SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 307 for 4 - 10 November 2006
10 Nov 2006 18:36:28 GMT Source: IRIN
JOHANNESBURG, 10 November (IRIN) - CONTENTSZAMBIA: Kabwe, Africa's most toxic city
SOUTHERN AFRICA: Climate change threatens regional food security
ZIMBABWE:
Undertakers report booming business
ZIMBABWE: Govt issues 99-year leases to boost food production
SWAZILAND: Parliamentarians go on 'strike'
ANGOLA-ZAMBIA: Refugees return home armed with the
knowledge of HIV/AIDS prevention
ZAMBIA: Masai healers fill public health services voidZAMBIA: Kabwe, Africa's most toxic cityKabwe, home to 300,000 people, is Africa's most polluted city and
has gained the dubious distinction of being ranked as the world's fourth most polluted site, according to a survey published by the Blacksmith Institute, a New York-based organisation monitoring
pollution in the developing world. Kabwe, Zambia's second largest city, grew up around the 1902 discovery of lead deposits about 150km north of the capital, Lusaka, and became Africa's largest lead
mine. Veins of lead ore, with concentrations as high as 20 percent, were mined deep into the ground; smelting operations were established nearby and ran almost continuously until 1994.Full report:http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56306SOUTHERN AFRICA: Climate change threatens regional food securityClimate change could force drought-prone areas of southern Africa to abandon
agriculture permanently in the next 50 years, according to new research. As a result of global warming, "weather events will become less predictable and more intense - heavier rainfall and longer and
more frequent drought cycles", said Martin Krause, regional technical advisor on climate change with the United Nations Development Programme and the Global Environment Facility (UNDP-GEF), which
helps raise funds for projects in developing countries. The projections are contained in a recent report, 'Africa - Up in Smoke 2', an update of an earlier report produced by the British-based
Working Group on Climate Change and Development. Southern Africa has been grappling with a series of droughts for the past six years, which has hit regional food security. This year was slightly
better, with most countries receiving seasonal rainfall on time, yet humanitarian agencies estimate that at least three million people will need food aid until the end of the lean season in March
2007.Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56278ZIMBABWE: Undertakers report booming businessOne sector of Zimbabwe's depressed economy is experiencing boom times. For those
providing services for the dead, business is very healthy. An area on the western fringes of the central business district in the capital, Harare, has been dubbed 'Death Valley' in recognition of the
concentration of businesses like undertakers, coffin manufacturers and funeral insurance companies. Although the capital has six registered funeral parlours, a further 21 unregistered parlours have
sprouted up as a result of high demand for funeral services. Attempts by the authorities to shut them down merely drove them underground and they have reappeared as backyard businesses across the
city.Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56290ZIMBABWE: Govt issues 99-year leases to boost food productionIn a bid to boost food production, the Zimbabwean government gave
99-year leases to the first batch of resettled black commercial farmers on Thursday.
Ngoni Masoka, permanent secretary in the ministry of lands, said in a statement that the leases demonstrated
government's commitment to empowering black farmers who had benefited from the government's controversial fast-track land reform programme. The leases will provide resettled commercial farmers with
security of tenure, which could serve as collateral for loans to procure inputs. They have cited their inability to raise money and uncertainty about their future as reasons for the drop in
production.Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56267SWAZILAND: Parliamentarians go on 'strike'Swaziland's parliamentarians have embarked on an unprecedented stayaway to
protest against Cabinet's inability to get grants paid to the elderly. Late last month, health and social welfare Minister Njabulo Mabuza blamed budgetary constraints and "technical problems" for the
failure to pay grants to widows and the elderly. Two-thirds of the country's roughly 1 million people live on US$2 or less day, and many of those aged 60 years or older rely on the government's
quarterly pay-out of R240 ($32), or R80 ($10.50) a month, to subsist, often while bearing the burden of caring for HIV/AIDS orphans.Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56308ANGOLA-ZAMBIA: Refugees return home armed with the knowledge of HIV/AIDS preventionFour years after a ceasefire ended decades of civil war in neighbouring Angola, Zambia is still home to more than
25,000 Angolan refugees awaiting repatriation. Zambia's HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is about 18 percent; in Angola it is around 4 percent. The challenge is how to keep Angola's relative low rates of
HIV/AIDS in check. About 170,000 refugees have already gone home, some having fled the fighting in the 1970s. They are returning to a country where war-induced isolation has helped keep HIV/AIDS
relatively low. The situation poses an acute problem: Will peace and the reopening of the country mean a jump in infection rates? The problem is aggravated by Angola's low rates of knowledge about
HIV/AIDS - what the disease is and how to avoid it.Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56285ZAMBIA: Masai healers fill public health services voidRising demand for the
services of traditional healers is drawing Tanzanian Masai practitioners across the border to fill the void left by the creaking Zambian public health system, but their discounted prices are upsetting
their local counterparts. Zambia's inadequate public health system and the relative wealth in the economic heartland of Copperbelt Province and Lusaka have lured the Masai, but their remedies, known
by the Swahili word Dawa, are substantially undercutting prices offered by the local healers. Nakaraga's charges range from US$5 to $20, while the average Zambian healer charges in kind by demanding
goods like goats and cattle, valued at about $300 in monetary terms.Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56264
