oor leadership, low agricultural output, a rising HIV/Aids pandemic, little economic activity and a lack of food security, threaten prospects for progress in the 14-country region. With clear indications that people are getting poorer than they were before, there is a call for the governments and humanitarian agencies to formulate policies and institute structural reforms to alleviate poverty.
Unless governments take comprehensive steps to reduce poverty in the poor countries, people will gradually lose confidence in democratic processes.
When several countries in southern Africa began to embrace multiparty democracy a decade ago, there was hope that the region governments would use that opportunity to enhance transparency and accountability in their institutions and enable the countries to enjoy economic prosperity and development. But on the contrary, the level of poverty is still on the increase in the region. It is now all too evident that multi-party politics did not bring about the desired fruits. As such, people have gradually lost confidence in their elected governments and leaders.
In many parts of southern Africa, people have lost interest in the process of democratization altogether. A leading UN agency is now calling upon aid organizations to rethink how they tackle humanitarian crises within the region in view of indications that people are poorer than they were five years ago. In its latest report on the current food shortage in southern Africa, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), says that owing to a variety of reasons, the region has slipped backwards in terms of political, economic and social development - all of which have increased the number of acutely poor people in the region whose population is 200 million.
According to the report, in 2001, many more people in Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe did not have enough money to satisfy their basic food needs than in 1996. Zimbabwe faired the worst with close to 75 percent of its population now living in poverty. In addition, 69 percent of Zambians and 48 percent of the Swazi have also witnessed a substantial decline in their purchasing power. Diminished agricultural production - Close to 13 million people in six countries face an acute food shortage - Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique being the most affected. In Malawi, there were dramatic stories like a man eating a snake because of hunger and police nabbing a woman for trying to sell one of her children in return for money to buy food. Currently, the country of 12 million people has a 600,000 metric tonnes cereal deficit.
“Although drought conditions may be the principle cause for the food crisis, serious problems of governance, the HIV/Aids pandemic, and virtually non-existent welfare and social security systems have exacerbated the situation”, notes the report. In the meantime, other interested groups have identified unfavorable agricultural policies imposed by donors as another contributing factor. Due to the economic integration of the region, a downward trend has been witnessed in production, resulting in a few economic opportunities. This has impacted adversely on the region with the diminished agricultural production leading to a cereal deficit of 4,071,300 metric tonnes.
The HIV/Aids pandemic is significantly a burden with almost 25 percent of Swaziland’s entire population living with HIV. With the food shortages, these people suffer from opportunistic infections as their resistance declines due to poor nutrition. On July 18, 2002, the UN launched a Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal calling on international donors to give a total of US$611 million to deal with the worsening crisis.
Democracy back-pedaled - During the launch of the 2002 United Nations Human Development Report, in Lilongwe, Malawi, Zahra Nuru, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Resident Representative, observed that poverty had worsened in the postone-party era in Malawi, saying the country was poorer than it was 10 years before. Malawi now ranks among 60 countries that are poorer than they were at the beginning of the 1990s. “Malawi is far from meeting its poverty alleviation goals particularly in food security, creation of jobs, curbing crime, enhancing environmental sustainability and tackling the HIV/Aids scourge. The global expansion of democracy seen in the 1990s, may go into reverse”, regretted Nuru. The report, which ranks the development of 173 countries worldwide, indicates that 33 countries, including Malawi, will not meet the Millennium Development goals by 2015.
It says unless governments take comprehensive steps to reduce poverty in the poor countries, people will gradually lose confidence in democratic processes. No confidence in politicians - So far, southern African countries have made little progress in embracing issues of human rights and good governance. Throughout much of Africa the situation has remained the same with widespread torture, intimidation and harassment of civilians, state sponsored genocide and suppression of dissent continuing unabated. These fresh revelations echoed another research by the British Council, which analyzed the capacity of women politicians in changing the lives of downtrodden women.
The survey conducted by women professionals in eight countries of Central and Southern Africa, also indicated that citizens had lost confidence in their political leaders particularly their members of parliament. It was largely agreed that the only motivation for those plunging into politics was to find a way to enrich themselves rather than to uplift the living standards of their communities. In fact they hardly collaborated with their constituents. Although the 14 member SADC states have targeted an average 30 percent women’s presence in parliament by 2005, an earlier SADC Human Development Report, titled Challenges and Opportunities for Regional Integration, notes that most SADC states who committed themselves to this goal have failed; half are still far below the 15 percent level. Ranking among the lowest in terms of women’s parliamentary representation are Swaziland and Mauritius with 7 and 5.9 percent respectively.
(From New People Feature Service)