Africa News blog

PHOTOBLOG: Children in Kenya and Haiti forced to grow up fast, if they survive

I had a flashback the other day when I was looking at photographs from Haiti of 15-year-old Fabianne Geismar, shot dead in the head after stealing wall hangings from a Port-au-Prince store, crushed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The image of Fabianne sprawled on the ground, blood trailing over the paintings she’d grabbed, took me back to my own childhood in Nairobi and the sight of a 7- or 8-year-old-boy – probably the same age as me at the time – who was caught stealing sweets from a street vendor and was beaten and burnt with rubber tyres. They called it mob justice.

To this day, I’ll never understand why that poor boy had to die such a violent and senseless death for something so trivial. I feel the same way about Fabianne – she survived one of the most catastrophic events in living memory, only to be shot in the head for petty theft. And for stealing wall hangings where there are no walls.

Fabianne’s childhood was brutally stolen from her and it got me thinking about how quickly so many young people in places like Africa, Asia and the Americas have to grow up, forced to fend for themselves through child labour or prostitution, denied an education and exposed to violence, disease and hunger at an age when they should be learning and playing.

Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion live in poverty and experience violence annually, UNICEF figures show, meaning nearly half the children in the world don’t get to have childhoods. There are also an estimated 132 million orphans in the world, UNICEF says.

Children under 18 make up almost half of Haiti’s 9-million population and the country faces the highest rates of infant and child mortality in the Western hemisphere.

Officials fear thousands of children have been separated from their parents, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by child traffickers, being illegally adopted by other countries or forced into child labour in order to survive. Around 150 million children worldwide aged 5–14 are engaged in child labour.

House calls for an HIV test

How will the Zuma team do?

Thousands of South Africans danced, cheered and sang hymns to celebrate President Jacob Zuma’s swearing in. Zuma, they said, as a man of the people, would give them houses and electricity, fight AIDS and crime, and ensure prosperity even as South Africa is on the brink of its first recession in 17 years.

But appointments to key ministries have raised questions over how well the new government will function.

Economic policy is seen intact after largely expected changes at finance-related ministries, but appointments to some other key sectors, including mining, energy and telecommunications left more doubts.

Siphiwe Nyanda, the newly appointed minister of communications, has been a military man, yet outside the African National Congress (ANC) and defence he is something of a mystery. He now takes over communications, a crucial ministry with oversight of Telkom, Africa’s biggest telecoms firm.

Dipuo Peters qualified in social work, but has been chosen to lead the energy ministry and help tackle the country’s power shortages that have led to a five-day shutdown of South Africa’s mining industry and crippled the country’s investor-friendly image.

“It appears this is South Africa’s tradition to appoint a minister who has no technical qualifications whatsoever,” said independent analyst Andrew Kenny.

Barbara Hogan, who has led the health ministry for the past six months, has been moved to oversee the public enterprise department, also in charge of sorting out structural problems at state-owned utility Eskom, which now supplies some 95 percent of the country’s power.

Can Zuma live up to unity pledge?

Pledging to work for national unity is pretty much a formality for any election winner, but in the case of South Africa’s Jacob Zuma it may be more than a platitude. It may need to be.

“The new President of the Republic will be a president for all, and he will work to unite the country around a programme of action that will see an improvement in the delivery of services,” Zuma said after the African National Congress won its sweeping victory.

“We may disagree on how to bring about a better life for all, but what unites us is the fact that this country belongs to all of us, black, white, coloured and Indian equally. We will need to work together on issues that are in the national interest, on which there is no need to compete or permanently bicker.”

Despite the strongest opposition challenge since the end of apartheid, the slick ANC campaign delivered the vote and persuaded a majority of South Africans that the party that has ruled since 1994 could also be the one to deliver change – more action against poverty, crime, AIDS and other concerns.

But unity is always going to be tough in a country with as many divisions as South Africa. The formerly monolithic ANC itself split last year after it ousted former President Thabo Mbeki.

The vote clearly showed up the racial divide 15 years after the end of rule by the white minority.

The vast majority of black Africans had clearly voted for the ANC, whose credentials are still strong for ending apartheid. The voters included those in KwaZulu Natal province, where the Inkatha Freedom Party used to be dominant. Zuma, a son of the soil, definitely helped the party win more votes there.

Will Mandela effect help ANC?

Nelson Mandela, a global symbol of reconciliation after the end of apartheid in 1994, appeared at the ruling ANC’s last election rally before Wednesday’s vote, delivering a last minute campaign boost for party leader Jacob Zuma.

Wearing a Zuma t-shirt, he sat beside the ANC leader, who has been fighting corruption allegations for eight years. The case was just dropped on a technicality and some South Africans still question his innocence.

It’s the second time Mandela has appeared at an ANC rally in the run up to the election, seen as the ANC’s toughest test since it came to power – it is still set to win by a big margin, but perhaps by not as big a margin as before.

After the first campaign appearance, some of the ANC’s foes suggested Mandela had been unfairly exploited and even that his health had been put at risk. But he certainly looked happy enough on Sunday – if as frail as might be expected for a 90 year-old.

Was Mandela’s appearance a desperate last attempt by the ANC to gather votes and divert attention from enduring troubles such as poverty, crime and AIDS?

Or was it just a sign of the faith that Mandela still has in Africa’s oldest liberation movement?

Fifteen years after the end of apartheid, is South Africa still seen a model of democracy on a continent where freedom is lacking? Or is it headed in the wrong direction?

At last: a positive look at Africa on U.S. TV

American television audiences were treated on Sunday night for the first time to the show “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”, which is based on the best-selling series of novels set in Botswana by Alexander McCall Smith.

The series, being aired in the United States by HBO, has already been broadcast by the BBC in Britain. Like the novels, it follows the light-hearted adventures of Precious Ramotswe as she seeks to solve mysteries with her keen intuition and big heart.

My colleague Rebekah Kebede did an advance story on the U.S. premier which you can read here.

I have read most of the novels, and the TV premier seems to stick to the spirit of the books. African problems, such as AIDS or the use of body parts from kidnapped children to make traditional medicine, or “muti,” are not swept under the carpet. But many of the tales woven by McCall Smith are uplifting or deal with profound ethical dilemmas that his intrepid lady detective always resolves.

And it takes place in Botswana, a sparsely-populated land of great beauty and spectacular wilderness — I’ve seen elephant herds crossing the highway there — long regarded as a beacon of good governance and democracy in Africa.

It provides a pleasant change from the entertainment industry’s often negative portrayal of Africa. For example, the current season of the Fox thriller “24″ features terrorists from a genocidal African state taking over the White House and threatening the U.S. president.

Crisis raises AIDS funding worries

HIV infection rates in Africa have slowed since the start of the decade, but statistics still make very grim reading on the worst affected continent – of the global total of 2.1 million deaths due to AIDS in 2007, 1.6 million were in sub-Saharan Africa.

An estimated 1.7 million people were infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007 compared to 2.2 million new infections in 2001.

Some now fear that progress could be knocked off course by the global financial crisis, potentially reducing the funds that Western donors have available for fighting the disease and providing treatment.

An official from the Global Call to Action against Poverty said recently that Kenya had already been asked by one donor to fund HIV and tuberculosis programme itself. Other donors, such as Oxfam, have said they fear the financial crisis will lead to funding cuts as developed countries have other priorities – such as saving their financial systems.

In a speech in a South African township this week, the newly appointed head of the U.N. agency UNAIDS noted that the “world has a responsibility to stabilise the market failure”

“But the same world has a moral responsibility to make sure that four million people who are on (HIV) treatment will continue to have treatment, six million more will have access to treatment…,” said UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe.

UNAIDS says it needs about $25 billion to ensure universal access to HIV treatment by 2010. It says interrupting funding could lead to millions of deaths in Africa.

Motlanthe greeted with relief, but South Africa’s problems are not over

South Africans have widely greeted new President Kgalema Motlanthe, many of them with a sense of relief after the bitter and divisive power struggle between his ousted predecessor Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, leader of the ruling African National Congress.

Motlanthe, quiet spoken and dignified, struck exactly the note the public were looking for when he took office, sober but smiling gently – a huge contrast to the theatrical ebullience of Zuma and the aloof, intellectual style of Mbeki, who was seen as arrogant and out of touch with his people.

The sense of relief was palpable on Friday.

“Motlanthe restores order” said the front page headline of Johannesburg’s Star newspaper, over a picture of the new president swearing the oath of office. “New leader steers SA to calm,” said the Pretoria News. “For now the country has at its head a nice and largely untainted man with not much ego who doesn’t think he knows everything and who listens to people. You can almost feel the relief in the republic,” Business Day said in an editorial.

But Motlanthe’s honeymoon may not last.

He must try to end an unprecedented battle inside the ANC while his country, Africa’s biggest economy, faces serious stresses including record inflation, slowing growth and a power supply crisis that has hit vital platinum and gold mines. Yet, he has little room for manoeuvre. Although fully accepted as the third president since the end of apartheid, he is seen only as an interim leader, holding the fort until Zuma takes over after elections expected around April next year.

This will make it difficult even to make a mark, without arousing suspicions that he wants the permanent job himself–something that many South Africans would welcome.