SWAZILAND NEWSLETTER 141. Swaziland - the first country to die of AIDS? The Telegraph (World - theage.com.au ), 5 June 2005
2. Despite his calls for abstinence and monogamy to fight HIV, Swazi king marries 11th wife. Associated Press, June 4, 2005
3. Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) and EFTA negotiators gear up to sign free trade pact. By Andile Ntingi. Published on the web by Business Report, June 8, 2005.
4. COMESA Member States Agree To Create Customs Union. By Robert Lee, Tax-News.com, London, 8 June 2005
5. Decades of drought predicted for southern Africa. SciDev.Net. By Wachira Kigotho, June 2, 2005.
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1. Swaziland - the first country to die of AIDS? The Telegraph (World - theage.com.au ), 5 June 2005
The scale of Swaziland's epidemic is unique, writes David Blair in Matsanjeni.
A dirt floor and the stinging odour of wood smoke were Margaret Zwane's only companions when she died inside a tumbledown mud hut in rural Swaziland.
She did not ever leave her children to seek hospital treatment and, until a few days before AIDS dragged the life from her, this emaciated mother was struggling to work the fields with a hoe.
When Mrs Zwane succumbed, her daughter and two sons became orphans, for AIDS had already killed their father.
"My heart was painful when she died," said Khetsiwe, her 12-year-old daughter. "I wish she would come back because my mother loved me."
An AIDS epidemic on a scale unknown anywhere else in the world is devastating Swaziland. Figures released last week show that 42.6 per cent of the adult population is infected with either HIV or AIDS. For Swazis aged between 25 and 29, the figure is 56 per cent. With a population of just 1 million, the survival of the nation is at stake.
"If the situation persists, we will be extinct as a Swazi people," said Faith Dlamini, co-ordinator of AIDS prevention at the National Emergency Response Council.
Already, one Swazi in 15 is an AIDS orphan. In five years, people like Khetsiwe will form an eighth of the population.
Khetsiwe lives in Matsanjeni, an arid expanse of hills 160 kilometres from the capital, Mbabane. Of the 8000 who live here, 2000 are children who have lost at least one parent to the epidemic, according to the local MP, John Shiba.
Khetsiwe's family may soon add to this toll. For the little girl's aunt, Zodwa, is desperately ill.
Her family say only that she has a "disease". But Swazis rarely disclose that their relatives are victims of the epidemic and Zodwa is 25 in a country where most people her age are terminally ill. If she dies, her son and two daughters - aged one, three and five - will be orphaned. AIDS has already claimed their father. They will be left wholly reliant on their grandmother, Loster Zwane, 63.
But tuberculosis is crippling Mrs Zwane. An incessant cough has almost robbed her of the power of speech and she can barely stand. She is tormented by the thought of caring for six orphaned grandchildren.
"It is too difficult for me to carry these tasks," said Mrs Zwane. "These children are too small to cook for themselves. They cannot work in the fields. If I die, nobody, nobody can take care of them. I pray that when God takes me, he takes me when these children have grown up."
The children will at least have a place in primary school. The Government has found $9.6 million to pay the fees for every AIDS orphan. But they may not have anything to eat.
So far, no international donor has come forward with the $20.2 million needed to provide every child with one meal during their school day.
Moreover, Swazis worry about what sort of society will emerge from a nation of orphans.
"When these young orphans have matured, what kind of adults will they become?" Miss Dlamini asks. "It's a frightening prospect."
She was taken aback by the latest data on the epidemic. Three years ago, the adult infection rate was 34.2 per cent. "We were hopeful that we would be stabilising the situation," she said. "But when you see the figures rising again, you ask: what more can I do? It is dispiriting and sometimes devastating."
There are some glimmers of hope. The infection rate in the 15 to 19 age group has fallen to 24 per cent, suggesting that teenagers are heeding the message of safe sex and abstinence. The Government has belatedly started a concerted fight against the epidemic and the roads are festooned with billboards promoting the use of condoms and urging teenagers to "say no to sex until the time is right".
But tradition makes their society vulnerable. Polygamy is common and men are judged by the number of women they marry and children they sire.
This, to varying extents, is the challenge across Africa. Already, 25 million people are infected and 16 million Africans have died. The continent's tattered health systems are incapable of containing the epidemic, let alone reversing it, hence Britain's call on the G8 countries to double the flow of aid.
Yet for Khetsiwe, and millions like her, it is already too late.
2. Despite his calls for abstinence and monogamy to fight HIV, Swazi king marries 11th wife, (Associated Press) June 4, 2005
Despite calling on citizens of Swaziland to practice abstinence and monogamy to slow the spread of HIV in the AIDS-ravaged nation, King Mswati III has married his 11th wife, BBC News reports. In 2001 the king called on all girls in the country to remain virgins until marriage and to delay getting married for at least five years under a cultural practice known as umcwasho--which means "badge of the virgin." But the king has defied his own rule by marrying a new bride each year and by fathering 24 children. Mswati's father had more than 70 wives by the time he died in 1982. Siphiwe Hlope, director of the Swaziland AIDS agency Positive Living for Life, said it was hoped the king would lead the nation's AIDS fight by setting an example for his subjects. "If he himself stood up and said 'I'm staying faithful to my partners. Everyone should have one wife and stick to his partner,' men here would listen," said Hlope. Swaziland currently has the world's highest HIV prevalence rate: More than 42% of the nation's adults are infected with the virus.
3. Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) and EFTA negotiators gear up to sign free trade pact. By Andile Ntingi. Published on the web by Business Report on June 8, 2005.
Johannesburg - Local exporters could see their products accessing the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) early next year if the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) concluded a free trade agreement with the group.
Xavier Carim, a chief director for trade negotiations at the department of trade and industry, said yesterday that negotiators from Sacu and EFTA would meet on June 21 to conclude the deal. The signing of the deal would be the culmination of a three-year negotiation marathon.
The EFTA was formed in 1960 and consists of four countries: Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. It is a rich group of tiny non-EU countries that have a combined gross domestic product worth $419 billion (R2.77 trillion). Average annual per capita income in the bloc was estimated at $35 000 in 1999.
At the heart of the outstanding agenda are issues related to market access for the EFTA's hi-tech products into Sacu and preferential access for Sacu's food products into EFTA's extremely protected agricultural market.
"Following intensive consultations, we have decided to grant the EFTA a better treatment of its hi-tech products, and they have also indicated that they will give us a better offer for our agricultural products," said Carim. If the deal was concluded, local food products such as fruit and meat would find their way into the EFTA market.
Carim said the deal would exclude trade in services, intellectual property rights, investment, competition and government procurement. South Africa signed a free trade deal with the EU in 1999, but the deal did not include the other Sacu members - Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia.
On the stalled free trade negotiations between Sacu and the US, Carim said officials were struggling to find a suitable date to meet because of crowded diaries. This resulted in last month's Geneva meeting between the camps being postponed.
Carim's reasons for the cancellation are in stark contrast with a report published by the Indian Ocean Newsletter last month, which said the meeting was cancelled because of a stalemate between Sacu and the US. The issues related to intellectual property rights, government procurement, black economic empowerment and better access for Sacu's industrial and agricultural products in the US market.
Carim said that once a suitable date was found, the parties would seek to reinvigorate the talks.
4. COMESA Member States Agree To Create Customs Union. By Robert Lee, Tax-News.com, London, 8 June 2005
Member states of Africa's largest trade bloc, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) have agreed to establish a customs union in order to accelerate the pace of economic development and promote trade and investment in the region.
"The member states decided that the COMESA customs union should be established by December 2008 and that member states not yet participating in the preferential trade area should do so as soon as possible," explained an official communique, released after a two-day conference in Rwanda.
The objective of the customs union is to impose identical duties on goods flowing into member countries from outside COMESA. To ease the transition towards this goal, member states, many of which are dependent on customs duties for a large part of their tax revenues, have been urged to approve the protocol of a COMESA fund by the end of 2005.
Customs duties contribute between 30% and 40% of government revenues for most members of the bloc, which includes: Angola, Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
However, officials have calculated that a customs union could eventually lead to a 25% increase in trade between member states, which have a combined population of 380 million and a total gross domestic product of about $200 billion.
So far 11 COMESA countries have signed up to the free trade deal, which was launched in October 2000. However, not all countries are said to be entirely happy at the prospect of a customs union, with governments fearing a loss of tax revenues, and business interests in poorer countries worried that they will be unable to compete with firms in the more the more economically dynamic member states.
The summit also saw the swearing-in of judges for the COMESA Court of Justice, which will have jurisdiction over trade disputes among member countries and their citizens.
5. Decades of drought predicted for southern Africa. SciDev.Net. By Wachira Kigotho, June 2, 2005.
Countries in the Sahel region of Africa will receive more rainfall and floods, while southern Africa will experience persistent drought in the coming decades, say researchers.
James Hurrell of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and Martin Hoerling of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say the changes are linked to temperature changes in the Indian and Atlantic oceans and are partially caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
"Changes in the Indian and Atlantic oceans are causing climate change in Africa and will have ripple effects on people and the environment," says Hurrell.
The researchers drew their conclusions, which they presented at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union on 24 May, after analysing 60 computer models that imitate global climate.
The findings indicate that the warming of the Indian Ocean is responsible for the current drought in southern Africa, while temperature changes in the Atlantic have generated more rainfall in the Sahel.
Since 1970, recurrent droughts have caused crop failures in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Hurrell and Hoerling attribute these droughts to warming of the nearby Indian Ocean.
"In our models, the Indian Ocean shows very clear and dramatic warming into the future, which means persistent drought for southern Africa [and parts of the Horn of Africa]."
Hurrell and Hoerling predict that these conditions will intensify in the 21st century.
The researchers compared model results from 1950-2000 to several control runs that omitted the Indian Ocean warming. None of these showed the magnitude of drying that has actually occurred in southern Africa.
However, when the models did include the Indian Ocean warming, southern Africa consistently dried out, matching reality. The experiment suggests that the warming Indian Ocean is responsible for the drought in southern Africa.
The researchers add that there is a strong suggestion that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are responsible for the warming of the Indian Ocean.
The models showed that by 2050, the monsoon winds that bring seasonal rain to sub-Saharan Africa could be 10-20 per cent drier than the 1950-2000 averages in southern Africa.
For much of 1950-2000, the southern Atlantic Ocean was warmer than the northern Atlantic. This, say the researchers, drew rain-bearing monsoon winds away from the Sahel, contributing to the very dry conditions there.
From the 1990s, however, the situation switched and the northern Atlantic became warmer than the southern ocean, partly because of higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
As a result, say the authors, we are witnessing more rainfall in the Sahel.
The study also showed that climate changes to Africa's monsoons have occurred in the distant past because of variations in solar output.
From this long-term perspective, says Hurrell, Africa's recent droughts "appear to be neither unusual nor extreme".
But he added that whereas such changes might be considered minimal on a global scale, food production and distribution would be disrupted and the most severe impact is likely to be felt in sub-Saharan Africa.
John Ng'ang'a, a professor in the department of atmospheric science at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, says the change would increase the area of dry land in southern Africa, adding that: "The effect of climate change on farming communities will be very severe".
Last month at a conference in London, United Kingdom, researchers warned that global warming will have a big impact on agriculture and food security in parts of Africa and Asia
Noting that rising temperatures have led to nearly all of the snow on Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro in eastern Africa, Ng'ang'a said: "These are signals that climate change has occurred much faster in sub-Saharan Africa than what scientists anticipated."
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