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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER 28, 1984
to attain it. [Kwame Nkrumah's most famous dictum incidentally,
was "seek ye first the political kingdom." ]
In his December 17 dispatch, correspondent Powers wrote, this time, from
Dayes, Mali:
Why is Africa going hungry? The reason in almost every case••• is
government•••• A common denominator in African food policy is to
.512 for the political expedient, the guick fix: The first concern
of most African governments is to provide cheap food for the
growing number of urban dwellers who can topple a government at
times of extreme dissatisfaction. Official price ceilings on
foodstuffs have worked to drive farmers out of business by fail
ing to provide them with a reasonable return--or any return--on
the food they produce. Over time, farmers respond by producing
only enough for their families•••.
In 60 per cent of the nations in sub-Saharan Africa, the govern
ment has a monopoly on the distribution of fertilizer and
seeds•••• These government agencies are•••frequently out of tune
with the needs of the people they are supposed to serve. One
month before planting time, farmers may find that no� in the
government has remembered to order fertilizer.
Across the continent, governments have failed to develop or en
force conservation policies. In Rwanda, trees� being cut 10
times faster than they are being replaced; in Kenya, five times
faster. The vanishing forest cover exacerbates soil erosion and
water supply problems. When rain does come to Africa, it usually
comes with force. With nothing to hold it back, it floods into
rivers, carrying topsoil with it, leaving the land and the people
on it ever more vulnerable to drought and famine.
Author Powers does not deal with two other major impediments to food pro
duction--tribal tradition and the approach to life of the various peoples.
In BLOOD RIVER, one of the best histories of South Africa ever written (pub
lished in 1982), author Barbara Villet recounts the story of an Orange Free
State farmer, Jaap de Villiers, -who is boss to some 300 Sotho and Zulu
farmhands. Said the Afrikaner farmer:
A few years ago, there was a famine in Lesotho. We sent up a
tractor and a team to show them how to improve their yields. We
planted their mealies [corn] and harvested their crop and then
left them the tractor to do the same next year. Well, when we
went back the next year, they'd done nothing. They told us they
still had enough from the previous year and didn't need to plow
and plant.
From Monrovia, Liberia, Powers wrote this in the December 18 issue of the
TIMES:
Political stability remains an elusive goal.••• Power changes
hands only by force. In 25 years, only two African presidents,
Leopold Senghor of Senegal and Arnadou Ahid jo of Cameroon, have
retired peacefully••.•