South African soldiers patrolling the Zimbabwe border apprehend illegal migrants

SOUTH AFRICA: Troops reinforcing a porous and dangerous border

Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN South African soldiers patrolling the Zimbabwe border MUSINA, 26 May 2010 (IRIN) – South African special forces troops have begun a six-month deployment along the troubled border with Zimbabwe, where rape, robbery and other crimes are commonplace, and the flow of desperate migrants continues unabated. “This is a battle to stop people coming across the border illegally – it is not a war. The soldiers know they [migrants] are just trying to survive. It’s very different from what they are trained to do, and it is very difficult,” Colonel Gert Faul, the South African National Defence Force commander in Limpopo Province, told IRIN. Two companies of Parabats – elite South African paratroopers deployed in recent years to Sudan, DRC and Burundi as peacekeepers – have arrived at a highly porous border in the first phase of a deployment that will see soldiers from various units return to all South Africa’s land borders in the next few years. The triple fence of razor-wire and an electric fence that marks the territorial limit is punctured at regular intervals by worn and rutted tracks weaving through it, a testimony to the heavy human traffic. Former President Thabo Mbeki’s administration removed border security from the army and handed it to the police in 2003, just as the effects of the Zimbabwe crisis began to gather momentum, spilling economic migrants in search of employment into the neighbouring states. The army is re-establishing the border’s decommissioned radio network, insisting on the resumption of malarial spraying programmes by the health department, and imposing a “24/7” approach to border security, rather than the “shift-work” of the police. Even so, Faul concedes, the number of troops falls far short of what is required to staunch the flow of border-jumpers. A survey in 2005 by army trackers, who compared human tracks through the fence to those apprehended by the police, found that about 15 percent of undocumented migrants were caught. The border fence, inherited from the apartheid era, is set a few hundred metres south of the international border, which runs down the centre of the Limpopo River. It has three lines of razor wire with an electric fence between, and the voltage can be calibrated from deadly to the uncomfortable electric tingle used for game fencing. At 10km intervals along the roughly 250km frontier there are Echo stations – brick and mortar buildings with sleeping quarters for 10 men, and dated but functional computer facilities that monitor and control the electricity range when the fence is switched on – which provide the precise location of any contacts or attempts to tamper with it. The undulating bush terrain between Echo stations is where the troops have begun to engage with the marauding border gangs that are blamed for the sexual violence and robbery against migrants. Cat and mouse games In the few short weeks that the troops have been on the border, this has turned into a game of cat and mouse. L/Cpl John Molefe told IRIN at a temporary reconnaissance post with sweeping views across the river, that their job was “intelligence driven”. Their opponents, the guma-guma (a local name for the border gangs) held an advantage as they knew the border backwards, and it was “pretty much a family business” developed over the past 40 years of smuggling contraband – from people, cooking oil and Viagra to abalone poached in South African waters – between the countries in both directions. People should be able to just walk across the bridge; legally, that should happen Molefe is part of a “stick”, a detachment of seven soldiers, who spend 14 days constantly on the move in the bush before being rotated to an Echo station. Their work begins at dusk, when they set up listening posts to find smuggling routes and apprehend people crossing illegally. Private Donovan Smith told IRIN the guma-guma had quickly adapted to the presence of the troops and were sending out their own scouts to track the soldiers’ movements. “Yesterday we caught a woman and eight children, among them babies,” Smith said, but the guma-guma were difficult opponents, as they blended in with the migrants, and the four that had been caught were found to be carrying both South African and Zimbabwean passports. The guma-guma, any contraband seized, and people crossing illegally were immediately handed over to the police. David Maynier, the shadow Minister of Defence and Military Veterans in the opposition Democratic Alliance, told IRIN that during the period when soldiers were absent from the border, the police had “raised the white flag” on their attempt to impose border security. At the main point of entry between the Zimbabwean town of Beitbridge and the South African town of Musina, illegal migrants enter the country using the bridge over the Limpopo River and then drop down onto the bank a few metres from a South African police station, avoiding immigration controls. The police sit drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, oblivious to migrant families crawling under the broken fences with their bundles of belongings. Police minister Nathi Mthethwa told parliament recently that the police spent R123.8 million (US$16.4 million) securing South Africa’s land and sea borders in 2009, of which Zimbabwe border accounted for about R25 million ($3.4 million). “By law there is a way to come into the country,” Director Modiri Matthews of South Africa’s Inspectorate of the Department of Home Affairs told IRIN, but could not comment on the behaviour of other units responsible for border security. Tara Polzer, a senior researcher at the Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, told IRIN that, strange as it might seem, the police approach was “correct”. “People should be able to just walk across the bridge; legally, that should happen,” she said. “The crazy thing is that there is no way to control that border.” In 2009 a proposed special permit for Zimbabweans was put on hold, but a moratorium on deportations was adopted, as well as a 90-day visa for nationals of countries belonging to the Southern African Development Community, provided it was accompanied by a valid travel document. The vast majority of Zimbabwean economic migrants coming to South Africa apply for an asylum seekers permit, which allows them to work, but also clogs up the system and prejudices those with valid reasons seeking sanctuary from persecution. Rape on the rise The FMSP estimated that about four million Zimbabweans reside in South Africa, although Polzer said her unit’s estimate was that there were about 1.2 million or at most 1.5 million Zimbabweans in the country. She said people opted to run the gauntlet of the border because they were ignorant of the regulations, and that was providing border gangs with a constant supply of rape and robbery victims. Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN South African soldiers apprehend illegal migrants from Zimbabwe Giuseppe de Mola, project coordinator in Musina of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the international medical charity, told IRIN the South African government was keeping up appearances by saying the border was “not open”, when in reality it was. It is estimated that nearly a third of people residing in Musina – which is said to have witnessed an annual growth rate of 50 percent – are from Zimbabwe, and at least 300 people a day arrive in South Africa. Among them are victims of rape and assault. “I crossed the river with a group of four people. We were met by a gang of seven guma-guma on the South African side, who were armed with knives and guns. They forced me to have sex with the women in my group and I refused. Then one of the guma-guma forced his penis into my anus and ejaculated inside,” according to testimony given to MSF. From the beginning of 2010 to early May, MSF treated 103 survivors of sexual violence, of which 71 cases had occurred since 1 March. De Mola said these were reported rapes, as well as cases from questionnaires completed by rape victims. Rape victims had also witnessed other, unreported, rapes while crossing the border, pushing up the number for March 2010 to more than 100. In March 2010 only four rapes were reported to Musina police. MSF provides rape victims with post-exposure prophylactics if they seek assistance within 72 hours of the rape, counselling services, and HIV testing. De Mola said people might discover they were HIV-positive, not always as a consequence of rape, and experience a double shock. “Sometimes it might be someone’s first HIV test, and they find out they are HIV positive and then you have to counsel for both the rape and the HIV.” go/he source.irinnews

GLOBAL: PMTCT could be key to cutting child mortality

Photo: Albino Mahumana/PlusNews

Fewer child deaths

JOHANNESBURG, 25 May 2010 (PlusNews) – Sub-Saharan Africa is struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing child mortality but with greater access to prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) services, some countries are slowly catching up.

A new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, published on 24 May in the online edition of British medical journal The Lancet, compared mortality in children younger than five from 1970 to 2010 in 187 countries to chart progress towards reaching the goal.

Worldwide child mortality had declined by 52 percent since 1970, but only 31 developing countries were on track to meet the MDG target of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds by 2015; African countries hit hard by HIV were conspicuously absent from the list.

Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for about half the global figure for child mortality under the age of five, and the region also had the slowest rates of decline in child deaths, which might be partly due to high HIV prevalence levels.

“We can see the effects of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa in the way that the declines in child mortality throughout the [19]70s and ’80s stop, and start to reverse in the 1990s. This coincides with the rise of the HIV epidemic there,” Dr Christopher Murray, director of the IHME, told IRIN/PlusNews.

According to UNAIDS, sub-Saharan Africa still has most of the world’s HIV infections, while a regional prevalence of about 5 percent accounted for almost 70 percent of all new HIV infections in 2008.

The good news

Yet there was compelling evidence that some African countries were making significant strides in reducing child mortality, and the report’s authors suggested that this could be explained by improved access to antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and PMTCT services.

“There has been a tremendous scale-up in ARV programmes over the past decade, and an increased emphasis on preventing mother-to-child transmission. We think both of these efforts are starting to show an effect on child mortality, and are helping to drive the child mortality rate lower,” Murray noted.

“Since 2005, though, we are starting to see declines [in child mortality] again, including in countries that have been hit very hard by HIV, such as Swaziland, Botswana, and Lesotho.”

The study also pointed out that southern African countries with relatively strong ARV and PMTCT programmes had notably lower under-five mortality rates than those in other regions of Africa.

Malawi, which has made substantial gains in ARV and PMTCT services, has been charting yearly declines in child mortality of more than three percent. Today, 45 percent of pregnant, HIV-positive women access PMTCT, up from just three percent five years ago, according to a recent report by the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, a support group for people living with HIV and AIDS.

Globally, the trend is clear – child mortality rates are going down faster than anyone anticipated

Studies like this may point way forward

Dr Ashraf Coovadia, chair of the South African National AIDS Council’s treatment and care support task team, and head of paediatric HIV services at the Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital in Johannesburg, told IRIN/PlusNews that the results of improved PMTCT regimens and access were becoming evident.

“We are seeing less [HIV]-infected infants, and those that are infected we are seeing at an earlier stage,” said Coovadia. Infants brought to the hospital in later stages of HIV infection tended to come from areas outside Johannesburg, where access to PMTCT services was often still problematic.

The study’s authors suggested that comprehensive and accurate studies, such as this one, should be conducted more often because decreased funding levels would make the data they provided crucial to guiding aid and national health priorities.

“We need to spend more time looking in depth at what is working and what isn’t working in countries where we have seen substantial progress … What are the lessons to be learned from these countries?” Murray said.

“Globally, the trend is clear – child mortality rates are going down faster than anyone anticipated,” he said. “Now, for governments and non-governmental organizations, the real work begins of identifying the best policies to build on that momentum.”

Coovadia agreed, noting that further studies were needed, not only to lobby governments and funders for extended services, but also to understand why not all countries with PMTCT programmes had charted gains, like Malawi.

“We need to know where we’re getting bang for our buck, especially when funding is dwindling; we need to take an evidenced-based approach to prioritising [health] interventions,” he told IRIN/PlusNews.

“We also need to look at the challenges of why, in places where programmes are in place, we may not be getting the same benefits … in many cases this is related to [weak] health systems and issues of access.”

llg/kn/he source.irinnews

GLOBAL: ARVs for prevention? Proceed with caution, say researchers

Photo: Kate Holt/IRIN ARVs may soon be used to prevent, as well as to treat, HIV ———– JOHANNESBURG, 25 May 2010 (PlusNews) – Two new studies have confirmed fears that the use of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to prevent HIV could lead to drug resistance if inadvertently used by people who were already infected. The findings presented this week at the International Microbicides Conference in Pittsburgh, in the US, suggest that regular HIV testing would have to be an integral part of any prevention programme using ARVs. Prevention approaches incorporating ARVs are still being tested in clinical trials, but are thought to be among the most promising potential interventions against HIV. One approach, called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), would involve giving a daily dose of a single ARV drug to people who were HIV-negative but at high risk. This could be effective in preventing HIV, but not to treat someone already infected. In fact, taking a single ARV drug – instead of the cocktail of three usually prescribed for treating HIV – could result in the virus becoming resistant to that drug or other drugs in the same class. Even more worryingly, people who develop ARV-resistant strains of the virus could infect others with these strains. A study by Ume Abbas, of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, US, working with colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh, used a mathematical model to determine the probable impact of a PrEP rollout on HIV prevention and drug resistance in a region of sub-Saharan Africa with high rates of HIV. In an optimistic scenario PrEP reduced HIV infection risk by 75 percent when used by 60 percent of the target population, 5 percent of which were unknowingly already infected. Under such conditions, 2.5 percent of the population would have drug-resistant HIV strains after 10 years. A pessimistic scenario assumed that PrEP reduced HIV risk by only 25 percent and reached just 15 percent of the population, 25 percent of which were already infected. In this case, 40 percent of the population would experience drug-resistance after 10 years. ARV-based microbicides A study by McGill University and the McGill AIDS Centre in Montreal, Canada, looked at the potential of ARV-based microbicides – a lubricant or gel applied prior to sex to prevent HIV transmission – to protect against drug-resistant HIV strains that are likely to become increasingly prevalent in places with large treatment programmes like South Africa. They found that in laboratory tests, four ARV-based microbicides – now undergoing clinical trials – were all effective against drug-resistant HIV strains, but those using combinations of two ARV drugs were more effective than those using only one drug. In other laboratory tests they determined that ARV-based microbicides could also contribute to the emergence of drug resistant strains if used by individuals who were already HIV-positive. The researchers said their findings did not diminish the promise of PrEP and other ARV-based prevention approaches, but offered a clearer view of “what is likely to be needed to ensure that [these approaches] can offer the most benefit to as many people as possible, and with the least amount of risk.” ks/he source.irinnews

ANALYSIS: Politics of identity – the Jos conflict

Photo: Obinna Anyadike/IRIN

Homes have been abandoned

JOS, 26 May 2010 (IRIN) – Reverend Zang Tengong is certain a religious war is under way for the soul of Nigeria and believes the central city of Jos is the frontline where Islam’s expansion southwards will be stopped.

The church he founded in Bukuru, in the southern section of Jos, escaped relatively lightly when the Christian community was attacked on 19 January. The walls are scorched where petrol-soaked rags were pushed through the windows, but the high zinc roof largely survived the heat of the blaze.

Surrounding houses were not so lucky; at least 20 were gutted, now abandoned, their owners scattered to other neighbourhoods.

Bukuru was part of the vendetta violence between communities in Plateau State that has left hundreds dead since January. A tense stand-off is monitored by a heavy military presence, but “silent killings” are continuing, and Tengong believes it is only a matter of time before major fighting resumes.

Like many other Christian leaders across this city, he is convinced the church is confronting jihad – an echo of the 19th-century campaign of Islamic conquest and conversion by Fulani nobleman Usman Dan Fodio, eventually halted by Nigeria’s southern forest belt and the hills of Plateau State.

Tengong has served his congregation for 52 years, but peace is not part of his sermons at the moment. Instead, he takes grim satisfaction that in his community, hugging the busy highway into the city, far more Muslims were killed than Christians in the January violence.

“I know what Jesus says, but Islam is a demonic religion,” he told IRIN. “These people are very dangerous, we know them, this is a religious war … We will fight to the last drop of blood.”

Religion alone does not explain the crisis in Jos. Ethnicity, political power, discrimination and fears of cultural demise are other, powerful ingredients being stirred in what was once seen as a laid-back cosmopolitan city.

“The real divide is between indigenous people who claim it’s their land, and those they call settlers,” said Nelson Ananze of the NGO Community Action for Popular Participation (CAPP).

History

A few kilometres from Tengong’s church is Bukuru’s main market, and the home of Ali Muhammed, head of the Hausa community in Jos South. His house was built by his great-grandfather, and he hands round a copy of a certificate awarded to him in 1942 as the village head of Bukuru by Britain’s King George, recognizing 33 years of “loyal and faithful service”.

The almost exclusively Muslim Hausa are one of Nigeria’s three main ethic groups. They dominate the north, and were drawn to Jos in the early 1900s to work in its tin mines. For the first half of the century, as a colonial administrative convenience, Plateau was under the authority of the neighbouring Hausa-Fulani emirate, and it remained part of the north until Nigeria adopted a federal system in 1967.

What Muhammed and other Hausa leaders ask is, how far back must you go to qualify as an indigene? Their forefathers were in Plateau before Nigeria existed, and they refer to themselves as Jasawa – which means people of Jos. They argue that with rights of citizenship guaranteed by the constitution, origin should not matter.

Photo: Obinna Anyadike/IRIN

Churches and mosques were torched

The three “original” ethnic groups that lay claim to Jos – the largely Christian Burom, Anaguta and Afizere – insist that it must. Hausa is the accepted lingua franca of Plateau State, Hausa attire commonly warn, but “you know the real Hausa man, and you attach Islam to him,” Ananze said.

Fundamentally the three indigenous groups fear their extinction – eclipsed by Hausa commercial dominance and numbers, which will inevitably translate into political power, explained Ezekiel Gomos, interim chair of the Conflict Management and Mitigation Regional Council (CMMRC).

“They worry about the future of their children,” said Ananze. “A Hausa man can always run back to Kano [the largest city in the north] if something happens – a Plateau man has nowhere else to go.” Yoruba and Igbo settlers, Nigeria’s two other main ethnic groups, also migrated to Jos before independence, but they do not claim indigene rights.

There has been fierce resistance to Hausa political control of Jos North, the commercial heart of the state, which was the trigger for rioting in 2008 that reportedly left 700 dead, and is likely to remain a flashpoint in the run-up to elections in 2011.

A more than symbolic expression of ethnic identity is the refusal to accept a Hausa paramount chief in Jos North, who would stand as an equal with the existing local traditional leader, despite the fact Hausas are probably the largest single group.

Politics

The grievances of Muhammed and his Hausa community are also deep. “None of the Muslims in Bukuru are working for the local government; they don’t employ us, don’t give us indigene forms [which entitles preferential treatment in schooling and state jobs], they don’t give us [business] contracts,” he said. “We haven’t taken anyone’s land, we respect their paramount ruler.”

The Muslim community withdrew all their candidates in Jos South in the 2008 local government elections in the “interest of peace”, and expected to be rewarded. Instead, the state and local government seem to have turned the screws; in one extreme example, they aim to relocate Bukuru market to a new site, a Muslim graveyard.

“Most of our people are sharpening their knives for the next crisis,” Muhammed said. Non-Hausas who were burned out of the market area, their shops and churches gutted, have not returned. “How can we guarantee their safety when we can’t even guarantee our safety?”

This year’s violence began on 17 January when a Muslim was prevented from rebuilding his house in a predominantly Christian area. The state police commissioner said – falsely – a church was also attacked, and the city was paralysed by unrest. Bloody tit-for-tat killings followed with an assault on a Fulani village in Kuru Karama, and a reprisal raid on a Berom community in Dogo Nahauwa in February. In the latest violence on 23 May, three Fulani herdsmen were killed, and reprisals are feared.

Fulani and Hausa share a common culture, but the true Fulani remain nomadic – their cattle seen as an additional prize in the clashes. Cattle rustling adds another level of resentment and layer of complexity, with the Fulani able to call on help from their kinsmen in neighbouring countries.

Boniface Igomu, of the USAID-funded Conflict Abatement through Local Mediation project, says the potential for renewed trouble is clear. But although peace structures are in place, what is missing is effective state and local government engagement. “The interest from the government is growing, but how non-biased the government is, is a big factor.”

Extremism

Muhammad Sani Mudi, spokesman for the Jos Muslim community, believes Governor Jonah Jang is the problem. Mudi, a career politician, accuses Jang, the first Burom to rule Plateau, of being a partisan extremist who has yet to condemn the Kuru Karama attack, or encourage any sincere peace efforts.

Photo: Obinna Anyadike/IRIN

The army is trying to keep a lid on trouble

“To the extremist mindset, the best way to address the issue of Hausa/Burom is to apply any formula, including force, to drive the Hausa out,” Mudi told IRIN. “It’s not a government for all, it speaks on behalf of the other community.”

But Reverend Tengong regards Jang as a “commando; if it were not for him these people [Hausa] would have finished us”. Jang is seen by many Burom as not only willing to stand up to his enemies in Plateau, but also within the national leadership of his own ruling People’s Democratic Party, and a federal government historically perceived as discriminating against indigenous groups.

“We’re looking at hard choices, hard decisions that have to be made,” said Gomos of the CMMRC. “I used to have mainstream views [on ‘settlers’] but I realized that would mean we would be perpetually fighting.”

He argues the current conflict obscures issues of accountability; without the unifying factor of the Hausa, the three indigenous groups would likely be fighting among themselves over “who is the superior owner” of Jos, and the allocation of state resources. His pragmatic line is that Hausa economic power is a reality, and their political control of Jos North should be accepted – and no longer seen in zero-sum terms.

“People say ‘over my dead body’, but it will happen, that’s yesterday’s problem. The area where we can’t make a compromise is over chieftaincy. Political representation is based on democratic will, but chieftaincy is not – traditional institutions should be left to the indigenous people.”

The joint military taskforce, in distinctive desert camouflage – a response to reports of killers masquerading as soldiers – is almost certain to stay in Plateau for the foreseeable future. But so many factors weigh against peace holding in Jos; not least the gangs of unemployed youth with little stake in stability, a political culture of impunity, allegations of meddling by political barons, and next year’s high-stakes elections.

Optimist Habila of CAPP does not live up to his name: “It’s really a very, very difficult situation,” he told IRIN. “We must sensitize the people; tell them that these power-seekers, these politicians are using you, what do you benefit from violence? And we must create jobs to allow this restless army of people to find something.”

oa/mw source.irinnews

Dishonest learned friend fighting for his honour

Kenya Judge risks arrest over Sh2m

High Court Judge Mr Justice Mathew Anyara Emukule is fighting an order requiring him to pay two million shillings to a company or face arrest. Photo/PAUL WAWERU

By NATION Correspondent
Posted Wednesday, May 26 2010 at 18:38

In Summary

• Order challenged by Justice Emukule arose out of an application filed by the company over some Sh740,000 given to the judge.

A High Court Judge is fighting an order requiring him to pay two million shillings to a company or face arrest.

High Court judge Mr Justice Mathew Anyara Emukule against whom the judgment was entered says the Sh2 million claimed from him is illegal.

The judge was given temporary order stopping his arrest for 14 days pending the hearing of his case.

He is asking the court to give him temporary orders stopping Kenya National Assurance company (KNAC) from attaching his property or trying to recover the amount from him.

Settle balance

Also sought by the judge is an order to allow him to settle the balance in reasonable monthly instalments.

The order challenged by Justice Emukule arose out of an application filed by the company over some Sh740,000 given to the judge when he was an advocate between the years 1997 and 1998.

It is alleged that he received the money in his professional capacity on behalf of the official receiver as liquidator of KNAC from Kapsabet nursing home. This was supposed to be instalment payments by the nursing home for loan advanced to it by KNAC.

The company claims that the judge in total betrayal of the trust reposed in him by itself as his client failed to account for or remit the money.

Instead, KNAC alleges, the judge converted the money held in trust for his client to his own use.

And as a result, it says, it has suffered loss of Sh740,000.

On his part, the judge says the company obtained the judgment against him in absence of his defence.

Secondly, he says, there is a dispute as to the exact amounts paid to him and what he owes.

And thirdly, the judgment entered against him is of Sh740,000 but the company is seeking to recover Sh2 million from him, he says.

Embarrass

He believes the proceedings to have that amount of money recovered from his is illegal and calculated to embarrass him.

The company had wanted to attach his salary and allowances.

The judge in papers filed in court on May 19, 2010 says there are negotiations going on between him and the company with an aim of settling the matter out of court.

He also says he made part payment of the money and is seeking that he be given an opportunity to have the outstanding issues resolved and right amount of payment determined.

According to the judge, the 23 per cent interest claimed from him by the company is also illegal and was never awarded.

source.nation.ke