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From Africa Recovery, New Releases, February 2003

Photo : ©WFP / Brenda Barton

Famine and AIDS batter Southern Africa

Action needed to avert collapse, Stephen Lewis warns

By John Nyamu

Already battered by the world's highest HIV/AIDS infection rates, Southern Africa is now reeling under the weight of a widespread drought that threatens entire countries with a devastating famine. Returning to New York from a two-week tour of Southern Africa at the end of January, Mr. Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, delivered a dire message: the interlocking HIV/AIDS and hunger crises are causing a breakdown not only in agriculture, but throughout all sectors. "Some government officials have said it feels like an overall societal collapse and that they are fighting for survival," he told reporters following his joint tour with Mr. James Morris, executive director of the UN World Food Programme.

The two officials warned that despite the swift delivery of food aid that has helped ease the humanitarian crisis in Southern Africa, a horrifying new disaster looms as HIV/AIDS threatens the "very existence of whole countries." The pandemic is changing the nature of famine in Africa by cutting agricultural productivity, weakening the population and undermining people's ability to recover from natural and man-made shocks, they said in a statement. "We know that the world's attention is focused elsewhere at the moment, but it is crucial that the UN and the international community continue to channel their efforts into refocusing on and responding to the crisis in Southern Africa and across the continent."

Stressing that same message in early December, Secretary-General Kofi Annan emphasized the direct link between famine and AIDS as well as their mutually reinforcing nature. As starvation threatens 16 million people in Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, AIDS is responsible for the loss of farming skills, declining agricultural development efforts, disintegrating rural livelihoods, falling productive capacity to work the land and shrinking household earnings, as well as an exponential rise in the cost of caring for the sick. At the same time, the disease is spreading dramatically and disproportionately among women, the Secretary-General said. For the first time, women make up some 50 per cent of those who are HIV-positive worldwide, and 58 per cent of those in sub-Saharan Africa, according to estimates for 2002.

The world is accustomed to images of famine in the drought-prone Horn of Africa. But it is now looking at a new type of crisis in Southern Africa -- most of which is normally fertile, well-watered and self-sufficient in food. Yet such blessings mean little in the face of a scourge that is reaping a deadly harvest of the region's most productive people. Mr. Lewis, who visited Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, associates AIDS with "the grinding down of society," saying that the decaying of Africa's agricultural sector could simply be a harbinger of worse to come.

Education is on the brink. Children, especially girls, are leaving school to care for sick and dying parents, while orphans cannot afford school fees. The disease takes a heavy toll on teachers. In Zambia, some 2,000 teachers have died annually during the past two years.

The mountain kingdom of Lesotho has some of the continent's highest HIV infection rates. Mr. Lewis recalls his conversation with Prime Minister Pakalitha B. Mosisili. "We're told repeatedly by donors that we don't have capacity. I know we have no capacity; give us some help and we'll build the capacity," Mr. Mosisili told the envoy. Though its population is larger than those of Namibia and Botswana, Lesotho lacks the wealth found in either of those diamond-producing countries.

Mr. Lewis said that the country's previous president, Mr. Frederick Chiluba, spent his time disavowing the reality of AIDS and throwing obstacles in the way of those keen to confront the disease. He added that since last year's election of President Levy Mwanawasa, everyone agrees that there has been a dramatic change in the voice of political leadership on the subject of AIDS.

Though heartened by the African leadership's new willingness to discuss AIDS, Mr. Lewis noted that despite the emerging political will, the critical missing element is money. Calling the lack of resources to fight the epidemic "mass murder by complacency," he said that those who watched it unfold "with a kind of pathological equanimity" must be held to account. "There may yet come a day," he said, "when we have peacetime tribunals to deal with this particular version of crimes against humanity."

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