Time Bomb Ticking
September 2002
16 mins 47 secs
REPORTER: David Brill/Mike Carey
These are the peaceful hills of southern Malawi. It's a country unused to war. But, now, this tiny southern African state of 11 million people is fighting for its very survival. Its twin towers of famine and AIDS are tumbling in an anonymous tragedy that is killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, a day.
JUSTIN MKOWA, MP: It is really, really critical.
REPORTER: So the world community has got to help?
JUSTIN MKOWA: They have really to help us. Otherwise, we are doomed. We need their help. They must help us. Please, if there are people there with a kind heart, please come to Malawi to help us. We are here in a bad situation.
Justin Mkowa is a politician, a well-fed one at that. Like all politicians, he can't resist a photo opportunity. But he is not exaggerating. Aid agencies claim 3.2 million people, or about 30% of the population, is in imminent danger of starving to death. And, with AIDS ravaging the most productive sector of the population, the country's survival is increasingly in the hands of its children.
SUZANNA (Translation): I'm the only one looking after my sisters. I'm the only one who can work on the farm as I have only one hoe.
Suzanna is 14 and the head of her family. She also only has one pot, so she collects water three times a day, 18km in all. Her family consists of her two sisters - Mavis, 12, and Patricia, just 9 years old. Her brother left for the capital, Lilongwe, and hasn't been heard of since. Suzanna's parents died two years ago from AIDS. Her grandma, who was looking after the family, passed away three months ago of old age. Now, in the face of this famine, the three sisters have to cope the best they can.
SUZANNA (Translation): After work in the afternoon, if I have corn meal I look for relish or vegetables. Then we cook the food and eat and then we go and play.
The famine has made life so difficult for Suzanna, that her daily grind to feed herself and her sisters is becoming increasingly desperate.
SUZANNA (Translation): If there is no food, we go into the village and look for casual work. If there's no work, we go to the next village and ask for casual work. We go from village to village. We take any job, whether labouring or pounding corn. We work until they pay us in corn. Then we have the corn processed. Then I come home and cook it. If there's no casual work we just come home and sit and we have nothing to eat that day.
This often fruitless search for food by AIDS orphans has made them very vulnerable. As children on their own, they sometimes find their meagre supplies are stolen. Worse still, some young girls have no option but to have sex in exchange for food. Others are just raped.
ELASTO MILLIMBO, OXFAM MALAWI: Men will take advantage, really, because there are some charcoal sellers here who get money every now and then and, if she doesn't have food, automatically, she can be enticed to get that money, so that he can sleep with her. At the end of the day, she has that pregnancy and that is the end of her future.
The devastation caused by the famine has not only robbed many children of their future. It is also threatening the very fabric of Malawian society. At this time of the year, pre-pubescent boys and girls are prepared for adulthood. They're separated into two groups. The boys dress as girls, so they can experience, ever so briefly, the problem of growing up female in this part of Africa. They're also taught the obligations and responsibilities of taking a wife. They learn the history of the tribe, its traditional songs and dances. And then, finally, moral lessons - honesty, kindness and truth. This year, though, there wasn't even enough food for the feast which normally ends the initiation period. When people become desperate, they will do anything to survive. These villagers have walked 10km to risk their lives going into this swamp. They're after nyika, a tuber of the lotus plant. But this wetland is infested with crocodiles.
GAVINALA CHARLE (Translation): If I cannot get food for my family it's very painful for me. Very. I kick myself and ask, "What can I do?" I try hard to go and find lotus tubers to feed my family.
REPORTER: And is that dangerous to go into the river?
GAVINALA CHARLE (Translation): I have to go, even though there are crocodiles. But what can I do? I have to survive. I have no option.
But death due to crocodile attack is insignificant when compared with the disease few people dare name. This famine has quietly settled on a country barely coping with the AIDS pandemic. At Trinity Hospital in Nsanje, southern Malawi, only the patients who are rich enough can afford treatment. Even here, the nurse can't bring herself to mention that this baby is HIV-positive, infected from her mum who, in turn, contracted the disease from her philandering husband.
NURSE: She said she consulted the village doctors, the traditional doctors, about the condition of the child and the doctors told her that the condition is because the child has no blood, because the husband is not working - I should say, he is working with other women. He is having affairs with other women. So there's a belief that the child becomes sick.
REPORTER: The baby becomes sick?
NURSE: Yeah, because the husband is having affairs with other women.
While the official figure is 15%, AIDS specialists say in reality, about 30-35% of the total population is HIV-
positive.
ROBERT WHITE, OXFAM MALAWI: It is estimated that about 50,000 Malawians are dying every year from AIDS. Now, this, coupled with the severe food shortage that we have, that might lead into famine, we are really fearing for the worst and we are in a very desperate situation. We need other people to come in and assist on this problem.
This is what's left after the reaper takes his harvest of 50,000 - one old woman caring for almost a dozen children.
WOMAN (Translation): I look after these children because their mothers died. When my daughter first got sick, she was taken to Mphimbi Hospital. After she came back home, she died. Then people said to me, "Take your other sick daughter to Matope Hospital." From there, the ambulance took her to Mwanza Hospital. At Mwanza, she died. As for these other children, their mother died in Balaka. So all these children were left with me, as you can see.
REPORTER: Is she getting enough food?
WOMAN (Translation): No, I don't get enough food. If I'm given food, it's only for lunch and in the evening, we just go to bed.
Wherever our cameras went, it was the same story. Here in Zadwaza village, 71 out of 200 households are led by children. These three are 15, 10 and 5 years old.
JUSTIN MKOWA: The mother and father died. There are three children, and living in this pathetic situation. Such kind of a house, a hut, is already broken and now we are facing the rainy season.
REPORTER: So is anybody helping these people?
JUSTIN MKOWA: Not at all. Not at all. It's what we are trying now is to get some other people to help us.
The Malawian Government wants the international community to help, but is it helping itself? There are still great taboos here about the causes of AIDS and how best to ameliorate its spread. Condoms, for example.
JUSTIN MKOWA: The President is always on the air, on the radio, telling people to avoid sex, to avoid - the only thing we can do with AIDS today is to avoid sex, to say "no" to it. That will be the end of it. Otherwise, we are not seeing the end of these diseases coming out, unless we stop it.
REPORTER: Stop sex?
JUSTIN MKOWA: We stop sex. Definitely. And I don't see the use of condom as a method to stop AIDS, no. Instead, we are encouraging it, because I know God cannot like it, because I believe now people go, they're going ahead using condoms, and when you are using a condom, it means you are making a sin to God.
But the government, too, has been accused of sinning on a grand scale. This is American maize flour and people have come from all over Mlolo district hoping to take away their 10kg sack. This could have been Malawian corn distributed to save Malawian lives. But, in late 2000, the government sold off its strategic grain reserve. As a recent document from the British aid agency Oxfam says, "Where all the money went has still to be explained." Justin Mkowa, the flamboyant member for Phalombe, is adamant the government has not done anything wrong.
JUSTIN MKOWA: I believe it's not true. Because I think maybe it comes from the opposition. You know, opposition can say anything against the government, in order to derail it.
REPORTER: What have you heard? What have you heard about the rumours?
JUSTIN MKOWA: The rumours are that the maize was not stole... I mean, it was not stolen, but it was sold in order to bring in some more money, but not stolen. That's what I heard.
It was the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, that told the government to sell its emergency grain reserve.
Tragically, two-thirds of the country's insurance against famine was sold just before the drought began to bite.
MRS LILLIAN PATEL, FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER: What I know is some maize was sold, yes, but, at that time, there was a lot of maize in our reserves, in our grain reserves, and it was not - it was advice from one of our donors that why are we keeping this maize when we are losing a lot of money, because that maize was bought. It was not free maize. It was bought from the villagers and just kept in the silos, and we were advised, "Why don't you sell some of it and make some money?" But then, two years later, the climatic conditions made us not have this maize. So these are decisions which I don't think the government should be blamed.
Right across the region, according to Oxfam, the IMF and donor countries have pushed so-called "economic liberalisation." This, Oxfam claims, has contributed to food shortages, forcing reliance on imported aid. State marketing boards have been dismantled, all fertiliser subsidies have been removed and even small-scale irrigation projects no longer receive government funds.
In Malawi, an incredibly successful free seed and fertiliser scheme to 2.8 million of the poorest farmers was scaled back on the advice of donor countries, contributing to an untimely slump in food production. Oblivious to all this, Suzanna prepares for the rains which may or may not come next month. After her day in the fields, she cooked a meal of maize porridge courtesy of Oxfam Community Aid Abroad. Suzanna had to hide the remaining flour as protection against the robbers.
And, after washing their hands and saying the Lord's Prayer as grace - "Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses" - they ate slowly and delicately, respecting every mouthful.
GEOFF SHEPHERD, WORLD VISION AUSTRALIA: Yes, I think, if we don't get on and do something, we will see another Ethiopia. 13 million people are facing starvation and we must not let it come to another Ethiopia. We must feed these people now.
The world community was insistent when it demanded Malawi restructure economically. Now, it should show that same determination to feed the country. If it doesn't, then the only business to flourish will be the business of death.
September 2002
16 mins 47 secs
REPORTER: David Brill/Mike Carey
These are the peaceful hills of southern Malawi. It's a country unused to war. But, now, this tiny southern African state of 11 million people is fighting for its very survival. Its twin towers of famine and AIDS are tumbling in an anonymous tragedy that is killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, a day.
JUSTIN MKOWA, MP: It is really, really critical.
REPORTER: So the world community has got to help?
JUSTIN MKOWA: They have really to help us. Otherwise, we are doomed. We need their help. They must help us. Please, if there are people there with a kind heart, please come to Malawi to help us. We are here in a bad situation.
Justin Mkowa is a politician, a well-fed one at that. Like all politicians, he can't resist a photo opportunity. But he is not exaggerating. Aid agencies claim 3.2 million people, or about 30% of the population, is in imminent danger of starving to death. And, with AIDS ravaging the most productive sector of the population, the country's survival is increasingly in the hands of its children.
SUZANNA (Translation): I'm the only one looking after my sisters. I'm the only one who can work on the farm as I have only one hoe.
Suzanna is 14 and the head of her family. She also only has one pot, so she collects water three times a day, 18km in all. Her family consists of her two sisters - Mavis, 12, and Patricia, just 9 years old. Her brother left for the capital, Lilongwe, and hasn't been heard of since. Suzanna's parents died two years ago from AIDS. Her grandma, who was looking after the family, passed away three months ago of old age. Now, in the face of this famine, the three sisters have to cope the best they can.
SUZANNA (Translation): After work in the afternoon, if I have corn meal I look for relish or vegetables. Then we cook the food and eat and then we go and play.
The famine has made life so difficult for Suzanna, that her daily grind to feed herself and her sisters is becoming increasingly desperate.
SUZANNA (Translation): If there is no food, we go into the village and look for casual work. If there's no work, we go to the next village and ask for casual work. We go from village to village. We take any job, whether labouring or pounding corn. We work until they pay us in corn. Then we have the corn processed. Then I come home and cook it. If there's no casual work we just come home and sit and we have nothing to eat that day.
This often fruitless search for food by AIDS orphans has made them very vulnerable. As children on their own, they sometimes find their meagre supplies are stolen. Worse still, some young girls have no option but to have sex in exchange for food. Others are just raped.
ELASTO MILLIMBO, OXFAM MALAWI: Men will take advantage, really, because there are some charcoal sellers here who get money every now and then and, if she doesn't have food, automatically, she can be enticed to get that money, so that he can sleep with her. At the end of the day, she has that pregnancy and that is the end of her future.
The devastation caused by the famine has not only robbed many children of their future. It is also threatening the very fabric of Malawian society. At this time of the year, pre-pubescent boys and girls are prepared for adulthood. They're separated into two groups. The boys dress as girls, so they can experience, ever so briefly, the problem of growing up female in this part of Africa. They're also taught the obligations and responsibilities of taking a wife. They learn the history of the tribe, its traditional songs and dances. And then, finally, moral lessons - honesty, kindness and truth. This year, though, there wasn't even enough food for the feast which normally ends the initiation period. When people become desperate, they will do anything to survive. These villagers have walked 10km to risk their lives going into this swamp. They're after nyika, a tuber of the lotus plant. But this wetland is infested with crocodiles.
GAVINALA CHARLE (Translation): If I cannot get food for my family it's very painful for me. Very. I kick myself and ask, "What can I do?" I try hard to go and find lotus tubers to feed my family.
REPORTER: And is that dangerous to go into the river?
GAVINALA CHARLE (Translation): I have to go, even though there are crocodiles. But what can I do? I have to survive. I have no option.
But death due to crocodile attack is insignificant when compared with the disease few people dare name. This famine has quietly settled on a country barely coping with the AIDS pandemic. At Trinity Hospital in Nsanje, southern Malawi, only the patients who are rich enough can afford treatment. Even here, the nurse can't bring herself to mention that this baby is HIV-positive, infected from her mum who, in turn, contracted the disease from her philandering husband.
NURSE: She said she consulted the village doctors, the traditional doctors, about the condition of the child and the doctors told her that the condition is because the child has no blood, because the husband is not working - I should say, he is working with other women. He is having affairs with other women. So there's a belief that the child becomes sick.
REPORTER: The baby becomes sick?
NURSE: Yeah, because the husband is having affairs with other women.
While the official figure is 15%, AIDS specialists say in reality, about 30-35% of the total population is HIV-
positive.
ROBERT WHITE, OXFAM MALAWI: It is estimated that about 50,000 Malawians are dying every year from AIDS. Now, this, coupled with the severe food shortage that we have, that might lead into famine, we are really fearing for the worst and we are in a very desperate situation. We need other people to come in and assist on this problem.
This is what's left after the reaper takes his harvest of 50,000 - one old woman caring for almost a dozen children.
WOMAN (Translation): I look after these children because their mothers died. When my daughter first got sick, she was taken to Mphimbi Hospital. After she came back home, she died. Then people said to me, "Take your other sick daughter to Matope Hospital." From there, the ambulance took her to Mwanza Hospital. At Mwanza, she died. As for these other children, their mother died in Balaka. So all these children were left with me, as you can see.
REPORTER: Is she getting enough food?
WOMAN (Translation): No, I don't get enough food. If I'm given food, it's only for lunch and in the evening, we just go to bed.
Wherever our cameras went, it was the same story. Here in Zadwaza village, 71 out of 200 households are led by children. These three are 15, 10 and 5 years old.
JUSTIN MKOWA: The mother and father died. There are three children, and living in this pathetic situation. Such kind of a house, a hut, is already broken and now we are facing the rainy season.
REPORTER: So is anybody helping these people?
JUSTIN MKOWA: Not at all. Not at all. It's what we are trying now is to get some other people to help us.
The Malawian Government wants the international community to help, but is it helping itself? There are still great taboos here about the causes of AIDS and how best to ameliorate its spread. Condoms, for example.
JUSTIN MKOWA: The President is always on the air, on the radio, telling people to avoid sex, to avoid - the only thing we can do with AIDS today is to avoid sex, to say "no" to it. That will be the end of it. Otherwise, we are not seeing the end of these diseases coming out, unless we stop it.
REPORTER: Stop sex?
JUSTIN MKOWA: We stop sex. Definitely. And I don't see the use of condom as a method to stop AIDS, no. Instead, we are encouraging it, because I know God cannot like it, because I believe now people go, they're going ahead using condoms, and when you are using a condom, it means you are making a sin to God.
But the government, too, has been accused of sinning on a grand scale. This is American maize flour and people have come from all over Mlolo district hoping to take away their 10kg sack. This could have been Malawian corn distributed to save Malawian lives. But, in late 2000, the government sold off its strategic grain reserve. As a recent document from the British aid agency Oxfam says, "Where all the money went has still to be explained." Justin Mkowa, the flamboyant member for Phalombe, is adamant the government has not done anything wrong.
JUSTIN MKOWA: I believe it's not true. Because I think maybe it comes from the opposition. You know, opposition can say anything against the government, in order to derail it.
REPORTER: What have you heard? What have you heard about the rumours?
JUSTIN MKOWA: The rumours are that the maize was not stole... I mean, it was not stolen, but it was sold in order to bring in some more money, but not stolen. That's what I heard.
It was the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, that told the government to sell its emergency grain reserve.
Tragically, two-thirds of the country's insurance against famine was sold just before the drought began to bite.
MRS LILLIAN PATEL, FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER: What I know is some maize was sold, yes, but, at that time, there was a lot of maize in our reserves, in our grain reserves, and it was not - it was advice from one of our donors that why are we keeping this maize when we are losing a lot of money, because that maize was bought. It was not free maize. It was bought from the villagers and just kept in the silos, and we were advised, "Why don't you sell some of it and make some money?" But then, two years later, the climatic conditions made us not have this maize. So these are decisions which I don't think the government should be blamed.
Right across the region, according to Oxfam, the IMF and donor countries have pushed so-called "economic liberalisation." This, Oxfam claims, has contributed to food shortages, forcing reliance on imported aid. State marketing boards have been dismantled, all fertiliser subsidies have been removed and even small-scale irrigation projects no longer receive government funds.
In Malawi, an incredibly successful free seed and fertiliser scheme to 2.8 million of the poorest farmers was scaled back on the advice of donor countries, contributing to an untimely slump in food production. Oblivious to all this, Suzanna prepares for the rains which may or may not come next month. After her day in the fields, she cooked a meal of maize porridge courtesy of Oxfam Community Aid Abroad. Suzanna had to hide the remaining flour as protection against the robbers.
And, after washing their hands and saying the Lord's Prayer as grace - "Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses" - they ate slowly and delicately, respecting every mouthful.
GEOFF SHEPHERD, WORLD VISION AUSTRALIA: Yes, I think, if we don't get on and do something, we will see another Ethiopia. 13 million people are facing starvation and we must not let it come to another Ethiopia. We must feed these people now.
The world community was insistent when it demanded Malawi restructure economically. Now, it should show that same determination to feed the country. If it doesn't, then the only business to flourish will be the business of death.