Trouble in Paradise

The southern African island nation of Madagascar has been gripped by a violent political crisis, which has caused at least 135 deaths since a dispute over poverty and democratic reform broke out in late January.

Hundreds of protestors at Antananarivo where many people lost their relatives (Photograph courtesy of Jerome Delay)

Violence broke out on 29 January when opposition leader Andry Rajoelina, the former mayor of Antananarivo, called a demonstration to protest against the government's closure of a private radio station, which had been campaigning for democratic reform.  He accused Madagascar’s President Marc Ravalomanana of being a corrupt tyrant.

Rajoelina, a 34-year-old one-time disc jockey, galvanised widespread anger over the president's failure to alleviate poverty. The president resigned and handed over power to the military.

Madagascar, which has a population of 20 million and is the world's biggest vanilla producer, has been the scene of increasing violence in recent weeks.

This should have been a landmark year for the island nation, with London-based Rio Tinto starting production from a vast project around the southern town of Fort Dauphin in January.

Yet more than 130 people have died in clashes with the security forces. Weeks of turmoil and street protests have brought US$400 million-a-year tourism industry to a grinding halt and worried investors in the important mining and oil exploration sectors. The country has large reserves of mineral sands, including ilmenite, a titanium oxide prized by the plastics industry.

The fourth largest island on the planet also boasts a unique biosphere with flora and animals not found anywhere else in the world.   But with its natural assets overshadowed by instability, Madagascar has become the latest example of how poverty and a lack of participatory governance can derail a nation’s path to prosperity. Meanwhile, the majority of Madagascans remain trapped in a subsistence existence despite nature's bounty.

Sources: allafrica.com, telegraph.uk, IRINNews

Partner Links: Plate forme Nationale des Organizations de la Société Civile de Madagascar

The lack of a coherently organized civil society that has the ability to engage with policy makers on issues of poverty reduction in Madagascar is seen as a major root cause of the problems in the country.

The Southern Africa Trust began supporting a broad-based coalition of civil society organisations in Madagascar in November 2008, with a grant of US$100.000 to strengthen their coordination at a national level, especially to engage in developing and implementing effective poverty reduction strategies. The funds are being used to strengthen civil society participation in the policy development, implementation, and monitoring structures of the Madagascar Action Plan (MAP), which is the country's new poverty reduction strategy.

The project will allow the voices of the poor to be considered in policy development in Madagascar. It will also increase the knowledge base, coordination, and visibility of civil society organisations in poverty reduction.

In the current situation in Madagascar, it seems that this kind of support given by the Southern Africa Trust is urgently needed. “This platform is proving to be an important forum for civil society organisations to develop and communicate not only a response to the current crisis issues, but to the underlying poverty-related causes of the crisis” said Ashley Green-Thomson, the Southern Africa Trust's Grants Manager.

Organised civil society engagement in policy making can lead to a poverty free Madagascar (Photograph courtesy of Jerome Delay)

Change4ever already makes a difference!

R16,000 for Zimbabwe cholera crisis

Concerned South Africans in solidarity with their sisters and brothers in Zimbabwe (Photograph courtesy of The Grail Centre Trust)

Following a request from the Catholic Welfare & Development (CWD), the Mail & Guardian and Change4ever ran a cholera appeal in December 2008 and raised R8 067 to buy Jik to purify water in response to the cholera crisis in Zimbabwe.

The Mail and Guardian highlighted the crisis in their17 December edition, when they visited the Musina show-grounds where Zimbabweans fleeing the cholera outbreak and crisis-torn Zimbabwe were staying, as they waited for asylum status

More than 500 men, women and children had no food, no shelter, no relief from the scorching sun and only on bits of cardboard to sleep on. Although local churches and welfare groups were trying to help, there was not enough food to go around. The men in particular, went without food (sometimes for days at a time), so that the women and children were fed.

The Change4ever campaign matched the donations from Mail & Guardian readers, with a further R8,000 raised from the campaign’s activities last year, bringing the total to R16 067, which was donated to CWD in January.

Go to: http://www.southernafricatrust.org/docs/The long wait for help.pdf

School shoes for vulnerable children

Change4ever joined in Metro FM’s school shoes campaign in January and donated R11,680 to buy school shoes for 144 under-privileged children. The Southern Africa Trust staff personally donated R1,600 to this cause.

Listeners to Metro FM were encouraged to buy school-shoes from Bata at a discounted price of R90 per pair with a goal of providing 9,000 pairs of school shoes to children in need.

Lupi's School Shoes are the Railway to Life’ campaign aimed to distribute 9,000 pairs of shoes among needy schoolchildren in South Africa’s nine provinces. But following an intensive cross-media campaign, a grand total of 8,600 pairs of shoes had already been collected by the end of January.

Lupi, the producer of Thomas Msengana's Metro FM Breakfast Show, said, “We may be enduring tough economic times, but South Africans have proved that they are more than willing to open their hearts and their wallets for a worthy cause.”

Photograph: Lupi Ncayisa, Metro FM (Photograph courtesy of Metro FM)

SA's parliament talks change4ever

9 February 2009 was a defining moment for the change4ever campaign, when South Africa’s deputy president Ms Baleka Mbete, endorsed the change4ever campaign during her response to the president’s state of the nation address.

Speaking to a packed parliament, the deputy president said, “The Southern Africa Trust, an NGO that promotes regional policy dialogue on poverty issues, has posted a question on its website, which is: If you could change one thing forever, what would it be?

“Lorna Maseko, SABC TV Producer and Presenter, gave an answer that speaks to the core of the philosophy of the kind of a nation that we have been working so hard to build:

“If I could change one thing forever, I would start with me and then the community around me. So many times we want to change the world and it just takes a look around - people in our immediate surroundings need the help that we could offer without having to travel miles away”.

“Many South Africans – across race, religion, regions, gender and class – share and practice this attitude.”

She went on to suggest that negative critics, “Should listen to the words of Lira (a change4ever Ambassador) – our songbird – in her response:

“If I could change one thing forever I would change the way that we as South Africans see ourselves and our country. We never celebrate the great things about ourselves. We are so easily willing to put emphasis on the negative. Have you looked around and realised what great people we are? We thrive under difficult situations, we are forgiving and innovative. I say we start celebrating who we are!”

View the Deputy President's full speech on http://www.change4ever.org

Thomas says “change4ever”!

The school needs help to secure the school from vandals, vagrants and criminals, who are posing a threat to the safety of the children during school hours and to the school’s premises and equipment.

90% of the 950 Yeoville Community School pupils come from disadvantaged families who cannot afford the school fees. The school was formed to accommodate children of returnees who were exiled during the apartheid years but with the deterioration of the area, the school’s fence has been destroyed and the playground is unsafe for both the pupils and teachers.

The Family Fun Day, jointly supported by the Gauteng Youth Commission, aims to raise R200,000 to build a palisade fence around the school.

Thomas says, “Providing a learning environment that is secure, is paramount in building future leaders of this country. They need a learning environment that will instill a sense of confidence, self achievement, exposure, aspiration as well as a sense of hope.”

The open-to-all fun day will have loads of entertainment, with music by South Africa’s popular DJ’s (Andy & Jahseed, Milkshake, Naked and Fistaz) and a live performance by hip-hop group Jozi.

There will be knock-out competitions for cricket, soccer basketball and netball for U16, U25 and Open teams. Amazing prizes for winning teams are up for grabs.

Listen to Metro FM and Khaya FM for more details or contact Carolina or Mpho at the Southern Africa Trust on +27 11 318 1012 for more information.

Drivers of Change 2009 nominations open

The Basic Needs Basket is an innovative monthly survey of how much it costs a family of six for it basic food and other essentials, compared against an average family income. Over the years, the independent survey done by ordinary people in districts throughout Zambia has shaped how the national budget is interpreted. It's become a major tool for ordinary people to talk to policymakers about national priorities to overcome poverty. And it's now being used in parts of Malawi, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria

The Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Zambia was named the 2008 Driver of Change in the civil society category for coming up with this innovative way of influencing policies to end poverty.

Nominations for the 2009 Drivers of Change Awards are now open. Nominate innovators and you will raise up a deserving individual, organisation, government agency, or business as a leader in innovation to overcome poverty in southern Africa. This includes you!

Entries close on 10 July 2009. The winners will be announced on 29 October 2009 at a gala event in Johannesburg. Please contact Sudley Adams at Mail & Guardian on +27 11 250 7300 or +27 82 900 0776 or go to www.southernafricatrust.org for more details and entry forms.

$224,813 to increase food production

With food prices still at worryingly high levels globally, there is increasing understanding amongst consumers, governments and agricultural organisations that the world needs to produce more food and reduce high agricultural input costs.

The recent food crisis, together with other social and political issues, has exacerbated food insecurity and threatened the livelihoods of poor people in the region. In Southern Africa, most people depend on agriculture for a living. Despite availability of arable soils and water resources in some parts, the region still imports a lot of food and gets food aid.

The agricultural sector is in decline, for a variety of reasons. The response must be to find innovative solutions in agricultural food production and marketing, which are relevant and adaptable to the realities of the region.

Studies show that investment in community-based initiatives targeting smallholder famers typically result in a greater impact on economic growth and poverty reduction, taken together with other investments.

The Southern Africa Trust, therefore, invited community based groups and small scale famers to submit proposals on innovative practices in agricultural food production. The intention was to find local innovation and provide a small grant of no more than $20,000 to use it to generate new policy interventions, and where appropriate to scale up in other areas.

Grants were awarded to twelve organisations in eight countries (Botswana, Tanzania, Mauritius, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, South Africa), totalling US$224,813.

Some of the innovations lie in domesticating wild plants for domestic consumption to boost nutrition and developing organic methods of farming that provide greater yield with less dependence on expensive chemical inputs.

Other projects will look at:

• Innovative food preservation methods
• Teaching food production techniques suitable for visually impaired people
• Alternative crop production and cross breeding programmes to increase dairy production.
• New gardening and crop planting techniques that reduce dependence on water, fertilisers and other inputs.

The Southern Africa Trust will work closely with these organisations to develop new learning in food production, and to support these small scale farmers in their work.

Upcoming Events March–May 2009

Who we are and what we do

Meet the team

Carolina Julai
Project Officer: Events

Carolina Julai has a background in development both at the national and regional levels, having worked with international organisations such as Oxfam, Goal-Irish, and InWEnt (the international capacity building agency of the German Development Service) in Mozambique and the Southern African Regional Poverty Network (SARPN). She is currently studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree in development studies with UNISA.

Chic, people-person Carolina speaks 11 languages and has a gift for interior design. Hailing from Mozambique, she is a talented chef, particularly with seafood dishes and says her favourite place in the world is anyplace that has a beach! She keeps in shape through daily sessions of aerobics, Tai-Bo and Walk for Life. Her favourite writer is Paulo Coelho, the best-selling Brazilian author of ‘The Alchemist’.

Southern Africa Trust contact details

4 Midridge North, International Business Gateway, 6th Road (off New Road), Midrand, South Africa

T: +27 11 318 1012 
F: +27 11 318 0814 
E: info@southernafricatrust.org  
W: www.southernafricatrust.org

The Southern Africa Trust appreciates the support it has received from:
 

Trustees: Dr Vusi Gumede (SA), Mr Denis Kadima (DRC),  Rev Joseph Komakoma (Zambia), Dr Perks Ligoya (Malawi), Dr Reginald Matchaba-Hove (Zimbabwe), Ms Alice Mogwe (Botswana), Ms Paula Monjane (Mozambique), Ms Shirley Moulder (SA), Ms Lucy Muyoyeta (Zambia), Ms Riah Phiyega (SA), Dr Prakash Ratilal (Mozambique)

 

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