ZIMBABWE: Devil in the detail

Photo: IRIN

Morgan Tsvangirai – Almost there

HARARE, 10 February 2009 (IRIN) – Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), says he has managed to win key concessions from President Robert Mugabe ahead of being sworn into office as Prime Minister on 11 February.

Speaking in the capital, Harare, after he announced his ministerial nominees to a government of national unity, Tsvangirai said most of the issues that had stalled a power-sharing administration were being finalised.

MDC demands ahead of the formation of a new government included the following:

- Fair distribution of provincial governors
- Release of journalists and human rights activists detained on allegations of banditry
- Equitable distribution of key ministries
- Enactment of the National Security Council Law to replace the military-dominated Joint Operations Command
- Effect Constitutional Amendment 19, legalising Tsvangirai’s appointment
- Review the appointments of Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor and the attorney general.

Tsvangirai said out of the 10 provincial governors, his party would be awarded five, based on the provinces where MDC registered a majority in the March 2008 elections.

“We are going to get five governors out of all the 10 and the issue is just being finalised. On the issue of detained activists, we are working very hard to ensure that they are released before the swearing into office,” Tsvangirai said.

Parliament has already passed Constitutional Amendment 19, which awaits the signature of Mugabe, while the National Security Council Bill is before parliament. Tsvangirai will become a member of the council, which will oversee the operations of security forces that over the years have been accused of terrorising opposition supporters.

However, Mugabe has refused to yield on his control of the key ministries of defence, justice, foreign affairs, information and local government. He said outstanding issues like the appointments of the RBZ governor and attorney general would be discussed when the MDC is in government.

Among Tsvangirai’s cabinet nominees is MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti as finance minister. Giles Mutsekwa, a former pre-independence Rhodesian soldier, has controversially been named to co-lead the ministry of home affairs. One MDC official described it as “waiving a red flag at ZANU” and unnecessarily provocative.

Tension is also simmering after Tsvangirai failed to name any MDC MPs from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, for cabinet positions. They won Bulawayo for Tsvangirai, beating off the challenge of the breakaway MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara, who is to be appointed deputy prime minister under the terms of the power-sharing agreement.

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ZIMBABWE: 94 percent of schools fail to open

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No school for most

JOHANNESBURG, 10 February 2009 (IRIN) – About 94 percent of Zimbabwe’s rural schools – where most children are educated – failed to open this year, the UN Children’s Fund said on 10 February 2009.

The education system, once viewed as the finest in sub-Saharan Africa, has become a casualty of the country’s economic collapse and political infighting.

Tsitsi Singizi, UNICEF’s spokesman in Zimbabwe, told IRIN the priority of the new unity government should be to salvage the education system. “The infrastructure for education is still there, but it needs to be brought back from the brink,” she urged.

The leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai, inaugurated as prime minister on 11 February and the a unity government, agreed by ZANU-PF and the MDC on 15 September 2008, is expected to begin its work of reconstructing Zimbabwe.

“Children in rural areas already live on the margins, many are orphaned, a huge number depend on food aid, they struggle on numerous fronts,” UNICEF’s Representative in Zimbabwe, Roeland Monasch, said in a statement. “Now these children are being denied the only basic right that can better their prospects. It is unacceptable.”

Children in rural areas already live on the margins, many are orphaned, a huge number depend on food aid, they struggle on numerous fronts

Widespread disruption of schools began in the aftermath of the March 2008 elections and continued beyond a presidential run-off poll in June, which was not recognized internationally because of the state-sponsored political violence.

After the elections, many teachers failed to return to their posts as a consequence of salaries made worthless by hyperinflation and a fear of continued political violence.

In 2008, school attendance rates dropped from 80 percent to 20 percent, UNICEF said, and the few schools that opened in 2009 are charging fees in foreign currency, making them unaffordable to most citizens.

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source.www.irinnews.org

MOZAMBIQUE: Cholera still remains a risk

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Cholera beds await patients

MAPUTO, 10 February 2009 (IRIN) – Cholera has spread to all but two of Mozambique’s 10 provinces, but that does not deter hundreds of vendors and buyers from crowding the waterlogged, garbage strewn Xiquelene market on the eastern outskirts of the capital, Maputo.

Outbreaks of cholera are common during the rainy season and there are still two months to go, so health authorities remain on high alert.

“When it rains there is mud and water everywhere, but if I stay at home I will have nothing to eat with my family,” said Rosina Nhone, a single mother of three, as she spread her tomatoes, onions and other vegetables on plastic sheets on the ground next to the other traders.

Three major roads meet at Xiquelene, making it the main shopping area for more than a dozen impoverished districts in Maputo, whether it rains or not.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has noted that cholera “remains a challenge to countries where access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation cannot be guaranteed … typical at-risk areas include peri-urban slums.”

Cholera is a waterborne intestinal infection that causes severe diarrhoea and vomiting, leading to rapid dehydration. Left untreated, it can bring death within 24 hours but the WHO describes it as “an easily treatable disease”, cured with rehydration salts to replace lost fluids.

Real risk

The numbers show the risk is real: according to the Ministry of Health, 2,655 cases and 21 deaths were recorded in Mozambique during the month of January alone. Since the outbreak began in October 2008, there have been 4,132 cholera cases and 52 cholera-related deaths.

The good news is that the mortality rate has dropped significantly. “The number of cholera infection cases normally increases during the rainy season but for this period [January] we are happy to say the mortality rate as a percentage of the cases treated is less than one percent,” the secretary-general of the Mozambican Red Cross, Fernanda Teixeira, told IRIN.

The latest cholera update by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted that the case fatality rate since the outbreak began was 1.3 percent but had dropped to 0.56 percent in January.

More than 50 percent of the population does not have access to safe and clean drinking water, and that is a major cause for the spread of the disease

Only the two southern provinces of Gaza and Inhambane have not record cholera-related fatalities; the highest fatality rates were recorded in Mozambique’s northern and central provinces of Nampula, Cabo Del Gado, Manica and Tete.

“More than 50 percent of the population does not have access to safe and clean drinking water, and that is a major cause for the spread of the disease,” Teixeira said.

“Our prevention strategy is aimed at teaching people about improved hygienic standards, such as washing hands after eating, and properly washing vegetables to reduce chances of their contamination during irrigation [before being harvested].”

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DJIBOUTI: Global food crisis adding to shortages

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Photo: Abdi Hassan/IRIN

Sunil Saigal, the UN Resident Coordinator in Djibouti, raising concerns about food security

DJIBOUTI, 10 February 2009 (IRIN) – Drought, high food prices and a weak response from donors have left a large proportion of Djibouti’s population without enough to eat, despite some level of economic growth, the UN Resident Coordinator said.

“Djibouti has been suffering over the last few years, not only from the drought situation that the Horn of Africa is facing, but it is also one of the countries severely hit by the global food crisis,” Sunil Saigal said.

Of a population of between 500,000 and 700,000, an estimated 130,000 were highly food-insecure. This, however, is a significant drop from the 340,000 cited by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) in September 2006.

“We don’t quite know how many people are actually in Djibouti right now,” Saigal told IRIN in Djibouti. “[But] a very large percentage is highly food-insecure. WFP [UN World Food Programme] is operating on the basis of 328,000 moderately food-insecure.”

The rural population was more affected because food prices had increased by more than in urban areas. Over five years, prices had increased in urban areas by 80 percent compared with 94 percent in rural areas.

“Between January 2007 and September 2008, the increase of the basic food basket in urban areas was 62.4 percent and in rural areas 74 percent,” he added. “So really the whole population has been severely hit.”

The situation had been aggravated by a lack of adequate donor attention, despite a good response from USAID, the European Union and the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund, among others.

“But overall, the response from the international community has been weak,” the Resident Coordinator explained. “We issued jointly with the government last July an appeal for the last six months of 2008 for US$31.7 million … we have a shortfall of about $20 million.”

Among other impacts, the drought and food crisis had increased malnutrition, despite government efforts to improve access to basic services.

“We are looking at global malnutrition rates of 16 and 17 percent and in the northwest of the country as high as 25 percent,” Saigal said.

“WHO [the World Health Organization] considers the threshold for a crisis to be 15 percent. We are well beyond the crisis situation and that is what we are trying to respond to.”

Djibouti, a semi-desert state that experiences frequent droughts and imports all its staple foods, is classified by the UN as both a least developed and a low-income, food-deficit country.

Years of minimal rains have left both rural and urban populations more dependent on food imports due to poor pastoral and agro-pastoral production while international commodity prices have risen steadily.

ah/eo/mw source.www.irinnews.org