Author: AFP

Liberia emerges from the nightmare of Ebola

Staff and volunteers at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia wearing protective gear. (Pic: AFP)
Staff and volunteers at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia wearing protective gear. (Pic: AFP)

Heavily pregnant when she died, Fatimah Jakemah was bagged, bleached and carted off for cremation, one of dozens of new cases in the capital that week as Ebola tightened its grip on Liberia.

It was early September and the outbreak was about to mushroom into an emergency of historic proportions that would eventually see 4 700 deaths throughout the country.

Across town, Olivia Clark found herself handing another collection team her 18-month-old son, Aaron, who had slipped away a few hours earlier, too young to fight the deadly virus amplifying inside his tiny body.

Her husband was already dead and Red Cross trucks piled with bodies were becoming a familiar sight as Ebola stalked the capital’s poorest neighbourhoods, terrorising families crammed into squalid slum housing.

Amid the horror, one case stood out as uniquely cruel.

In the quarantined hamlet of Ballajah, 150 kilometres away, 12-year-old Fatu Sherrif was locked into her home with her dead mother as panicked neighbours fled to the forest.

Her cries could be heard for several days by the few who had stayed in the abandoned village before she died alone, without food or water.

By October the situation was so bad that besieged Red Cross disposal teams had given up trying to separate Ebola victims from those who might have met other ends, following a government directive to “burn them all”.

As Ebola set out on its murderous path through Liberia and its neighbours Guinea and Sierra Leone, credible medical experts were predicting worst case scenarios of more than a million cases and tens of thousands dead.

‘Ebola-free’

Yet treatment units are now lying empty and life is returning to normal as Liberians emerge from the nightmare which enveloped them in the summer and autumn of 2014.

If there are no new infections in the next 48 hours, the World Health Organisation (WHO) will declare Liberia “Ebola-free” on Saturday, 42 days – or twice the incubation period of the virus – after the last case.

At the height of the crisis in late September it was seeing more than 400 new cases a week, with uncollected and highly infectious bodies piling up in the streets of Monrovia, a sprawling, chaotic city at the best of times.

The health system – embryonic before the crisis, with some 50 doctors and 1 000 nurses for 4.3 million people – was devastated, losing 189 health workers out of 275 infected.

Schools remained shut after the summer holidays, unemployment soared as the formal and black-market economies collapsed and clinics closed as staff died and non-emergency healthcare ground to a halt.

And then, as suddenly as it had crept in, Ebola retreated.

Liberia, which had recorded 389 deaths one week in October, found the tally dropping below 100 within weeks and into single figures by the start of 2015.

The last person to die was Ruth Tugbah, a 44-year old fruit seller who contracted the virus in mid-March, probably through having sex with her boyfriend, an Ebola survivor.

In the coming years there will be a reckoning on the response to the greatest ever Ebola outbreak, which has left 11,000 dead and is still simmering in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The West was accused of ignoring the crisis early on and then treating Liberia and its neighbours as pariahs, blocking flights and quarantining returning health workers after the first-ever domestic infections outside of Africa, in the US and Spain.

The WHO, at times seen as overly bureaucratic and politicised, was berated for waiting until August – almost five months after the outbreak was identified – to declare it a “public health emergency of international concern”.

‘Morale transformed’

With the outbreak nearing its peak and facing criticism over US inertia, President Barack Obama ordered the largest ever US deployment to the region in September, sending 2,800 troops to build 11 Ebola treatment units across Liberia.

Critics pointed out that cases had already begun to fall before they were set up and most remained empty.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has pointed out, however, that the military activity was just a small proportion of the full American response which included – among numerous projects – funding 10 000 civilian responders and 70 safe burial teams.

An official told AFP that clinics it funded had treated 943 patients, 190 of whom had Ebola.

In any case, David Nabarro, the UN’s special envoy on Ebola, argues that the appearance of the Americans and their military clinics gave people hope.

“I watched in September and October as the arrival of the Americans in Liberia completely transformed the morale of people and the government and, I believe, contributed to a much more widespread change in behaviour than any of us imagined would be possible,” he told reporters this week in Dakar.

“Virtually the whole country in the space of a couple of weeks in the beginning of October adopted different ways of living and reduced their risk of infection.”

When – if – the WHO declares Liberia “Ebola-free” on Saturday there will be no bunting, no ticker tape parades, just the repeated reminder on the airwaves to guard against complacency.

Liberia will remain alert to two threats – the possibility that someone with Ebola might get into the country under the radar, and that “small flare-ups” seen in other outbreaks are a possibility over the coming months.

“My colleagues in Liberia told me that they expect to be keeping extensive surveillance and practising precautions for probably as long as one year,” Nabarro said.

‘No room’ for gays in Kenya, says deputy president

(Pic: Reuters)
(Pic: Reuters)

Kenya’s deputy president, William Ruto, has told worshippers at a church service in Nairobi that homosexuality had no place in the east African nation, reports said on Monday.

Homophobia is on the rise across much of Africa and homosexuality remains illegal in many countries, including Kenya where it was outlawed under British colonial legislation.

“We will not allow homosexuality in our society as it violates our religious and cultural beliefs,” Ruto was quoted as telling a cheering congregation at the Jesus Winner Ministry Church on the outskirts of the capital.

“We will stand with religious leaders to defend our faith and our beliefs,” he said. “There’s no room for homosexuality in this country. That one I can assure you.”

Ruto’s comments came as US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Kenya. Asked to react to the reported comments, Kerry reiterated Washington’s position.

“The US believes that all people are created equal and all people have rights, that includes people of every faith, every gender, every choice of partner, no matter who you love,” he told reporters.

Ruto, who is on trial at the International Criminal in The Hague accused of crimes against humanity, said his stance was about morality not politics.

“When we say this, we are not saying so as to get votes but to protect what we all believe is right,” he said, according to The Star newspaper.

In conservative Christian and Muslim countries in Africa, homophobia is a vote-winner.

In Uganda legislators sought the death penalty for homosexuality and although the anti-gay bill has since been watered down, ruling party MPs remain eager to see it passed.

Nigeria and Gambia have passed tough new anti-gay laws in recent years, with Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh, calling homosexuals “ungodly, Satanic… vermins [sic]” in a speech last year.

Homosexuality is illegal in 36 out of 54 African countries and punishable by death in four, according to human rights group Amnesty International.

In Kenya, too, a cross-party parliamentary group is seeking stricter application of existing anti-gay legislation.

Binyavanga Wainaina, a prominent Kenyan writer who last year came out as gay, took to social media to attack Ruto’s comments.

“Our Deputy President Ruto is building himself to be the most dangerous man in Africa. If his strategy works much will burn,” Wainaina told his 18 000 followers on Twitter.

The Jesus Winner Ministry Church specialises in prophecies and describes itself on its website as “an oasis” for people “under the yoke of curses, witchcraft, stagnation, ancestral spirits and other evils brought by Satan.”

It is popular with Kenya’s political elite.

Togo’s taxi drivers left behind by growing economy

(Pic: Flickr / Claudio Riccio)
(Pic: Flickr / Claudio Riccio)

Swarming the streets of Togo’s capital Lome, thousands of motorcycle taxi drivers are just some of those left behind by the recent economic growth spurt in the crushingly poor nation.

Some have college degrees and work multiple jobs but still take home as little as $1.60 a day transporting passengers in the west African country that is gearing up for presidential elections on Saturday.

“There is no work,” said 31-year-old Gabriel, a driver who holds a high school diploma. “Everyone is a motorcycle taxi driver. There are thousands of them – too many.”

While Togo now hits six percent economic growth per year, more than half the country of roughly seven million survives on less than $1 per day as the nation claws its way back from 14 years of international sanctions.

“Young people are being suffocated by unemployment in Togo,” said Maurice Toupane, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Senegal’s capital Dakar.

“Many young people are leaving the country for Nigeria and the holders of university degrees find themselves driving motorcycle taxis.”

The drivers – known locally as Zemidjan or zem – do not own their bikes, instead they  have to slowly pay back the cost.

It is no easy feat to come up with the money on what the drivers make. They might earn about 7.50 euros per day, but three euros goes on paying for the bike and three more on fuel.

On the really lean days they can dip into the community fund called a “tontine” that aims to help people take home 1.50 euros to their family every night.

For many drivers, the motorcycle taxi is their second job. Among the 15 or so drivers waiting for customers in Lome one day recently was a woodworker, a tailor and a cobbler, who was putting a new sole on a shoe.

Unemployment
The thaw in Togo’s economy began with the country’s current leader, President Faure Gnassingbe, who is running for a third five-year term.

He took over in 2005 after the death of his father Gnassingbe Eyadema, who had ruled with an iron fist for 38 years.

During Eyadema’s reign the European Union suspended aid in 1993 in response to a “democratic deficit”.

The gross national product, life expectancy and the number of children at school all dropped during that period and state businesses were left abandoned.

In that era “the country was bled dry by 14 years of international sanctions,” said Kako Nubukpo, Togo’s minister of long term strategy.

The money began to flow again in 2007 when the EU decided Gnassingbe possessed “good will”, after reforms leading to press freedom, multi-party politics and abolition of the death penalty.

Gnassingbe has taken a proactive approach by cleaning up public finances, embarking on large infrastructure projects and offering free primary school, all things that he has reminded people of during the election campaign.

Additionally, the GDP has doubled in 10 years and public debt has remained relatively low.

But the improvement in the economy cannot hide unemployment that is close to 29 percent, with a majority of young people out of work, said Nubukpo.

And those gains that have been made – driven by commodity prices – are mostly benefiting the wealthy, according to the United Nations.

Two-thirds of Togolese, meanwhile, still make their livings as subsistence farmers.

The majority of the motorcycle taxi drivers are in their 20s, reflecting the demographics of a country where three quarters of the population is under 35. The nation doubles in size every 25 years.

“It’s a sprint between the speed at which our society modernises and its capacity to include young people,” Nubukpo said. “We must give some hope to young people otherwise we run the risk of a social explosion.”

Nigeria marks first anniversary of Boko Haram schoolgirl kidnappings

A file screengrab taken on May 12 2014, from a video of Boko Haram obtained by AFP, shows girls wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural location. (Pic: AFP)
A file screengrab taken on May 12 2014, from a video of Boko Haram obtained by AFP, shows girls wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural location. (Pic: AFP)

Nigeria on Tuesday marks the first anniversary of Boko Haram’s abduction of 219 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chibok, as part of a series of events planned around the world.

The commemoration and renewed calls for their release came as Amnesty International said the Islamists had kidnapped at least 2 000 women and girls since the beginning of last year.

The UN and African rights groups also called for an end to the targeting of boys and girls in the conflict, which has left at least 15 000 dead and some 1.5 million people homeless, 800 000 of them children.

The focus of the one-year commemoration was on Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, where a vigil has been held demanding the girls’ immediate release almost every day since they were kidnapped.

In New York, the #BringBackOurGirls campaign said the Empire State Building would be lit in its colours of red and purple, to symbolise an end to violence against women.

Prayers, candlelit vigils and marches have been held or are planned and campaign group member Habiba Balogun said it was important to mark the anniversary.

“It’s wonderful that the world is remembering and… sending the message that we are not going to forget and we are not going to stop until we know what has happened to our girls,” she told AFP.

Insurgency tactic

Boko Haram fighters stormed the Government Secondary School in the remote town in Borno state on the evening of April 14 last year, seizing 276 girls who were preparing for end-of-year exams.

Fifty-seven escaped but nothing has been heard of the 219 others since May last year, when about 100 of them appeared in a Boko Haram video, dressed in Muslim attire and reciting the Koran.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has since said they have all converted to Islam and been “married off”.

The mass abduction brought the brutality of the Islamist insurgency unprecedented worldwide attention and prompted a viral social media campaign demanding their immediate release.

Nigeria’s government was criticised for its initial response to the crisis and was forced into accepting foreign help in the rescue effort after a groundswell of global outrage.

The military has said it knows where the girls are but has ruled out a rescue effort because of the dangers to the girls’ lives.

In a new report published on Tuesday, Amnesty quoted a senior military officer as saying the girls were being held at different Boko Haram camps, including in Cameroon and possibly Chad.

The Chibok abduction was one of 38 it had documented since the beginning of last year, with women and girls who escaped saying they were subject to forced labour and marriage, as well as rape.

‘I forgive Boko Haram’

#BringBackOurGirls organisers thanked supporters across the world, from ordinary men, women and children to public figures such as US First Lady Michelle Obama and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.

The girls were “the symbol for the defence of the dignity and sanctity of human life, of the girl child, women, for all those oppressed, repressed, disadvantaged, hurting, unsafe,” they said.

“We must prioritise their safe return,” they said in a statement last week.

Malala, who was shot and nearly killed by the Pakistani Taliban for advocating girls’ education, on Monday published an open letter to the Chibok girls, describing them as “my brave sisters”.

The 17-year-old criticised Nigerian and world leaders for not doing enough to help secure their release and called the girls “my heroes”.

Outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan’s government has been accused of indifference to the fate of the girls after initially trying to downplay the size of the kidnapping and even deny it had happened.

Jonathan’s election defeat last month to former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari has raised hopes of a breakthrough. He has vowed to “spare no effort” to destroy the militants.

Twenty-one of the 57 girls who escaped are currently studying at the American University of Nigeria in Yola, the capital of neighbouring Adamawa state.

They told AFP in an email exchange with university staff they were hoping to make “positive future changes, not just in Chibok, but in our country and the world”.

The kidnapped girls were in their thoughts and prayers every day, they said, but they did not blame Boko Haram foot soldiers.

“I forgive Boko Haram for what they have done and I pray God forgives them, too,” said one.

Mugabe lambasts West on visit to South Africa

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe (L) and South Africa's President Jacob Zuma deliver a speech before the signing of various memorandum of understanding between the two countries at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on April 8 2015. (Pic: AFP)
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe (L) and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma deliver a speech before the signing of various memorandum of understanding between the two countries at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on April 8 2015. (Pic: AFP)

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday launched a wide-ranging attack on Western colonisation in Africa and recent intervention in the Arab world, as he made his first state visit to South Africa in 21 years.

The veteran leader, 91, seized the opportunity of a televised press conference with President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria to lambast the United Nations Security Council, the United States and former colonial power Britain.

“We want a political environment in which we are not interfered with by outsiders and we become masters of ourselves in Africa,” Mugabe told reporters.

“We don’t think we are getting a fair deal at the United Nations.

“The five countries there who are permanent members… control the entire system.”

Mugabe said the developing world should stand together against the US, France and Britain, who make up three of five permanent members of the UN security council.

“They disturb the Arab world and leave (it) torn apart. Look at what they did to Libya,” he said, adding that US-led wars in Iraq revealed the “messy, reckless, brutal approach of the West”.

Mugabe, who is often accused of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, said his state visit to Pretoria represented Africa’s victory over colonialists.

“Now we are our own people, and we have President Zuma here and President Mugabe in Zimbabwe – that is what what you fought for,” he said.

“African resources belong to Africa. Others may come to assist as our friends and allies but no longer as colonisers or oppressors, no longer as racists.”

Seeking investment

Mugabe provoked laughter from some officials when he spoke about a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes in Cape Town that has been vandalised in recent student protests.

Rhodes is buried in Zimbabwe, which was called Rhodesia until independence in 1980 when Mugabe came to power.

“We are looking after the corpse. You have the statue of him,” Mugabe said. “I don’t know what you think we should do – dig him up? Perhaps his spirit might rise again.”

Mugabe, who was accompanied by his wife Grace, hopes his visit to South Africa will drum up foreign investment to revive his nation’s moribund economy.

Zimbabwe has been on a downturn for more than a decade due to low growth and high unemployment.

Zimbabwe’s economy entered a tailspin after the launch of controversial land reforms 14 years ago. By 2008, inflation had officially peaked at 231 million percent before the government stopped counting.

Zuma said a series of agreements signed on Wednesday would help both nations.

“The economies of the two countries are historically and inextricably linked,” he said. “Opportunities for deeper economic cooperation exist.”

Mugabe, who is the current chairman of the African Union, has visited South Africa in the past on working trips but has made no state visit since 1994.

His wife Grace is seen as one possible successor to her husband.

Former vice-president Joice Mujuru was long considered likely to take over, but she fell out with the veteran leader late last year and was sacked in December.

Mugabe will attend a bilateral business forum in Pretoria on Thursday.