The Great Lakes Research Journal

As Zimbabwe awaits potentially massive economic aid, in a state of collapse, President Robert Mugabe has had his 85th birthday celebration prepared by his supporters. Although his birthday was on February 21st, he will be celebrating it on saturday the 28th in the north-western town of Chinhoyi. It is reported that Mugabe’s supporters have raised in excess of $250,000 as the people of Zimbabwe asks other African countries for near $2 billion in aid.

As so many in Zimbabwe await aid desperately as the economy is struggling tremendously President Mugabe is preparing to celebrate his 85th birthday lavishly. Most recently, Cholera has had a major affect on the people of the country as over 84,000 cases have been reported.

Also, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has recently publicly stated that although the long-term aid picture is not yet clear, it is apparent that as much as $5 billion could be needed in order to simply start to restore Zimbabwe’s government. Mugabe swore in PM Tsvangirai this week as they are slated to take a power-sharing approach in order to turn around the world’s leading inflation, food shortages, and the cholera epidemic. All of these things obviously take precedence to a birthday celebration, as Zimbabwe remains in a state of desperation, and Mugabe definetely stands to receive criticism.

Since the war in Congo began in 1998, the president of Congo and loyalist forces have faced significant rebel opposition. To this day, nearly 5 million people have been killed by either combat, disease or starvation, or a combination of the three.

Although technically the war has ended, new reports claim that bands of rebel militia continue to loot and kill as they please.

The displaced people, numbering over 70,000 in and around the provincial capital of Goma have been victims of several incidents involving looting and killings.

“They came up, pointed a gun at me, and said, ‘Wake up, wake up, give us money and everything you have,”‘ Sebahunde said. The militiamen steal food, money as well as water buckets.  The soldiers also fire their weapons int he air, intending to provoke fear in the innocent people. The stray bullets have killed on a number of occasions.

 ”Witnesses said the soldiers shot in the air, and that one stray bullet hit a 45-year-old woman in the head, killing her instantly. A 20-year-old woman was killed at Kibati on Thursday night when a bullet pierced her tent and hit her in the head.” (Fox News). These shootings and robberies continue to end even though peace talks have occured.

The local people are continuously angered by the U.N.s failure to protect them from these rebels. And in my opinion, they should be. I think it is time that the “United Nations” should step up and do what it was formed to do in 1947, promote the peace.

In my opinion, the U.N.’s role in Congo is to promote the peace. This is not what they seem to be accomplishing. The people continue to hurl stones at the U.N. convoys as a show of their anger and weariness of being robbed and possibly killed.

According to reports, the Government of Congo, under president Joseph Kabila, has REFUSED negotiations with the Rebels, under Laurent Nkunda, who thanks to combined efforts by the Congolese and Rwandan armies, was CAPTURED in January of 2009. I hope this is the event that President Kabila seems to be waiting for. At the very least, this can give the many, many, hordes of the displaced hope.

Today death, starvation, and violence have overcome many areas of Africa. “Despite decades of conflict, death and tragedy, coverage of issues in Africa has often been ignored, oversimplified, or excessively focused on limited aspects.” In areas like the Congo specifically, people are extremely malnournished. Other countries, such as the United States have began to reach out to Africa, but it is going to take a long time to recover from all of  these damages.

Pollution is a large reason for starvation and malnournishment. Water is used to clean, bath, and do various everyday activities with. Water is polluted with dirty oils and and substances that are put there by other countries. Richer coutries have paid Africa to take their waste and rid of it, however, it just ends up going in their water and food supply.

Violence is continuing to rage with the rapes of women, and slavery is common in Africa as well. Governments within Africa pay officers off to help promote this slavery and violence, and ignore it. It is important that other governments come in and stop the violence, because it will not stop if it is left up to the authorities over there.

There are also thousands of orphans in Africa that are unattended to. In addition, many of these children die because there is no one to take care of them. AIDS and other viruses are spread around through the sexual contacts and rapes, and passed on to some of these children.

All of these issues are extremely saddening. It is important that the U.S. and other nations step in and help Africa. “It quickly becomes obvious that conflicts that have dominated the agendas of actors in a position to respond (policymakers, the media, the public and academia) are often relatively small in scale compared to many of those that have consistently failed to attract attention.” Continuing to raise awareness is key.

Sources: http://www.globalissues.org/article/84/conflicts-in-africa-introduction

Oil had the potential to make Nigeria an extremely wealthy country, but instead it is very poor. “The trial and hanging of environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the Ogoni ethnic minority made world-wide attention.” Now western countries are trying to help the corrupt governments in Nigeria to support their fossil fuels that have been exploited, and in turn benefit from it as well.

Companies like Shell, Chervon, Mobil, and Elf are some of the individuals that have been trying to manipulate Nigeria in order to gain some supply of their oil. It has been reported that Shell specifically has been paying off certain members of the Nigerian area, to turn the people against each other in terms of the oil supply and where it should go. The Nigerian goverment is starting to take control of these types of actions, and put them to an end.

The oil supply in Nigeria has severely hurt their people. “Oil corporations in the Niger Delta seriously threaten the livelihood of neighboring local communities. Due to the many forms of oil-generated environmental pollution evident throughout the region, farming and fishing have become impossible or extremely difficult in oil-affected areas, and even drinking water has become scarce. Malnourishment and disease appear common.”

I think that this situation is very sad. Our gas companies are hurting Nigeria, and the things that are taking place are causing death and destruction in that area of the world. It is important to realize that people can no benefit from other’s pain. Eventually got comes around goes around, and this will end up hurting Western countries in the end.

Source: http://www.globalissues.org/article/86/nigeria-and-oil