(R)iot police officers brandishing batons charged into a group of 100 doctors and nurses on Wednesday in Harare, the capital, breaking up a demonstration for better pay and working conditions in a nation suffering from both the cholera outbreak and an economy in free fall.
Since August, cholera deaths have risen to 565, according to the United Nations. More than 12,500 people are infected, and to make matters worse, in Harare water itself has become scarce as a dysfunctional government lacks the chemicals to purify the drinking supply. Many businesses have shut because of the sanitation problems.
Another exquisite example of a denial and breakdown in politics inevitably manifesting itself in the public health.
JOHANNESBURG — Miriam Makeba, the South African singer who wooed the world with her sultry voice but was banned from her own country for 30 years under apartheid, died after a concert in Italy. She was 76.
In her dazzling career, Makeba performed with musical legends from around the world — jazz maestros Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon — and sang for world leaders such as John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela.
She was also the first African woman to win a Grammy award.
The Pineta Grande clinic in Castel Volturno, near the southern city of Naples, said Makeba died of a heart attack early Monday.
Town Mayor Francesco Nuzzo said Makeba collapsed late Sunday at the end of a concert against organized crime, which has been blamed for the local massacre in September of six immigrants from Ghana.
Makeba had not looked well as she visited an immigrant aid centre in Castel Volturno early Sunday afternoon, the mayor said.
The death of “Mama Africa,” as she was known, plunged South Africa into shock and mourning.
“One of the greatest songstresses of our time has ceased to sing,” Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said in a statement.
“Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid and colonialism through the art of song.”
Makeba wrote in her 1987 memoirs that friends and relatives who first encouraged her to perform compared her voice to that of a nightingale. With her distinctive style combining jazz with folk with South African township rhythms, she was often called “The Empress of African Song.”
She first started singing in Sophiatown, a cosmopolitan neighbourhood of Johannesburg that was a cultural hot spot in the 1950s before its black residents were forcibly removed by the apartheid government.
“I never understood why I couldn’t come home,” Ms. Makeba said upon her return at an emotional homecoming in Johannesburg in 1990 as the apartheid system began to crumble, according to The Associated Press. “I never committed any crime.”
Ms. Makeba wrote in 1987: “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realizing.”
Just in case anyone was wondering what was up on this score , this is a fascinating issue we hope to examine more closely over time, but for now: an overview:
Back in January in his state of the nation address to Zambian Parliament President Levy Mwanawasa facing much public and political pressure 'announced the cancellation of of all tax concessions for copper mining companies operating in Zambia' and stated that the government had decided to 'introduce a new fiscal and regulatory regime in order to bring about equitable distribution of the mineral wealth'.
The 'new fiscal regime' as it came to be known 'introduced a variable profit tax at 15% on taxable income above 8% and raised corporrate income tax to 30% from 25% in a move that will effectively raise mining taxes to 47 percent from the previous 31.7%, and increased royalties on sales from 0.6% to 3%.'. The changes in the Mines and Mineral Act were made and passed in late March.
Copper accounts for 70% of Zambia's export income and all companies were due to make record profits this year, as production in the mines has been steadily climbing since the once state owned mines began to be privatized beginning in 1999. Copper prices which were as low as 65 cents a pound U.S. in 2001 and appeared to close today at 3.30 (UK) (according to the London Metals Exchange - you can do the math) Or about 1600 dollars (US) a tonne in the early 2000s, to about about 7200 dollars (US) earlier this year.
The government and people of Zambia, and mining companies operating in the country, are facing a dilemma which is increasingly faced by many countries with significant mineral or hydrocarbon resources: against a backdrop of a sustained boom in the price of commodities such as copper, how can one ensure that all of the people of Zambia can share in this boom, whilst at the same time maintaining a climate attractive enough to the investors which have contributed to that boom?
In Zambia it is a dilemma which surrounded by significant history and tensions between various groups. It is clear that at the time of the privatization of the state-owed Zambian Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) in the late-1990s that the sector was suffering from low copper prices and sustained under-investment. As a result the sector was in severe decline and was a significant financial burden on the Government of Zambia. Those companies which then bought into the sector were more than often able to negotiate attractive terms from a government which was in a weak position. The negotiation of these mine development agreements remains today a controversial process, which many stakeholders perceive as having been opaque.
Today’s tensions subsequently are focused on three key areas:
A doubling of Zambian copper production and a quadrupling of copper prices over the past 7-8 years combined with a favorable outlook for the sector has not resulted in significant revenues for Zambia’s Government. However, it is expected that the mining companies in Zambia have either started to pay corporate income taxes or will be doing so shortly.
The terms of mine development agreements negotiated at a time of stagnation in copper prices are very favorable to investors, particularly in the light of the changed outlook for the sector, globally as well as domestically.
But at the same time Government has not been able to fill the gap in the provision of key infrastructure and social services which were previously maintained by ZCCM.
It is the interplay of these factors which leads to the question with which this report opens, i.e. how to develop a more equitable balance between the development needs of the Zambian people and an investment climate which encourages mining companies to continue to invest and create wealth.
(boldness mine)
There was a time when those Developmental Agreements referred to above were "guarded secrets" between the government of Zambia and the companies involved - but now, thanks to Alastair Fraser's excellent MineWatchZambia website some of them at least, can be viewed - here.
And now, in recent developments, President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa died in France on August 18 following complications from a stroke - and the country has now been plunged into the constitutionally mandated process of picking a new President expected to culminate some time in November. It will be interesting as this issue was probably the most significant during the last Presidential election in 2006, but that should (or at least could) be different this time as "Standard Chartered" (via Zambian Economist) points out in this analysis:
While the opposition deliberately played on voter discontent with Zambia’s share of the copper windfall in the previous election, making strong gains on the copperbelt and in other urban constituencies as a result, the MMD government has since then itself moved to increase mining sector royalties and impose a windfall tax on mining companies, seeking to secure a greater proportion of copper-related revenue for Zambia. In doing so, the government had taken an important step towards neutralising the opposition. (Sata’s subsequent about-turn on the issue of mining sector taxation, claiming that the government had gone overboard with policy to the detriment of long term prospects on the copper belt, will also be recalled). Policy differences are no longer likely to be an important voter differentiator – it is how policy is implemented, rather than the policy itself, on which the various parties are likely to differ. In a short space of time, Zambia has seen an important maturing of its multiparty democracy. Political risk – at least to the extent that it might impact on policy - has receded meaningfully.
But the larger macro-issue remains:
In today's international economic climate and prevailing economic conditions what is the best (though perhaps not ideal) way for low income countries to receive maximum revenue and developmental benefits from the extraction of their natural resources?
The result of China's demand for raw materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade between Africa and China has risen from £5million annually a decade ago to £6billion today;
Paul Collier, author of the recent bestseller The Bottom Billion has an idea (his prescriptions have been described as unsentimental)) His goal, he says, is to provide 'credible hope' to low income countries who may be presently experiencing an entry into one of the global commodity booms and to avoid the 'mistakes of the past'. He believes that in order to get maximum economic return the rights to such resources should be 'auctioned off' in what he calls "verified auctions" in the most transparent, open manner possible. Its a theory that he outlines in the below talk he recently gave as a part of the TED lecture series:
A new paper provides comprehensive new estimates of capital flight for a sample of 40 African countries between 1970 - 2004, and; offers new insights on the linkahges between external borrowing and capital flight. Excerpt:
This paper has presented new evidence on the dramatic financial hemorrhage of African economies through capital flight countries over the past four decades. The estimates indicate that for the sample of 40 countries as a whole over the period 1970 - 2004, real capital flight amounted to $420 billion (in 2004 dollars). Including imputed interest, the stock of capital flight for this group of countries reached a staggering $607 billion dollars in 2004. This exceeds the countries’ combined external debt by $398 billion, making Africa a “net creditor” to the rest of the world. For some countries, including Angola, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, the stock of capital flight is more than four times the stock of external debt.
Our data raise some important methodological questions concerning the assessment of drug use in Somalia. According to our experiences in a preparatory study [63], answer tendencies play a major role in the self-reported khat use. The wording of the questions has a marked effect on the respective answers; for instance, when asked directly whether a respondent would chew khat, almost 100% of respondents answered “no,” even though this was obviously in strong contrast to our daily observation of the respondents. An indirect style of questioning, such as employed in this study, however, produced answers with more face validity. Still, we believe that this method of self-report produces underestimates of real figures. We observed that many respondents answered that they had stopped chewing khat one week or one month before and thus failed to report khat use in the week preceding the interview. Many respondents obviously had a strong wish to discontinue their own khat consumption, which was contrasted by frequent relapses. On the other hand, we cannot rule out that social desirability played an important role in under-reporting, especially because of the respondents' fear that they would be denied access to http: DDR programs if they admitted their drug use. In particular, self-reported khat use might have been affected by under-reporting or nonreporting due to social desirability, in contrast to the perceived use by unit members.
