Africa needs reparations, not occupation and sanctions

The people of large parts of Africa are suffering from a famine that is just as “unexpected” as was the hurricane disaster in Louisiana.

Since a drought, followed by a plague of locusts last November, destroyed most of the food crops in a broad swath of sub-Saharan lands, it was known by many international agencies tasked with providing humanitarian aid that there would be mass hunger and even starvation this summer in countries like Niger, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and others.

These agencies said they sounded the alarm but, just as in the case of the warnings about what a severe storm would do to New Orleans, the authorities who control the resources that could make the difference between life and death did virtually nothing.

The result has been heart-breaking images of babies and small children reduced to skeletons, dying at feeding stations that were set up too late to make a difference. The cameras of BBC have been in Niger, but the story is the same in several other countries.

Adding to the anguish of the people is the fact that, while food aid came too little and too late, it is now about to end. The policy of the donor agencies is to pull out when there is a new harvest. The problem is that many of the farmers are deeply in debt because there was no harvest last year, so whatever they earn this fall at the market will go to pay that debt. They will have nothing left, and will be just as vulnerable to starvation as they were last year.

Just as in New Orleans, a natural disaster was involved in Africa, but it is by no means the whole story. The poverty in Africa is the real culprit. And this poverty, in a continent rich in natural resources, comes from its history of plunder by Europe and the U.S., where the ruling classes have amassed vast fortunes from their colonial and imperialist conquests.

The U.S. and Britain are now threatening Zimbabwe, a country in southeastern Africa once ruled over by Britain, with economic sanctions. Zimbabwe is on their hit list because it has been turning land titles over to African families, many of them veterans of its war for independence. That land was formerly owned by white settlers, who at one time had control over most of Zimbabwe’s most productive land.

Zimbabwe paid the white farmers compensation for the land, but that didn’t appease them. Many are descendants of the soldier-settlers who first stole the land from the African people living there when Britain took the area for its colony.

Zimbabwe is another country suffering from drought at present. It needs help from the world, not sanctions meant to bring its leaders to their knees. Most of all, it and the rest of Africa need reparations for the terrible damage done by the slave trade, colonialism and now the intrigues and exploitation of imperialist corporations.

The pictures of African children dying of famine don’t have to be. A small amount of money could end the famine and help the people be more self-sufficient. Just recently, Washington launched a military expansion in Africa called the Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative that will cost $500 million over the next five years.

Africa, like New Orleans, needs relief and the development of its infrastructure, not Pentagon military occupation.