|
Misanet / The Chronicle, 7 January - Mourners on empty stomachs. Pallbearers in haste. And a speedy burial so the local pastor can attend another funeral in the neighbouring village. A baby girl of five - the fifth child in seven days - has just died at the clinic. The weak, pale, hairless and pot-bellied creatures on tiny limbs are brought to rehabilitation and nutrition centres by their equally hunger ridden mothers. Too old for their ages, they die silently and no one counts. At Namadidi in Zomba the local pastor confesses serving the Lord can be involving indeed. He attends more burial ceremonies than church services and weddings combined. Head teacher for the local primary school Donald Mweruza says class attendance has dwindled while senior community development assistant Angelina Kalongosola complains that villagers spend more time mourning than building bridges and roads. At the national rehabilitation centre in Blantyre figures of children dying from hunger related illnesses continue to soar. It has received twice the average intake of malnourished patients in recent months with a death toll up to 22 and 28 per month, more than doubling the normal death rate of six to twelve. The situation is worse in the village where the young and old are left to die at home because hospitals are congested and attention therefore, minimal. And, because food has become so scarce, it is being valued not at the price of gold, but human life. The media reported recently of how a man lost both his arms for stealing two tubers of cassava. Last month, a man was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment with hard labour for forcing two sons to have sex with their mother as punishment for stealing cassava in his garden. Three weeks ago in Ndirande, Blantyre a woman burned the buttocks of her baby girl for taking without permission some K10 (US$ 0.10) meant for flour to buy a cob of roasted maize. The World Food Programme (WFP) which is already involved in relief food in the southern African region, anticipate that the number of people in need of food in the region will increase to 14.4 million by March next year representing a 10% increase. This excludes the urban vulnerable (about 850,000 in Zimbabwe alone), according to an IMF report. It appears though that drought, the hideous natural phenomenon that keeps poking it's ugly head in the sub-Saharan region, is not the only enemy member sates ought to mind, but HIV/AIDS as well as poor governance. Says matron at the national rehabilitation centre in Blantyre, Loveness Nyirenda: "Many of the children that are brought here would have recovered in normal circumstances but they die because they also come already infected with the virus." Nyirenda says if it were not for HIV/AIDS, efforts being taken by the donor community and government could save many malnourished cases. "And because many people are infected, they become too weak to look for food and work in gardens to grow food for the next year," says Nyirenda. Of the estimated 42 million people worldwide infected with HIV, almost 30 million live in sub-Saharan Africa. Of those, close to a million are said to be in Malawi where government is spending millions of dollars struggling to deal with a pandemic that is tormenting the productive age group. The National Aids Commission (NAC) says 46 oercent of the new infections occur in young people, painting a more harrowing picture for the country's future. The HIV/AIDS figures continue to swell despite the massive civic education and other campaigns by government, NGOs and donor community on abstinence and safe sex. From one person in 1985, the figures have continued to treble proof enough about the stubbornness of the pandemic and the continued vulnerability of the human race. WFP and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) are funding a programme known as Action Against Hunger. They confess the AIDS pandemic has become a stumbling block because the disease aggravates the already starved body mechanism. To make matters worse, antiretroviral drugs that would prolong lives are not commonly found and where they are, they are too expensive for a poor villager at the price of K2,500 (US$ 30) per month in a country with a per capita of US$ 200. While nutrition specialists describe HIV/AIDS as a contributing factor to the increasing deaths caused by malnourishment, poor governance is proving to be a bigger player. Says the WFP in its report for the month of October: "In Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, this year's food crisis has come on top of a poor season last year but poor governance has played a major role in these food shortages due to poor governance and land and economic policies." WFP points out in particular corruption in Zambia under the previous administration of President Frederick Chiluba, disastrous land and economic policies in Zimbabwe, which have turned a fall in agricultural production into a crisis, and poor management of food stocks in Malawi. WFP's observations are not unfounded. Last year, while a starved and impoverished Malawian population was working a failed maize crop, government sold all of its cereal stocks purportedly under pressure from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund despite having been warned of an impending food shortage. The sale of the stocks has opened a can of worms with mounting allegations that the decision and actual selling of the maize was fraudulent and selfish because a number of people in government benefited individually from such sales. Chair of the parliamentary committee on agriculture, Joe Manduwa was three months ago fired from his position by his party, the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) allegedly for sniffing too close to senior ministers in his investigations to establish the circumstances and the nature in which the maize was sold. While government denies irregularities in deciding and selling the maize, allegations continue to mount that the grain was sold among top government officials at give-away prices who in turn sold it to their desperate brethren at more than 300 percent profits. Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, senior ministers agreed to chase away white commercial farmers and replace them with their own black kin. And as if that were not enough of a governance problem, the colonial sisters, Zimbabwe and Malawi, are in a political quandary. While Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is busy manufacturing legislation in his parliament to smother the opposition, the press and non-governmental organisations; back home in Malawi government is pushing for a constitutional amendment to allow president Bakili Muluzi to run for a third term of office. Many think the government ought to busy itself hatching ways with which it can avert the food crisis instead of fighting for political power. Public Affairs Committee (PAC) a grouping of NGOs and religious organisations says the worst crisis Malawi faces is it's leadership. PAC chair Father Constantine Kaswaya condemns government for wasting it's resources funding presidential rallies in each and every constituency every day of the week to campaign for the presidential third term bid, leaving the food crisis on religious organisations and international bodies. - It does not take an intellectual to see that politics is what counts in the mind of government (rather) than the survival of its people, he says. "Unless such a mentality changes, I do not see food problems coming to an end. If there is anything the international community should be concerned with is helping Malawian leaders realise that their priority is (to) the people and Malawi will have her own food." Kaswaya says the money government spends organising presidential rallies could effectively have been used buying more maize while the air time spent on the state radio MBC broadcasting party meetings could have been well utilised broadcasting programmes on food security and good governance, he says. Media reports indicate that government has already spent 200 million Kwacha (US$ 2,3 million) on presidential trips alone since the budget was passed in July. - First, you don't sell your country's staple food and, secondly, you do not aggravate the problem by throwing away monies addressing political rallies for personal gains leaving the hunger problem to international organisations, says Kaswaya. "It is Malawi's problem." Government has always scoffed at the idea of restraining it from political rallies claiming the rallies are developmental. It has instead accused religious leaders of meddling in politics instead of sticking to their 'sole' role of preaching the word of God and bringing salvation to people for the kingdom to come. To PAC's accusations, President Muluzi replied: "After all, it is not anybody's homes that I visit neither do I demand gifts in the form of forced handouts from the people," he said adding, "Whether one likes it or not, I will continue travelling. I have never been to Kaswaya's home to ask for even a glass of water." During the rallies, the president travels with truckloads of donated relief food to be distributed among the hunger. The behaviour has been criticised by the opposition who look at it as politicising of the relief aid. Recently, the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) complained that the relief aid was only being given to UDF supporters and that opposition supporters were being told to join the UDF if they were to get any. - And how do you describe a president flying across the country visiting chiefs just to elevate them when people are dying? How can you talk of developmental tours when people are this frail and antiretroviral drugs are only accessible to the rich, says Nicholas Dausi, MCP spokesman. As he speaks, one thing becomes frighteningly clear: Once the leaders have finished playing politics, chased away white farmers and mismanaging their nations' already overstretched resources, many of their voters will have died and the remnants will be too frail to slot a vote as Dausi says: "We are as good as living dead."
|
