The Razor

UPDATE: Thanks to the Watcher’s Council for awarding this post the top council post of the week 6/27/2008. I humbly appreciate the honor considering the quality of posts the council produces every week. – SK

Thabo Mbeki has sat silently while his country is flooded with refugees fleeing the economic and social collapse of South Africa’s northern neighbor Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s liberator turned oppressor lost the parliamentary elections held in March, then scrambled his thugs to action to make sure that his loss wouldn’t be repeated in the run-off to be held Friday. While international pressure against Mugabe mounted, Mbeki resisted joining the chorus of condemnation and use the leverage his nation has over Zimbabwe to get Comrade Bob to relinquish power. Instead Mbeki pursued a “soft-softly” conciliatory approach, telling the rest of the world, in particular the US and the UK, to but out of what he considered to be an “internal matter.”

But Mbeki’s soft-softly approach has failed spectacularly as the Guardian notes:

“Mbeki has fundamentally misread the situation in Zimbabwe; the political advice and intelligence reports he has been given is appalling,” said (Piers Pigou, director of the South Africa History Archive), who called the quiet diplomacy policy “a remarkable example of how to mess something up”. “He [Mbeki] overestimated his influence over Mugabe and Zanu-PF, thinking that his politics of appeasement would be reciprocated by concessions from them. It wasn’t.”

Ray Hartley, editor of the Times of South Africa, is furious with Mbeki’s approach:

Regional leaders and South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, in particular, have failed to act against Mugabe even as evidence of the torture, murder and mutilation of opposition campaigners has mounted. They have not raised a finger to stop brazen election rigging and what now amounts to the theft of the run-off election by Mugabe’s thugs.
...
Mbeki’s flaccid diplomatic has failed utterly and yet, like a man who believes he can press reality into assuming his likeness, he persists with this weak initiative.
What is needed now is action against the Mugabe regime.

The Mark Bellamy and Stephen Morrison writing in the Washington Post call Mbeki “quietly complicit for enabling Mugabe’s misrule,” while the Post itself in an editorial blamed Mbeki for preventing Zimbabwe’s neighbors or the UN from intervening to stem the catastrophe that has driven 3,000,000 Zimbabweans to flee their own country.

The big question is why Mbeki has taken this approach. Piers Pigou believes the natural friendship between liberation movements is overblown. Liesl Louw, associate editor at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria South Africa, ponders the question as well.

Surely Mbeki, who has successfully run the largest economy in sub-Sahara Africa and mediated in crises in Burundi or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, would not support a man who has driven his country to economic collapse? The collapse has caused millions of Zimbabweans to stream across the border. It has also cost the South African economy billions in loss of export revenue.

Perhaps Mbeki’s problem has nothing to do with western pressure or liberation comradeship even though he has stated that Zimbabwe’s problems are “an internal matter” – odd coming from a man who worked to make aparteid an international cause in the late 1970’s. Reading his background Mbeki has been involved in some pretty tough negotiations, but that may be the problem.

Mbeki is a diplomat. In 1985 he negotiated as a member of the ANC with South African businesses. In 1989 he led talks with the South African government that led to the banning of the ANC and the release of political prisoners including Nelson Mandela.

Diplomats are by nature incapable of making decisions. Decisions are left to leaders who set goals for talks and approve or decline compromises. Diplomats function well when two sides are willing to give up something, but are useless when one side refuses to give up anything at all.

And that’s exactly what Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe. By turning a nation into his own personal estate, he sees nothing to gain by leaving power. He pried it from the hands of the white colonialists. He alone has ruled it in the thirty years since. In his mind Zimbabwe is his. Why should he negotiate? He already has what he wants.

To call Thabo Mbeki South Africa’s Neville Chamberlain would risk using a cliche if it weren’t for the fact that both men were diplomats and both failed to recognize that one party was not willing to give up anything or compromise in the least. A leader will recognize and walk away from a negotiating table the minute he senses that the other party has nothing to offer; not so a diplomat. A diplomat will always believe that he alone can pull success out of any negotiation if given enough time and effort.

Robert Mugabe is a leader. He will not let a diplomat pry his property from his own hands, even if in the process he is strangling that property to death. Thabo Mbeki is a diplomat who is incapable of stopping him.

I always believed that Thabo Mbeki was incapable of filling the shoes of another leader whom he served, Nelson Mandela, but later reconsidered and thought that maybe South Africa needed a diplomat  to keep the peace between divergent power centers in the land. While Mbeki has been successful in that diplomatic role, he has completely failed his international role as a leader of post-colonial Africa. The people of the region need a leader to step up and recognize that the time for talk is over and the suffering must end. Unfortunately for them Thabo Mbeki is not that leader.

NOTE: I also would like to thank Zach Barbera for his excellent commentary on Zimbabwe around the time that confiscation of land began occurring in 2002. It has stood the test of time for being prescient as well as some of the best writing on Mugabe and the nation he has pillaged over the years. I don’t know where you are, Zach, but thanks!

Liberal Enablers of Mugabe here.

I’ve written extensively about the military and the Stepson in The Corps. But true heroism comes in all shapes and sizes and isn’t limited to police officers and firemen. In November 2007 Readers Digest captured a few stories of heroism that, not being a RD reader myself, I missed.

Take for example the story of Moezeldin Elmostafa, a cab driver in Durham North Carolina who immigrated to the US from Sudan in 1999. Shortly after midnight on March 14, 2006 Elmostafa picked up two college boys, took them to an ATM and a drive thru, then delivered them both to Duke University’s West campus. After a decent tip from the boys, he thought nothing more of the ride until a month later when he was contacted by one of the boy’s lawyer. Reade Seligmann and two other Duke students had been accused of raping a dancer at a party. At the time of the alleged crime Seligmann had claimed that he was in Elmostafa’s taxi.

Even though he didn’t want to get involved, and feared that his involvement in a criminal case would jeopardize his chances for citizenship, Elmostafa imagined how he would have felt had his son been falsely accused. “I will testify,” he said. “I will stand up and tell the whole truth.” Elmostafa swore out an affidavit testifying to Seligmann’s whereabouts that night, showed his phone bill with a call from Seligmann’s phone to back up Seligmann’s story and was interviewed by the case detectives.

His reward? Elmostafa was jailed two weeks later on a two year old misdemeanor charge of larceny for driving a woman to a store, waiting for her while she shopped and driving her home. It turns out that she wasn’t shopping: she was shoplifting. The case had been settled soon after the charges were drawn up, but that didn’t stop Durham DA Mike Nifong from resurrecting the charge to pressure Elmostafa to change his story about the boys. Elmostafa didn’t roll over: he hired his own attorney and faced down the charges three months later in court, where he was acquitted.

But Elmostafa stuck by his story and testified for the defense. The boys were acquitted of all charges as the case fell apart, and Durham’s District Attorney was disbarred in June 2007.

Elmostafa could have taken the easy route for himself and simply not gotten involved. Had he not done so nothing bad would have happened to him, although the chances are good that three innocent young men would be behind bars today. Even though he was scared – and his fear was based on reality judging by the actions of Mike Nifong – Elmostafa showed true bravery, proving Rickenbacker’s adage that “It ain’t courage if you ain’t scared.”

Elmostafa is the kind of immigrant that makes America great, and the sooner he gets his citizenship, the better. He was voted “2008 Hero of the Year” by an online Reader’s Digest poll and it’s clear to me that he deserves the honor.

Looks like China wants to burnish burn its human rights reputation by propping up Robert Mugabe with mercenaries in Zimbabwe.

April 24, 2008: Concurrent with China’s latest shipments of arms and munitions to Zimbabwe (see), two dozen uniformed and armed Chinese soldiers were seen patrolling the streets of the eastern border town of Mutare, with Zimbabwean troops, during a strike by Mugabe’s political opposition. The Chinese Embassy denied that there were any Chinese troops in the area, but suggested that local Chinese-owned companies hired contractors to protect their interests.

Tibet. Darfur. Burma. Wow these guys really get around.

Is Comrade Bob done? Stick a fork in him and see. Meanwhile things are looking good for Morgan Tsvangirai. I wish Zach Barbera was around the blogosphere to appreciate this day given his lengthy postings on Zimbabwe in the early days. Zach’s writings stand as some of the best blog posts ever, and his analysis remains spot on.

Here’s what the AP writes about the farm seizures:

The unraveling began when Mugabe ordered the often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms turned over to blacks, mainly relatives, friends and cronies who allowed cultivated fields to be taken over by weeds.

Today, a third of the population depends on imported food handouts. Another third has fled the country and 80 percent is jobless. Life expectancy has fallen from 60 to 35 years and shortages of food, medicine, water, electricity and fuel are chronic.

Thinking Kenyan is hopeful after watching Congress’s investigation into the election… theft? debacle? disaster?... that occurred there in December.

The recommendation pushed by Mr. Kiai is only just now beginning to make sense to me. He proposes that the Koffi Annan team continues with the talks with the objective of having a transitional government in Place with Kibaki and Raila sharing power, and tasked with the responsibility of facilitating the enactment of a new constitution that has been debated and variously referred to as the Bomas draft or the Naivasha accord. The transitional government should not be in place for more than two years and should formulate a way to have a truth and justice and reconciliation process after the elections have been held. It is important, according to the KNHRC that elections are held to re-affirm Kenya’s belief in the electoral and democratic practices.

There’s lots of good background information, so read the entire thing.

And it appears that both parties have reached a powersharing agreement as well.

While paying attention to what is happening in Kenya, I’ve picked up the buzz on Obama amongst commentators there, and even one of the best Kenyan commentators on the situation stumbles when it comes to our Byzantine nomination process. It’s no surprise since I’m still confused about it myself. I posted the following:

The American political system is a bit different from the one you suggest. First, no one will choose between Obama, Clinton and McCain. Obama and Clinton are fighting for their party’s nomination; McCain belongs to a different party. The people making this decision are the party faithful – the iPod listening rally attendees that you mention. That decision must be made at the latest by Aug during the party’s national convention. After that the winner will face the winner of the other (Republican) party – most likely John McCain at this point – in the general election in November.

So in the end it will be either Obama vs. McCain or Hillary vs. McCain. That’s when the votes of the common people will count.

Second, there is less of a difference between the two parties here in America than any two parties in Europe or Asia. Yes McCain is a white man, Hillary a woman and Obama a black man. However if they were politicians in the UK they would probably all three belong to the Conservative party. Liberal/Conservative in the USA does not = Liberal/Conservative elsewhere. The US is actually more conservative than the two party system would have you believe.

Third, Obama is a “rock star” and popular – but this popularity isn’t due to his policies; it’s more due to no one really knowing what those policies are. He’s critical of the war in Iraq, but will he remove troops from the land at a time when the bloodshed is declining and peace gradually seeping into a land that has been at war for decades? While the anti-war folks are wearing iPods and attending rallies, their message hasn’t exactly resonated with the bulk of the masses here in the US. In fact as far as anti-war movements go, this has to be one of the least effective ever mounted. The campaign to keep the USA neutral prior to World War 2 was much more effective in terms of setting the agenda, and the Vietnam protests were much more galvanizing for public opinion than the current crop of protests has been.

As that issue recedes and the American economy cools, focus has turned to jobs and the economy. What’s Obama’s stance on illegal immigration? What will he do to help alleviate the debt burden on average Americans? What does he propose to do to stop the flow of jobs abroad? How does he feel about Abortion? Gun control? I don’t know – and I’m one of the people following politics. Once these stances become known, his popularity will lessen.

Finally regarding Africa, yes he’s a black man – but that doesn’t guarantee he will pay more attention to the “plight” of Africa than a white man. It’s a very racist to think that one cares more about the land where his ancestors came from hundreds of years ago than someone else. Mine came from Germany – does this mean that I care more about Germany than I do Kenya? The fact that I’m reading your posts about Kenya, have been there and to Tanzania several times, and speak ki-Swahili better than Deutsch should disprove that.

Given the dire situation in Kenya, Kenyans must focus on solving their crisis and stop hoping for someone else to fix it. America cannot save Kenya, neither can the UK, the UN or the AU - or any other outside organization. Kenyans need to decide for themselves if they are going to allow their nation to fall apart violently like Yugoslavia, turn to genocide as in Rwanda, or whether they are going to rise up and replace the leadership that has failed them so miserably over the past weeks.

There is much for Kenyans to do; the election in America is only a distraction from the work and hard decisions that lay ahead.

UPDATE: 02/07/08
As you’ll see in the comments M – the writer of ThinkersRoom – took offense at my comment. S/he should have because s/he never wrote asking for an outside savior for Kenya. I was wrong to associate him/her with that meme, and I’ve apologized here, on ThinkersRoom and in a private email. I try to live my life as honestly as possible, and what can I say. I screwed up. No excuses or “re-do”s.

The assassination of a second opposition politician in Kenya proves that President Kibaki’s supporters are not satisfied with just stealing the election, they want to overturn the ODM’s control of Parliament. This would constitute the end of Kenya’s “democracy experiment” begun in 2002.

However the return to dictatorship will not stabilize the situation there. If anything, it’s going to lead to full-blown civil war. We are possibly already in the early stages of that war, and unless some breakthrough is made between the Odinga and Kabaki, I see nothing less than the collapse of Kenya into two or more separate states based on ethnicity similar to what happened in Yugoslavia 18 years ago.

Such an event would constitute the greatest disaster to befall East Africa since the Rwandan Genocide.

UPDATE:
Thinking Kenyan makes some interesting points about the calls for peace without justice:

What about the call for peace?. I support the call for peace.We can go to the mountain tops and shout peace peace peace,In fact i personally went to Nakumatt and donated foodstuffs for the displaced.But in reality,have we solved the issues that brought about the unrest in the first place?
So after the Kalenjin has stopped attacking his kikuyu neighbors and become peaceful,should he just forget that he had a problem as well?Will the call for peace remove all doubts in his head that the elections were rigged?Will it have solved any land issues?

From a very cold and distant place with snow on my doorstep.
Everyday I check this site to see what the locals are saying. I also read the online stories that pop up occasionally on BBC, Yahoo! and Fox News. So far it appears that Kenyan society has stopped – waiting for leadership, a decision on whether the nation will continue on the path towards freedom and prosperity or slip backwards towards dictatorship and tribalism. Will it choose the future of India or Congo?

While the people wait, the demons that lay hidden in the darkest hearts of men and women creep out here and there, snatching a handful of victims at a time. A family of missionaries live in Nakuru, a town now gripped by violence. I’ve always found the reaction of normal people to abnormal events to be much more compelling than the reporting of professional journalist. There’s something particularly disturbing about this scene:

It started yesterday with the killing of a Kalenjin athlete. He had traveled from Nairobi and alighted at the Mololine booking office here in Nakuru. Some people grabbed machetes from a nearby vehicle and hacked him to death.

This created much confusion and the police had a hard time controlling the area. I had been in town just before this took place. I sensed tension and decided to stay on the other side of town…

Here are some notes from the Kenya Unlimited Blogs Aggregator:

Are Ugandan Troops in Kenya? Gerald Baraza thinks so:

I have been gathering information from the ground in Busia,Teso,Bungoma and West Pokot. There is enough evidence that Mwai Kibaki, Daniel Arap Moi and Yoweri Kaguta Museveni hatched a plot to steal the elections even before last year’s General elections were held in Kenya.Ugandan troops were siphoned into Kenya and stationed strategically to fight any Kenyan who would try to stand up against Kibaki. This is a gross violation of a people’s sovereignity and dignity.

Freedom House has downgraded Kenya’s government to not free. KA Investor notes:

Freedom House defines a “free country” as one where there is “broad scope for open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civil life and independent media”. Kenya has violated all of these in less than 20 days, moving us from a “partly free” state to a “not free” one. Kenya now rank in the same category as Somali, Zimbwabwe and Congo. SHAME!

Shirel calculates the death toll tops 1200.

Thinker’s Room has video of Kenyan police shooting and killing two protesters.

According to Shirel:

There has to be justice before there can ever be peace. Here is a well-known example. The chastisement for our peace was upon Jesus Christ (Isaiah 53:5), i.e., He had to die on the cross before we would ever have peace. Before God’s wrath was satisfied, i.e. before justice was served on the cross, we as human beings had absolutely no hope for peace. None!

So Kenyans, do we want justice and peace, or are we cowards who just want some silence and a maintenance of the status quo?

She believes the bitter silence that has followed the violence will lead to even more violence. Read the whole piece to learn why.

Kenyan Pundit has left the country and arrived safely in Johannesburg after a hair-raising ride to Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi.

Mentalacrobatics attended the banned ODM rally in Uhuru Park and took pics (more pics here).

I continued walking towards the centre of town and got as far as The Hilton Hotel before I encountered a crowd running towards me and obviously running away from something. There is only one thing that would make Kenyans break the 100 metre sprint record (we are more of the long distance running types), the police. Or specifically the elite paramilitary police, the General Service Unit.

One thing that I have found extremely heartening is the repetition of peace and unity in the posts coming out of Kenya.
Because I love Kenya – Startup Kenya
This lead to shouts from the crowd of, “You are Kenyans, you are our brothers.” – Mentalacrobatics
I have no political affiliations. The only affiliation I have is with Kenya. – Josiah, The Alpha Quadrant

That’s not cherry-picking. No matter how the bloggers voted, no matter which party or pol they support, they are Kenyans.

Kenyan pride. Maybe after all this is over they will truly have something to be proud about.

So far it’s a mixed picture when it comes to the goings on in Kenya right now. According to Riba Capital Nairobi is calm – at least for now.

Banks were open and the financial system is fully operational and fuel supplies have resumed atleast within Nairobi. Things in general were stable today as businesses opened and people reported to work. However considering Raila has called for a mass action meeting tomorrow at the Uhuru park, most businesses are expected to close and the city centre could turn to a ghost town as was the case in the last few days..

News from Eldoret is tough to get. According to various mainstream news reports, thousands of Kenyans have crossed the border into Uganda, and hundreds have fled to Tanzania. The death toll reported by the media so far ranges from 250-500.

BBC has a map of Kenya showing ethnicity. I don’t know how accurate it is.

Thinker’s Room confirms that shelves in Nairobi are being stocked and things seem slowly getting back to normal. He also postulates that President Mwai Kibaki wasn’t interested in running again until just two months ago. His evidence is pretty strong.

Kenyan Pundit on the other hand is leaving Nairobi for Johannesburg.

After lots of back and forth and mental anguish for me I have decided to head back to Johannesburg where I’m currently based. It’s been a tough day. I’m from a multi-ethnic background and I feel like I’m being hit on all sides – family stranded in Kericho, no word from family in Kisumu and Western, in-laws under siege in Nakuru, relatives businesses being looted at the Coast, my mother emptying out her two stalls at Kenyatta market and carrying out things in plastic bags and duffel bags because mobs have threatened to burn down the market tomorrow – that’s her livelihood – it’s bad enough that she’s had no business for most of December. We are all feeling so helpless and are reduced to platitudes like “let’s hope for the best” and all “we can do is pray” and “it will end soon” and “these guys need to do something” but all we are doing is masking our fear that we are on a precipice.

The BBC is reporting that the opposition rally in Nairobi will be held tomorrow in defiance of the government ban. I doubt the apparent calm will hold.

Unfortunately our first post of 2008 is a bad one. So far about 260 people have died in violence in Kenya after President Mwai Kibaki claimed victory and took the oath of office in elections EU observers claim “have fallen short of key international and regional standards for democratic elections”. At least 50 have been killed in a church blaze set by government supporters attacking opposition supporters inside. More here.

Here’s a history of Kibaki’s rule and primer on the past 5 years. More background here.

Thinker’s Room has two excellent pieces on the origins of the violence here and here. As Thinking Room notes, the violence began as a political powersharing deal between Kibaki and Odinga who united against the ruling party KANU led by Daniel arap Moi – who was constitutionally barred from seeking another term. The coalition won, and Kibaki took power. Unfortunately he broke the gentleman’s agreement known as the Memorandum of Understanding made with Odinga’s party, thereby setting the stage for today’s violence which has become ethnic in character.

Opposition supporters brandish crude weapons during protests in Nairobi December 31, 2007. Reuters.

The roots of the violence are not political, but tribal – and that’s what makes this particular outbreak especially dangerous. Kibaki is Kikuyu and the leader of the opposition Raila Odinga is Luo. As the Beeb article accurately notes, “With patronage and corruption still common, many Kenyans believe that if one of their relatives is in power, they will benefit directly, for example through a relative getting a civil service job.”

Tens of thousands of armed people are now heading to the Burnt Forest region which has a long history of tribal violence. This area appears to be in the southwestern part of the country, bounded by Eldoret to the north, Kisumu to the west and Nakuru to the southeast.

Local reaction here.
More at this blog aggregator here including these blog posts:

We’re halfway there. Halfway to Nairobi. In a few hours we’ll leave Amsterdam and land in a city that I don’t recognize from the news online. People waving pangas, policemen all geared up and ready for battle…I won’t lie, I am scared about where we are headed.

RibaCapital reports that things may be improving, at least in his area.

Today (01/01/2008), is relatively peaceful and atleast from Eastlands in Nairobi where am publishing this article, I have not heard a gunshot or even seen smoke in the skyline, neither have I seen crowds running and shouting as was the case for the last few days.. I hope this continues to be the case…

Gerald Baraza isn’t as conciliatory:

Now this is our message to the fraud regime of Mwai Kibaki: You are not our president! You do not speak for us! We do not recognize you! You can torture us if you want, you can break our bones, you can kill us if you want but we will never recognize you as our president. We will fight your illegitimate regime to the last man!

Yes, it’s the people’s revolution!

Thinker’s Room lives next to the Nairobi slums and posts pictures of the aftermath. He also notes this – which I find particularly troubling:

Nairobi Women’s hospital reports sharply increased incidences of rape, gang rape and sodomy based purely on numbers of people that have accessed their services. Considering the public transport system has ground to a halt I shudder at the thought of the actual numbers on the ground.

Kenyan Pundit continues writing during a news blackout imposed by the government (yeah, that will settle things down. Right…)

Ethnic cleansing going on in Rift Valley. Kikuyus been targeted all over the province. Guys are being hidden by friends – I have first hand reports of this. My friend’s mother’s house was burnt in Molo last night. Where are these people supposed to go? Meanwhile, ODM supporters in ODM strongholds being beaten, raped, and killed arbitrarily by GSU officers. How does the “government” expect to heal these divisions once they have achieved their objective? Why are the two sides willing to pay such a high cost? We are just now recovering from Molo clashes of 1992! I’m frustated about the lack of options.

He also questions the government denial of the scale of the violence:

Alfred Mutua, the government spokesman, continues to be in la-la land talking about incidents of violence “here and there.” Actually, he is beginning to remind me of Baghdad Bob when the Iraq war started.

Across the border Tanzanian bloggers are following events very carefully. Tanzania does not have the trouble with tribalism that Kenya does since the “Baba ya taifa” Julius Nyerere stressed national unity over tribal politics, often at the point of a gun during his rule.

Reginald Miruko has some stunning pictures of the violence including this one:

And this one:

Some pictures (NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT) here picked up via Mashada, Africa’s online community.

UPDATE: 5:45pm EST
The Wife and I are switching between Fox News and CNN. Even the ticker tapes at the bottom are ignoring events in Kenya, although I note that both news websites have it in their top 3.

Is it compassion fatigue? Dean’s World poster Arnold Harris no doubt speaks for many when he writes:

Aside from the politically correct, who are paid or coerced into showing such concern, who in hell in the West really cares what happens in a place such as Kenya?

And on another note, who in the West seriously expects Africans to act other than the way they do?

Don’t want to be macheted? Stay out of Africa, and leave those people alone to work out their own destinies. Which they did for all the ages before there even was a chrisian America.

That means stop trying to bring them democracy. Stop trying to feed them. Stop trying to get rid of the AIDS and other viri that infect much or even most of their populations. Stop trying to enlighten them. Just leave them alone to be whatever nature, their own strengths and their own weaknesses, intended them to be.

The people of Kenya are human beings. They do not deserve the fate that awaits them if chaos takes hold in Kenya.

UPDATE: 9:00pm EST

Kenyan Pundit is reporting that things are looking grim in the Burnt Forest

From a KP reader:

“Approximately 40-50K people are holded up at the compounds of ST. PATRICKS CATHOLIC CHURCH and ARNESENS HIGH SCHOOLl, both in Burnt Forest. There is no running water, food and ELECTRICITY has been cut. THIS MEANS THAT PEOPLE CANNOT RECHARGE THIER CELL PHONES and soon we’ll not be able to contact them. Also, due to the chaos/anarchy in these compounds, means that people, especially women are not any safer than if they were out in the chaos. There has been reports of rapes and molestations. I’ve also heard that the Eldoret highway has been closed by thugs an d that there is no transportion, hence people cannot leave this area. My family in that area feels very helpless and we can only ask that we spread the world and try and get some security in the area.”

Meanwhile Samuel Kivuitu, the chairman of the Election Commission that certified the results admitted that he acted under pressure.

“Some PNU (Party of National Unity) and ODM-Kenya leaders put me under pressure by calling me frequently, asking me to announce the results immediately,” (Kivuitu said)

I should make it clear that there is a difference between taking to the streets to fight for democracy – and ethnic clashes which advance no political agenda. The latter is happening in Kenya, and the only “winners” of the genocide that is looming will be hyenas and vultures.

Originally posted at Dean’s World here.

Last week scientists met to discuss the eradication of Malaria. This comes just after the appearance of two articles in popular science magazines New Scientist and Scientific American.

How the World Left Malaria Off the Hook, by Fred Pearce documents the failure of the world community to stop the malarial parasite during the 1950s and 1960s. He attributes the failure to a combination of aid cuts by the US congress, overconfidence over the control of the disease and its vectors, and the demonization of DDT by environmentalist groups. Pearce notes, "environmentalists were as determined to ban DDT as doctors had once been to banish malaria. In 2001, the pesticide appeared on a list of 12
toxic industrial chemicals that were to be banned worldwide under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants." Fears that DDT would breed resistance were unfounded because DDT not only killed mosquitoes, it repelled them. "Roberts has also now shown that DDT is uniquely effective in banishing malaria not because it kills mosquitoes but because it repels them. He published these findings in August this year – but notes that the observations were first made in 1953 by the entomologist Robert Muirhead-Thomson. (link)"

Jeffrey Sachs takes a more political correct view of malaria, writing DDT’s "function as an insecticide in open fields (which is environmentally
unsafe and promotes resistance) also curtailed use of the chemical," while ignoring the fact that countries banned the pesticide and refused to fund its use at all in the developing world.

His solution? Free bed nets and cheap drugs. While both are part of the solution, cheap drugs such as chloroquine have been in use for decades. The result? Most malaria parasites have some degree of chloroquine resistance. While artemisinin therapy is relatively cheap, there is already concern about the development of resistance to the wormwood-based drug, so the WHO and CDC recommend its usage in combination with other anti-malarials in order to minimize resistance.

Treatment is $1/day – which doesn’t sound like much until you realize that in many regions that’s a day’s pay for a worker. However treatment consists of six doses – so that’s six days of wages for one person. If the average worker is supporting 4 people, chances are that one of them will be sick with malaria at any given time – so that theoretically leaves the worker broke after paying for malarial treatments. Jeffrey Sachs is an economist. He should have known better.

Here’s another problem. Have you ever slept under a bed net in the tropics? The holes are tiny but effective at keeping out any breeze, thereby making sleep under one uncomfortable. Since the mosquitoes that carry malaria are most active at night, insecticide-treated bed nets have been proven to significantly reduce morbidity in children. They are an important part of the fight against malaria, but they are only one weapon in an arsenal that we must deploy against a disease that kills 1,000,000 children a year and sickens as much as a tenth of the world’s population.

In Tanzania, people are extremely social and tend to meet and congregate outside at night. Burning mosquito coils and citronella candles as well as wearing repellents and protective clothing would go a long way to cutting down the incidence of malaria. Other weapons include environment management strategies that seek to change the conditions the mosquito needs in order to pass along the malaria parasite. These strategies involve the local people organizing to removing weeds from irrigation canals and clean up debris that could fill with water and provide mosquitoes places to breed: "In Kampala, brick pits, tire ruts and puddles were the predominant
sites favored by the major malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae s.l.." In Malawi, a Habitat for Humanity project where mud and thatched roof huts were replaced with houses made from brick and tile not only cut the incidence of malaria, but also respiratory illness and diarrhea in children. A study conducted jointly by Boston and Harvard Universities in conjunction with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and Ethiopian Institute for Agricultural Resources found that changes in the maize cultivation practices can control the mosquito population based on the discovery that mosquito larvae prosper on maize pollen.

All of these grassroots efforts involve the local people actively participating in their own protection instead of passively relying upon aid from the national government or international relief organizations. Because the locals are involved in their own security, they are much more likely to continue these practices after the aid money and has dried up and the attention of the international community has shifted elsewhere.

A vaccine is the Holy Grail for those fighting malaria. Currently the best candidate is RTS.S, a vaccine funded by GlaxoSmithKline and the Gates Foundation’s Malaria Vaccine Initiative. While this vaccine is only 50% effective for children under the age of 18 months, it is the first vaccine to show any significant promise at fighting the disease. As GSK CEO JP Garnier points out in an article in The Times of London, the task is complicated by the disease’s multi-stage life cycle as well as its endemicity in regions with few medical resources and riven with linguistic and religious divides.

There is a lot of finger pointing at the environmental movement and Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring that became its manifesto for succeeding in banning DDT, but Carson herself cannot be blamed for the DDT bans since she was not calling for a ban on its use in the fight against malaria, only on its use as a general pesticide for crops. While environmental groups have a responsibility to recognize their hand in the resurgence of malaria from the brink of eradication, and those who continue to call for the ban without scientific evidence to back up their claims should be held accountable for their positions, we must recognize that malaria is not really a single problem that will fall to a single solution. Instead, like cancer, it is a complex system that will only fall to a systematic and thorough approach involving all of the resources at our disposal.

Bed nets. DDT. Cheap Drugs. Grassroots efforts. A vaccine. All of these weapons and more must be brought to bear against a disease that kills a child every 30 seconds. To that end I am pleased to see Bill Gates take a personal interest in this fight. I’ll remember that the next time Windows blue-screens on me.

Thanks, Bill!

This is a rough draft of various videos shot on a 2 megapixel camera. I’ve added a soundtrack by one of my favorite soukous stars, Koffi Olomide to make it palatable. I haven’t edited it, so it’s not pro. However if you’ve never been to Tanzania, it should give you a feel for the nation that I can’t help but love.