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August 1 2002: A major humanitarian crisis is developing in southern Africa, according to aid agencies, with more than 14 million people facing death from starvation. Here is some of the best journalism.
UN world food programme
Special report: famine
The weblog
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A complex emergency
IRIN, the UN information network on humanitarian affairs, interviews a world food programme (WFP) official on the current food crisis, which is described as a 'complex emergency'. The effects of drought, he says, have been exacerbated by politics (particularly in Zimbabwe), by the failures of the land reform programme in Malawi, and throughout the region by the burden of HIV and Aids.
IRIN
Q&A - Times
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How Aids feeds a deadly drought
Loveness Mudaala, of the Siavonga district of southern Zambia, has 18 children - six of her own, and 12 who were orphaned by Aids. As Time Europe reports in its overview of the crisis, she survives by sending the children into the forest for berries and nuts, and boiling them to remove the poisons.
Time Europe
Special report: Aids
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The aftermath of war
Angola may finally have won its war against the Unita rebels, but the methods it used - a scorched-earth policy, in which crops were cut down and burnt - has led to the displacement of millions and more than 5,000 suffering from critical hunger. Hamilton Wende of South Africa's Sunday Times meets the Médecins Sans Frontières treating Antonia, a 12-year-old child they found in the bush, starving, bewildered and alone.
Sunday Times (South Africa)
Angola starved rebels, but now people are dying - Independent
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Sleeping with hunger
Jacqui Goddard, reporting for the Scotsman in Mponela, Malawi, reports on the case of HIV-positive mother Filipina John. whose death is being hastened by malnutrition. A total of 3.2 million are facing starvation in the country.
Scotsman
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The political fallout
Malawi had a huge grain reserve two years ago - but sold almost the entire maize stock, following advice from the IMF that it should sell some of it. Christer Pettersson, writing for South Africa's Business Day, reports on the claim and counterclaim - and the rumours that fortunes were made when the maize had to be bought back at a higher price.
Business Day (South Africa)
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Children starve while rulers squander fortunes
Swaziland's monarchy is one of the oldest on the continent. The Independent's Basildon Peta contrasts the misery of the undernourished with opulence of the king - who has just bought an executive jet at more than twice the cost of the country's annual health budget.
Independent
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The safety of GM food
Zambia's government is caught in a quandary over whether to accept genetically modified (GM) maize - which, if planted and allowed to contaminate other maize, could hit Zambian exports in years to come. In a column in the Zambia Post, a local scientist assures the population of the safety of the food.
Zambia Post
allAfrica.com
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Is GM the solution?
But this polemical article, by Devinder Sharma in the Ecologist, says the UN wants to 'push' GM crops onto 'unsuspecting developing economies' simply in order to open up the market. Arguing against the use of GM in the third world, he cites the UN's own food and agriculture organisation, which says the main causes of widespread hunger are 'political instability, inappropriate economic policies, weak regional co-operation and limited economic integration'.
Ecologist
Biotechnology will bypass the hungry - Ecologist
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Face to face with death
Angela Rippon, the vice-president of the British Red Cross, writes in the Independent of a fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe. She talks of 'famine, plague and death' on an 'apocalyptic scale'.
Independent
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The failure of land reform
Robert Mugabe's land reform programme, in which Zimbabwe's white farmers were forcibly driven from their land, 'has brought commercial farming to a grinding halt', writes Absalom Mutere in the East African Standard. As a result, it is the landless blacks it was supposed to help that are starving.
East African Standard
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Political manipulation of aid
BBC Radio 4's 'File on 4' programme visited Zimbabwe to explore evidence of the political manipulation of food aid after the disputed presidential election. Opposition MP Jealous Sansole says: 'They are mostly using food to intimidate people. Each time there is distribution of food, they tell people that all those who belong to MDC, they are not capable of having that meal ... You have to have a Zanu-PF card for you to have food.' Zanu-PF, for its part, denies political interference in the relief effort. (RealPlayer required.)
BBC Radio 4
Special report: Zimbabwe
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Action on debt relief
Campaigner Barry Coates argues that the latest G8 summit, in Kananaskis, Canada, 'applied a sticking plaster on a gaping wound' by failing to address debt relief as part of its action plan on Africa. From OneWorld.
OneWorld
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Time we shared prosperity
Andrew Dougal, media co-ordinator for Oxfam in Scotland, argues in the Scotsman that food security should be 'top priority for all governments, the World Bank and IMF'. Otherwise, he says, the crisis will recur.
Scotsman
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Food as a human right
'Hunger, like poverty, is essentially a man-made problem,' says Ashfak Bokhari in Pakistan's Dawn newspaper. In a well argued article, he says the US is not rushing food to famine areas simply because it is not profitable to do so - and in such circumstances, he is cynical of US corporations' attempts to 'increase their control over the world food supply' by marketing GM crops.
Dawn (Pakistan)
Special report: globalisation
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