-Caveat Lector-
> Please copy and distribute to other interested individuals and groups
>
> **********
>
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 15:58:06 EDT
> Subject: *New African* article, Oct. 200, pp. 16-17.
>
> ( New African is one of the largest English-language magazines focused upon
> African issues, published in London but circulated widely in Africa. )
>
> Baffour's Beefs
> Does Mbeki suffer from 'psychological trauma?' The sharks are circling.
> They think they can smell blood in the water. But will Africa allow them to
> make another kill?
>
> View from the editor: Baffour Ankomah
>
> The prey is Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, the African Renaissance
> Man, the man who wants to see what lies at the bottom of the "African Aids
> epidemic."
>
> In 15 months as president, Mbeki has proved beyond doubt that he is nobody's
> errand boy. Recently, the powers that be wanted him to deliver the head of
> Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe on a silver plate. He refused.
>
> His usual display of African presidential confidence is causing ripples
> abroad, especially in Britain, where he has become the target of crude
> headlines in recent days. The aim is to give him a bad name so they can hang
> him.
>
> All of a sudden, Mebeki is said to be suffering from some kind of mental
> illness (mad is the word).
>
> David Beresford, writing from South Africa for *The Observer ("Mbeki lets
> Aids babies die in pain,* 20 August), set the ball rolling: "A Sussex
> University economics graduate, seen during the years of struggle against
> apartheid as the ANC's arch-diplomat, Mbeki was widely regarded as
> sophisticated and cosmopolitan," Beresford wrote. "Time and experience now
> offer, however, another perspective--of a man whose sensitivity on race
> points to a previously undiscovered psychological trauma which, while
> deserving of sympathy, makes him among the politicians least qualified to
> heal past wounds."
>
> Three days later, Michael Dynes, writing in *The Times (Mbeki flounders as
> economic malaise settles on South Africa,* 23 Aug.), put his own spin on it:
> "...Mbeki is suffering from a gargantuan persecution complex."
>
> The field was now cleared for R. W. Johnson, one of the most ribald of
> British rightwing journalists, who recently wrote in *The Telegraph* that
> "Africa should be recolonised," to take a swipe at Mbeki (*The new apartheid,
> The Spectator,* 26 August).
>
> "Crudely put," Johnson wrote, "many now believe that Mbeki is no longer
> playing with a full pack--that he's off his rocker. A Russian friend said to
> me, 'It's strange about Mbeki. In Russia it generally takes about five years
> for our presidents to go mad. He's done it in one.'"
>
> So Mbeki is mad! They said the same about Nkrumah, Lumumba, and recently
> Mugabe. Any African leader who shows the slightest sign of independent
> thought is mad. Yet Africa is accused of not offering its own solutions to
> its problems.
>
> Now we are left with the likes of R. W. Johnson offering Mbeki advice: "Mbeki
> is already in a hole," says Johnson, "and if he keeps digging, he can only
> end as South Africa's Mugabe. It is unfortunate that he has a circle of
> fawning yes-men as advisers, for the advice he really needs is that he should
> stop digging."
>
> It was the turn of *The Sunday Times* on 2l7 August to put the knife in.
> *Enemy of the people,* was the headline. "Nelson Mandela," *The Sunday
> Times* said, "was always going to be a hard act to follow... If the man to do
> it was [Mbeki], it seemed just an eccentric part of the new Pretoria
> politics. That was before Thabo Mbeki declared himself a medical expert who
> understood his country's Aids epidemic better than the global authorities."
>
> Three days before *The Sunday Times* article, a curious one had appeared in
> the *International Herald Tribune (South Africa rejects Aids drug loans*).
> Written by Rachel L. Swarns, the article said: "The US offer of $1 billion in
> annual loans to finance the purchase of anti-Aids drugs in sub-Saharan Africa
> has been rejected by South Africa, one of the countries most devastated by
> the disease, health officials said."
>
> You didn't have to read the whole article to see the mischief hidden in the
> headline. In the very second paragraph, Rachel writes: "Namibia has also
> rejected the offer, and other nations in this stricken region are voicing
> serious reservations, the officials say."
>
> In effect, it is not only South Africa that has rejected the "Aids drug
> loans." So why pick on South Africa in the headline? Why not "Africa
> rejects Aids drug loans?" In fact that is what the story says. But,
> remember, "get the shepherd and scatter the flock." It works!
>
> But Rachel wasn't finished. She continued: "The [loan] offer last month by
> the US Export-Import Bank, an independent government agency, financed by the
> US Congress, was made to 24 sub-Saharan countries. Bank officials say none
> of the countries has formally accepted the offer so far."
>
> The loans are being offered at a 7% commercial interest rate.
>
> "Officials at the SADC which represents 12 [sic] other countries in the
> region," continued Rachel, "are also expressing doubts about the proposal.
> They say they would prefer that the US put pressure on US drug companies to
> reduce prices...
>
> 'Members are already burdened by debt,' said Dr Thutula Balfour, director of
> the health unit of the SADC. 'Making drugs affordable is the solution rather
> than offering loans that have interest'... Dr Kalumbi Shangula, the
> permanent secretary for the Namibian Ministry of Health, agreed. He said his
> country could not afford the drugs. In the US, a patient might pay $12,000 a
> year or more for drug therapy, a price tag wayout of reach for patients in
> poor African countries."
>
> AN ECHO FROM THE PAST
> Mbeki's current "problems" should remind us of Kwame Nkrumah. Forty years
> ago, Nkrumah was called a "megalomaniac" (mad, in short) for preaching
> African unity, and wanting to industrialise Ghana as a model for a new Africa
> of those days. His government was overthrown. His projects were called
> "white elephants."
>
> Yet, today, Nkrumah's 11-point African Union programme (published in 1963)
> has been adopted and implemented almost wholesale by the European Union.
> Africa, realising that it has lost out because it allowed itself to be
> deceived, is now going back 40 years for Nkrumah's African Union project.
>
> Mbkei's two cardinal sins are supposed to be his refusal to "berate Mugabe in
> public" (Michael Dynes), and his little trouble with Aids.
>
> But in the West, when one country is in trouble, leaders in "the region " do
> not publicly berate the president of the troubled country. They call it
> "non-interference" in domestic affairs. At best, they use diplomatic
> channels to make themselves heard. Why the same Western countries and their
> journalists wanted Mbeki to do otherwise, in Mugabe's case, shows how lowly
> they think about Africa and its leaders.
>
> Michael Davis (*The Times*) even had more to say: "President Mugabe's
> reckless seizure of white farms shocked investor sentiment across the region.
> 'How do we know we are going to own the land we build our factories on 10
> years down the line?,' investors asked in bewilderment."
>
> This is what is we call in Ghana, "putting sand in my gari." First, troubles
> in Northern Ireland--and they've been going on for a long time--do not affect
> foreign investment in mainland Britain or even the Republic of Ireland.
> Troubles in the Basque regions of Spain and France themselves, least the
> whole "European region."
>
> So if troubles in Zimbabwe affect "investor confidence" in the whole SADC
> region of 14 disparate countries, when peace in Namibia does not favourably
> affect investment in the whole region, then there is something more to it
> than meets the eye.
>
> Anyway, if investors are not sure they would still own the land on which
> their factories stand in 10 years time, this is why: For far too long, the
> world has glossed over the fact that from Canada to USA, to Latin America, to
> New Zealand, to Australia, to parts of Africa, and elsewhere, indigenous
> peoples were deprived of their lands by European settlers after exterminating
> the native populations. Today the descendants of these European settlers
> have become *the* fat of the land, while the descendants of the natives tread
> water, (if not herded into reservations).
>
> This is an affront to the modern world, and something must be done by way of
> restitution. In short, if investors in the SADC region are not sure that the
> land beneath their factories would still be their in 10 years time, it is
> because the descendants of the natives also want to eat.
>
> Which takes me to Mbeki's other supposed crime--Aids?
>
> R. W. Johnson kindly informs us (*A second Black Death looms in South
> Africa, The Times, * 29 Aug) that in South Africa, "Aids has an unequal
> racial incidence. Africans have by far the highest infection rate, followed
> by Coloureds... The Asian and white figures are microscopic by comparison."
>
> Bold statement, this. But if you asked Johnson to give you HARD figures to
> back up his claim, he would have none. He would give you only "estimates."
>
> Anyway, the view that Aids is black African is not Johnson's. It is the view
> of the Aids establishment. Look at your average Aids map. Arab North Africa
> is painted white (free from disease). Anywhere else below the Sahara is
> painted brown. How Aids knows the differences among the skin colours is one
> of the seven wonders of our modern world. ["HIV" is supposedly so
> sophisticated that it also distinguishes between genders and sexual
> preferences. F.C.]
>
> But let's go with Johnson for a moment. If Aids is indeed black African,
> doesn't it behoove responsible African leaders to look at what lies at its
> bottom, in order to find a suitable cure? Yet Mbeki does exactly this, and
> they say he is "mad, he is acting like a nutter" (*The Sunday Times*).
>
> But there are very important questions here. On 2 March this year , both
> *The Times* and *The Independent* reported that the Millennium holiday (24
> Dec. - 31 Dec 99) alone resulted in a 20% rise in abortions in Britain. "An
> additional 9,000 women and abortions in January and February [2000] compared
> with the same time last year, aid Marie Stopes International, one of the main
> providers of abortions in the country," reported *The Independent.*
>
> "This increase could be the tip of the iceberg,"said Helen Axby, the deputy
> director of Marie Stopes. "It seems we are just seeing the first swath of
> women who have missed their period after the holidays."
>
> *The Times* quoted Ann Furendi, of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, as
> also saying: "We have some figures for the January period showing numbers are
> up by as much as 30% in some clinics..."
>
> Which means two things: (a) the British are sexually promiscuous, (b) they
> don't use condoms (if at all, the rate is low). Britain, again, is said to
> have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. Again, it confirms that
> condom usage is low else the teenagers would not be getting pregnant at that
> high rate.
>
> Now the question: If the British are promiscuous, and the majority do not use
> condoms, and ARE NOT catching Aids; and if Africans are promiscuous, and the
> majority do not use condoms and ARE catching Aids (as the Aids establishment
> tells us), doesn't Africa deserve the right to examine why the dichotomy, in
> order to find a cure unique to the African condition?
>
> This is all what Mbeki is doing. But they say, "No, you mustn't do that, we
> have the answer, the drugs and the loans here for you, take them."
>
> Well, thank God, Africa now has, at least, one leader who is not prepared to
> swallow this arrogance from the North. They can rant and rave--but let them
> rant and rave!
>
> For Africa, it is time we knew when to support and protect our progressive
> leaders. Nkrumah, Lumumba, etc., were cut down because the people did not
> protect them. Are we going to allow the sharks to make another kill?
> [end]
> *New African* [London], October, 2000, pp. 16-17.
>
> **********
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