Sunday Business Post | Irish Business News

Breaking News Business Ireland World Sport Weather

Navigation (Home)News News Features The Market Technology Media & Marketing Comment & Analysis Computers In Business Profile Property Motoring Agenda Letters

People In Business Done Deal Budget Forum Events / Conferences Company Reports Tools Crossword Search the archives Newsletter IMODE RSS

Text-Only

Irish aid workers brave African danger zones
Sunday, November 30, 2008
From brutal warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo to absolute rule in the HIV-ridden kingdom of Swaziland, aid workers live with danger, writes Stuart Clark.

The dangers faced by development workers in politically unstable parts of Africa came into sharp focus earlier this month when Concern Ireland had to evacuate one of its programme off ices in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country whose slide toward full-scale civil war seems inexorable.

‘‘We were told to drop everything and get out by United Nations security because of the threat of our base in eastern Congo, Masisi, being overrun by anti-government rebels,” said Fergus Thomas. He has spent nearly two years working for Concern in Africa’s third most populous nation.

‘‘We drove across the border to Rwanda, which I know sounds a bit ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, but it’s actually more stable there at the moment than it is in the DR Congo.” After they were given the all-clear by the UN on November 11, they drove the nine hours back to Masisi. While this latest escalation of the 11-year-old conflict appears to have taken the international community by surprise, Thomas says it’s been obvious to people on the ground that January’s fragile truce between President Joseph Kabila’s Forces Armees de la Republique Democratique du Congo (FARDC) and the rebel National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) wasn’t holding.

‘‘When civilians start fleeing their homes in large numbers, which they have been since the end of August, you know you’re in for a rough ride,” he said. ‘‘I was hoping that things might have bottomed out since we evacuated, but everywhere we drove today, there were people moving away from the rebels, and government troops walking around with heavy looking machine guns and bazookas. Even more poignantly, we saw a child soldier who couldn’t have been older than 12 or 13.”

As well as providing emergency food and shelter for the newly displaced, Concern has long-term strategies for the 5,300 families already living in their four Masisi camps. ‘‘We’ve had great success supplying people with seeds and tools so that they can grow their own crops, and running cash-for-work programmes whereby they get paid to repair the roads. This not only puts money in their pockets, but wins Concern a lot of goodwill, which is a valuable commodity round here.”

Harder to repair are the emotional scars left by the routine rape and murder of civilians, which the UN has accused government and rebels of. ‘‘The Congolese have these amazingly resilient coping mechanisms, but even so, there are a lot of people who’ve been deeply traumatised by these terrible human rights violations,” Thomas said. ‘‘Part of our job is to battle the despair this civil war - and we really have to call it by that name - is causing.” Despair is something of which there is an abundance in Swaziland, where Irish charity workers are also working.

The tiny landlocked kingdom, engulfed by South Africa and Mozambique, has the highest HIV infection rate in the world - 39.2 per cent. Almost 400,000 Swazis have contracted the virus, leading to a life expectancy of 32 - half the world average of 65.8 years. Add the fact that the majority of its one million inhabitants are living on less than $2 a day, and it’s no wonder that King Mswati III, Swaziland’s absolute monarch since 1986, is faced with a growing dissident movement. One of the most persistent thorns in his side has been the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) which volunteer Irish worker Stephen Donaghy joined last year.

‘‘Swaziland makes a great pretence of being a democracy, but political parties are banned and the king appoints both the prime minister and the cabinet,” he said. ‘‘He also has the power arbitrarily to dissolve parliament, nominate the people who select the country’s judges, and outlaw organisations that are allegedly supporting terrorism.” Donaghy said that, on November 15, it was made a criminal offence to be a member of the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), the Swaziland Youth Congress, Umbane and the Swazi Solidarity Network. The offence is punishable by jail terms of up to 25 years or life.

The police raided the PUDEMO leader Mario Masuku’s house the following day and found nothing, but still took him into custody and charged himwith terrorism. ‘‘The question we’re asking ourselves now is, ‘Who’s next’,” said Donaghy. Despite the intervention of the Centre for Conflict Resolution, the government has refused to enter talks with the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions, which is one of SCCCO’s key members. ‘‘An option being considered at the moment is a general strike,” Donaghy said. ‘‘There were already strikes on September 3 and 4,which brought 15,000 people out on to the streets of the capital, Mbabane, and the second city, Manzini.

‘‘The organisers made it clear that these were to be peaceful, but unfortunately a small number of hotheads on one of the marches clashed with the security forces.” The trade unions’ commitment to peaceful protest isn’t shared by the unknown organisation that recently planted a bomb near one of the king’s 13 palaces, or those Swazis who are widely rumoured to be receiving paramilitary training in South Africa.The king’s reaction to all of this was to authorise the army’s purchase, during the summer, of 18,000 handguns, 20,000 grenades and a million bullets.

‘‘Does the potential exist for Swaziland to become the next Zimbabwe?” asked a leading dissident who asked not to be named for fear of government reprisals. ‘‘Absolutely.At the moment, Swaziland is surviving on handouts from other countries; 600,000 people are receiving world food aid and you’ve got the government going on record as saying ‘We do not fear conflict, we know how to control it.’ That’s scarily similar to the rhetoric employed by Robert Mugabe who, incidentally, happens to be a friend of the king’s.”

One of the people hoping to stave off violence through democratic change is newly elected Swazi MP Nonhlanhla Dlamini. ‘‘I had to wait six hours yesterday to meet the king, but when I did, I told him that the government previously had betrayed us, and I intend to pursue new legislation dealing with gender violence,” she said.

‘‘They always say things are in the pipeline -well, I’ve come in to clear the pipe. I also talked to him about issues of corruption, poverty and food supply and how things are likely to get worse. We’ve had several spells of drought recently causing harvests to fail, so that’s a major consideration.

‘‘I will also be questioning such budgetary decisions as nine of the king’s wives being given $1 million each to go on a shopping expedition to Dubai, when there are tens of thousands of Swazis who don’t have adequate food, accommodation or health care.” Dlamini is the outgoing director of the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA).

It has been given €583,000 to help expand its range of services by Skillshare International Ireland, a non-government organisation that receives 75 per cent of its funding from Irish Aid. As part of the agreed programme structure, Skillshare receives quarterly financial and narrative reports from SWAGAA which, to ensure transparency, publishes all its accounts.

‘‘The money SWAGAA’s received from Ireland has quite literally saved lives,” Dlamini said. ‘‘We currently counsel over 2,000 victims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse along with perpetrators who wish to change their behaviour. We run girls’ empowerment clubs in schools, which provide vulnerable children with a support network they otherwise wouldn’t have, and we facilitate self-help groups for men and women, many of whom are living with HIV/Aids. None of that would be possible without the support of our overseas partners.”

Stuart Clark is the assistant editor of Hot Press. For more information on overseas charities, see www.concern.net and www.skillshare.ie.

Click here for Sunday Business Post stories before this date