘IFAW found more than 9,000 wild animals and animal products for sale on the internet in just one week,” said Kwesi Prah Jr. of IFAW, referring to the 2005 IFAW report, ‘‘Caught in the Web: Wildlife Trade on the Internet”.

Bell-Leaske rejected arguments that overpopulation increases conflict between animals and human beings. ‘‘Elephants have been coming into contact with people for many years. There have been case-specific initiatives to deal with these conflicts which have been successful.

‘‘In some cases it involves fencing people to keep them away from the elephants. This is as simple as putting electric fences around community areas and around areas where people are working and growing crops,” he said.

‘‘In Liwonde National Game Park in Malawi, for example, the communities are growing chilli peppers which elephants do not eat. Chilli peppers are bringing far more revenue to the people because they have more value than maize. It is not a solution for every place. But it is a case-specific solution for Liwonde Park,” Bell-Leaske said.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 23 2007 (IPS)

‘‘Eviction is like removing grass from its roots. We will die like the grass,” said Jumanda Gakelebone, spokesperson of the First People of the Kalahari, the group that represents the rights of the San community in Botswana.

He was responding to the Botswana government’s campaign to remove 5,000 San people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to clear the way for diamond mining. In the latest incident in the campaign, the government has denied the United Nations’ special rapporteur on indigenous peoples access to the country.

Rodolfo Stavenhagen, the special rapporteur, is investigating the eviction of the San community, also known as the Basarwa, from their ancestral lands.

Survival International, a London-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) which highlights minority issues globally, said last week that the Botswana government ‘‘has invoked a special clause of the country’s constitution to slam visa restrictions” on Stavenhagen.

‘‘I think it is dictatorial. They say they do not want outsiders to get involved in the problems of the San,” Gakelebone told IPS by phone from the Botswana capital Gaborone.

The San, historically hunters and gatherers, are regarded as the aboriginal people of southern Africa. Anthropologists say they are the oldest inhabitants of the region, having a traceable record of over 20,000 years in southern Africa.

About 100,000 San live in the region: 50,000 in Botswana, 4,500 in South Africa, 38,000 in Namibia, 1,600 in Zambia and 1,200 in Zimbabwe, according to the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA), based in the Namibian capital of Windhoek.

In Botswana, the campaign to remove the San from their ancestral lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve began in 1985 after diamonds were discovered there, Gakelebone said. The reserve was created to protect the 5,000 Gana, Gwi and Tsila San people and the game they depend on.

The campaign gathered pace in the 1990s when in three waves, in 1997, 2002 and 2005, virtually all the San were forcibly removed from their lands. ‘‘People were moved in trucks and dumped in distant places between 400 and 1,000 kilometres away,” Gakelebone told IPS.

In December 2006, a Botswana court ruled that the eviction was ‘‘unlawful and unconstitutional” and gave the San community the right to return to their land.

The evictions attracted a lot of international attention which did not please the government. ‘‘Foreign journalists who have written stories about the evictions have not been allowed back in the country. The government knows that when the journalists and human rights groups come to Botswana, people will tell them the truth,” Gakelebone said.

Apart from Stavenhagen, 17 other foreigners denied entry into Botswana in March this year included four Survival International staff, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, other journalists and human rights activists. Most of them had taken an interest in the eviction of the Kalahari San, according to a Survival International statement.

‘‘International convention allows Botswana the right to deny access to an individual. But it is rare to deny the United Nations as an institution access,” according to David Monyae, lecturer at the department of international relations at South Africa’s Witwatersrand University.

‘‘Botswana’s action raises a lot of questions. One is whether the Botswana government is complying with UN regimes that it is a signatory to. It shows a picture of a government that is trying to hide something,” he said.

Survival International agrees. In its statement, the group’s director, Stephen Corry, said: ‘‘The Botswana government clearly thinks it has something to hide from the UN special rapporteur. And indeed it does. Despite the Botswana High Court’s decisive ruling in the Bushmen’s favour, the government is still trying to stop them returning to their land.”

Despite the court ruling, Gakelobone said the government is preventing them from returning to their ancestral lands.

‘‘We believe that we have been cursed by our ancestors for leaving our lands to which we have had an attachment for centuries. Our ancestors are buried there. We talk to them and the land provides us with medicines. Because of the curse, we have now picked up alien habits and diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Drugs and alcohol abuse are killing our people,” he said.

Monyae argued that ‘‘the San people won their case internally in Botswana. But along the way you may have some interest groups that make the Botswana government angry, prompting it to declare these groups undesired aliens within their territory”.

But some believe that Botswana has gone a little too far this time. ‘‘Botswana is touted as the Switzerland of Africa for its stability and democracy. Therefore, it makes no sense for it to deny access to a UN human rights official. This is a basic request. Democracy must be bigger than that,” Hassen Lorgat, campaign and communications manager of the Johannesburg-based South African National NGO Coalition (SANGOCO), told IPS in an interview.

To resolve the problem, Monyae urged the government of Botswana to engage the United Nations using structures within the world body. Efforts to get a response from the Botswana government proved fruitless.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 17 2007 (IPS)

Nobody will escape the effects of climate change but the poor in Africa will suffer the most because of decreasing food production and the heightened prevalence of diseases such as malaria, warn environmentalists, church leaders and researchers.

Another dilemma is that, ‘‘for a long time, Africans have regarded owning vehicles like in America and Europe as signs of wealth and good living. Now suddenly they are being told to give up such dreams because of global warming,” said Zenale Twala, executive director of South African Non-Governmental Organisations Coalition (SANGOCO).

She was speaking at a SANGOCO workshop in Johannesburg on the effects of climate change on the poor this week (May 15).

‘‘When I see the price of basic commodities like maize increasing, I see the writing on the wall,” Bishop Paul Verryn of the Methodist Church told the workshop. He is particularly concerned about a plan to turn some of South Africa’s arable agricultural land into producing biofuels. ‘‘Turning the land into producing biofuels could exacerbate poverty.”

South Africa’s planned production of biofuels from crops such as maize, sunflowers and sugar cane ‘‘can play a role in improving energy supply for the poor as long as they are grown by small-scale farmers and rural people”, said SANGOCO.

SANGOCO is opposed to the plan by the government and business to use some of South Africa’s arable land for maize for biofuels while more than 1.2 million South Africans suffer from malnutrition and 14 million are vulnerable to food insecurity.

Almost half of households in South Africa – 43 percent – suffer from food insecurity. Ten percent of children under nine are underweight; whilst 1.5 percent are classified severely underweight, according to official figures.

Emissions of carbon dioxide can largely be attributed to the transport sector. ‘‘Yet we are taking away food from poor people’s tables and putting it into rich people’s cars,” said Annie Sugrue, southern African co-ordinator of Citizens United for Renewable Energy and Sustainability, a non-governmental organization (NGO).

There is also a concern that the manufacturing of biofuels will use a lot of energy and generate greenhouse gases.

Last year the World Food Programme (WFP) said 40 million people from 36 African countries required food aid. The reasons ran from perennial drought and floods to unpredictable and reduced rainfalls attributed to climate change.

African leaders have placed the issue of poverty on their agenda. This received impetus in 2000 when world leaders met in New York and committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals, including halving poverty by 2015. ‘‘Six years later, progress has been made on poverty but we are actually losing ground on hunger,” the WFP said.

Findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that Africa will suffer the worst effects of global warming. The IPCC is a team of scientists set up by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to examine climate change.

According to the IPCC, agricultural yields in Africa are predicted to halve by 2020. At that time, some 250 million Africans ‘‘will experience water stress”. Low-lying African coastal areas will be under water as the sea is expected to rise six metres or more.

African fisheries will experience decreasing stocks due to the over-exploitation of marine resources. The IPCC predicted that ‘‘diseases and pestilence will spread throughout the continent”.

‘‘What we are seeing now are the effects of what happened 30 years ago. What is happening now should have been addressed much earlier,” said Richard Worthington of Earthlife Africa, an environmental group based in South Africa.

Africa’s position is clear on climate change. ‘‘Globally, Africa contributes the least to climate change but continues to pay the most for the degradation of the environment. Northern countries remain the greatest polluters and should pay the most. We will insist on the principle of ‘polluter pays’,” said Hassen Lorgat, campaigns and communications manager at SANGOCO.

He argued that ‘‘current measures aimed at entrenching the so-called free market-which puts profits before the environment-must be changed”.

A SANGOCO briefing paper dated May 2007 pointed out that the US is ‘‘the worst offender”, producing ‘‘about 25 percent of global carbon emissions, with the European Union (producing) about 15 percent. China is on the US’s heels.

‘‘It is expected that China will overtake the US with carbon emissions within the year. China has 1.3 billion people and produces 4,732 million tones of carbon dioxide whereas the US has 293 million people and produces 5,799 million tons of carbon dioxide. That means that each person in the Unites States is producing more than four times what a Chinese person is producing”, according to the paper.

More than 100 activists, led by SANGOCO, marched on the US consulate in Johannesburg on May 15, demanding that the US adopts the Kyoto Protocol like most other states have done. They also urged countries to cut emissions to pre-1990 levels as soon as possible: 30 percent by 2020 and 50 percent by 2050.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 15 2007 (IPS)

A few years ago, this IPS correspondent posed a question at a workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, about whether non-governmental organisations (NGOs) should be held more accountable for their actions. Afterwards, the key speaker at the event pulled me aside, and issued a polite rebuke for my “dangerous question”.

The “dangerous question” has continued to crop up since then, however, reflecting a growing debate over standards of conduct within the humanitarian sector as it has assumed an ever more prominent role in public life. Civic groups are now being scrutinised over a range of issues – from accounting practices, to whether they are truly serving the needs of communities.

“It’s true that accountability is not being exercised to the extent that it should be. Quite a large number of civil society organisations and NGOs have no organically-evolved mandate from the citizens,” Ozias Tungwarara, director of the Johannesburg-based Open Society Institute, itself an NGO, told IPS.

Notes an anonymous posting on the website of the Southern African NGO Network: “Many NGOs are not practicing what they preach and a good example is the HIV/AIDS activists. Soon after conducting a workshop, they are already getting promiscuous. Is it the money that attracts them to the job or the need to be socialists that want to see change in the society?”

“Having worked for NGOs for almost four years, I can safely say that most of these NGOs just want funding and if not monitored, they convey it to their personal use,” added the writer.

Nicholas Mkaronda, co-ordinator of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a pressure group, takes a more positive view of the situation.

“I think there is a high level of accountability in the way civil society organisations and NGOs handle their finances and address societal issues,” he told IPS from the coalition’s office in Johannesburg.

Mkaronda said complaints about NGO conduct may sometimes stem from public misunderstanding about the roles of these groups: “For example, the Zimbabwean community in South Africa expects us to mobilise resources to sort out shelter, feeding and legal (immigration) status. Yet our role is to highlight the crisis in Zimbabwe.”

Political and economic difficulties in South Africa’s northern neighbour have prompted an exodus from the country. Briefing journalists in Johannesburg in March, Pius Ncube, the Catholic Archbishop of Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo – and an outspoken critic of the Harare government – put the number of Zimbabweans living in South Africa at over two million.

Daniel Molokela, coordinator of the Zimbabwe Combined Civil Society Organisations, a Johannesburg-based network, believes self-regulation may hold the key to improving matters: “It would be a good idea if NGOs and civil society groups came up with a code of conduct like the one which guides other professionals such as medical doctors and lawyers.”

“They could organise annual meetings and audit their books as part of accountability and transparency. If they didn’t comply, then they could be boycotted by their community or donors,” he told IPS.

An initiative to this effect is already underway concerning international NGOs – or INGOs: last year, eleven of these groups signed the ‘INGO Accountability Charter’. The first document of its kind, the charter lays out a number of principles such groups should adhere to, to retain public trust in the non-governmental sector.

These include working “in genuine partnership” with local organisations and communities; complying with governance, accounting and reporting obligations in countries of operation; and balancing expectations of NGOs with the salaries needed to attract competent staff, when deciding on remuneration.

The charter also stipulates that INGO employees should be “enabled and encouraged” to become whistleblowers concerning activities by aid groups that are illegal, or which contradict the goals and commitments of these groups.

CIVICUS – the World Alliance for Citizen Participation – is serving as secretariat for the INGO Accountability Charter, administering processes to ensure that signatories are meeting their obligations, amongst others.

This Johannesburg-based network groups a variety of civil society organisations with the aim of strengthening civic participation in public life, particularly in areas of the world where this is under threat.

The debate on civic accountability will also feature strongly during CIVICUS’s annual World Assembly, scheduled to take place in Glasgow, Scotland from May 23-27 under the theme ‘Acting Together for a Just World’.

Demands for accountability may intensify as NGOs attempt to have their views taken into account more broadly, including in the African Union’s (AU) discussions about continental governance.

African foreign affairs ministers met in the South African port city of Durban last week to discuss strategies for achieving the union’s goal of political and economic integration of its 53 member states.

To date, however, “The public have not been involved in the AU’s conversation about continental governance, or had their views listened to. We cannot have a United States of Africa without citizenship,” noted Janah Ncube, senior programme officer at the Nairobi branch of the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development, an international NGO, in a recent statement.

“Effective states require active citizens and the participation of all men and women in governance.”

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, May 8 2007 (IPS)

Civil society organisations in southern and eastern Africa have urged John Kaputin, the secretary general of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of states, to insist that assessments be done to evaluate the potential effects of the European Union’s proposed economic partnership agreements (EPAs).

In 2000, the European Union (EU) and the 79-member ACP group agreed to carry out full assessments on the possible consequences of the EPAs, said Dot Keet of the Alternative Information and Development Centre, a research and lobby group based in Cape Town.

This decision was taken when government representatives met in Cotonou, the capital of the tiny west African republic of Benin, according to Keet.

Kaputin left South Africa on May 6 after a five day visit. While in the country, he held talks with South African foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and representatives of the country’s department of trade and industry.

He also met with the president of the Pan African Parliament, Gertrude Mongella, and the secretary general of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Olukorede Willoughby.

Little information came out of Kaputin’s meetings. Campaigners contacted by IPS did not even know that the ACP secretary general was in the country.

All that was said after the meetings was that a range of issues were discussed, which included the future of the ACP group, the EPA negotiations and the relationship between the ACP group and the African Union (AU).

Kaputin also praised South Africa, which had joined the ACP group in 1997, three years after the demise of apartheid.

”In its 10 years of membership, the country has proven its willingness to provide the group with invaluable leadership and direction,” Kaputin told journalists in Tshwane (formerly Pretoria), the capital of South Africa.

Keet told IPS that ”Kaputin should realise that there can be no further trade negotiations with the EU until full impact assessments have been carried out”.

The negotiations to institute EPAs in the place of the preferential trade agreements of the past 30 years started in 2002. The EU wants the EPAs to be signed off by the end of the year and to be put into effect from next year.

”Yet nobody knows what the full consequences of the agreements will be,” said Keet, who also campaigns for a fair deal for poor nations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Similarly, church leaders from southern and eastern Africa recently said that ”while we appreciate the development objectives of the Cotonou agreement, we are mindful that in the current negotiations the European Union and our governments have lost sight of these objectives”.

This statement emanated from a conference held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, between April 23 and 25. The churches also said that the ”EPAs have turned out to be free trade agreements, which will have a detrimental impact on our agriculture and food security, infant industries as well as natural resources.

”In addition, they will lead to a loss of tax revenue that is earned from duties on imported goods,” the statement said.

According to the British pressure group Action for Southern Africa, ”more than 19 percent of total government revenue will be lost in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. Ghana could lose 194 million dollars – up to 19 percent of current government revenue – as a result of free trade”. This information was published in a January 2007 briefing document.

The churches also asked for an extension of the December 31 deadline for the ACP-EU negotiations. ”This would give our governments the opportunity to initiate a participatory impact assessment and include development and benchmarks in the negotiations,” the churches said.

”Issues must be defined and timetables shifted,” insisted Richard Kamidza of the African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), a non-governmental organization based in Durban, South Africa.

”If the EU can spend a year considering the request to include South Africa in the EPA negotiations before it gives a response, why do we not extend the EPA deadline?” he asked. ”Even now countries are submitting their views and the EU is taking its time to consider them,” he said.

The civil society groups are worried about the variety of trading blocs within the African region negotiating with the EU. Dlamini-Zuma warned that fragmented voices would weaken the region’s negotiation power.

Keet contended that the ”Europeans are undermining and destroying regional unity”.

To complicate matter, the EU is not the only trading power interested in Africa. ”There is competition between China and the EU in Africa,” Kamidza said.

Civil society organisations also want Kaputin to concentrate more on delivering those important trade commitments that wealthy nations have made to developing countries but which have remained unfulfilled.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 26 2007 (IPS)

A senior member of parliament of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Ben Turok, says the existing trade agreement between South Africa and the European Union (EU) has not benefited his country.

The trade, development and cooperation agreement ”is not a good agreement. It has not brought benefit to South Africa. Europe has been the beneficiary,” Turok told IPS in an interview. He is a member of parliament’s portfolio committee on trade and industry.

The trade, development and cooperation agreement (TDCA), concluded in 1999, has led to conflict over the use of brand names such as the South African wine label Nederburg because of its similarity to geographical names in Europe.

Last month South Africa was included in the negotiations for economic partnership agreements (EPAs) currently underway between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP). Before then South Africa only had observer status.

Despite the TDCA between South Africa and the EU, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) EPA grouping requested that their most powerful member be included in the EPA talks. The EU’s approval of the request came nearly a year after it was made.

It has been speculated that South Africa insisted on joining the talks to try and reap benefits in the form of access to EU markets while also gaining protection for its domestic products.

South Africa’s inclusion in the EPA talks has put its trade policy under renewed scrutiny. South African trade negotiators were positive about the so-called Singapore issues when these issues were proposed by the developed states in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the 1990s.

The Singapore issues include investment and government procurement which are about governments ensuring the same level of support and access for foreign as for local companies.

The inclusion of the issues was opposed by most other developing states in Africa and successfully blocked from the WTO talks. But the Singapore issues have resurfaced in the EPA negotiations, leading African trade ministers to express their objections.

Turok told IPS that South Africa is ”not a charity. The trade relations with other countries in the region must be reciprocal. We are not going to subsidise the region. We must have complimentary relations.”

”Every country has to defend its interests. There are few countries that do not do that. When it comes to trade it is self-interest that comes first. It is sad but we are not doing it in a selfish manner,” he said.

Turok ruled out any suggestion that South Africa’s trade policy may be harming its neighbours. ”South Africa has shown very clearly that its short-term and long-term interests do not affect its neighbours detrimentally. It would be very foolish for us not to identify with the region,” he said.

South Africa was both defending its interests and helping its neighbours, said Turok.

The EU has also agreed to a Southern African Customs Union (SACU) EPA grouping being formed which comprises Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland. South Africa is also part of the SACU EPA grouping while Mozambique, Angola and Tanzania remain in the SADC grouping.

Despite South Africa’s admittance to the EPA talks, ”the separate EU-South Africa deal is still valid,” Richard Kamidza, senior researcher at the African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), told IPS. ACCORD is a non-governmental research organization based in the Indian Ocean port city of Durban in South Africa.

At the beginning of this month, the EU offered to lift quota and tariff restrictions on all ACP products to encourage the ACP states to conclude the EPAs by the December 31 deadline. South Africa was expressly excluded from this offer despite now being part of the SACU EPA grouping.

The EU cited as reason that South Africa produces globally competitive goods. Turok told IPS that ”South Africa is a semi-industrial country. It produces a lot of goods. This is in contrast with most of the ACP countries who are producers of raw materials and commodities.”

South Africa, the economic giant of the continent, stands to benefit by working with the rest of the region, said Margaret Legum, an economist at the South African New Economics (SANE) network, a pressure group based in Cape Town.

”It is difficult for SADC to go it alone against the EU,” she said. This is especially true for Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Lesotho whose economies are tied to that of South Africa through SACU.

Campaigners have been unhappy with how the EU divided the regional blocs for the EPA talks. Especially the inclusion of a ”southern and eastern Africa” EPA bloc has provoked criticism because it does not take into account existing configurations. ”This is a divide and rule tactic by the EU,” Kamidza said.

Legum concurred that the developed states’ approach to Africa ”has always been ‘divide and rule’. If you are stronger you have an edge in negotiations. In trade negotiations the preference is always for a weaker negotiating opponent.”

South Africa had no choice but to enter the bilateral TDCA with the EU, said Nkululeko Khumalo, trade researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), a research organisation attached to the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

”The EU was unwilling to give South Africa the same preferential treatment it awarded to others in the ACP group. So it concluded a separate deal with South Africa,” Khumalo pointed out.

Matters are further complicated by overlapping membership among existing regional entities. ”We are still far away from regional harmonization,” said Kamidza.

He is also concerned about the lack of active participation by citizens affected by what is decided in the EPA talks. ”We are not organised. Farmers, traders and fishermen, for example, are left out of discussions.”

The EU has proposed the EPAs as replacement for the preferential trade arrangement between Europe and the ACP states which had existed for three decades. The EU is renegotiating the terms of trade with the ACP to bring trade relations with the bloc in line with WTO rules.

Other developing states have complained about being excluded from the preferential trade benefits in the EU’s 2000 Cotonou agreement with ACP states. The new trade regime has to be in place at the end of this year.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
PRETORIA, Apr 26 2007 (IPS)

In Africa, 25 countries are expected to experience water scarcity or water stress in the next 20 to 30 years. This translates into 16 percent or 230 million of Africa’s population facing water scarcity by 2025, and 32 percent or 460 million people living in water-stressed countries by that time.

This is according to a paper presented by Ahmed Nejjar of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) regional office for Africa at a conference looking at water management. The two-day conference, entitled Water Management Africa 2007, was attended by representatives from multilateral, nongovernmental and governmental agencies. It ended in the South African capital Pretoria on April 24.

Signs of climate change can be seen in decreasing rainfall and severe droughts in Africa, environmentalists warned at the conference. River levels are dropping. In extreme cases, rivers are drying up.

”I went to Limpopo in early April and found the river level low. April is supposed to be the end of the rainy season (when the water level should still be high in South Africa),” Marius Classen, manager of water resources at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a governmental research organisation based in Pretoria, told IPS.

This scenario is reflected across Africa. For example, the level of Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest inland fresh water, has been decreasing in the past decade which has affected Uganda’s electricity supply.

Some environmentalists have attributed the decrease in the level of Lake Victoria to climate change while others have blamed it on a decision to divert water from the lake to a nearby dam. Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania all extract water from the lake.

The Limpopo river, which is shared between South Africa and its northern neighbour Zimbabwe, gave its name to South Africa’s Limpopo province with its population of eight million. ”The majority of the people of Limpopo depend on groundwater. The river feeds the groundwater. When it is dry, it affects the groundwater,” said Classen.

”Groundwater is extremely important in Africa. It is estimated that more than 75 percent of the African population use groundwater as their main source of drinking water,” said Nejjar in the paper he presented at the conference.

”We used to have good rains but the rains are now disappearing. We should expect more droughts,” Kevin Scott, a researcher at South Africa’s Institute for Agricultural Engineering, told the conference. He is involved in research work in Limpopo province.

”Rainfall is declining in the region. We have to work together and have a joint vision,” he argued.

Environmentalists at the conference warned that most of the effects of climate change will be seen in or through water. The climate will be characterized by greater variation and more intense, extreme water events.

The Stern Review of 2006 placed the current global temperature level, which is blamed for the melting of ice in the Arctic and the drought in southern Africa, at 0.6 degree centigrade. The review investigated the economics of climate change and development and was produced by a committee chaired by Sir Nicholas Stern, advisor to the British government.

If the temperature rises to 4 degrees centigrade it will potentially cause a 30-50 percent decrease in water availability in some vulnerable regions such as southern Africa and Mediterranean, said the report. If it reaches 5 degrees centigrade or more, rising sea levels will threaten major world cities, with devastating effects.

Part of the solution lies in collecting and harnessing rain water, according to Johnson Klu of the Mvula Trust. The trust has provided 750,000 South Africans with a basic level of water supply and over 500,000 with improved sanitation in the past five years in South Africa.

The other solution lies in technology. In his opening speech at the World Nano-Economic Congress in Pretoria on April 23, South Africa’s deputy minister of science and technology, Derek Hanekom, urged scientists ”to assist us in our quest to halve the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

”They should help advance the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals,” he said.

South Africa, regarded as a water-stressed nation, has made some progress as the government has committed itself to halving the number of people without access to water and sanitation by 2015, as required by the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Cornelius Ruiters, deputy director general for water resource infrastructure at the department of water affairs and forestry, told the water conference that since the demise of apartheid in 1994 basic water infrastructure has been supplied to about 14 million people.

Currently, 31 million South Africans (67 percent of the population) have access to free basic water. Basic sanitation infrastructure has been provided to over 1.8 million households.

”The target for eradicating the entire water supply backlog is 2008. For sanitation it is 2010,” Ruiters indicated. ”If this is achieved, it will mean that South Africa will not only have met the MDG targets of wiping out 50 percent of the backlog by 2015, but will in fact have wiped out the entire backlog.”

The effects of climate change around the continent have remained a cause of concern. Zimbabwe’s political problems have been exacerbated by environmental phenomena such as the shortage of rain and droughts.

This has contributed to the influx of an estimated three million Zimbabweans into South Africa, Botswana and Zambia over the past few years, according to human rights groups and campaigners.

The conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur is also about natural resources, including water.

”In Nigeria, 1,350 square miles (2,160 square kilometres) are converted into deserts each year. Farmers and herdsmen are moving to the cities,” Sue Taylor, climate change programme manager at the Pretoria office of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), told participants at the water conference.

”People have been talking about war over water. With climate change, it is becoming possible.”

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 23 2007 (IPS)

While South Africa’s “homelands” – areas formerly set aside for blacks – have been relegated to the dustbin of history for more than a decade, their legacy lives on in the form of land degradation, and even desertification in northern and eastern parts of the country.

Ten homelands were created along ethnic lines under the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959. This was in a bid to strip black South Africans of their national citizenship and make them citizens of homelands that were ultimately intended to become independent. The Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970 made all blacks citizens of these regions, irrespective of where they resided.

“Apartheid policies ensured that 42 percent of the people lived on 13 percent of the land (the homelands). This overcrowding…resulted in severe erosion. As the land became increasingly degraded and thus less productive, subsistence farmers were forced to further overuse the land,” notes the Enviro Facts Project, a think-tank funded by the Southern African Nature Foundation.

With the demise of apartheid, homeland legislation was discarded along with other laws entrenching segregation. But difficulties remain says Klaus Kellner, a professor at the School of Environmental Sciences and Development at North-West University; he points to persistent soil degradation.

“Land tenure is a problem in the former homelands. People don’t own the land; the land is owned by the government – so they think it’s a government problem,” he told IPS. “I think it is the people’s problem. If they don’t look after it, the land will not be there for the next generation.”

According to 2004/2005 statistics from the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, about 13.6 million people live in the former homelands. Official figures from 2006 indicate that there are 47.4 million people in South Africa.

Disputes about the responsibility for dealing with land degradation notwithstanding, it is clear that the current pattern of subsistence farming cannot continue. “We must create alternative livelihoods for the people, like (through) eco-tourism, so that they don’t live off the land,” said Kellner.

Ismail Khan, a researcher at the University of South Africa in the capital, Pretoria, agrees; his work focuses on the links between poverty and land degradation.

“Poverty must be addressed for people to earn more money through jobs…If poverty is addressed, it would ease the pressure on land,” he told IPS. “The majority of the more than 40 percent unemployed South Africans live in remote rural areas with no decent earnings.”

The precise extent of joblessness in South Africa is disputed. Government puts the figure at 25.5 percent, but some believe it is considerably higher.

However, alternatives for income generation will not eliminate the need for initiatives to address the existing problems of land degradation.

“Desertification is more of a challenge to us than ever before. It poses a huge threat to rural communities who depend on natural resources for their livelihoods,” Deputy Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Rejoice Mabudafhasi observed in 2006, which was declared the International Year of Deserts and Desertification.

“Millions of people are directly affected by natural resource degradation, and many of them live below the poverty line,” she said. “They depend on natural resources for survival. Yet the capacity of our country’s land, water and biological resources to sustain its people is eroding. Tonnes of productive land are now lost and many once pristine conservation areas are denuded.”

Noted Kellner: “We…need to educate, train and raise awareness of the problems of desertification. This requires research institutions, NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and government to work together to fight desertification.”

“But more important, we need people on the ground in the villages in rural areas to feel the benefits, otherwise they will not buy into it. They want to know what’s in it for them,” he added.

About 20 programmes have been put in place to address desertification; however, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk has expressed concern about the level of co-ordination between these initiatives, saying it does not match what is needed for land to be managed sustainably.

The situation is of even greater concern if predictions about climate change are taken into account.

“A number of climate change reports say we are going to have less rainfall. This means there will be less vegetation and less water for livestock,” said Kellner. “Food, fibre, fodder and fuel are going to get less and less if we don’t address desertification.”

Already, “Ninety-seven percent of South Africa is arid or semi-arid. We shall be hit hard by desertification.”

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 18 2007 (IPS)

Reports that Zimbabwean Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu has annulled the registration of all non-governmental organisations (NGOs) active in the country have been greeted with dismay by civil society representatives.

“27 years after Zimbabwe welcomed democracy and justice, the current government has marked this Independence Day by clamping down on peaceful NGOs – the same organisations that work to protect human rights, reduce poverty and encourage the betterment of Zimbabwean society,” said Clare Doube, manager of the Civil Society Watch programme at the Worldwide Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS), in reference to the emergence of the reports ahead of Zimbabwe Independence Day, Wednesday.

CIVICUS is a network of civil society organisations; it is based in South Africa’s commercial centre, Johannesburg.

“Rather than engaging these active and passionate citizens in ending the current economic and social crisis, the government is attempting to silence them,” Doube added, in an Apr. 17 statement put out by CIVICUS.

Zimbabwe is currently battling runaway inflation, high unemployment and shortages of essential goods – blamed by some on government’s economic mismanagement. The country is also experiencing political repression that has resulted in widespread human rights abuses and a number of flawed elections.

State-controlled television was quoted as saying that the annulment was aimed at identifying “agents of imperialism from genuine organisations working to uplift the well-being of the poor”.

The Harare government has accused certain Western states of trying to topple it, saying these countries are responsible for the many problems gripping Zimbabwe. It portrays opposition and civil society groups as being puppets of outside powers.

“At the moment (civil society groups) are perceived as opposition parties. This is wrong,” Nicholas Mkaronda, co-ordinator for a pressure group called the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, told journalists at a briefing held by CIVICUS Tuesday. The event highlighted the findings of an Apr. 13-16 visit to Zimbabwe by CIVICUS Secretary General Kumi Naidoo and Doube.

News of Ndlovu’s threats came as civil society organisations were demanding that they be included in talks for finding a solution to Zimbabwe’s political and economic ills which are being mediated by South African President Thabo Mbeki.

A Mar. 28-29 summit of the Southern African Development Community held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, mandated Mbeki to “to continue to facilitate dialogue” between Zimbabwean authorities and the opposition.

“The solution to Zimbabwe’s problems should not be confined to ZANU-PF and the MDC. Civil society should be part of it,” Don Mattera, a South African writer and member of the Global Pan African Movement, told IPS – referring to the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe’s leading opposition group. He was another of the representatives of civil society organisations present at the CIVICUS briefing.

“There are many other players there besides the MDC and ZANU-PF.”

CIVICUS is planning to meet Mbeki to discuss the situation in Zimbabwe. “We’ll tell Mbeki not only to mediate between government and the MDC, but also with civil society and other Zimbabweans,” Doube said at the briefing.

“The situation in Zimbabwe is dire. It’s truly a crisis of many different dimensions,” she added, noting that some 600 people are estimated to have disappeared since a Mar. 11 prayer meeting where opposition and civil society representatives were beaten by police. The victims of abuse included Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of an MDC faction. Authorities claimed the gathering was illegal.

“If we don’t act fast we are going to have an Argentina-style operation where people ‘get disappeared’,” Naidoo said, alluding to the manner in which government opponents vanished in this South American country during military rule in the 1970s and 1980s.

During his stay in Zimbabwe, Naidoo addressed a prayer gathering in the southern city of Bulawayo.

“While Saturday’s prayer meeting in Bulawayo was fortunately allowed to proceed without police interference, this was definitely an exception to recent practice. The increasing restrictions on civil society action in Zimbabwe severely hamper citizen participation in making a turn for the better,” he was quoted as saying in the Apr. 17 statement.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 12 2007 (IPS)

African states should put in place sufficient budget allocations and the right policies if the continent is to meet the global and regional health care targets that governments have committed themselves to, say campaigners.

In 2000 African states, along with most of the world, agreed to meet the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. African heads of state also committed their countries to improving health care across the continent by 2010 at a meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2001.

Of the eight MDGs, three relate directly to health. One calls for reducing child mortality, the other for improving maternal health and the last one is aimed at combating HIV/AIDS and malaria. Campaigners are concerned that the majority of African nations will not achieve these MDGs.

Therefore, representatives from 143 member organisations of the African Civil Society Coalition on HIV/AIDS and Allies came together in Johannesburg, South Africa, this week (Apr 9-13) to lobby African health ministers who were meeting at the same time to draft the Africa Health Strategy 2007-2015.

The coalition urged African governments to allocate 15 percent of national budgets to health care, as per the Abuja commitment of 2001. It also urged governments to engage civil society and line ministries in mobilising resources for tuberculosis (TB).

Member states should work towards closing the TB funding gap of nearly 11 billion US dollars over the next decade, the coalition demanded. It organised a demonstration on 11 April. About 1,000 people participated.

‘‘Eight million Africans are dying from HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria every year. We want to stop this,” Regis Mtutu of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) told IPS in an interview. TAC is a pressure group based in Cape Town, South Africa, which seeks access to drugs for people living with HIV/AIDS.

‘‘We cannot meet the MDGs at this pace. We need to double up our efforts through some extraordinary work, particularly in the areas of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria,” said Mtutu.

Regarding the commitment to put aside 15 percent of national budgets for health services, ‘‘only Botswana and The Gambia have met this promise”, Mtutu said.

Following the demonstration in Johannesburg, the coalition presented its petition to the African Union (AU) commission for health. ‘‘We hope that they will listen to us. We are not fighting them. We are sending our message robustly,” Mtutu said.

Part of the African health ministers’ discussions included a plan to set up pharmaceutical plants for producing life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). Mtutu pointed out that ‘‘the ministers for finance and industry were not part of the discussion. To succeed, the health ministers need mandates from their finance and industry counterparts.

‘‘If we are to achieve the MDGs, the key ministerial clusters need to meet in the next six to 12 months,” Mtutu said.

Some campaigners say meeting the health MDGs cuts across other areas such as combating poverty, improving sanitation and infrastructure. Eve Edete, policy officer at Oxfam Kenya office, told IPS that ‘‘‘MDGs’ is just a label. It is a brand.

‘‘HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and other diseases are really the issue. It is about systems to deliver health care. This should be the starting point to meeting the MDGs,” said Edete.

Although governments have committed themselves to the MDGs and the Abuja target, some prefer to move at their own pace. Kenya’s government, for example, says it will commit 12 percent of its national budget to health by 2008, according to Ruth Charo of Kenya’s Health Nongovernmental Organizations Network based in the capital Nairobi.

‘‘It should be a step-by-step approach. Each country has its own strategy. If you set a time frame it might not work. For example, you cannot expect (strife-torn) countries like Somalia, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo to reach the 15 percent target. It is not practical,” she told IPS.

The coalition said in a statement that ‘‘the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe deserves special mention as it is also a health crisis for Africa. People living with HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe cannot obtain the care they need and the climate of violence is perpetuating the epidemics of HIV and TB.

‘‘The shockwaves from the crisis in Zimbabwe are reverberating throughout the continent as refugees seek health care and other services in neighbouring countries. Our health ministers must speak out on Zimbabwe on health and humanitarian grounds,” the coalition argued.

Civil society groups put the number of Zimbabweans who have fled their country since the crisis began in 2000 to 5 million, with 2.5 million of them believed to be living in South Africa. Others have fled to Botswana, Zambia, Namibia, Britain and the United States.

In a new report, ‘‘Paying for People”, published this month (April), Oxfam estimates that 13.7 billion US dollars must be invested every year to appoint an additional 1 million teachers and 2.1 million health care workers urgently needed to break the cycle of poverty in Africa.

Oxfam is an international charity which is part of the coalition which lobbied African health ministers in Johannesburg,

‘‘Today in too many of the world’s poorest countries health and education services are dependent on a handful of workers struggling heroically to do their jobs on pitiful wages and in appalling conditions. Becoming a doctor, nurse or teacher is like signing a contract with poverty,” Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stuart wrote in the report.

According to the report, ‘‘Africa has 13 percent of the global population and 25 percent of the global burden of disease but only 1.3 percent of the global workforce.”

The report cites Tanzania as an example. This southern African country produces 640 doctors, nurses and midwives each year. But to reach the World Health Organisation’s recommended staffing levels within 10 years it would need to produce 3,500 such health workers each year.

Another example is Malawi where only nine percent of health facilities have adequate staff to provide basic health care. The country loses around 100 nurses each year ‘‘who emigrate in search of a better wage”, according to the Oxfam report.

Charo told IPS that Kenyan health workers are not only moving overseas but are also seeking opportunities in the private sector for better pay. ‘‘If you work for government, you get 12,000 Kenya shillings (about 172 US dollars) but in the NGO or private sector you earn 40,000 shillings (nearly 572 US dollars) a month. People are tempted to move on.”

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 9 2007 (IPS)

A debate is underway among analysts and civil society activists about how South African President Thabo Mbeki should proceed in fulfilling the mandate given to him last month by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), to continue mediating between Zimbabwe’s government and opposition.

The hope is that talks between the political groupings will enable Zimbabwe to address a political and economic crisis that has led to repeated human rights abuses, as well as soaring inflation and unemployment, and shortages of basic goods.

Some question the effectiveness of the policy of quiet diplomacy that Mbeki has adopted towards Zimbabwe until now.

“Mbeki has failed in his quiet diplomacy. This is the fifth time SADC has mandated him to mediate in Zimbabwe since 2000,” Idai Zimunya, co-ordinator of the Crisis Coalition of Zimbabwe, a pressure group based in South Africa, told IPS.

“But it’s too early to judge him on his previous failure.”

Noted Claude Kabemba of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, a think tank in the South African commercial hub of Johannesburg: “I think Mbeki needs to move from quiet diplomacy to open mediation so that people know what he’s doing.”

“In the past we didn’t know who he was talking to – and nobody knew who was creating problems for the quiet diplomacy,” he told IPS. “If the mediation is transparent, people will know who’s holding it to ransom.”

For its part, the South African government argues that an outspoken approach would alienate the Mugabe regime, and cause Zimbabwean officials to harden their position.

The special SADC summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where the 14-bloc grouping handed the mandate to Mbeki, was convened amidst global concern about another wave of political violence in Zimbabwe.

“The government of Zimbabwe has permitted security forces to commit serious abuses with impunity against opposition activists and ordinary Zimbabweans alike,” the New York-based Human Rights Watch noted in a Mar. 28 statement.

“Security forces are responsible for arbitrary arrests and detentions and beatings of opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters, civil society activists, and the general public.”

One activist has been killed in the latest bout of repression, while a number of opposition supporters were beaten and hospitalised when a prayer meeting was broken up by police Mar. 11 – including Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of one of the factions in the MDC.

Mugabe accuses the party of undertaking a terror campaign to topple him, a charge the opposition has denied.

The media, already constrained in their operations, have also been feeling the effects of the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe.

Last week, the body of Zimbabwean cameraman Edward Chikomba was found some 50 kilometres west of the capital, Harare – this after he had been abducted towards the end of March. The killing of the former state broadcaster employee has been attributed to his reported leaking to foreign media of footage showing injuries sustained by Tsvangirai during the violent dispersal of the Mar. 11 prayer meeting.

Under the 2002 Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, foreign correspondents have effectively been banished from Zimbabwe, where authorities have also made accreditation for local reporters mandatory.

Gift Phiri, who writes for a London-based weekly, ‘The Zimbabwean’, was hospitalised last week. According to a statement by the International Freedom of Expression eXchange and Reporters Without Borders, he required treatment for injuries acquired while being beaten during four days spent in police custody. Phiri has apparently been charged with working without the required accreditation.

In addition, Time magazine reporter Alexander Perry was arrested, convicted and fined for working without accreditation; the fine was reportedly less than one U.S. dollar.

Trade unions in Zimbabwe called for a strike last week to increase the pressure for political change. However, there was reportedly a limited response to the appeal.

“With unemployment standing at 80 percent, you can imagine the pressure on the 20 percent employed – many of whom do not belong to any union,” Nicholas Dube, a representative in South Africa of the MDC, told IPS.

“The majority of Zimbabweans are self-employed, selling tomatoes or other types of vegetables. They are not members of any union to go on strike.”

Also, “If any employer closes a business…the government automatically withdraws his or her licence,” said Dube.

Further pressure has come from Catholic bishops in Zimbabwe, who issued a message over Easter warning that public uprisings against the current situation were imminent (Mugabe is himself a Roman Catholic).

“Many people in Zimbabwe are angry, and their anger is now erupting into open revolt…” stated the letter, which was titled ‘God Hears the Cries of the Oppressed’.

“In order to avoid further bloodshed and avert a mass uprising, the nation needs a new people-driven constitution that will guide a democratic leadership chosen in free and fair elections.”

Elections held over the past few years have been marred by irregularities and rights abuses.

The bishops also called for prayer and fasting to take place this coming Saturday, to push for reform.

This would doubtless have the approval of Zimunya, who believes a broad range of actions is needed to bring about change.

“We are not putting all our eggs in SADC. We will not sit back and relax,” he said.

“We will use other strategies…to complement SADC efforts. We believe it’s not only one key that can unlock the Zimbabwe crisis.”

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 6 2007 (IPS)

South Africa seems to have succeeded in preventing an outbreak of Extreme Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB) from spiralling out of control and spreading beyond its borders, at least for now.

XDR-TB is a more serious form of Multidrug Resistant TB (MDR-TB). While various strains of MDR-TB can resist treatment by certain “first-line drugs” – drugs used as the first line of defence against the disease – XDR-TB is also resistant to various second-line drugs.

The outbreak took place last year in the south-eastern KwaZulu-Natal province.

“Of the 54 people infected with the new strain, 53 died,” Lihle Dlamini, coordinator in KwaZulu Natal for the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), told IPS. The TAC is a pressure group based in the coastal city of Cape Town that seeks access to treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Persons who have contracted the HI virus are particularly vulnerable to TB, while XDR-TB can prove deadly. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), adult HIV prevalence in South Africa is put at 18.8 percent.

On the eve of World Health Day (Apr. 7), these developments are significant. The theme for this year’s day is “Invest in health, build a safer future”. It was chosen to highlight the fact that health threats increasingly stretch across borders, and that global co-operation is needed to counter them.

Had XDR-TB gained a hold beyond KwaZulu-Natal, it would have posed a threat not only to South Africa, but the region as a whole – considered the epicentre of the global AIDS pandemic. UNAIDS estimates indicate that one in three people who have contracted HIV lives in Southern Africa.

“In an age of widespread global trade and travel, new and existing diseases can cross national borders and threaten our collective security,” writes Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), in her message for World Health Day 2007.

“Only through strong collaboration among developed and developing countries, together with an increased focus on information sharing and the strengthening of public health systems and surveillance, can we contain their spread.”

In South Africa, an XDR-TB epidemic would also have proved very costly, no small matter in a country where there are many needs to be addressed.

“Government spends at least 400 rand (about 55 dollars) per patient for treating ordinary TB. For multidrug resistant TB, the cost of treatment dramatically increases to 24,000 rand (3,288 dollars) per patient” Jeff Radebe, acting health minister, said in a speech on World Tuberculosis Day, Mar. 24.

“In addition to the resources available in provinces, we have allocated an extra 3.6 million rand (about 494 million dollars) to complement infection control renovation projects that are underway in various provinces,” he added.

Efforts to step up the fight against TB are focussed on a variety of areas.

“Infection control measures are aimed at reducing direct or indirect contact transmission by isolating patients, creating adequate bed floor space and improving ventilation in wards,” Radebe noted.

“These hospitals are being fitted with extractor fans and ultraviolet light filters which remove and kill the bacteria circulating in the air, thereby preventing cross infection in health facilities. For extra protection, respirator masks are given to health workers, and visitors in the hospital and patients are provided with surgical masks,” he added.

“Drug-resistant TB units are also being improved countrywide to deal with infection control.”

Several factors cause TB to develop resistance to drugs, including patients’ failure to complete courses of TB medication. Incorrect prescription of drugs and the use of poor quality drugs are also to blame.

Much remains to be done in the fight against the various strains of TB, such as tackling traditions that undermine effective treatment.

“For cultural reasons and stigma attached to the disease, some TB patients prefer to go to the witchdoctor first. And when they are too sick they come to the hospital,” said Dlamini. “By then, they are already too weak and some of them can’t even walk.”

XDR-TB also remains a threat.

“Even now we have 200 cases in the province (KwaZulu-Natal). The number could be more, but we are not sure because not everybody comes for testing,” Dlamini noted. “The majority of our people live in rural areas where the nearest clinic may be five or six kilometres away. However, there’s a specific team focusing on TB in the province.”

There is also a pressing need for new drugs to cope with XDR-TB.

“Research into these new agents has only recently been revitalised and despite promising drugs in the pipeline, these will not be available for at least five years. Further investment in new drug research and development will be necessary to ensure an adequate number of effective drugs,” noted a statement by WHO TB experts and others who gathered in the South African commercial centre of Johannesburg last September. Their meeting discussed strategies for dealing with TB resistance.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 31 2007 (IPS)

South Africa has joined the race to find alternative sources of energy: government has already approved a ‘Draft Biofuels Industry Strategy’, and called on stakeholders to discuss it.

The strategy proposes that biofuels ultimately account for 75 percent of the country’s renewable energy target.

“Maize and sugar, as well as soya beans and sunflowers, were confirmed as potential crops to satisfy the country’s biofuels production. The strategy also acknowledges that South Africa conducts research to develop other crop varieties to further increase the country’s production levels. There is no intention in the draft strategy to exclude any crops,” the Department of Minerals and Energy noted in a statement.

Nonetheless, says Annie Sugrue of the Johannesburg-based Citizens United for Renewable Energy and Sustainability, “We believe the focus is too much on maize, sugar cane, soya and other traditional crops.”

Adds Richard Worthington, co-ordinator for the Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Project, also based in Johannesburg, “Maize should be treated with a lot of caution. Studies show that algae can also be a source of biofuel.”

Private companies such as Ethanol Africa have been discussing the development of biofuels from maize and sugar.

But, “Maize and sugar are their business. They don’t want to risk moving to other crops,” says Worthington.

Ethanol Africa declined to be interviewed by IPS at this time. Erhard Seiler, chief executive officer for the Southern African Biofuels Association, of which Ethanol Africa is member, indicated in an e-mail that ”At the moment we are in very close communication with the South African Government for the preparation of the Biofuel Strategy, which will be tabled (in) parliament during the 2nd or 3rd quarter in 2007.”

Sugrue fears that producing biofuel from maize could affect food security. Maize is the staple food of South Africa, consumed by 80 percent of the population.

“One of the biggest criticisms of the biofuels sector is that it could contribute to a shortage of food. This could happen if there is competition for the crops themselves,” she told IPS.

Such competition could pose problems at regional, as well as national level, Sugrue wrote in a paper titled ‘Towards A Southern African NGO Position On Biofuels’: “In Southern Africa maize could be a major feedstock for biofuels, yet it is the staple diet of more than 80 percent of the population and all of the poorest citizens.”

“A conversion of these farms to the production of energy crops would be devastating to the food economy and security. Other countries like South Africa and Namibia have limited arable land and in the former case have achieved reasonably good local food production that should be maintained.”

She also points out that maize can prove difficult to cultivate, being vulnerable to drought, and vacillating between surpluses and deficits from one year to the next.

“It might be better to look at the sugar industry which has consistent and permanent surpluses that are used for export that could be diverted towards the biofuels industry,” noted Sugrue, who says environmentalists are committed to having 10 percent of electricity in South Africa generated by renewable energy sources by 2012 – and 20 percent by 2020.

The ‘Draft Biofuels Industry Strategy’ was given the green light in December last year.

Biofuels also hold out the prospect of increased employment, no small matter in a country with widespread unemployment.

“Biofuels is labour intensive. It could provide a lot of jobs – up to a million including indirect jobs,” said Worthington.

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 30 2007 (IPS)

Hopes that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe would be taken to task this week over human rights abuses in his country have been dashed – this after regional leaders reaffirmed their solidarity with Zimbabwe, and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) endorsed Mugabe as its presidential candidate for 2008 elections.

A special summit of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) also appealed for sanctions against Zimbabwe to be lifted.

The European Union imposed targeted sanctions on the country in 2002, and the United States in 2003, in response to rights violations in Zimbabwe and flawed parliamentary and presidential polls in 2000 and 2002 respectively. In its communiqué for the Mar. 28-29 summit, SADC described the 2002 presidential election as having been “free, fair and democratic”.

In addition, the summit communiqué called on Britain – Zimbabwe’s former coloniser – to honour a commitment made during independence negotiations to help fund land reform in the country aimed at rectifying racial imbalances in land ownership.

It also mandated South African President Thabo Mbeki “to continue to facilitate dialogue” between Zimbabwe’s government and opposition, and the SADC executive secretary to study the economic situation in the country.

South Africa’s policy of quiet diplomacy towards its northern neighbour has come under repeated attack, with critics accusing the approach of being ineffectual.

Zimbabwe is currently battling inflation of about 1,700 percent, widespread unemployment and shortages of food and other basic goods – evidence of economic decline ascribed to government mismanagement, and a controversial farm redistribution programme ostensibly aimed at giving property to landless, black Zimbabweans.

Mugabe blames Zimbabwe’s economic woes on Western nations, accused of undermining the Southern African country in response to the land reallocation programme.

The SADC summit also discussed the aftermath of elections in Lesotho, and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Just a day after regional leaders wrapped up their talks in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, ZANU-PF agreed to hold presidential, parliamentary and local government elections in 2008 – backing Mugabe to lead it in the polls. The 83-year-old leader has been in power since independence in 1980.

ZANU-PF’s continued support of Mugabe Friday came despite reports of disenchantment in party ranks at the effects of his rule, which has in recent weeks seen another crackdown on opposition supporters that claimed the life of an activist earlier this month.

Several others have been hospitalised after undergoing beatings. They include Morgan Tsvangirai – leader of a faction in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) – who was assaulted when police broke up a prayer meeting on Mar. 11.

Mugabe has accused the MDC of staging a terror campaign to unseat him (a charge the party denies), and portrays it as a Western puppet. Reports indicate that nine opposition officials were charged this week in connection with the alleged terror campaign.

In a press release issued Wednesday, Human Rights Watch claimed that ordinary Zimbabweans had also been affected by the latest wave of state repression.

“Witnesses and victims from Harare’s high-density suburbs of Glenview, Highfield and Mufakose told Human Rights Watch that for the past few weeks police forces patrolling these locations have randomly and viciously beaten Zimbabweans in the streets, shopping malls, and in bars and beer halls,” notes the Mar. 28 document.

The New York-based grouping had called on SADC to speak out against abuse in Zimbabwe as well as against “the general climate of repression faced by (its) citizens”. It also wanted the region to appeal for and participate in an independent commission of inquiry into the latest abuses at the hands of security forces.

Ayesha Kajee, a researcher at the Johannesburg-based South African Institute of International Affairs who recently visited Zimbabwe, says people there often depend for their survival on family and friends living abroad. Economic and political hardship has caused millions of Zimbabweans to leave for South Africa, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

“The standard of living has fallen among ordinary Zimbabweans. Two to five years ago an average family would have subsisted on proper meals. People now depend on grain and vegetables. They say they are relying on remittances from the disaspora,” she told IPS.

But, “If people were forced to change their forex (foreign exchange) at the official rate they would not live. They change it on the parallel market at 40 times the official rate,” Kajee added.

Remittances will not reach everyone, however.

On Thursday Rashid Khalikov, New York head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, informed the Security Council that harvests this year might only meet one third of Zimbabwe’s requirements. This would increase the number of people at risk of hunger, a figure that had already reached upwards of 1.4 million last year.

Agencies such as the U.N. World Food Programme are already feeding the needy in Zimbabwe.

Noted Kajee: “People are reluctant to tell you that they rely on food aid. But they will tell you that they know someone who relies on food aid. Of course they have their pride and dignity to protect.”

Excerpt:

By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 26 2007 (IPS)

As Lesotho’s newly-elected legislators settle down to the task of governing, activists are expressing disappointment at the low representation of women in the country’s parliament.

Just under a quarter of the legislators are women – 28 out of a total of 120. While this is 11 more than in the previous parliament, it still falls “far below” the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) target of 50 percent, says Keiso Matashane: co-ordinator in Lesotho for the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Trust. This grouping seeks to improve the situation of women through lobbying, and researching various issues related to the law and rights.

No deadline has been set for achieving equal representation of women in decision-making posts of the 14 SADC countries, which include Lesotho; the 50 percent target reflects the position taken by the African Union.

In 1997, SADC set a goal of having 30 percent of decision-making posts in government occupied by women, by 2005. However, only South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania met the deadline.

Women’s groups say they are still analysing the reasons why female candidates did not make a better showing in Lesotho’s Feb. 11 polls. In the meantime, those searching for pointers on how to improve gender parity in the next parliamentary vote may wish to take a closer look at local elections, which have resulted in a 58 percent representation of women in Lesotho’s local government offices.

This figure is the highest in the SADC region, says Loveness Jambaya of Gender Links, a non-governmental organisation based in the South African commercial hub of Johannesburg.

“Lesotho tops the league in local government. At the bottom is Mauritius with 6.4 percent representation,” she told IPS. “If we understand the strategy Lesotho women used in local government, we may be able to unpack the strategy at national level.”

Concerning the overall progress Lesotho is making with bringing women into government, however, Jambaya – like Matashane – is unenthusiastic: “In terms of women’s parliamentary performance, Lesotho is not doing well…It sits in the middle rank.”

Of the 19 registered political parties in the 1.8 million-strong nation, two are led by women – the New Lesotho Freedom Party and the Basutoland African Congress.

The number of women ministers has increased from five in the previous cabinet to six. Those women who are in the legislature will have the opportunity to address issues that affect women – gender-related violence and inheritance rights, amongst others – through a women’s parliamentary caucus, says Matashane.

Women elsewhere in the region have asserted the need for female decision-makers in government to advance gender equality.

“For those of us women in privileged positions, it behoves us to use the space we have to make a difference,” Athalia Molokomme, Botswana’s attorney general, wrote in the 2005/2006 Gender Links annual report.

“We are painfully aware that the challenge before our region is not to simply occupy these spaces of power but to accelerate the achievement of gender equality in Southern Africa. We will strive to make our contribution, from what ever vantage points we are able to.”

Gender Links strikes a more positive note about the progress of women in Southern Africa as a whole.

“Although only three countries have achieved the…SADC target (of 30 percent representation), on average women comprise 20 percent of the region’s legislators: second only to the Scandinavian countries where the average is 38 percent,” the organisation noted in a statement presented to the SADC head of states summit held in Lesotho’s capital – Maseru – in August 2006.

“And where it took the Scandinavians 60 years to achieve this, SADC has shown that rapid change is possible.”

Excerpt: