May 2002 From the South African website Censor Bugbear
Famine for 24-million people in southern Africa
The World Food Programme is warning of a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions facing all of Southern Africa’s 120-million strong population, already suffering from a huge Aids epidemic.
This season’s May 2002 crop map, published here, shows how little food (bright green) is being grown throughout the region. All the rest is fallow land…
One-third of Angolan children are now starving to death; hundreds of people are dead from famine in Malawi. From Angola on the west coast to Mozambique on the East Coast famine is spreading rapidly, warns Judith Lewis, WFP regional director.
Koen Henckaerts of Doctors without Borders; Dr Guy Zimmermann of the international federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies; and the World Food Programme of the UN now have all have launched urgent aid appeals. UK pop singer Bob Geldof has also submitted a report on the tragic “state of Africa”to the UK government.
South Africa, the only country where about 30,000 commercial (Afrikaner) farmers still manage to produce excess grain crops, predicts that this year’s May harvests will not meet all these urgent needs of the entire southern African region.
“(African) harvests were low last year; this year food shortfall will be very great since there won’t be any more food production before April next year. It’s clear the situation will now worsen very quickly,” Dr Guy Zimmermann, a nutrition expert at the Red Cross Federation, has warned.
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Mbeki pardons murderers of farmers – had been “jailed in the struggle for our liberation”…
Cape Town – May 15, 2002 – President Thabo Mbeki today admitted that he pardoned 33 convicted murderers for political reasons — saying that they had been “jailed because of their involvement in the South African freedom struggle.”
By freeing these convicted murderers — at least four have killed Eastern Cape farmers — Mbeki also fuelled the widespread belief among commercial farmers that the ongoing farm attack epidemic against the Afrikaner agricultural community is politically motivated.
Mbeki reacted on Wednesday: “These are people who are in jail as a result of activities that were conducted in the struggle for our liberation.”
Four murderers of East Cape farmers released: Among those pardoned by Mbeki was Dumisani Ncamazana, a PAC member jailed for 16 years for three farm attacks during 1994.
Other farm attackers pardoned were PAC members Zama Thutha and Luvuyo Kulman, who had been refused political amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the August 1993 murders of Elliot farmer Michael Meyers and his daughter Donna.
Also given a political pardon by Mbeki last week was Monwabisi Eric Khundulu, who had applied for amnesty from the TRC for killing Cradock farmers Matheus and Jeanette Palvie in February 1987.
Khundulu was granted political amnesty by the TRC for the male farmer’s killing — but refused political amnesty for the farm wife’s killing and the housebreaking and robbery accompanying the Palvie couple’s slaughter.
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Graeme Hunt
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