The Financial Gazette

Letter from America
By Ken Mufuka

Former US President George W. Bush is still regarded as a joke in many countries in the world, but not in Africa. He manufactured a story about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to avenge an attempted assassination of his father by Iraq President Saddam Hussein. In Africa, however, he is regarded kindly, and as a man of action.

At the G-8 summit in 2005, President Bush proposed as a moral imperative that anybody in the world who suffers from the disease Aids should get some help. He pledged that the US would provide US$12 billion towards the alleviation of the curse Aids. Surprisingly, he offered real money, not some fancy words with definitive clauses and subjunctive phrases. Some people say that as a Texas cowboy, he knew very little grammar, and could not have mastered a convoluted sentence like President Barack Obama.
President Bush did the world another favour. These G-8 (or G-20) meetings are all talk and no substance. In 1995 in Scotland, the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to end (or alleviate poverty) in the world by debt forgiveness.
Here are a few facts. The US government pledged and actually spent US$750 million in Tanzania fighting Aids during President Bush’s term in office, 2002-2008. Similarly the US government spent US$456 million in Uganda during the last four years of Bush’s term. Of the US$533 million spent in Ethiopia, US$411 went towards Aids projects.
In Zimbabwe, as we go to press, the US has spent US$500 million in humanitarian aid. The figures of the destitute and hungry are in dispute. The United Nations says 80 percent of all Zimbabweans live under the poverty datum line so that almost everybody did in some way or other receive American food aid.
Now, you will say: “Ken, if the US is doing so well, what seems to be the trouble?” I turned to Sister Charlotte Musarurwa of The Sunday Mail for an answer. Sister Charlotte says that if the Aids package treatment is limited to the deathly sick, with a blood corpuscle count of 200 and below, only 218 000 packages are needed.
However, those diagnosed with a 350 blood count are on the verge of falling sick. Now remember that President Bush promised and pledged the good faith the of the US government that anybody suffering from this disease will get free medical aid. Now you have 518 000 patients in Zimbabwe alone for which the US government has pledged its good faith.
My researchers went further than Sister Charlotte. If you add children to this witches’ brew, there is no knowing how many one will come up with. The Leo Sullivan Report of 1992 said before the disease Aids can be tackled, the disease poverty must be dealt with. This enemy, poverty, is responsible for tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria, untreated gonorrhoea, syphilis, kwashiorkor and other diseases in Zimbabwe.
My friends in the Roman Catholic charities say that almost three quarters of the children go to school without breakfast. If a kid faints at school, is it because the kid is hungry or is it that the kid is suffering from some congenital disease related to the dreadful Aids?
So USAID finds itself apparently paralysed. Americans love kids. You can’t deny kids food and medicine. You can argue later whether, as Brother Sullivan argued, poverty was more deadly than the disease Aids. Sullivan worked for President George Bush the elder.
Just to remind our readers that I do know some stuff, the experts say that there is no such disease called Aids.
They say there is, however, a syndrome, called Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome, which lowers a person’s ability to fight diseases and therefore allows parasitic diseases to hang on to that person longer than usual. I was almost run out of a conference by feminists for calling this syndrome the disease Aids.
The next problem is that having promised to help with the treatment of the disease Aids, the treatment itself takes a life time.
The US government is now hooked to a never ending syndrome whereby African countries have developed a dependency syndrome. It is a thankless task.
Also my researchers found that in Africa, new cases of the diseases are still being diagnosed everyday and that effective preventative efficacy is lacking.
President Obama has decided to share the burden with African governments, a nice way of saying that the US does not have unlimited funds. The US budget has already overrun its mark. While Bush had earmarked US$12 billion, US$15 billion has already been spent.
Americana presence in Africa is aimed at influencing the direction of governments towards a democratic dispensation. This can be done through the 2 400 NGOs  Brother T. Mahoso talks about in Zimbabwe. But with the Aids burden actually mushrooming, and seeing no end in sight, there is very little money towards anything else. That is the US dilemma.
The governments which the US would like to influence the most, Ethiopia Uganda and Zimbabwe, draw up their Aids budgets and leave them at US embassies.
I see clearly the primitive mind at work here. “You want our children to die!” they shout at the ambassadors. No, not even a “DANKIE!” In fact, the Ethiopian government, which is alleged to have stolen the election in 2005, curses the US government on a daily basis and bans the Voice of America. The same is true in Zimbabwe and Uganda.
Congress is looking for ways to get out of President Bush’s pledge, by hook or by crook.

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