Mozambicans could revolt, says Mandela’s wife
An increase of attacks against foreigners living in South Africa sent thousands of them (including those from Mozambique) fleeing back to their homelands. As a result, Nelson Mandela’s wife (former Mozambican first lady), Graca Machel, believes that those that returned to Mozambique from South Africa might revolt against their government because of its inability to provide for them, reports the BBC. “For the first few weeks, they will cry on the shoulders of their families for having lost everything. Then they will go and cry to the government, and at the end they will revolt against the government and all who are around them,” she said at a conference on ethnic cleansing attended by delegates from Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. After the spike in deadly anti-foreigner attacks in South Africa, in which 27 Mozambicans were killed, 39,000 of them returned to the country. When they got back to Mozambique, most had to depend on others to survive. In South Africa, Machel said, the influx of foreigners put a lot of pressure on the country’s infrastructure, reports the news service. “Extreme poverty dehumanizes people and leads them to madness. That’s what happened in Rwanda over 10 years ago,” she said. Many South African attackers blamed foreigners for taking jobs and increasing to the nation’s crime rate.

Uganda’s president is “very happy” about the worldwide food crisis
People all over the world are suffering from high food prices, yet the president of an African nation says he’s happy about it. “Why? Because we produce a lot of food…we are stuck with food,” Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told head government officials, reports the BBC. According to Museveni, milk production in the country was so high people had to pour it away, until Uganda set up a deal with an Indian plant where they now ship their extra milk to. “Our problem has been marketing…we produce 10 million metric tons of bananas and 40 percent of it rots because we have nowhere to sell it,” he also told officials. Museveni is hoping that trade barriers will be removed, resulting in Uganda and like nations gaining from their food production. But, not all Ugandans share their leader’s positive outlook on the food crisis, according to the BBC. In fact, many poor Ugandans (who only grow food for themselves to eat, not to export) are suffering while only large commercials farmers are benefiting, says the news service. However, Uganda’s food production is expected to increase 8.9 percent this year.

TAGS: crisis, food, Mandela, Mozambique, president

Comments (0)