by api

We do hope that this is not an event of victimization. Many will use Kerubo to kick out the DCJ for their own gain.

Something happened, for sure, but not that it amounts to the whole nation’s attention. This smells of sacrificial tendencies.

Money is playing a big role here.

End

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Floods leave Angolan returnees stranded

Photo: Tomas de Mul/IRIN

The Zambezi is prone to flooding annually

JOHANNESBURG,  – Several thousand Angolan returnees from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are stranded by floods in northeastern Angola. They are among the first casualties of what promises to be a very wet rainy season in parts of southern Africa.

“At least 50,000 people – 24,000 of them returnees – in 10 villages in Uige Province [northeastern Angola near border with DRC] have been affected by the flooding, rains and hailstorms in the past four months,” said Antonio Maiandi, head of the Evangelical Reformed Church of Angola, which has been trying to help those affected. The rainy season here tends to be longer than elsewhere in Angola.

“It is still pouring hard. At least 1,142 houses have been destroyed by the rains. Each family with shelter is now hosting other families,” said Maiandi, adding that the returnees, who had sought refuge from the civil war in Angola which ended in 2002, were putting enormous pressure on locals, and organizations such as his.

“The local population who are mostly farmers have been severely affected. Their cassava [staple food in Angola] and groundnut crops have been destroyed, so there is not enough food to go round.”

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) restarted formal repatriation of Angolans in November 2011 after logistical and other problems forced the process to stop in 2007. DRC is home to some 80,000 Angolans refugees, according to UNHCR.

The new return initiative comes after a UNHCR survey in 2010 found that 43,000 wanted to return home, and following a tripartite agreement between Angola, DRC and UNHCR (signed in June 2011), around 20,000 people signed up for help to return. The agreement came about after years of tense relations between the two countries: Angolan and Congolese nationals have been expelled from the two countries regularly.

Each family with shelter is now hosting other families

“The local population is extremely poor and unable to support the returnees,” and “people are still coming in every day,” said Maiandi.

UNHCR in Angola told IRIN they took a break in December 2011 and would resume formal repatriation on 17 January, but did not have an update on the number of people who had already arrived.

According to aid workers, increasing instability in the DRC following the recent disputed elections could be prompting more people to leave.

Maiandi said the returnees had not received adequate support from the authorities and church organizations had limited resources.

Meteorologists for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have predicted normal to above normal rains for most of the region from January to March 2012 largely because of the continuing effects of the 2011 La Niña event. Thousands of people in the region were displaced and scores killed in early 2011 as a result of heavy rains and flooding associated with La Niña.

Zimbabwe

As the rainy season begins here, aid workers and disaster prevention teams are closely monitoring water levels in the all-important Zambezi river, the continent’s fourth largest.

The authorities have issued a flood alert after being forced to release water from the swollen Kariba Dam on the Zambezi earlier than usual in the rainy season.

The Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) which usually opens the spillway gates of Lake Kariba in the last two weeks of January was forced to open one of the gates on 3 January. It has advised people living downstream to evacuate their homes.

Zambia

Zambia is in for a mixed season. Dominicano Mulenga, national coordinator of Zambia’s Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit, said a plan had been drawn up to help 368,953 people likely to be affected by rain and dry spells. While northwestern and western parts of the country had seen heavy rain, southern, eastern and parts of central Zambia were likely to receive little or no rain, he said. 

The water level in the Zambezi was higher than at the same time in 2011, he added. “We have had three seasons of heavy rainfall and the ground is saturated with water, making it more prone to flooding.”

Namibia

Namibians, currently experiencing a heat wave, are eager for rain, said Guido van Langehove, chief of the Namibia Hydrological Services. Southern African Development Community (SADC) meteorologists have forecast normal to above normal rains for Namibia over the next three months. “It was the same forecast last year and we recorded three times the normal rain,” van Langehove pointed out.

The Caprivi Region, Namibia’s poorest area, is prone to annual flooding.

Japhet Itenge, director of Disaster Risk Management in the Office of the Prime Minister, said they were prepositioning essential commodities and relief tools as part of their contingency plans.

Lesotho

Lesotho has not received adequate rainfall in the past few months, a spokesman for the country’s meteorological services told IRIN. “SADC has forecast heavy rains for Lesotho in the coming weeks. We are worried it can cause early frost and destroy crops that have already been planted,” he said.

Lesotho and Namibia have food insecurity levels greater than their five-year averages due to the severe flooding experienced during the last growing season, according to FEWSNET.

Mozambique

The Mozambican authorities have begun to release water from the Cahora Bassa Dam on the Zambezi. People living mainly along the lower Zambezi basin and in Buzi, Save, and Pungue basins, including Beira city, are on alert.

Sofala Province in central Mozambique is currently distributing items such as bicycles, stretchers, masks, gloves, megaphones and boats, according to the Mozambique Red Cross; and members of seven local disaster risk management committees established in Beira City are cleaning the drainage system.

The National Institute of Disaster Management (INGC) is monitoring the rivers Montepuez, Licungo, Mutamba, Pungué, Buzi, Save, and Maputo, said FEWSNET. In the Zambezi and Limpopo river basins, FEWSNET warned of a near-average-to-high probability of flooding.

João Bobotela, CARE’s emergency response coordinator in Mozambique, said INGC and local authorities had been running flood simulation exercises since November 2011 to prepare communities for sudden evacuations.

Botswana

Arid Botswana has not received good rains in the past few months. “We are expecting average rains which might help crops,” said a spokesman for the Botswana Meteorological Services.

Malawi

More rains have been forecast for southern Malawi, where land adjacent to the River Shire, one of the most food-insecure parts of the country, is prone to flooding. Parts of the region, which has seen an outbreak of foot and mouth disease and a hike in food prices, are in crisis mode, warned FEWSNET.

South Africa

Much-needed rain has fallen in South Africa’s major maize-producing northern Free State area in the past few weeks. The government and USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) say the country has adequate supplies, but global maize stocks are low, putting considerable upward price pressure on South African white maize.

jk-dd/cb source www.irinnews.org

TANZANIA: Government recalls faulty HIV test kits

Photo: Glenna Gordon/IRIN

The UN World Health Organization has issued an alert on the test kit, which failed quality assurance tests (file photo)

DAR ES SALAAM,  – Tanzanian health authorities have announced the withdrawal of a South Korean HIV test kit from circulation following warnings about its poor quality.

In November, the UN World Health Organization removed the Standard Diagnostics Bioline® HIV 1/2 3.0 Rapid HIV Test Kit from its list of approved rapid test kits with immediate effect; the alert was issued after Bioline failed quality assurance tests.

The Tanzanian government has followed neighbouring Kenya [ http://plusnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=94586 ] in issuing an immediate recall of all Bioline testing kits in the country.

“What we know so far is that 1,178 test kits have been used in the field, but we have yet to substantiate exactly how many of them were defective,” Hadji Mponda, Tanzania’s Health Minister, said at a news conference on 5 January.

jk/kr source www.irinnews.org

SUDAN-SOUTH SUDAN: What they are saying about the Sudans

Photo: Hannah McNeish/IRIN

Recovering from shrapnel injuries in Kurmuk, Blue Nile (file photo)

NAIROBI,  – Sudan has long generated a plethora of academic reports and think-tank analyses, especially in times of heightened insecurity and great political moment. Following the country’s division into two states, current conflict in border areas has given rise to a flurry of such documents. What follows is the latest instalment of IRIN’s irregular series of overviews.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) warns of a growing risk of war on multiple fronts.   

“After the end of the CPA [Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in 2005], rather than negotiate with Sudanese opposition forces, NCP [the ruling National Congress Party] hardliners have opted for a military solution – not an unusual policy response – when confronted with opposition. “This, however, is pushing Sudan’s disparate rebel movements and opposition forces together and could trigger a wider civil war for control of the country.”

Post-CPA, there is no coherent political framework to deal with the many remaining challenges in Sudan, with international attention focused on safeguarding South Sudan’s referendum and independence largely having underestimated the impact of secession on the north, the report says.  

“To the resurgence of war in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile will likely be added an escalation in Darfur, especially now that the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) has returned from Libya and rejoined forces in Darfur.”

According to a report by Germany’s University of Halle, The Genesis of Recurring Wars in Sudan, “the resurgence of armed conflict in the Nuba Mountains [in South Kordofan] implies that the CPA was not a ‘comprehensive’ and ‘final’ settlement accord to northern Sudan’s recurring political conflicts. It was rather a long-term ‘truce’ or ‘ceasefire’, as far as the northern Sudan is concerned.

“…The heavy shooting that occurred in South Kordofan’s capital Kadugli on 5 June was not the beginning of something new. It was rather the climax of several concomitant violent processes; which had taken different forms and had occurred on different levels throughout the CPA transitional period and before, and include events seemingly far away.  

“The last election in South Kordofan was bound to fail not because of technical flaws, but because it was treated as a zero-sum game between the two parties, NCP and SPLM/A [Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army]. Accordingly, the forms of ethno-political mobilizations exercised during the war were perpetuated and further stabilized,” it says, attributing recurrent war in Sudan to all dominant political players mainly operating militarily.  

“In consequence, only a radical change of the rules of the game can be a way out,” it says. “This perpetuation of war logic [has] prevented the development of plural voices and new ways, which are needed for non-violent political alternatives to historical injustices and inequalities. In conclusion, the unceasing militarization of society will continue to inhibit breaking the vicious cycle of fragile peace and recurring wars.”

Poverty and severe marginalization of the peripheries, combined with poor governance, are at the centre of continuing conflicts in Sudan, says a report by Sweden’s Uppsala University, The Crises Continue – Sudan’s Remaining Conflicts.

With regional inequity having fostered frustration and created a hotbed for rebellion, there is a need for decentralization, it states, adding that “the government’s propensity for using militias and divide-and-rule strategies has to stop for a brighter future for Sudan”.

The report further recommends that the various crises are dealt with in tandem as so far, “the international community has shown a clear lack of ability to deal with the different regions of Sudan simultaneously”.

Sanctions urged
 
In a 6 December letter to the UK’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, the UK Parliament  noted that “the scale of death and suffering caused by the ruthless military offensives against the peoples in South Kordofan and Blue Nile; the denial of access to international investigators or to the media as well as the refusal to allow access by aid organizations to victims of military offensives; and the catalogue of reports of violations of human rights, including unwarranted arrests, torture and threatened executions would seem to warrant a stronger response than continuing dialogue…

“…We have highlighted the imposition of targeted sanctions against leading members of the NCP, because this would put pressure on those who currently enjoy unimpeded travel to London, many of whom also enjoy their ownership of residences here.”

The letter added that unless the UK government is “seen to be taking some effective action, instead of continuing to make dialogue a priority, there will be a real danger that Khartoum will believe it can escalate its aggression with impunity, not only with dire humanitarian consequences, but also with serious implications for the vulnerable new nation of South Sudan and for the geo-political stability of the region.”

Photo: Peter Martell/IRIN Southern Sudanese soldiers patrol the streets of Juba. Small arms stocks are widespread in parts of South Sudan (file photo)

On 8 December, South Sudan’s foreign minister warned that the North and South were on the “brink of war” following fighting near the Jau region, along the South Kordofan and South Sudan’s Unity State border area. Hundreds of refugees fleeing South Kordofan are in Unity.  

The fighting in South Kordofan is pitting the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) against the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N). Many in South Kordofan sided with the South during the civil war.

“The bombs that fall are indiscriminate; they kill and maim young and old, man and woman, Christian and Muslim. In short, innocent civilians have become a target and their suffering has become political currency,” said a statement by the Province of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan, urging the two governments to negotiate.

The conflict could worsen. The SPLM-N and JEM, as well as two factions of the SPLM/A, recently signed a declaration in Kauda, South Kordofan, establishing the Sudan Revolutionary Front, whose aim is to overthrow the NCP using all available means, above all, the convergence of civil political action and armed struggle, according to a communiqué, says a late November field dispatch from the Enough Project.

The dispatch also quotes former Blue Nile governor, Malik Agar, who was replaced by the NCP before the fall of Kurmuk on 3 November to SAF forces as saying that “losing battles is quite natural in wars.

“However, the war is not yet lost, though politically [Sudanese President Omar el] Bashir is making lot of noise about [it]. Bashir pronounced SPLM [-N] dead but I can tell you, this is not the end of the movement, and SPLM[-N] is still very much alive and remarkably noisy.”

Rival support

Meanwhile, both Sudan and South Sudan accuse each other of supporting rival insurgents.

“There is strong circumstantial evidence that the forces of Peter Gadet and George Athor [among greater Upper Nile’s insurgencies’ commanders] have received logistical and material support, including small arms and ammunition, from Khartoum and other external sources,” notes a November report by Small Arms Survey.

The oil-producing greater Upper Nile comprises Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile states, where ongoing armed insurgencies are claiming to seek changes to the Juba-based government or to overthrow it, according to the report.

The greater Upper Nile forms much of South Sudan’s border with Sudan and small arms stocks are widespread in the region, despite numerous civilian disarmament campaigns, says the report, adding that “at a time when the Republic of South Sudan faces multiple other threats along its border with Sudan…[it has] ultimately failed to contain the rebel threat.

“This current stalemate leaves the new country vulnerable and unstable.”

On 14 December, the UN Security Council expanded the mandate of the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei to include assistance in border normalization due to the recognition that “the situation in that area constituted a threat to international peace and security”.

aw/am/mw source www.irinnews.org