[A-List] Climate change and IMF assault southern Africa

["Sherry & Stan Goff" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

Once again, African children are dying of hunger. But why is famine
afflicting places of such natural wealth?

By Karen MacGregor in Durban and Katherine Butler
07 June 2002

Hunger stalks southern Africa. In Malawi, the men risk their lives to dive
for water-lily bulbs in crocodile-infested rivers and kill mice to eat and
sell. The women gather wild grasses and boil up weeds to feed their
children.

Nearly 13 million people are on the brink of starvation as the worst food
crisis in a decade spreads across six countries: Malawi, Mozambique,
Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Lesotho.

A meeting in Johannesburg of aid officials and government leaders has heard
a stark warning from the United Nations. Jean-Jacques Graisse, the deputy
director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said: "This is a crisis of
enormous dimensions. The situation worsens each day."

More than 1 million tonnes of emergency food aid is required to avert an
unfolding disaster in which many people will die. "We'll talk about a famine
the day we see thousands and thousands of people dying," said Mr Graisse.

"At this stage, we have a great number of people facing malnourishment and
starvation in some areas, and if we do nothing, we will face a famine."

The most vulnerable - the very young and the sick - are already perishing,
and millions are surviving on staple foods supplemented by scraps foraged
from the wild.

The British charity Christian Aid is assessing the crisis in Malawi and is
poised to launch a major appeal. "People here are so desperate they are
hunting mice to eat and sell," said the agency's Dominic Nutt, speaking from
Blantyre.

"Many villages are getting no help at all. We saw the fresh graves of
hundreds of people in one village who have died since February. Children,
many of them HIV orphans, have swollen stomachs from chronic malnutrition,"
he said.

In Zambia there has been a 90 per cent crop failure and the price of maize
has spiralled Joanne Muté, of the aid agency Tearfund, who is in the
worst-hit area in the south of the country, said: "Families here are eating
roots and even rats when they can find them."

Yesterday, the UN organisations released new estimates of food-aid needs in
the six countries, based on the reports of its own fact-finding missions.

The total number of people going hungry is 7.7 million, and they urgently
require 262,000 tonnes of food aid. This number will soar to 11.5 million
people from September to November, and to 12.8 million from December to
March. Some four million tonnes of aid will be required to see the region
through to the end of the year, the UN said.

By then, there will be 6 million Zimbabweans in need of emergency food aid,
3.2 million people in Malawi, 2.3 million in Zambia, 500,000 in Mozambique,
445,000 in Lesotho and 231,000 in Swaziland.

Southern Africa is a region of enormous natural wealth. So why are 13
million people enduring these pitiful conditions?

Drought and floods are certainly to blame, but man-made calamities, such as
the decision of the authorities in Malawi to sell off a strategic
167,000-tonne grain reserve and President Robert Mugabe's controversial land
seizures in Zimbabwe, have played a big part.

It is no coincidence that the countries worst hit by food shortages are
those in the greatest political turmoil - Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia. But
only now are governments in the region admitting that they share the blame.

Non-governmental organisations have criticised the IMF for encouraging
Malawi, where up to 3.2 million people are going hungry, to reduce its grain
reserves. Yet Malawi itself ordered the total sale, and the government is
now investigating where the money went. The privatisation of agencies that
previously regulated the price paid to farmers and the distribution of seed
and fertiliser has also contributed to the crisis.

Zimbabwe used to export food to the entire region. Now an extraordinary 5.3
million people need aid.

Yesterday a minister in Mr Mugabe's government admitted for the first time
that politically inspired invasions of thousands of white-owned commercial
farms were partly to blame for the crisis.

Simba Makoni, Zimbabwe's Finance minister, conceded at a summit in Durban
that his country's land-redistribution policies had reduced the amount of
commercial farmland growing maize, the staple food. "It compounds, it
exacerbates, but it is not the primary cause of the problem," he added,
placing the blame primarily on drought.

The ruling Zanu-PF party is also accused of delivering food aid only to its
supporters.

Nobody at the gleaming International Conference Centre in Durban is going
hungry. There, in a separate meeting, eight African presidents and 700
delegates from 47 countries (28 of them African) are thrashing out ways of
implementing Nepad - the New Economic Partnership for African Development -
the continent's renaissance plan, and attracting funding for it at the
upcoming G8 summit in Canada.

The summit in Durban and the famine gathering in Johannesburg are
inextricably linked. Nepad would help Africa cope with famine in the future
by tackling issues such as the need to stamp out corruption.

The meeting in Johannesburg, organised by the WFP and the Food and
Agricultural Organisation, has brought together some 100 aid agency, donor
and government officials to coordinate their responses and to tackle issues
such as accountability and donor concerns about giving aid to governments
they view as unreliable. The focus is also on an Aids epidemic that is
deepening the effects of crop failure.

While climate has played an important role in the impending food security
crisis the need for more effective governance is highlighted by a new
problem being faced this year, according to Brenda Barton, of the WFP.

"Governments said they would import large amounts of food, but these have
largely not materialised," she said. "Lack of imports has meant lack of food
on the market, which has fuelled price hikes. This has made the poor unable
to buy food when their harvests run dry." Zimbabwe, like Malawi, sold maize
reserves even as shortages escalated.

Zimbabwe has had its longest dry spell in 20 years. But that is far from the
only reason for its worst agricultural crisis since the country achieved
independence in 1980.

Drought has been aggravated by a sharp fall in maize production by
commercial farmers, who used to produce a third of total cereals but whose
farming has been severely disrupted by land reform and invasions.

While the area of planted maize has grown through the resettlement of
peasant farmers, the area of commercial farmland planted with maize - the
most productive sector - has plummeted by 62 per cent in two years since the
start of farm occupations. Maize production is 77 per cent less than it was
two years ago, other cereal production is 67 per cent less.

The WFP says: "The extremely poor main season has been caused by a severe
drought between January and April in most parts of the country and the near
collapse of large-scale commercial production due to land reform activities.
Zimbabwe is facing an immediate, serious food crisis. Unless sufficient food
can be imported, and the poorest people can access it, severe malnutrition
and death caused by hunger will occur in the coming months".

Mr Mugabe may also be facing a torrid time from fellow African political
leaders in the coming month, as they prepare to sell the Nepad scheme to the
G8. Zimbabwe's political crisis could make it a test case for the
regeneration plan, which promises political and economic reform in return
for debt relief and increased Western aid.

Zimbabwe has expressed fears that it will be "abandoned" by the rest of
Africa. Olusegun Obasanjo, the Nigerian President, said that Africa would
not hesitate to "sanction itself" if necessary.

full at http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=302878