In this issue:

Deputy Foreign Minister Says South Africa Will 'Not Cower' Over Iraq

20-Member COMESA Seeks Blanket License for Producing AIDS Drugs

Land Seizures Reportedly Ended in Zimbabwe

From Volume1, Issue Number 39 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Dec. 2, 2002
AFRICA NEWS DIGEST

Deputy Foreign Minister Says South Africa Will 'Not Cower' Over Iraq

The Cape Argus newspaper of Cape Town, South Africa reported Nov. 28 that Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad made a strong response to criticism that has plagued the Foreign Affairs Department since Pahad returned from the highly successful international trade fair in Baghdad last month. Anglo-American forces pushing the Iraq war are unhappy that a number of nations are viewing normal relations with Iraq as a pathway for reaching a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis, through cooperation with the United Nations, and ultimate lifting of sanctions.

The row about Pahad, and by extension South Africa, "hobnobbing" with Iraq followed reports that he had personally delivered a letter from President Thabo Mbeki to Saddam Hussein, and that the Iraqi President then orally invited Mbeki to Baghdad. Joe Seremane, deputy leader of the British-spawned Democratic Alliance in South Africa, is trying to preempt a possible visit to Iraq by Mbeki, insisting that this would "damage U.S.-South Africa relations," and would jeopardize the benefits achieved from the United States' Africa Growth and Opportunity Act.

Pahad responded last week that the government would not cower under pressure from people who want to "control us" externally, "who do not trust the ability of black people and black institutions to do the right things." He continued: "We are adjudged guilty by association (with Iraq). What most fail to realize is that we have relations with all countries in the world. And if the same principle (of guilty by association) is applied fairly, we will then have no relations with anyone. It's nonsense!" Pahad made clear that South Africa had not yet received the "official written invitation" from the Iraqi side, and that once that is received, his Department "will look at the facts and the purpose of the visit. If we believe that the President's visit would be of benefit to world peace or to South Africa, we will advise him to go."

20-Member COMESA Seeks Blanket License for Producing AIDS Drugs

The Secretary General of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Erastus Mwencha, told Reuters in a Lusaka interview, "We have applied for licensing from the WTO [World Trade Organization] to allow us to manufacture AIDS drugs, and we would like to see this happening by December" 2002, according to a Reuters wire Nov. 15. COMESA has 20 member countries from Egypt to Madagascar, representing a population of 380 million.

Mwencha said AIDS is strangling trade and development across Africa because it is killing the continent's most qualified and economically active people. "The West argues that they must make profits, but our argument is that drugs must be cheaper, as we cannot continue to see people dying for the sake of profits," he said.

COMESA made its request to WTO while trade ministers met in Sydney, Australia, to discuss a plan for the WTO which, in Reuters' words, "would allow poor countries to manufacture generic copies of drugs that are protected by intellectual property rights in developed countries."

In a series of EIR articles from 2001 on the African and Third World fight against the World Trade Organization, which was protecting pharmaceutical giants under "intellectual property" laws, EIR reported:

"The right to purchase medications at affordable prices, and more importantly, to produce their own medicines for treating AIDS and other deadly diseases, is a national security issue for the Third World, especially the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 3 million adults and children who died due to HIV/AIDS during 2000, 2.4 million were in sub-Saharan Africa, a rate of death of 9.48%, which is far higher than other areas. And, due to the unaffordable prices of pharmaceuticals, only 10,000 patients out of the 25.3 million diagnosed with AIDS in Africa are being treated with life-prolonging drugs.

"Africa is dying. There is a combined death rate, in sub-Saharan Africa, from AIDS-TB-malaria, of about 5 million people per year. This is very high mortality, relatively, for all three linked diseases. It's over eight-tenths of one percent of the population, annual mortality from these alone. That is 9% of all deaths in the world annually, from all causes, accounted for by these three diseases alone."

In April 2001, EIR reported that 39 pharmaceutical companies, "Facing a rising surge of resistance from representatives of millions of AIDS victims," had "dropped their case against the South African government to block imports of cheaper AIDS drugs." The pharmaceuticals, led by the U.S.-British-European-based multinationals, had put their money and muscle together to sue South Africa in order to block a 1998 law "that would allow the country to ignore patents, and either import or manufacture generic drugs, under specific circumstances, to protect public health." The law applied to other medications beyond the AIDS drugs.

But the pharmaceuticals and WTO still denied the right of Third World countries to produce their own drugs for AIDS. The multinationals drastically cut prices in order to circumvent the issue. Now, the COMESA move at WTO again puts this challenge on the agenda, in a situation in which AIDS/HIV cases are increasing beyond any projections from earlier surveys in Africa, and spreading massively in Asia.

Land Seizures Reportedly Ended in Zimbabwe

After a ministerial-level meeting of the South Africa-Zimbabwe Joint Commission on Cultural, Technical and Scientific Cooperation, a South African official told IRIN News Nov. 12 that the Zimbabwe delegation led by Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge, gave "certain assurances" that land seizures had ended.

"They said there would be no more land acquisitions either by war veterans or anyone else," said the unnamed official, according to IRIN. The Joint Commission last met in 1996.

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