This Tuesday 18 September we talk to Denmark based Hannilie Zulu, founder of AfriDAD, a non governmental organisation dealing in development, aid and debt in Africa. She has argued that HIV and AIDS do not exist. She has argued that food and appropriate medication should be priority for people "stamped with HIV" instead of antiretrovirals, which she feels are toxic and therefore dangerous to people's health.
She has supported South African President Thabo Mbeki's former stance questioning the thinking that HIV causes AIDS. In recent years, President Mbeki has accept the mainstream logic that HIV indeed causes AIDS.
However, like President Mbeki, Zulu accepts the critical role of diet in people "stamped with AIDS". In August the Academy of Science of South Africa released a report that concluded that nutrition on its own is not sufficient to contatin aids neither could "supplements without a healthy diet.
How then does Zulu interrogate and locate the present South African position on AIDS within the context of the past and present positions both the government and the president have taken? What is her take on the position adopted by ASSA?
Listen live on 105.5 FM in Toronto or online on http://www.chry.fm/ worldwide as we discuss this issue. To contribute, call our studio number on +1 416 736 5656 or write to africanperspective@chry.fm
About African Perspective
African Perspective is a current affairs programme that reports and analyses news and events from an African viewpoint. It broadcasts on Tuesdays at 10am-11am Eastern Time/2pm-3pm Greenwich Mean Time on CHRY 105.5 FM in Toronto and http://www.chry.fm/ on the Internet worldwide. The programme provides Africans with a platform to articulate their experiences, challenges and celebrate their achievements to both the Canadian public and policy makers.
Presenters: Kuthula Matshazi and Shadya Yasin
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Theft of land continues to masquerade as 'land reform'
The Zimbabwean
Wednesday, 24 October 2007 15:42
BY CHIEF REPORTER
'Mugabe forgot about the 1.2 million blacks living on white-owned
farms when he launched his land grab in 2002'
MASVINGO - A highly productive dairy farm producing yoghurt and sour
milk, Lacto, has fallen victim to President Robert Mugabe's land grab, with
the white farmer kicked out and the farm given to the daughter of Masvingo
provincial governor Willard Chiwewe.
The Alfords, who owned the farm for generations, were evicted last
week from their home by Chiwewe's daughter, who was accompanied by a
brigadier in the Zimbabwean army. Chiwewe owns five farms in Masvingo.
The Alfords left the 40-hectare property in Chiredzi, about 460 km
south east of Harare, last week Friday. They were mulling returning to
Britain with a heavy heart this week.
The farm used to produce 1,000 litres of milk monthly and a crop of
oranges, vegetable seed and high quality sugar cane. The tractors on the
property have been seized along with ploughs, planters and tools that were
stacked into the store room by Chiwewe's daughter.
"We made a big mistake," said Nicky Phiri, 48, who has worked on the
farm for many years with his nine children and two wives. The mistake is the
"package" which thousands of retrenched farm workers demanded from their
former employers.
Mugabe forgot about the 1.2 million blacks living on white-owned farms
when he launched his land grab in 2002. They are losing their jobs and homes
under the renewed land seizures, which saw 11 farmers subpoenaed to court a
fortnight ago for resisting eviction.
In panic, the government has passed laws compelling dispossessed
farmers to pay terminal benefits to their workers. In a country where
unemployment exceeds 80 per cent, the former farm labourers know that they
will never work again. At the grabbed farms, workers once enjoyed free
housing, schools, food and medical care. They are now out in the cold.
Mugabe claims that drought has put 6.7 million people, more than half
the population, at risk of starvation. Yet rains were normal in Mashonaland
West, Zimbabwe's most fertile province, which has fed the nation for 60
years.
Further north from Chiredzi lies the heartland of sugar production. In
Hippo Valley and Triangle, where "settler farmers" used to produce high
quality sugar cane for milling, mile after mile of empty land now stretches
from horizon to horizon after the grab of productive farms. There are
abandoned farmyards every few miles along the dusty Chiredzi/Triangle Road.
The sugar cane planting season should be on right now. Instead of a
green landscape of young sugar cane there is nothing but bare earth or dry
stalks from past seasons.
John Worswick of Justice for Agriculture said the ongoing evictions
were defective because the new owners were using offer letters issued by the
Ministry of Agriculture, which lacks the locus standi to issue such letters.
Worswick said the "new farmers" settling on formerly white-owned land
will barely succeed in growing enough for their families. There will be
nothing left over to feed the nation, he said.
After years of vilification from Mugabe, the British Government is
helping to pick up the pieces. A fortnight ago Britain donated £8 million to
feed starving masses in Zimbabwe.
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