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Date Posted: 22:40:36 12/01/02 Sun
Author: weird_enigma
Author Host/IP: 209.252.119.119
Subject: Famine and AIDS ravage southern Africa

Double trouble
Famine and AIDS ravage southern Africa, abetted by drought, foolhardy economic policies, corruption and mismanagement
SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN
Knight Ridder

KASISI, Zambia - Timothy Tembo's stomach hurt. The 10-year-old orphan hadn't eaten for more than a day, so he took an ear of corn from his uncle's field.

When Timothy's uncle found out, he tied the boy to a bench with his hands behind his back. He wrapped a plastic cornmeal bag around a stick and dipped it into a fire until the plastic began to melt. Then he dripped the molten plastic onto his nephew's hands and feet.

"I was crying and calling for my mother and father," said Timothy, who is smaller than a boy his age ought to be.

Malnutrition, disease and starvation stalk more than 16 million people in southern Africa. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, already have died, and if the world doesn't respond quickly enough, the World Health Organization says, 300,000 people could perish from hunger-related illnesses before March's harvest of corn, the region's staple food.

"The intensity of this crisis is increasing faster than we ever could have expected," said James Morris, the United Nations special envoy for humanitarian needs, who says southern Africa is the scene of the "largest humanitarian crisis in the world today."

Hunger still haunts much of Africa: Eighteen years after famine killed 1 million people in Ethiopia, sparking an international relief effort that included two rock concerts, that country is once again asking the international community for help to feed its people.

But that wasn't supposed to happen in southern Africa. Called the "bread basket of Africa," the region was an oasis of relative peace and plenty in a continent plagued by war, corruption and feeble governments. Three years ago, the region was able to feed itself and export grain, tobacco, sugarcane and other agricultural goods to the United States, Europe and neighboring African countries.

Now, humans and nature have conspired to create an unparalleled catastrophe there that defies easy solutions. Back-to-back droughts, compounded by disease, corruption, foolhardy economic policies, misguided nationalism and government mismanagement have crippled agricultural production in six southern African nations: Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. And in Angola, a 27-year civil war has ended, but tens of thousands of returning refugees have no means to cultivate their devastated land or buy food.

For the first time in history, AIDS has taken center stage in a hunger crisis, as thousands of infected villagers are too weak to till their fields.

Cutbacks in government-run health and agricultural programs, often made at the behest of Western lending agencies, have left many small farmers vulnerable to the whims of the free market and many villagers unable to afford treatment for illnesses spawned by hunger.

In Zambia, mistrust of the West and its biotechnology have prompted the government to reject offers of genetically modified corn from the United States, even as millions starve.

In Zimbabwe, the government has thrown hundreds of Africa's most productive farmers off their land in an effort to reverse the effects of white colonialism.

In southern Africa's last major famine, in 1992, "you were dealing with Mother Nature," said Brenda Barton, the chief spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program in southern Africa. "Now you are dealing with Mother Nature, economics, politics and AIDS."

Not enough aid for crisis

This alliance of natural disaster and human folly is gnawing at the twin pillars of African society, the family and the village. As parents die of AIDS and other illnesses, young orphans and aging grandmothers are becoming heads of households.Neighbors steal from neighbors and an uncle tortures his starving nephew. Children collapse in school or drop out to help feed their families. Men, out of work and out of confidence, abandon their families. Women turn to prostitution and adultery to feed their babies.

"It's survival of the fittest," said Alexander Kasenzi, the director of Harvest Help, a Zambian relief agency. "All these things are not natural in Africa."

Help has been slow in coming, despite the fact that the world is growing more food than ever. The United States exports 60 percent of its food. India has millions of tons of surplus grain in its silos.

President Bush has vowed not to allow a famine on his watch, and the United States is providing 40 percent of the emergency food aid to southern Africa, more by far than any other country. But only half of the $507 million in food aid that's needed to prevent a famine in southern Africa has been pledged, WFP officials say.

Western television screens and front pages have been preoccupied with a possible war with Iraq, and they have had little time or space for starving babies with bloated bellies. That's made it harder for relief agencies to raise money.

The world is growing weary of fighting humanitarian brushfires from Afghanistan to Liberia.

Development aid from the United States and other wealthy nations has shrunk more than 25 percent since the mid-1980s, when the United States, the Soviet Union and their proxies battled for influence in Africa. Back then, the United States spent $1.2 billion a year on agricultural projects around the world. Now, it spends around $400 million.

"There seems to be far greater willingness to fund emergencies rather than development projects," said Luis Clemens, a WFP spokesman in Malawi.

Because there isn't enough emergency food aid to go around, WFP workers and local authorities in all the hungry nations except Angola have asked village chiefs to choose the most vulnerable villagers to get bags of cornmeal and other food every month.

In Mkhonde, a village in the green hills of southern Malawi, Namayesa Machirike would seem to qualify. A widow, she has seven children, including two malnourished twins with swollen bellies. Her husband, she says, grew weaker and weaker this year and finally lost his battle with hunger.

When he died, there was no one to help Machirike plant crops. That meant there were no crops, no harvest and no food for her children, who have been losing weight and getting scabies and other skin diseases.

Machirike began feeding her children banana roots she dug up. Her spirit was as bruised as her hands.

Tribal tradition dictates that a man's property belongs to his relatives, not to his widow. So her husband's relatives came and took all her possessions -- pots, plates, everything -- from her mud hut.

"They didn't harvest any crops this year, either," she said, as she pulled out a gaunt breast to feed her crying baby. She squeezed. She squeezed again. Then she pulled out her other breast.

"There's no milk," she said, finally giving up as one of her malnourished twins sat motionless with a blank look in his eyes.

Machirike tries to cope by taking her children on a 10-mile walk to a feeding center every two weeks. There, she gets barely enough cornmeal and soybeans to feed her family.

Kaphale Zakeyo, who has two relatively healthy children, is one of the 10 lucky villagers in Mkhonde, where elders say about 50 people have died of hunger and hunger-related causes since February.

He's the village chief.

"Most of the chiefs take advantage," said Sarah Kaphamtengo, 26, a WFP food monitor. "They're corrupt."

When asked why the chief was more eligible for food aid than Machirike, Peter Kutheka, the deputy village chief, replied:

"This is according to the government's plan."

Harsh penalties for stealing

Southern Africa's food crisis is shredding the safety net that has always protected people when the weather, the governments and the outside world have failed them: the village and the extended family.

In Matua, a village on the shores of Lake Kariba in southern Zambia, fishermen keep a close watch on their nets, because their neighbors have begun sneaking up at night and stealing their fish. Sometimes the nets vanish, too.

"This never used to happen here before. Now it's happening more and more," said Kiliford Buleke, 25, as he wrapped up his black net under a tree.

"Hunger," he explained, shaking his head.

Up a dry, barren hill, Enny Manyena, 27, brewed a potent brown concoction of water, yeast and sugar into beer. Her customers -- six unemployed men -- gathered a few yards away, spending their last kwachas to forget their woes and their large, hungry families.

Mandamu Samende, a glassy-eyed grandmother who's taking care of three orphans, remembers the 1992 famine, when she fought her hunger by begging from relatives or bartering her possessions for food.

This time, food is scarcer and more expensive. People want cash. Her relatives are thinking only of their own families.

"Everyone has to survive on their own," Samende said. "This hunger is a one-sided battle. As I'm sitting here, it is fighting me, but I'm not able to fight it."

The penalties for stealing food can be harsh. At the Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi, doctors have treated dozens of men for machete wounds from vigilante farmers. Some thieves have been killed.

Timothy Tembo's uncle was sentenced to seven years in jail for mutilating his nephew. Timothy now lives in an orphanage in Kasisi -- on the outskirts of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia -- funded by American and European donors and run by nuns.

At first, he stole food from other orphans and squirreled it away in different places.

"I was scared I would get hungry again," he said in a shy, mousy voice.

His life is better now. In the bright, clean rooms of the orphanage, children carry Winnie the Pooh dolls and white teddy bears. They have enough to eat.

As happy as a kid in a candy store, Timothy rattled off his favorite foods: "Meat, sweets, chips, biscuits, bananas, sausages and ice cream."

His scarred feet have healed just enough to let him wear shoes. But his mutilated fingers are curled. He cannot shake hands with visitors. He can't draw or write.

In a society where children are expected to help their parents in the fields or at home, nobody wants a boy who can't use his hands.

"He's here for good," said Sister Mariola, one of the nuns at the orphanage.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email Sudarsan Raghavan at sraghavan@krwashington.com

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