1985_03 The Daily Collegian March 1985

              JUhuru-
Africa-Update-
«-\f f_m!i%#a. -*-
March 6,1985    3
Ttfe roots of famine:
ithiopia
The Ethiopian  famine has touched
ery humane person in the world.
Some 200,000 Ethiopians have died in  j
months; six to seven million  I
n danger of starvation in the
In response to tins tragedy, millions
roughout the worl_ have responded,
ntjing contributions small and large in
) emergency relief effort to save as many
,es as possible.
But there is another Ethiopia—a nation
41 million people struggling to build a
turc in which such famines are forever
dished. And for this Ethiopia, there is
c bitter knowledge that this famine need
i have happened at all.
The Fthiopian famine is not the inevit-
le result of drought, or the result of
competence or callousness on the part
the fthiopian government. It is-the
suit ol a century of exploitation by the
est. and most recently the result of
deliberate U.S. policies to prevent the
[Ethiopian people from becoming self-
|$uiTicteni *
Roots of the crisis
The drought that has gripped a large
ta directly beneath the Sahara—the
ihcl region—for the past twenty years
is made agricultural production very
fficult. But in other areas, countries with
tie rainfall have been able to provide
sufficient food for their people.
Ethiopia, the tragedy of the current
ic is a legacy of nearly a century of
agricultural production based not on the
people's need for food, but on
and European corporations'
the 1974 revolution, feudal
landlords comprising 2% of the popula-
iwned 80% of the land. More than
of Ethiopians lived and worked in
these rural areas—but the crops they
produced were for export—not for con¬
sumption. Sixty percent of this land was
devoted to only one crop: coffee. The
-ndlords marketed this coffee to such
corporate giants as Nestle Company and
'/■
4o
•conquer
General Foods Corporation. The land left
to produce food for Ethiopians was often
not suitable for fanning, and what little
food was scratched from the soil was
heavily taxed by the landlords.
This brutal system was enforced by the
U.S. financed and trained army of
Emperor Haile Selassie, which ruthlessly
tortured, jailed and killed any and all
political opponents.
In 1973, this exploitative system, com¬
bined with a severe drought, created a
famine in which 200.000 people died. The
imperial Selassie government did abso¬
lutely nothing to save the lives of the
starving Ethiopians. This catastrophe
ct e ated tbe conditions for the overthrow of
the Emperor the foUowing year.
In 1974, a group of young, patriotic
army officers led by Mengistu Haile
Mariam overthrew the 1200-year-old
empire. In the foUowing two yeara, the
new government began the development
of a new economy, eliminating the cen¬
turies-old power of the landlords. The
government allocated 90% of the farms
into the hands of the people who had
worked them, and created large cooper¬
ative state-owned farms of the rest
At the same time, the new government
began to tranform Ethiopia into a modern
society: they launched a massive literacy
campaign that cut illiteracy by one-half;
established a free national health care
system; and began to build the basic
industries and transportation system
needed for development Much of this was
accomplished with the aid of the socialist
countries, particularly the Soviet Union
and Cuba.
U.S. hinders Ethiopian relief
The advances of the socialist govern¬
ment of Ethiopia toward self-sufficiency
did not find favor with the U.S., .which
profited so greatly under the old rule.
Since 1981, the Ethiopian government
has been warning of the impending
famine. But the U.S. and its European
allies played games with relief aid for
three years, only beginning their insuf¬
ficient donations after hundreds of thou¬
sands of Ethiopians had died. Charles
Elliot, former head of Christian Aid of
Britain, speaking of the U.S. and Euro-
pear inaction said, "Their long hostility
toward (Ethiopia) caused them to refuse
to release adequate funds." The U.S.
hope: that the famine would topple Ethi-
■past—
opia's government
The U.S. also aggravated the effects of
the drought by fomenting long-standing
wars of secession by Ethiopian minority
groups in the most severely drought-
stricken regions of the country, especially
Eritrea and Tigre, and by supporting a
territorial grab by Somalia in the Ogaden
region of Ethiopia. These wars cost the
Ethiopians valuable resouces that could
have been used to ease, perhaps even
prevent, the famine. And worse, these
wars prevent emergency relief from being
delivered to the hardest-hit areas of the
country.
Finally, the U.S. is perpetrating the
myth that the famine is the result of the
Ethiopian government policies. Though
the horrific images of the famine are now
familiar fare 'on network television, the
U.S. public is not told that 85% of the
Ethiopian people live in the Central
Highlands region where food has been
sufficient, and the bold efforts to construct
a new society free of exploitation and
hunger are well under way. While famine
is still a tragic and deadly part of
Ethiopia's legacy, the new Ethiopia is
emerging at the same time, a society in
which famine will be forever eliminated.
Team Work
Suggested
iGhini-n Leader Jerry Rawlings last month
ged his countrymen to reject selfishness
id io work together as a team to ei
liana's progress, the Ghana news agency
"Friends will not be keen to help us if v,
) noi make determined efforts to sa^
is country ourselves", he said after
tee-hour miliary parade marking the
ird anniversary of his coming to power.
Fit Lt. Rawlings said that it was strong
i-t it would deserve strong friends.
("Should we become week, all 'friend},
ong and weak, will desert us."Headded
ii ihe prosterity of Ghana could only be
untamed on a strong economic basis.
Tutu, Nyerere
Confer
President Julius Nyerere has
said that his country would continue its
support for the struggle against South
Africa's Apartheid policies until the system
was abolished, Shihata News Agency said.
Shihata quoted President Nyerere as
telling Nobel Peace.Prize winner Bishop
Desmond Tutu of South Africa last week:
"We Have no quarrel with white men as
such. Our quarrel is with the evil system of
apartheid."
Tanzaniajs among the front line African
states leading black African opposition to
apartheid.
Nigeria Hopes For
Stronger Ties With U.S.
iria's Ambassador to the US, Mr
is Olisemaka, has said that although
a and the US differ on approaches
is a resolution of the problems in
Southern Africa, il is the hope of the
it  Military Government that the
Rcagan administration will further streng-
•hen the existing, cordial relations between
Mr Olisemaka, who was speaking at a
option held for him by the Washington
chapter of the Nigerian Student Association,
said that Nigeria's developmental efforts
required the support of American investors
and technology, but desirable as that
support was, it could never be taken at the
expense of the legitimate aspirations of
the people of Southern Africa for freedom,
justice and independence, reported the
Washington correspondent of the News
Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Mandela honored
Jailed civil rights crusader, Dr Nelson
Mandela has been described as a man
whose life embodied the legitimate as¬
piration of the deprived, the suffering and
the slighted.
In an oration read on the South African
nationalist at the confernment of an honorary
degree of doctor of laws on him at the
University of Lancaster.England, the insti¬
tution's orator, Mr CA. Lyas said Dr
Mandela more than deserved, the award.
^r Lyas observed that those who lived
in countries where basic rights were
guaranteed owed it a duty to sympathise
with those who have no such rights.
"And they too owe a duty of sympathy
for those like Dr Mandela, who have
unceasingly striven in the face of hardship
and danger to claim those rights "Mr Lyas
said. He added that Dr Mandela's life had
been devoted to the effort of securing for
all the citizens of South Africa, regardless
of their color, certain simple yet basic
rights.
"The most fundamental of which is the
right of each of those who must obey the
law, to an equal voice within the political
system under which the law is created,"he
oberserved.
Improvement
Ghana last year, registered a 5 percent
growth in its Gross Domestic Product
(GDP)asagainst0.7percentin 1983, Said
Ghana's Finance and Economic Planning
Secretary, Kwesi Botchway.
He told newsmen that following the
Provisional National Defence Council's
(PNDC) economic recovery programme,
the rate of inflation had gone down from
123 percent.
He attributed the reduction jn the inflation
rate to increased food production as a
result of abundant rains and the supply of
fertilizer and farming implement:
fanners. ^^^^
The goverment would maintain a flexible |
exchange rate for the Cedi (GJiani
Currency), which has been devalued thrice I
in two years. He estimated the growth rate J
of the GDP in 1985 at 6 percent.
He said that lack of enthusiasm or
part of some bureaucrats had slowed I
down the utilisation of import licences, |
causing bottlenecks in importsadisniptiorj
of the export programme which in turn
resulted in shortages.