IN THE LAND OF DIAMONDS, BOTSWANA’S RULING PARTY’S SPARKLE DIMS
Oct. 27 (GIN)—The ruling Botswana Democratic Party won a majority of seats in parliamentary elections this past week, ensuring a second five-year term for President Ian Khama, whose party has ruled Botswana since independence from Britain 48 years ago.
But the victory was hard-won. The recently united opposition coalition has eaten away at the number of seats held by Khama’s majority party. Of 57 seats up for grabs, the ruling party won 33, the Umbrella for Democratic Change took 14 and the Botswana Congress party nabbed two.
“I am thrilled to be part of this epic moment,” said Duma Boko, presidential candidate of the three-party UDC alliance after casting his vote. Friday’s poll saw a high turnout of the 800,000 registered voters.
Khama, 61, a retired army general, is an ascetic and increasingly authoritarian figure with an undisguised dislike of journalists and a callous disregard for the Kalahari Bushmen, or “San,” who, he says, have an “extinct” and backward way of life.
Of their ancestral homelands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, he said, “Look, this is a game reserve. The whole purpose of a game reserve is to protect and conserve the flora and fauna.
“Just because they have had this way of life for many years, and continue living a very extinct form of life, a very backward form of life, denying them and especially their children opportunities to grow with the mainstream of our citizens, they have to be moved into the modern way of doing things. Give them livelihoods which will allow them and their children to live better lives.”
A landlocked, southern African country of two million people, Botswana is the world’s largest rough diamond producer by value, with production of 23.2 million carats valued at $3.6 billion in 2013, according to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. De Beers, Lucara Diamond Corp. and Gem Diamonds are among the companies with operations in the country.
Diamond sales funded generous social programs over the years, such as old-age benefits and monthly food rations to all destitute residents.
Young people receive 10 years of basic education, following which they can choose one the seven technical colleges in the country, or take vocational courses in teaching or nursing. The best students enroll in the University of Botswana, Botswana College of Agriculture and the Botswana Accountancy College in Gaborone.
The Botswana International University of Science and Technology began accepting students in 2011.
Efforts to diversify the economy—bringing in value-added jobs beyond mining—were championed by the minister of Mines, Energy and Water Resources, Onkokame Kitso Makaila.
Those efforts paid off in the relocation of sorting and sales by De Beers from London to Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, in the direct sales by state-owned Okavango Diamond Company and in an increase in auxiliary services, such as brokers, banks, shipping companies and grading laboratories that have set up shop in Gaborone.
Makaila, however, failed to hold on to his seat in the recent election, losing his constituency by 611 votes. The appointment of a new minister is pending.
‘WE DON’T NEED AN EBOLA CZAR’ INSISTS FAMED COLUMBIA PROF
Oct. 27 (GIN)—With media stoking fears of a spreading Ebola crisis, medical professionals and other experts have been taking pains to keep cool heads above the super-heated news frenzy.
They forced a retreat this week on plans by governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie of New York and New Jersey, respectively, who threatened to quarantine all arrivals from the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea for 21 days. A quarantined nurse with no symptoms, held at University Hospital in Newark, N.J., was released after she threatened to sue the state.
Speaking today on the DemocracyNow news show, the director of the noted Earth Institute, Jeffrey Sachs, discussed his recent article “We Don’t Need an Ebola Czar.”
“President Obama should be backing up his real Ebola leader, Tom Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, rather than appointing somebody who obviously lacks the necessary knowledge and experience to head an Ebola effort. This was politics.”
He added that Obama’s hand appeared to be forced by what he called “a disgraceful show in Congress, when congressmen who had been cutting the CDC budget for years, then went after Frieden, who is one of the world’s most experienced leaders in public health.”
He said,“Rather than asking, ‘What can we do for you, Dr. Frieden, to help ensure a quality U.S. effort?’ they started making accusations.”
Sachs commented on a report from Jubilee USA, an alliance of faith-based and social-justice groups, to the effect that Guinea now spends more repaying foreign debt that it spends on public health. Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, said the group, spend together nearly $200 million a year on debt.
In 2010, they group observed, the U.S. passed a law supporting debt relief for Haiti after the earthquake. What about doing the same thing for these countries?
Sachs recalled his own frustrated efforts to raise funds for community health workers in Liberia, before the Ebola epidemic had started. “The answer from all of the international agencies is, ‘There’s no money here, and Liberia is not much of a priority. Come back in the next funding cycle.’”
Nancy Kass, professor of bioethics and public health at Johns Hopkins University, said, “Clearly, we need people on the ground,” especially people providing direct care in the treatment centers to sick patients. She expressed dismay that the 3,000 volunteers promised by the Department of Defense had not yet arrived.
She noted that the Democratic Republic of Congo recently sent 1,000 health workers to Liberia. “Obviously, Congo has experience with Ebola from past outbreaks, and they were willing to send health care workers there,” she remarked.
The Pentagon announced that a new commander has taken over the U.S. military mission to fight Ebola in West Africa,. The troops, who arrived in Liberia 38 days ago, have put up two new laboratories and a 25-bed hospital, which should be operational in the capital Monrovia by November.
SOUTH AFRICA REJECTS LIGHT SENTENCE FOR ‘BLADE RUNNER’ AND PREPARES APPEAL
Oct. 27 (GIN)—South African prosecutors announced plans this week to appeal the conviction and sentence given to athlete Oscar Pistorius for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in what was ruled “culpable homicide.”
Judge Thokozile Masipa also disappointed close watchers of the trial when she gave the Olympian runner a three-year suspended sentence for discharging a firearm in a restaurant.
Pistorius was taken to jail last week to begin serving a five-year prison sentence on the homicide charge, but observers say he could be out in 10 months.
“The prosecutors are now preparing the necessary papers in order to be able to file within the next few days,” said Nathi Mncube of the National Prosecuting Authority.
Ms. Steenkamp’s mother, June, would not say whether the family would support a state appeal.
“All we have ever said is that we want to know the truth,” she told the Times newspaper. “We owe it to Reeva.” She was interviewed ahead of the publication next month of her book, “Reeva: A Mother’s Story.”
In the book she describes her daughter’s boyfriend as “pathetic,” “moody,” “gun-toting” and “possessive,” and she rejects his version of events.
South Africans were further shaken by the murder this past week of a beloved soccer star, Senzo Meyiwa, shot while protecting his girlfriend when burglars broke into her house demanding valuables and mobile phones.
Meyiwa, called “one of the best goalkeepers in Africa,” began playing for a Johannesburg club (the Orlando Pirates) before rising to captain in September of this year.
It was seven years ago this month that renowned reggae singer Lucky Dube was killed in a robbery. Crime happens all over the world, but the question in the minds of many South Africans is why is violence in South Africa is so gratuitous? Between April 2013 and March 2014, more than 17,000 people were murdered in South Africa, an increase of approximately 5% over the previous year, according to police figures.
