Posted on 17-6-2003
No
future
Decimated by famine and the Aids pandemic, entire communities
in southern Africa are facing collapse, writes Judith Melby
Monday June 16, 2003
Last year, humanitarian agencies in the UK called for urgent
action to avert a potential famine faced by 14 million people
in southern Africa. It was a difficult message to convey. There
were no images of skeletal figures reminiscent of Ethiopia in
1984, yet the response from British donors was generous and
famine was averted. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands are
still reliant on food aid, and after an erratic rainy season,
the situation in the region remains precarious.
But famine is not the only concern. Underlying this potential
disaster is a new element which will not be defeated by food
aid alone. The Aids pandemic affects almost 30 million people
in Africa. In the countries of southern Africa, an average of
25% of the adult population is affected and it is changing the
nature of famine. It is reducing agricultural productivity,
decimating the productive generation and undermining people's
ability to recovery from food shortages.
HIV/Aids kills some of the most productive members of society.
More teachers die each year in Zambia than graduate from teacher
training colleges. The pandemic has also left women, children
and the elderly heading houselholds which are acutely vulnerable
to food shortages as they have fewer opportunities to earn an
income or grow crops.
Impoverished families are forced to bear the costs of ill health
and often liquidate household assets to pay for medical expenses
and funeral costs. Children leave school to care for their dying
parents, or to look for work. In doing so, they lose any access
they might have had to HIV/Aids education.
Keeping children, and particularly girls, in school is vital
for their future. It is also key in reducing their vulnerability
to violence, sexual exploitation and HIV. Yet in their role
as main breadwinners, many are forced to turn to alternative
work including prostitution, which exposes them to a high risk
of HIV infection.
Colin Madundo is HIV positive and very ill. His wife died of
an Aids-related illness two years ago. Such situations are not
unusual in Zimbabwe, where 2,000 people die each week from Aids.
What is surprising is Madundo's willingness to admit he infected
his wife. Although one in three Zimbabwean adults are living
with HIV, very few are willing to admit it.
Madundo has huge responsibilities and very few resources, as
he is too ill to work. In addition to four-year-old twins, named
Prince and Princess, he has five other children to raise.
He lives in Manicaland district which, like the rest of Zimbabwe,
is suffering from drought. The drought has sparked food shortages,
and the collapse of Zimbabwe's economy and President Robert
Mugabe's highly controversial land reform policies have made
it all but impossible for ordinary people to cope. Occupations
of huge maize farms over the past two years have allowed irrigation
systems to dry up and once-fertile fields have reverted to barren
bush. Cereal production has fallen by two-thirds.
Prince, Princess and four of Madundo's other children receive
food aid every day from Christian Care. The organisation, which
is funded by Christian Aid, feeds some 10,000 children under
the age of five in Manicaland. Its programme started as a supplementary
initiative, but many parents admit that it is has become their
children's principle source of nutrition. Their bowl porridge
is sometimes their only meal of the day.
Farmers like Madundo are used to tough times. He remembers the
droughts of 1982 and 1992. But now weakened by HIV, and battered
by hyperinflation and a collapsed economy, his ability to cope
is fast disappearing.
"Things are much worse now. In 1992 you could buy maize
in the stores and your money was worth something. Now there
is no maize in the country. Thank goodness the children get
something at school," he says.
Madundo suspects Prince and Princess are HIV positive, but he
can barely afford to feed them, let alone send them for voluntary
testing and counselling, and he is desperately worried about
their future.
"When I die, who will look after them?" he asks. "Life
is so hard for them already, how will they manage without me?"
Christian Aid is integrating HIV/Aids awareness and education
into all its development and emergency work in Africa. In Zimbabwe,
for example, feeding sessions provide an ideal opportunity to
educate mothers.
The combination of Aids and famine, exacerbated by poor healthcare
and education systems, a lack of sanitation and weak economies
is making life in southern Africa unsustainable. Entire communities
are collapsing, and while the developed world fails to properly
address the Aids pandemic, the prospect of a recovery from the
combined threats is bleak.
" Judith Melby is Christian Aid's journalist in Africa
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