For
the past few hundred years Africa had to face an onslaught, which can be
traced separately from the HI virus. The parceling out of African
territories to Colonial governments and the ensuing damage to
traditional economies followed by bitter decades of war.
The
displacement of huge quantities of people resulted in economies and food
production systems being wrecked, and even till today a diagonal line
can be drawn across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean on Angola's southern
border to Sudan's border on the Red Sea. Not even taking into account
wars elsewhere on the continent or natural disasters such as drought and
floods
Ex Zimbabwean minister
of health, Timothy Stamps said in a BBC interview in 1998, that without
a doubt the South African apartheid agents had inoculated the Zimbabwean
people with diseases such as Anthrax, Ebola and the Bubonic Plague
during the liberation war in the 70"s.
In South Africa Wouter
Basson faced charges that he headed the apartheid regimes biological
warfare and one of his objectives was to inoculate blacks with poisons
to reduce their birthrate. South Africa is unique in that social and
economic damage was politically driven without waging a full scale war.
In South Africa
millions of so called black and colored were forcibly removed from their
land and treated as third class citizens in their own country. Education
received by the oppressed people was designed in such a way as to
prevent them from ever empowering themselves or to compete against
"white" counterparts in the local job markets. Special
homelands were created so as to isolate blacks from the mainstream of
the economy.
The "white"
minority government during this time incurred huge debts to fund the
monstrosities they committed against the black people of South
Africa. This triggered massive defiance campaigns by all opposing
political movements against the Apartheid regime, spearheaded by the
ANC. When the country headed for total disaster, they released Mr.
Nelson Mandela unconditionally and started negotiating a new South
Africa, which led to democratic elections in 1994, the first in the
history of South Africa.
All over Africa,
poverty is a common denominator and it is not surprising that peoples
immune systems have been damaged. WHO (World Health Organization)
classes malnutrition as the number one killer on the African continent,
poverty being the primary factor for AIDS.
In 1998 the report by
WHO lists HIV, 8th on the killer list.
Next: