SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 347 for 20 - 26 October 2007
JOHANNESBURG, 26 October 2007 (IRIN) - CONTENTS:
ZAMBIA-ZIMBABWE: Zimbabwe's sex workers look to their neighbour for business
SWAZILAND: Food or biofuel seems to be the question
ZIMBABWE: "The Mother of all farming seasons"
AFRICA: Farmers need a financial umbrella says World Bank
SOUTH AFRICA: Refugees being treated like "animals"
SOUTH AFRICA: Sugar Daddies find plenty of sweet teeth
AFRICA: Food to eat or to run your car?
SOUTH AFRICA: Skills training scheme under review
ZIMBABWE: No rest for the dead
MALAWI: Role of traditional birth attendants to change
ZAMBIA-ZIMBABWE: Zimbabwe's sex workers look to their neighbour for business
An influx of Zimbabwean sex workers into the Zambian capital, Lusaka, is testing the government's patience with its neighbour.
Although there are no official figures for the number of Zimbabweans resident in Lusaka, unofficial estimates have put the figure at 10,000 or more, and many are said to be engaged in activities the government frowns upon.
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SWAZILAND: Food or biofuel seems to be the question
The government of Swaziland announced this week that it would be allocating thousands of hectares to a private company to cultivate cassava for biofuel. About 40 percent of the country's one million people are facing acute food and water shortages.
"The cassava ethanol project has restarted the debate on how the country should use its agriculture land," said Sipho Mthetfwa, an agriculture extension officer in Shiselweni Region in the south of the country.
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ZIMBABWE: "The Mother of all farming seasons"
President Robert Mugabe's government is launching an ambitious plan to revive Zimbabwe's agricultural production, which plummeted following the chaotic expropriation of white-owned farmland for redistribution to landless blacks seven years ago.
The government's fast-track land reform programme dispossessed about 4,000 white commercial farmers of prime agricultural land, ostensibly to correct a history of skewed ownership. Critics allege the newly settled farmers were not given adequate state support, while senior members of the ruling ZANU-PF party and other government officials, including high-ranking army and police officers, took over the best estates.
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AFRICA: Farmers need a financial umbrella says World Bank
Helping small-scale farmers in Africa cope with risks such as natural disasters, extreme weather events and price fluctuations should be a priority, according to agricultural experts and the World Bank's annual report, released last week.
Exposure to these "uninsured risks ... has high efficiency and welfare costs for rural households" said the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development, the bank's first analysis of agriculture since 1982. "Selling assets to survive shocks can have high long-term costs ... [distress sales of land and livestock] creates irreversibilities or slow recovery in the ownership of agricultural assets."
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SOUTH AFRICA: Refugees being treated like "animals"
An unannounced visit by a South African parliamentary committee to Cape Town's refugee centre last week found foreign nationals being treated like "animals" by officials responsible for running the centre.
Although South Africa's Department of Home Affairs, whose duties include processing refugee applications, is routinely criticised for its treatment of foreign nationals, the aftermath of the parliamentarians' visit to the refugee centre has sparked a political furore, because Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula had shied away twice from meeting the parliamentary commmittee to explain the "deplorable state" of her department.
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SOUTH AFRICA: Sugar Daddies find plenty of sweet teeth
While sugar daddies are not a new phenomenon, their latest incarnation could be described as a symptom of the "new" post-1994 South Africa with its rampant consumerism and glittering shopping malls, located just a few kilometres from informal settlements where people still live in shacks.
Nowhere are these jarring inequalities more apparent than Johannesburg, South Africa's economic hub and the natural territory of "Black Diamonds", a term coined to describe members of the new black middle classes. Most of this group have long abandoned the townships for upmarket suburbs, but many still return on weekends to drink in shebeens and flirt with young women, who are easily impressed by their flashy cars and designer clothes.
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AFRICA: Food to eat or to run your car?
As oil prices soar and biofuel production becomes more attractive, especially to poor countries, a debate is raging over its possible impact on food security.
Biofuel production to earn revenue should go "hand-in-hand" with efforts to make countries food secure said Andre Croppenstedt, an economist with the Agricultural Development Economics Division of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
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SOUTH AFRICA: Skills training scheme under review
A multimillion-dollar scheme designed to address South Africa's skills shortage and make inroads into the high unemployment rate is under review and is expected to be streamlined by 2010.
The Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) were established in 2000 as a result of the Skills Development Act, promulgated two years earlier, which divided the economy into 24 sectors, each with a SETA overseeing the development and quality control of relevant skills.
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ZIMBABWE: No rest for the dead
As Zimbabwe's economic crisis deepens, the daily struggle to make ends meet often takes priority over providing loved ones with a decent burial and morgues are being filled beyond capacity.
Mortuaries, plagued by power failures, failing refrigerators and lack of chemicals to operate properly, have to keep corpses for extended periods of time while relatives try to scrape together what they can to bid the deceased a final farewell. Many relatives never return and, after nine months, abandoned corpses are given pauper burials by the state.
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MALAWI: Role of traditional birth attendants to change
Malawi is planning to change the role of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) in an attempt to reduce one of the world's highest rates of maternal and infant deaths.
A 2004 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey said the maternal and infant mortality rate was 984 out of every 100,000 live births, translating to 6,000 maternal deaths each year.
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Theme(s): (IRIN) Economy, (IRIN) Food Security, (IRIN) Gender Issues, (IRIN) Refugees/IDPs
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[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] |
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