U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
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SOUTHERN AFRICA
IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 41
13 - 19 October 2001


CONTENTS:

ANGOLA: Ceasefire before 'humanitarian corridors'
ANGOLA-NAMIBIA: Nightly curfew along common border
ZIMBABWE: International NGOs prepare to distribute food
SOUTH AFRICA-ZIMBABWE: Zimbabwean workers given three month reprieve
MALAWI: Hunger set to deepen by December
ZAMBIA: Chiluba presidential challenger barred
LESOTHO: Police whip striking workers


ANGOLA: Ceasefire before 'humanitarian corridors'

The United Nations Security Council this week asked Angola's warring
parties to grant humanitarian workers access to at-risk communities,
saying it is deeply concerned about humanitarian conditions in the
country. UN statistics indicate at least 500,000 Angolans are in desperate
need of food and medicine cannot be reached. Security Council President
Richard Ryan said in a statement on Wednesday that the Council had
received an extensive briefing from Ibrahim Gambari, the
Secretary-General's special adviser on Africa, on the work of the United
Nations Office in Angola (UNOA). "Council members expressed deep concern
about the humanitarian situation. They asked that access to the at-risk
population be granted to humanitarian workers," Ryan said.

The issue of getting to Angola's most vulnerable populations, who cannot
access humanitarian assistance because of the ongoing civil war, was
raised by the church and other civic bodies earlier this year, when they
called on the government and UNITA to create conditions for the
establishment of "humanitarian corridors" in areas they control. Other
international NGOs have also echoed the call. The UN has expressed support
for the concept and could raise the issue with Angolan authorities, at
least, by the end of the year, a source told IRIN.

However, UNITA spokesman Joffre Justino told IRIN that without a bilateral
ceasefire, UNITA could not provide humanitarian workers with safety
guarantees. He said it would be impossible since UNITA now operated as a
guerrilla force and did not "control" any part of the country. The
responsibility for creating humanitarian corridors, he said, lay with the
Angolan government.

Ryan said Council members remained deeply concerned at the continuing
conflict and "reiterated their position that the primary responsibility
for the continued fighting lies with the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA)". "They called on UNITA to end its military
action and to enter into dialogue with the government of Angola on how to
conclude the implementation of the Lusaka Protocol," Ryan said.

For more details:
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/sa/countrystories/angola/20011018b.phtml

Food pipeline guaranteed until February

Meanwhile, a WFP spokeswoman told IRIN that Angola's food pipeline had
been secured until around mid-February next year, thanks to late
donations. Early in September WFP appealed to donors, warning that without
further supplies, its food pipeline would dry up by the end of the year.

"It's a lot better at the moment. Right after issuing the appeal we
received 80,000 mt of maize from the US government and this week we
received another US $1 million - half in cash and half in vegetable oil.
So right now this pretty much guarantees the pipeline until mid or end of
February," Cristina Muller told IRIN on Monday. She added, however, that
there might be a sugar shortage by the end of December. WFP, through
various programmes, feeds about 1.2 of Angola's approximately 12 million
people each year. Muller said even though food security for the next four
months or so was expected to be stable, WFP still needed pledges to keep
those affected by the war from starving.

UN calls for release of abducted children

On Tuesday the UN condemned the abductions and called for the children's
immediate release. "This is not the first time that children have been
abducted: similar abductions have occurred throughout Angola's prolonged
conflict in various parts of the country. The majority of these children
have not been heard from since. The motivation for these abductions is not
always clear, but children abducted in conflict countries are often used
by armed groups to carry goods and ammunitions and to cook and clean. In
the worst cases, children, particularly young girls, may be sexually
abused and both girls and boys may be used in combat or as a defensive
shield," said a joint statement from UNICEF and the Humanitarian
Coordinator in Angola.

Archbishop Camuenho shares Sakharov Prize

Archbishop Zacarias Camuenho was named joint winner of the Sakharov Prize
for Freedom of Thought on Thursday, Lusa reported. He shared the human
rights prize, awarded annually by the European Parliament, with Middle
East peace campaigners Izzat Ghazzawi and Nurit Peled-Elhanan, the report
said. Ghazzawi is a Palestinian writer and academic and Peled-Elhanan an
Israeli academic.

Lusa quoted Fernando Neves, Portuguese Ambassador in Angola, as saying
that Camuenho`s award was a "stimulus" for the Angolan peace process. "The
award of this prize is recognition of the need to encourage efforts to
achieve peace through peaceful channels", he said, adding that the
decision also reflected the importance of the church in the solution to
Angola's internal conflict. Previous winners of the Sackharov Prize
include Nelson Mandela, Alexander Dubcek and Xanana Gusmao.

ANGOLA-NAMIBIA: Nightly curfew along common border

Namibia this week announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew along a stretch of its
northern border with Angola to prevent raids by Angolan rebel movement
UNITA. Army commander Major General Martin Shalli said that residents on
both sides of the Okavango River, which formed the border, would have to
stay 200 m from its banks during the curfew. He said the rural population
along the 340 km border would be notified of the curfew and that Angolan
government forces had already been informed.

Meningitis outbreak in north

A massive immunisation campaign was to be launched in the north of the
country on Wednesday after 50 cases of meningitis were reported in Engela
district in the Ohangwena region, 'The Namibian' reported. It said that so
far the outbreak had only claimed one life - that of an Angolan child.
Acting Director of Health for the North West, Eloby Amundaba, was quoted
as saying that immunisation teams would cover 104 points, including
schools and clinics in the Engela Health District. The campaign would last
for three days, he said. According to the report, Amundaba said many
villages along the border with Angola were affected by the epidemic.

Amundaba said Angolan children from villages close to the border could
cross the frontier to nearby Namibian clinics and schools for
immunisation. "Ten percent of our immunisation will be for the Angolan
children who are living along the border in Angola. We are fully prepared
and hope that all children in that target group will be immunised," he
said.

ZIMBABWE: International NGOs prepare to distribute food

Food shortages and food security became an increasingly important issue in
Zimbabwe this week, as international NGOs working in Zimbabwe said that
they were preparing food distribution and food for work programmes despite
the government's reluctance to admit to a food crisis. "We're initially
targeting about 130,000 people in the Midlands and Matabeleland South
provinces," Zvidzai Maburutse of World Vision International (WVI) in
Harare told IRIN.

Oxfam in Zimbabwe said that it was trying to help a smaller number of
rural people - about 8,500 - "but that's just phase one, we'll expand if
we can secure enough funding," Arif Khan, Oxfam's regional humanitarian
coordinator told IRIN from Pretoria. He added that Oxfam was equally
concerned about food shortages in urban areas and that his agency was
trying to address this problem as well. Both agencies said they had
secured permission from government to import food aid at a time when the
issue of food shortages is of growing political sensitivity. Oxfam is
attempting to raise about US $1 million to fund the first part of its
programme.

The country's leading financial newspaper, 'The Financial Gazette' said
this week that an estimated 2.5 million people in four southern provinces
have registered with the government for food aid. It said the figure
represented one-fifth of the nation's 12.5 million people, and came from
totalling the number of requests for food relief in the provinces of
Matabeleland South and North, Midlands and Masvingo

For more details:
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/sa/countrystories/zimbabwe/20011016a.phtml

Price controls result in shortages and lay-offs

In a related development, Zimbabwean business warned on Wednesday that the
government's reintroduction of price controls would threaten many
companies with closure, and cause shortages the controls were designed to
prevent. "It is common knowledge that price controls lead to shortages of
the very commodities we would like people to access," Malvern Rusike,
chief executive of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industry (CZI) told IRIN.
"It is futile to try to address the symptoms of the economy's problems and
avoid the real issues, nor does it make sense to control the price of the
end product whilst key input prices are market determined."

President Robert Mugabe said on Monday that he would press ahead with
price controls introduced last week on bread and other commodities to curb
soaring prices in the midst of Zimbabwe's worst economic crisis since
independence. Mugabe warned that the state would take over any businesses
that closed if they blamed their closure on price controls. But Jacob
Dube, president of CZI, said that such policies ignored economic
realities. "If there is no re-negotiation of the controls that have been
put in place ... most likely almost all the bakeries in the country will
close," Dube said.

"There will be no bread on the shelves. These guys (industry wide) are
taking a knock of about 1.8 million Zim dollars (US $32,700) loss per day.
There's no business that is prepared to carry that loss," Dube told a news
conference. In a statement, the CZI pointed out that policing the new
regulations would mean more government expenditure as an army of price
inspectors and monitors would have to be recruited.

Bakeries in the capital Harare and nearby Chitungwiza reduced their
production of bread on Monday, citing massive operational losses as a
result of the statutory price controls introduced by the government last
week.

Government declares new minimum wage

And in another sign of stricter controls, Mugabe's Cabinet this week
legislated minimum wages for Zimbabwean industry without reaching
agreement with labour and business. The minimum wages, which were still
under discussion in the Tripartite negotiating Forum (TNF), were gazetted
together with new price controls at the end of last week and were
effective from 1 October. The new wage represents an increases of over 100
percent in some sectors, which some companies, already reeling from
runaway production and input costs and expected to fare badly under new
price controls, might not be able to afford. "It's likely that some
members are in a position to pay (the minimum wages) but others are in a
worse state," said Bankers' Association of Zimbabwe vice chairman Nigel
Chanakira. Business executives said many firms were likely to apply for
exemptions from the new regulations, while others could be forced to cut
back on staffing levels to remain viable.

Opposition suspends top officials

On the political front, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) said on Monday that it had suspended eight top officials, including
four lawmakers, from party positions amid internal squabbles. Welshman
Ncube, the MDC secretary general, said the eight, who include Learnmore
Jongwe, the party's chief spokesperson, and Tapiwa Mashakada, shadow
finance minister, were relieved of their duties pending a probe into the
in-fighting. They will remain ordinary party members while investigations
are under way into factional clashes last month.

SOUTH AFRICA-ZIMBABWE: Zimbabwean farm workers given three month reprieve

South Africa on Thursday has granted a 90-day reprieve to Zimbabwean farm
workers it had threatened to deport earlier in the week.  The workers in
the Northern Province have been given extensions on their work permits in
order to give the government time to find a compromise on the issue, Home
Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi said. "This should give the Cabinet
sufficient time to make a reasonable decision on the workers," he said.
The government had ordered 10,000 Zimbabwean farm workers in the province
to leave by Monday or face deportation as part of an effort to encourage
farmers to hire unemployed South Africans.

MALAWI: Hunger set to deepen by December

About 78 percent of Malawi's rural poor may not have food by December,
according to the preliminary results of a World Vision survey. A
humanitarian source told IRIN on Monday that the survey also indicated a
33 percent chronic malnutrition rate - determined by a formula using a
child's height and age. "This can be described as pretty bad," the source
said. To compound matters, he added, 78 percent of rural households
visited during the survey "won't have food by December".

Malawi's rural and urban poor have been bearing the brunt of the country's
food shortages as maize prices soar and the staple food becomes more
scarce. News reports emerging in recent weeks have painted pictures of
starving people scouring through bins for food in the cities and eating
animal feed and husks in the countryside. Even though the government has
ordered 150,000 mt of maize from South Africa, the maize will not
necessarily help feed the poor. It is headed for the commercial market.

World Vision relief manager for Malawi, Elton Ntwana, told IRIN on Monday
that he did not want to pre-empt the survey. However, he said it seemed as
though the southern part of the country - most affected by floods earlier
this year - were more severely affected by food shortages. He said that as
soon as the final report was ready, the results would be discussed with
representatives of the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) and the
government, with a view to drafting a national plan

For more details:
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/sa/countrystories/malawi/20011015.phtml

ZAMBIA: Chiluba presidential challenger barred

Zambia's Vice President Enoch Kavindele said on Monday that opposition
Forum for Democratic Development (FDD) presidential candidate Christon
Tembo would not be allowed to stand in the election because his parents
were from Malawi. Kavindele was quoted as saying that the constitution
required that both parents were born in Zambia. "It is general knowledge
that Tempo's father is Malawian," Kavindele said. The ruling Movement for
Multiparty Democracy (MMD) amended the constitution in 1996 to include a
provision that both parents of presidential candidates should be Zambians
by birth.

Tembo was elected FDD leader and nominated as presidential candidate at
the party's first national convention at the weekend, reports said.
Christon Tembo beat three other candidates, including two former
ministers, reports added. The FDD was formed four months ago by former
ruling Movement for Mutiparty Democracy (MMD) cabinet ministers and MPs
expelled from the party for publicly opposing Chiluba's third term bid.

Lawmaker joins presidential race

In a related development, Inonge Mbikusita-Lewanika, announced on Thursday
she would join the race in this year's presidential election. She was
nominated by the small opposition Agenda for Zambia (AZ) as its
presidential candidate. "I have accepted the challenge and I will run for
the high office," said 54-year-old Mbikusita-Lewanika. The
highly-respected Mbikusita-Lewanika has been a lawmaker since the
government of President Frederick Chiluba came to power in 1991. She was
one of the founding members of the ruling Movement for Multiparty
Democracy (MMD) but quit in 1994, leading the first break-away group from
MMD.

LESOTHO: Police whip striking workers

Lesotho police used teargas and whips to disperse striking clothing
workers who took to the streets of Maseru on Monday to demonstrate for
better wages and working conditions, news reports said. According to
reports some protesters sustained injuries when police whipped the crowd.
The clash erupted when a group of protesters threatened workers who had
reported for duty. The protesters were by then on the way to Prime
Minister Pakalitha Mosisili's office to present a petition against low
wages in the clothing industry. The petition was also handed over to the
minister of employment and labour, Sello Machakela, and to the speaker of
the national assembly, Ntlhoi Motsamai. The wages advisor report to the
government had recommended a 6.5 percent increase in wages which the union
rejected.


IRIN-SA
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