US embassy cable - 04ROME1496

UNCLAS  ROME 001496 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
STATE FOR IO/EDA  KOTOK 
FAS FOR LREICH AND RHUGHES 
USAID/FFP FOR LANDIS AND USAID/OFDA FOR MENGHETTI 
 
FROM THE U.S. MISSION TO THE UN AGENCIES IN ROME 
 
E.O. 12958:  N/A 
TAGS: AORC, EAGR, ETRD, FAO 
SUBJECT: BETWEEN PLAGUE AND FAMINE: ASSISTANCE AND 
DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA 
 
REF:  ROME 001340 
 
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Summary 
----------------------- 
 
1.  On the margins of FAO's March 1-5 Regional Africa 
Conference in Johannesburg, FODAG DCM Michael Cleverley 
and Agricultural Minister Counselor Geoffrey Wiggin 
discussed and visited World Food Program (WFP), Food and 
Agriculture Organization (FAO), NGO, and USAID operations 
in South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.  Even beyond 
the rhetoric and press play, the AIDS/HIV epidemic in 
this part of Africa was, from our observation, a 
humanitarian crisis of colossal historic proportions, one 
that preoccupied most conversations and much of everyday 
life, particularly in the countryside where people are 
most helpless. 
 
2.  Observing the FAO's and WFP's use of US resources was 
a primary objective, and we were happy to find some 
outstanding people implementing sometimes life-saving, 
other times income-expanding infrastructure-building 
projects.  This was especially important in Zimbabwe, 
where a policy and public management implosion has 
destroyed the governance process, particularly as it 
applies to the critical questions of food and farming. 
We also were impressed with the extraordinary efforts 
NGOs were making to deal with the food aspects of the 
HIV/AIDS epidemic. 
 
3.  The hand-off between WFP's food assistance and FAO's 
emergency operations appeared smooth during discussions 
at the Johannesburg headquarters for UN operations and 
with the projects we visited in Zimbabwe.  However, it 
appeared somewhat anomalous that the US was funding 
large-scale resources for WFP's food distribution and 
FAO's long-term development activities (through 22 
percent of the agency's regular budget), but was a 
relatively minor player in FAO's emergency operations. 
These FAO activities, often dependent upon extra- 
budgetary largess from donor countries, were where FAO 
appeared to be at its best, at least in AIDS- and 
drought-plagued southern Africa. 
 
End Summary 
 
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WFP: Fully engaged and on top 
------------------------------- 
 
4.  During a March 5 side trip from the FAO conference to 
neighboring Swaziland, we received a better appreciation 
of the food crisis emanating from the southern African 
drought and HIV/AIDS epidemic.  There, WFP targets the 
most vulnerable households  41 percent of Swaziland's 
population lives in female-headed households, 10 percent 
in child-headed households.  Working through NGOs, WFP 
feeds about 150,000 people per month, 35,000 through 
school feeding programs.  In early 2004, 15 percent of 
the country's population was beneficiary of WFP feeding. 
 
5.  With 38.6 percent of Swaziland's adult population HIV 
positive, the effects of the epidemic were all pervasive. 
We arrived early in the morning at a school feeding 
program at the Khuphuka Neighborhood Care Point for AIDS 
orphans and others unable to pay the $60/year tuition 
fees.  About 45 children, aged 5-18, gathered daily 
around a shack with no professional teacher.  When one of 
our party organized singing and play for the children, 
they danced and sang a song whose words ran, "We all have 
AIDS, We are all dying from AIDS."  The school feeding 
was the main source of nutrition for these children.  At 
a nearby Manyeveni Primary School, enrollment had risen 
by 20 percent (to about 540 children) due to WFP's school 
feeding program that started up in July 2003.   Located 
next to the school was a volunteer-run clinic that 
provided feeding for pregnant women and mothers of newly 
born children.  Again, the feeding program was the 
primary source of nutrition for these people. 
 
6.  What we saw in Zimbabwe corroborated the crucial need 
that we had found in Swaziland for highly targeted food 
assistance for the growing numbers of helpless.  On the 
 
first morning we visited the Porta Farm squatter village 
where WFP supported a school-feeding program and, through 
a local NGO, home care and food for families suffering 
from HIV/AIDS.  Porta Farm was a very vulnerable 
community of people, once farm laborers on large 
commercial farms, and now uprooted and a pariah class for 
their association with the previous economic order.  The 
Mugabe Government had dumped them on empty ground along 
the main road to Harare where they now have to fend for 
themselves.  The only services available for this 
community of 10,000 were ten water taps and a primary 
school set up by an NGO.  There are reportedly half a 
million of such former farm workers in Zimbabwe. 
 
7.  Our WFP hosts had us at Porta Farm in time for the 
school feeding.  The food, coming from US and EU donors 
via the WFP, was a mix of corn meal, corn-soya blend, and 
vegetable oil cooked in large pots on wood fires by 
volunteer mothers.  The feeding was strictly for the 
children.  The headmaster of the schools said that 
enrollment is 1200 children, and he estimated "very 
conservatively" that were there no feeding the school 
would not have more than 800 students.  A year ago, 
before the school feeding began, most of these children 
were malnourished.  That had changed with school lunches. 
(The population of Porta Farm has virtually no land 
available for producing their own crops.  Many families 
are trying to grow crops around their homes.  The only 
local sources of income are collecting firewood, which is 
becoming increasingly difficult as more and more distant 
sources have to be tapped, and fishing.  The community is 
located on the margin of an old commercial farm that has 
a reservoir rich in fish.  The Porta Farm people catch 
fish and sell them to passing cars on the Harare road.) 
The houses were makeshift shacks made of mud, straw, 
cardboard, and tin  whatever was available. 
 
8.  We made the morning rounds with a local NGO that 
delivered home care.  The nurse provided rudimentary 
health care and WFP-supplied food to households suffering 
from AIDS.  In one case the house was on the verge of 
collapsing on the invalid woman occupant  she had had 
the strength to build it when in good health, but as AIDS 
weakened her, she was not able to correct the disrepair. 
In another similar hut, a young man and his wife sat on 
the dirt floor, exhausted by their AIDS infection, 
watching their two infant children, as they wasted away. 
WFP food kept them alive.  Next, we went to the house of 
two children whose parents had already died from AIDS. 
At seven and twelve years old, these brothers had been 
catapulted into the world alone.  If such personal 
l 
alienation from life can be degraded into a symbol, it is 
one of hopelessness shared by millions.  But the seven 
year old cooked WFP soy-maize blend, and the older kept a 
garden.  The nurse said the younger was smart and did a 
lot. 
 
9.  Given the complete lack of services (people don't 
even have the money for transportation to clinics to have 
their physical problems diagnosed and treated  they sit 
and suffer), the food provided was medicine, sustenance 
and a suggestion of hope.  WFP's representatives were 
fully engaged and on top these situations, as best as one 
could, moving food efficiently into the homes of the 
squatter village's worst cases. 
 
-------------------------------------- 
FAO: Successful Emergency Operations 
-------------------------------------- 
 
10.  Like WFP, FAO appeared to have an outstanding staff 
dedicated to alleviating the region's food and 
agricultural production problems, especially through its 
emergency operations.  FAO's Regional Emergency 
Coordinator for Southern Africa (RIACSO) is co-located 
with WFP, UNDP, UNHCR, and other UN agencies in a modern 
office complex outside Johannesburg.  A collaborative 
informal atmosphere was evident.   RIACSO, which 
coordinates all FAO emergency activities throughout 
southern Africa, was under the capable leadership of its 
director, Graham Farmer, an FAO official with long 
experience in the region, especially Zimbabwe. 
 
 
11.  We observed FAO emergency operations in the field in 
Zimbabwe.  The drought of the last two seasons had 
exacted its toll from these people, leading them to 
question their normal ability to feed themselves. 
Despite these doubts, and WFP food assistance and FAO 
input support, primarily seeds, it was apparent that 
under normal circumstances with supportive policies these 
are good farmers with a means to sustain themselves. 
Standing among the late planted corn and sorghum that 
looked good now that the rains had finally arrived (any 
planting done in September in anticipation of the normal 
arrival of the wet weather was for naught as drought 
continued), the seeds provided by FAO appeared 
providential, while food assistance looked uneeded. 
Nevertheless, when asked, the farmers inssted that after 
the shortages of the past two yers, they had little 
intention of selling any gran. 
 
12.  In one communal farming area, FAO had introduced 
treadle pumps for irrigation.  While FAOs wide advocacy 
for this simple water technologythroughout Africa makes 
it a development clichi,its economic power in this 
instance was palpable  Most of the people using treadle 
pumps had built new homes over the past 2-3 years with 
proceedsfrom their higher yields.  We met with a group 
o 14 farmers that had installed, with FAO help, thee 
pumps.  Their testimonials to the time savings and the 
extra income generated through their use was persuasive. 
The circumstances were attractiv for treadles  the 
water table was not too deep elow the surface and the 
amount of water allowedfor irrigation most of the year. 
FAO's active reresentatives were not mis-stepping by 
jumping on the treadle pump wagon. 
 
13.  FAO's sub-regional director for southern and eastern 
Africa, Victoria Sekitoleko, spent half a day traveling 
with us, briefing, demonstrating, and answering our 
questions.  A former Ugandan Minister of Agriculture, Ms. 
Sekitoleko appeared to be an exceptionally strong leader 
who was conversant with the political leadership and well 
known among the small farmers we met. 
 
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NGO Successes 
--------------------- 
 
14.  We met several NGOs working hand-in-hand with WFP 
and FAO.  NGOs both paralleled and extended the WFP food 
pipeline.  Ninety-nine percent of FAO's emergency 
implementation was done through NGOs.  While in 
Johannesburg, we spoke with both small and large NGOs 
working throughout southern Africa. 
 
15.  LDS Charities was a smaller operation and relatively 
new in Africa.  Much of its work was coordinated closely 
with the ecclesiastical authorities of the LDS church. 
Recognizing its relative inexperience, the organization 
partnered with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the 
Adventists, WFP, and several others.  Last year it 
provided $11 million of humanitarian assistance in 
southeast Africa.   In Zimbabwe, LDS Charities had made 
available its meetinghouses for distributing WFP food 
assistance and to the Red Cross to which it had donated 
$3 million for measles vaccinations.  It had also used 
its meeting places to provide HIV/AIDS education to over 
90,000 people in southern Africa. 
 
16.  C-Safe, an innovative USAID-funded consortium of 
CRS, World Vision, and Care, had pooled successfully the 
resources of these three large NGOs into a unitary 
coordinated effort with a program value of over $100 
million per year.  This included 160,000 MT of food 
commodity in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia.  In Malawi, C- 
Safe included six additional NGOs.  C-Safe's director 
told us that they were still testing the consortium 
approach.  So far, several advantages were apparent: the 
size of the organization has placed it in a strong 
advocacy position with a block voice, the participating 
NGOs were learning from each other, and they found 
themselves in a position to work more effectively with 
WFP, distributing risks of pipeline failures more 
broadly. 
 
17.  Accompanied by USDA Under Secretary Eric Bost, we 
 
 
observed first hand how another the USAID-supported 
Humana People-to-People project saturated a community of 
about 100,000 people with HIV/AIDS education.  In Durban 
Deep Township, not far from Soweto, the NGO aimed to 
reach every household in the community, and 90 percent of 
the people, over the three-year life of the activity. 
Working with a highly motivated and well trained cadre of 
ward workers (known as "passionates"), Humana ensured 
that the individuals were educated about HIV/AIDS. It 
also assisted them to develop a strategy to live with the 
disease and a belief in a possibly positive future.  We 
went on house calls and were impressed with the knowledge 
that community residents had acquired about the disease. 
When Humana is finished, after three years, a team of 
motivated local passionates will stay behind to carry on 
the work. 
 
18. In South Africa's Northern Province, we also observed 
a USAID-sponsored NGO, the Promoting Agricultural 
Linkages (PAL) Project, transition traditional farmers 
from subsistence to commercial farming.  The seminal 
activity brought buyers into forward contracts with 
selected farmers by guaranteeing a minimum purchase price 
for products that meet buyer specifications.  The PAL 
both made farmers ready for meeting the challenges of 
marketing their produce, and lined up major buyers.   The 
success of the activity, on a micro-level at least, was 
evidenced by the eager continuing participation of 
farmers that have benefited. 
 
19.  Ag MinCouns Wiggin also participated in a meeting 
between a white South African commercial farmer 
interested in selling his 4,500 ha. game ranch, and a 
consortium of black South Africans interested in buying 
the property.  In a political environment fraught with 
uncertainty for white commercial farmers with large 
holdings (in part because of Mugabe's activities in 
neighboring Zimbabwe, and in part because of persistent 
rumors of changing land laws in South Africa) any 
amicable example of inter-racial land transactions on a 
"willing-buyer-willing-seller" basis was a valuable 
demonstration that the market economy for land can work. 
 
--------------------------------------- 
Zimbabwe  twinned plague and famine 
--------------------------------------- 
 
20.  A visit to Zimbabwe's communal farming areas pointed 
out some stark contradictions in the Government's 
handling of land tenure.  Although these farming areas 
were deemed "communal," none of the farmers had title to 
his or her land.  Farmers could not easily, if at all, 
buy and sell or acquire new holdings.  While this may be 
more or less true in other African countries, the lack of 
title was a constraint to the rational use of the 
resource, to economies of scale, to land's moving into 
the hands of efficient producers, and to investment. 
The absence of a land market thus destined the farmers to 
remain on small five acre or less plots indefinitely. 
 
21.  In the areas of Zimbabwe we visited, we observed a 
critical need for continued food assistance for the 
country's hunger- and HIV/AIDS-inflicted groups.  The 
drought may no longer be the factor it once was 
considered, and there was a question over whether general 
food distribution was any longer needed.  However, 
targeted assistance, as labor-intensive and relatively 
expensive as it may be, is still badly needed by large 
numbers of people in Zimbabwe, especially those former 
farm workers whom the government dispossessed and re- 
located to squatter camps.  The sad thing was that, even 
with the drought, Zimbabwe's food crisis was one that did 
not have to be.  Perhaps the ancient Greek writer Hesiod, 
in the 7th century BC, said pretty much what was to be 
said about today's Zimbabwe when he wrote: 
"How often have whole cities had to pay for choosing one 
who can but evil do?  On them far-seeing Zeus sends 
heav'nly woes  twinned plague and famine  till the 
people die." 
 
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Comment 
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22.  For future generations today's AIDS epidemic may 
remain one of the defining events of the late 20th and 
early 21st century, much as the plague was in earlier 
centuries.  One big difference, of course, is that 
ignorance of the disease will not be a qualifying defense 
for our generation.  In southern Africa, where the 
epidemic is at its worst, we saw the international 
community battling to deal with the epidemic, especially 
in producing and making available food in societies, the 
e 
extent of whose devastation was still only becoming 
evident.  WFP, FAO, and NGOs were fully engaged in this 
struggle. 
 
23.  There appeared to be a relatively smooth hand-off 
between WFP's immediate food assistance and FAO's 
emergency operations, such as seed distribution, 
extension advice, conservation agriculture, and treadle- 
pump irrigation.  We did not observe the next follow-up 
phase, FAO's longer-term development activities, but we 
did hear criticism that the latter are not as effective 
as its emergency projects.  In any case, there may be 
some anomaly that the USG is not as involved in 
supporting emergency operations as it is in other parts 
of the pipeline. FAO's emergency projects were actually 
where the organization seemed to be at its best, but 
where it relied almost entirely on extra-budgetary 
contributions.  We would recommend that Washington 
consider whether we may want to earmark more resources 
for this vital stage that, at least in southern Africa, 
appears to be launching farmers at least toward full 
subsistence production. 
 
CLEVERLEY 
 
 
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 2004ROME01496 - Classification: UNCLASSIFIED