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Workers World
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/floods-0906/
Imperialist media close their eyes as
Floods devastate Africa’s Sahel
By G. Dunkel
Published Aug 31, 2007 7:12 PM
July and August saw flooding across Africa in countries just south of the Sahara desert, as well as in Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique. South Africa, which is experiencing the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, has seen flooding, too—along with freak snowfalls heavy enough to close the border between South Africa and Lesotho for a time. While African Web sites and newspapers, as well as the United Nations Information Network, are filled with stories about the floods, the major English-language media in the West have ignored this tragedy. Instead, MSNBC ran a humorous piece Aug. 2 on snow in South Africa. The Washington Post ran a 560-word article Aug. 15. Half a million Africans are affected. Some have lost their food stocks or seeds for the next crop cycle. Others have seen their houses, made from dried-mud bricks, dissolve in the heavy rain. Normally, in the rainy season, the bricks melt a bit but people can repair them when the sun comes out. Not this year in many places in the Sahel, a normally semi-desert area just south of the Sahara that stretches from Senegal to Sudan.
Once people lose their homes, they lose access to sanitation and drinkable water. For example, Tintane is a small city in southeastern Mauritania where a flash flood wiped out the water supply, sanitation and houses of two-thirds of its people. They are living in tents and makeshift shelters, none of which have latrines.
The floods destroyed the dam, the health center and nearly 2 miles of water pipes.
The Mauritanian government appealed for international aid to rebuild the town. Libya, Tunisia and Morocco have already promised emergency items, including tents, food, blankets and medicine.
So far, the European and U.S. imperialist countries that have sucked out Africa’s valuable resources ever since colonialism and the slave trade are being conspicuously tightfisted about giving aid.
Even when aid arrives, the Mauritanian government will still have major problems supplying the people of Tintane with water, education and health care. As one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 154 out of 177 countries in the United Nations Human Development Report and with a per capita income of only $2,000 per year, Mauritania’s infrastructure even before the floods was sorely lacking.
Besides Mauritania, the countries of Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad also had major problems with flooding. The water didn’t relieve their droughts since it came in torrents that couldn’t be absorbed by the soil. Lake Lere in Chad, which is on the Cameroon border, overflowed its banks Aug. 9. As of Aug. 15 people who lived in the area were still finding bodies and wading through the water looking for dry land. Chad ranks 171 out of 177 countries on the UNHDR.
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