Africa – Page 6 – artdiamondblog.com

“Intimidation, Threats and Violence Against the White Farmers” in Zimbabwe

“A man tries to force a white Zimbabwean farmer off of his land in “Mugabe and the White African.”” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C9) Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson’s “Mugabe and the White African” is a documentary account of the efforts of Mike Campbell and his son-in-law, Ben Freeth, to hold onto their farm. It tracks their precedent-setting lawsuit against Robert Mugabe, the authoritarian Zimbabwean president, in a regional African court, as well as events on the ground in Zimbabwe: intimidation, threats and violence against the white farmers still holding out after a decade of land seizures by the government.

Many viewers will leave “Mugabe and the White African” thinking that they have seen few, if any, documentaries as wrenching, sad and infuriating, and those feelings will be justified. What has happened (and continues to happen) to the Campbells, the Freeths and some of their white neighbors is not only unjust but also a horrifying, slow-motion nightmare. That sensation is reinforced by the movie’s political-thriller style, partly a result of the covert filming methods necessary in a country where practicing journalism can get you thrown in jail.

For the full movie review, see:

MIKE HALE. “Fighting His Country to Keep His Farmland.” The New York Times (Fri., July 23, 2010): C9.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 22, 2010.)

Mr. Africa Carries a Gun to Keep the Press Free

“Anchors read the latest news from around the world this month in the studio at Radio Mogadishu, which opened in 1951.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A6) This is a typical day at Radio Mogadishu, the one and only relatively free radio station in south central Somalia where journalists can broadcast what they like — without worrying about being beheaded. The station’s 90-foot antennas, which rise above the rubble of the neighborhood, have literally become a beacon of freedom for reporters, editors, technicians and disc jockeys all across Somalia who have been chased away from their jobs by radical Islamist insurgents.

. . .
Somalia has become one of the most dangerous places in the world to practice journalism, with more than 20 journalists assassinated in the past four years. “We miss them,” Mr. Africa said about his fallen colleagues.
He cracked an embarrassed smile when asked about his name. “It’s because I’m dark, really dark,” he said.
Mr. Africa used to work at one of the city’s other radio stations (the city has more than 10) but decided to move on after fighters with the Shabab dropped by and threatened to kill the reporters if they did not broadcast pro-Shabab news. Mr. Africa called the Shabab meddlers “secret editors” and now he carries a gun.
“I tried to get the other journalists to buy pistols,” Mr. Africa remembered. “But nobody listened to me.”
Another reporter, Musa Osman, said that his real home was only about a mile away.
“But I haven’t seen my kids for months,” he said.
He drew his finger across his throat and laughed a sharp, bitter laugh when asked what would happen if he went home.
The digs here are hardly plush. Most of the journalists sleep on thin foam mattresses in bald concrete rooms. The station itself is a crumbling, bullet-scarred reflection of this entire nation, which has been essentially governmentless for nearly two decades.
. . .
They air the speeches of insurgent leaders, they say, and stories about government soldiers robbing citizens.
“If the government does something bad,” Mr. Africa said. “We report it.”

For the full story, see:
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN. “Mogadishu Journal; A Guiding Voice Amid the Ruins of a Capital City.” The New York Times (Tues., March 30, 2010): A6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated March 29, 2010.)

The “Bongo System” of Corruption in Gabon: More on Why Africa is Poor

“The image of Ali Bongo, the son of longtime ruler Omar Bongo, blanketed Libreville.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A5) The “Bongo system,” as people here refer to it — forsaking roads, schools and hospitals for the sake of Mr. Bongo’s 66 bank accounts, 183 cars, 39 luxury properties in France and grandiose government constructions in Libreville — is etched in the streets of this languid seaside capital, where he ruled for 41 years, and also in the minds of its inhabitants.
. . .
A Western family here spoke of embarrassment at visiting a government minister whose house is packed with the latest flat-screen televisions and other expensive electronic gadgets, and whose garage was full of luxury cars. The top aide to a leading opposition figure, discussing the “Bongo system,” said: “You had to bring a suitcase to the palace. Bongo didn’t write checks.” The president, he said, “calls everybody to the palace, and the money is handed out. That’s how the country was run.”
He spoke of a “sandwich system” of vote-buying employed by the ruling party in rural districts: notables are called together for a meeting, and at the end, when all are tired, a tray of “sandwiches” is passed around. Inside each “sandwich” is up to $600.
Looking around at an outdoor restaurant, he asked not to be named because he said: “It’s a police state. They mess up your life.”
. . .
On paper, the government’s budget allocations for health, education and transportation were impressive, “huge,” said the Western development official. “But in reality, it was actually about 20 percent of what was on paper,” the official said. “The rest was embezzled,” he added, asking to remain anonymous because identifying him would complicate his work in the country.
. . .
“It’s a tiny number that benefits from the country’s riches,” said a cigarette vendor, Price Nyamam, squatting on the pavement in the poor Rio district. He said he had degrees in economics and sociology. “You are obliged to do work that doesn’t correspond to your aspirations.”

For the full story, see:
ADAM NOSSITER. “Libreville Journal; Underneath Palatial Skin, Corruption Rules Gabon.” The New York Times (Tues., September 15, 2009): A5.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date September 14, 2009.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

“Foraging for food at the main dump.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Corrupt African Official Enjoys Malibu Estate, While “People Starve” and Obama State Department Sleeps

“The $35 million estate belonging to Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its ruler, in Malibu, Calif., in the lower center of the frame.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) Several times a year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his $35 million estate in Malibu, Calif., his fleet of luxury cars, his speedboats and private jet. And he is always let into the country.

The nation’s doors are open to Mr. Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that “most if not all” of his wealth comes from corruption related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.
And they are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving American visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction of it.
Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the State Department, said she was prohibited from discussing specific visa decisions. But other former and current State Department officials said Equatorial Guinea’s close ties to the American oil industry were the reason for the lax enforcement of the law. Production of the country’s nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies like ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.
“Of course it’s because of oil,” said John Bennett, the United States ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, adding that Washington has turned a blind eye to the Obiangs’ corruption and repression because of its dependence on the country for natural resources. He noted that officials of Zimbabwe are barred from the United States.
“Both countries are severely repressive,” said Mr. Bennett, who is now a senior foreign affairs officer for the State Department in Baghdad. “But if Zimbabwe had Equatorial Guinea’s oil, Zimbabwean officials wouldn’t still be blocked from the U.S.”
Shown the Justice Department (p. A19) documents that detail the accusations of corruption against Mr. Obiang, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who wrote the law restricting visas, expressed frustration and anger with the State Department, which is responsible for issuing visas.
“The fact that someone like Mr. Obiang continues to travel freely here suggests strongly that the State Department is not yet applying the law as vigorously as Congress intended,” Mr. Leahy said. The law was partly inspired by the accusations of corruption surrounding Mr. Obiang’s family and the Equatorial Guinean government, Mr. Leahy’s staff said.
“There are many instances of corrupt foreign officials plundering the natural resources of their countries for their own use while their people starve,” Mr. Leahy said. “The law states clearly that if you do that, you are no longer welcome in the United States.”

For the full story, see:

IAN URBINA. “A U.S. Visa, Shouts of Corruption, Barrels of Oil.” The New York Times (Tues., November 17, 2009): A1 & A19.
(Note: The title of the online version of the article is “Taint of Corruption Is No Barrier to U.S. Visa”; the online version of the article is dated November 16, 2009.)

World’s Poor Care More About Food and Illness than Global Warming

(p. A21) The saddest fact of climate change–and the chief reason we should be concerned about finding a proper response–is that the countries it will hit hardest are already among the poorest and most long-suffering.

In the run-up to this month’s global climate summit in Copenhagen, the Copenhagen Consensus Center dispatched researchers to the world’s most likely global-warming hot spots. Their assignment: to ask locals to tell us their views about the problems they face. Over the past seven weeks, I recounted in these pages what they told us concerned them the most. In nearly every case, it wasn’t global warming.
Everywhere we went we found people who spoke powerfully of the need to focus more attention on more immediate problems. In the Bauleni slum compound in Lusaka, Zambia, 27-year-old Samson Banda asked, “If I die from malaria tomorrow, why should I care about global warming?” In a camp for stateless Biharis in Bangladesh, 45-year-old Momota Begum said, “When my kids haven’t got enough to eat, I don’t think global warming will be an issue I will be thinking about.” On the southeast slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, 45-year-old widow and HIV/AIDS sufferer Mary Thomas said she had noticed changes in the mountain’s glaciers, but declared: “There is no need for ice on the mountain if there is no people around because of HIV/AIDS.”

For the full commentary, see:
BJORN LOMBORG. “OPINION; Time for a Smarter Approach to Global Warming; Investing in energy R&D might work. Mandated emissions cuts won’t..” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., DECEMBER 15, 2009): A21.

Malaria “Weakly Related to Temperature”; “Strongly Related to Poverty”

(p. A17) In the West, campaigners for carbon regulations point out that global warming will increase the number of malaria victims. This is often used as an argument for drastic, immediate carbon cuts.

Warmer, wetter weather will improve conditions for the malaria parasite. Most estimates suggest that global warming will put 3% more of the Earth’s population at risk of catching malaria by 2100. If we invest in the most efficient, global carbon cuts–designed to keep temperature rises under two degrees Celsius–we would spend a massive $40 trillion a year by 2100. In the best case scenario, we would reduce the at-risk population by only 3%.
In comparison, research commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center shows that spending $3 billion annually on mosquito nets, environmentally safe indoor DDT sprays, and subsidies for effective new combination therapies could halve the number of those infected with malaria within one decade. For the money it takes to save one life with carbon cuts, smarter policies could save 78,000 lives. . . .
Malaria is only weakly related to temperature; it is strongly related to poverty. It has risen in sub-Saharan Africa over the past 20 years not because of global warming, but because of failing medical response.

For the full commentary, see:

BJORN LOMBORG. “Climate Change and Malaria in Africa; Limiting carbon emissions won’t do much to stop disease in Zambia.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., NOVEMBER 2, 2009): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated Nov. 1st.)

Aid Dependency “Kills Entrepreneurship”

Dambisa Moyo. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p.11) You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years.

Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.

Maybe that’s because they have so much money that we here in the U.S. are begging the Chinese for loans.

Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid.

What do you think has held back Africans?

I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.

If people want to help out, what do you think they should do with their money if not make donations?

Microfinance. Give people jobs.

For the full interview, see:
DEBORAH SOLOMON, interviewer. “Questions for Dambisa Moyo; The Anti-Bono.” The New York Times, Magazine (Sun., Feb. 22, 2009): 11.

Source of book image: http://media.us.macmillan.com/jackets/500H/9780374139568.jpg

Foreign Aid to Africa “Underwrites Brutal and Corrupt Regimes”

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) It is one of the great conundrums of the modern age: More than 300 million people living across the continent of Africa are still mired in poverty after decades of effort — by the World Bank, foreign governments and charitable organizations — to lift them out if it. While a few African countries have achieved notable rates of economic growth in recent years, per-capita income in Africa as a whole has inched up only slightly since 1960. In that year, the region’s gross domestic product was about equal to that of East Asia. By 2005, East Asia’s GDP was five times higher. The total aid package to Africa, over the past 50 years, exceeds $1 trillion. There is far too little to show for it.

Dambisa Moyo, a native of Zambia and a former World Bank consultant, believes that it is time to end the charade — to stop proceeding as if foreign aid does the good that it is supposed to do. The problem, she says in “Dead Aid,” is not that foreign money is poorly spent (though much of it is) or that development programs are badly managed (though many of them are). No, the problem is more fundamental: Aid, she writes, is “no longer part of the potential solution, it’s part of the problem — in fact, aid is the problem.”
In a tightly argued brief, Ms. Moyo spells out how attempts to help Africa actually hurt it. The aid money pouring into Africa, she says, underwrites brutal and corrupt regimes; it stifles investment; and it leads to higher rates of poverty — all of which, in turn, creates a demand for yet more aid. Africa, Ms. Moyo notes, seems hopelessly trapped in this spiral, and she wants to see it break free. Over the past 30 years, she says, the most aid-dependent countries in Africa have experienced economic contraction averaging 0.2% a year.

For the full review, see:

MATTHEW REES. “Bookshelf; When Help Does Harm.” Wall Street Journal (Tues., Mach 17, 2009): A13.

The reference to the book under review, is:
Moyo, Dambisa. Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

A Salute to the Sudanese Medicine Men

One might expect that the Sudanese medicine men mentioned below, might have undermined the British physicians, as potential competition. So either there is more to the story than is sketched below, or else these Sudanese medicine men in 1939 placed the mission of saving lives, above their own narrow short-run self-interest. If it was the later, then they deserve our belated salute.

(p. 236) Meningitis was a vicious disease. The death rate had always been high, and nothing they did had much effect. The British physicians concentrated on nursing the sick and trying to limit the spread of the disease. The only thing different this year came in the form of three small sample bottles of sulfa that had been sent to their clinic for the treatment of strep diseases and pneumonia. Strep diseases were not the problem of the moment in Wau. This meningitis was caused not by strep but by the more common cause, a related germ called meningococcus. Still, they had the new medicine, they had nothing else, and they had nothing to lose. Someone decided to try it on a meningitis patient.
. . .
(p. 237) . . . There were twenty-one patients in the first group. The doctors hoped to save at least a few of them.
A few days later, all but one were still alive. The physicians immediately wired for more sulfa. Once it arrived, one of the British doctors stayed at the hospital while the other two went village to village, administering sulfa to every meningitis patient they could find. They asked the help of local “medicine men,” as they called them, tribal healers whose dispensation was needed before the natives would accept treatment. The Sudanese healers knew how deadly the disease was. They told their people that the physicians had “magic in a bottle.” They told them to take the shots. The physicians traveled day and night, injecting patients in grass huts, under trees, and along roadsides, The results, they wrote, were “spectacular.” Within a few weeks, they treated more than four hundred patients. They saved more than 90 percent of them. They knocked out the epidemic before it could get started.

Source:
Hager, Thomas. The Demon under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007.
(Note: ellipses added.)

The 10 Million Dollar Bookmark and the 35 Billion Dollar Egg

“A vendor arranges eggs on a new 100 billion Zimbabwean dollar note in Harare July 22, 2008. Zimbabwe’s central bank introduced new higher-value 100 billion Zimbabwe dollar notes on Monday as part of a desperate fight against spiralling hyperinflation, the bank said. An egg now costs $35 billion.” Source of caption and photo: http://www.daylife.com/photo/03ORa153k8bVA

(p. A1) Robert Mugabe has kept his embattled regime in Zimbabwe afloat on a sea of paper money. Now, he’ll have to try to do it without the paper.

The Munich-based company that has supplied Zimbabwe with the special blank sheets to print its increasingly worthless dollar caved in to pressure on Tuesday from the German government for it to stop doing business with the African ruler.

Mr. Mugabe’s regime relies on a steady supply of the paper — fortified with watermarks and other antiforgery features — to print the bank notes that allow it to pay the soldiers and other loyalists who enable him to stay in power. With an annual inflation rate estimated at well over 1 million percent, new notes with ever more zeros need to be printed every few weeks because the older ones lose their worth so quickly.
. . .
Zimbabwe’s central bank stopped posting inflation figures in January, when it stood at a relatively modest 100,580%. A loaf of bread costs 30 billion Zimbabwean dollars.
. . .
Mr. Mangoma uses a 10 million Zimbabwe dollar bank note, worth 0.0008 of a U.S. cent, as a bookmark because he doesn’t “care if I lose it.”

For the full story, see:
MARCUS WALKER and ANDREW HIGGINS. “Zimbabwe Can’t Paper Over Its Million-Percent Inflation Anymore; Under Pressure, German Company Cuts Off Shipments of Blank Bank Notes to Mugabe.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., JULY 2, 2008): A1 & A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)

“Harare produce seller Chipo Chivanze needs a basket of cash to make change because of Zimbabwe’s battered currency.” Source of caption: print version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above. Source of photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.