S Africa’s land reformers walk uneasy path

POLOKWANE, SOUTH AFRICA, Oct 26: As Mahile Mokomo decides which white farmers must sell their land to black claimants in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province, he is keenly aware of events just to the north in Zimbabwe.

If he takes too long, black land claimants say they may take matters into their own hands and seize farms. White farmers say if the process is not handled correctly, farms will fall into disrepair and food supplies could be threatened.

The process takes place in the shadow of a Draconian land reform programme just across the Zimbabwean border, where President Robert Mugabe has forcibly — and sometimes violently — seized white owned farms to give to blacks.

The farm seizures there have been blamed for creating food shortages in the country, once the region’s breadbasket.

South Africa’s land reform programme aims to help blacks recover land they have lost under colonial or apartheid-era laws by purchasing it from mostly white landowners at market prices.

"It has to happen," Mokomo, a former lawyer who now serves as Limpopo’s land claims Commissioner, told in the regional capital Polokwane, approximately 200 kms south of the Zimbabwe border.

"You can’t have a situation where 80 percent of the land is held by a group who make up less than 12 percent of the country."

South Africa aims to put 30 percent of agricultural land in black hands by 2014, two decades after the end of white apartheid rule, mainly through Government-funded transactions on a willing buyer-willing seller basis.

This process has been criticised as too slow. The South African Communist party says less than three percent of the land earmarked for black ownership has been handed over.

But land claims, in which blacks lodge formal requests for specific tracts of land they say they were stolen from them in the past, have proven to be even more controversial.

"It’s Zimbabwe in a velvet glove," says white farmer and Limpopo mango grower Tony Long, who grew up in Zimbabwe, told on the Veranda of his farmhouse in Tzaneen, 100 kms west of Polokwane.

"But there’s a realisation that we need land reform. The main problem is the uncertainty."

All land claims had to be submitted by the end of 1998, but thousands — some covering dozens of farms — remain unresolved. Most of them are in Limpopo, where the main staples are cattle and tropical fruit. South Africa’s main grain producing areas, further south, have been much less affected.

President Thabo Mbeki says the land issue must be resolved by the end of 2005.

Mokomo says that target is an impossible challenge with some claims opposed by white farmers and others stalled by competing demands of different groups or by divisions among claimants.

"But we are confident by then we will have made considerable progress," he says. "Three years ago, we had a staff of less than 20 and now it is 102."

In some cases, particularly where the disputed land is part of an urban area or used for mining or industry, the claimants may receive financial compensation rather than land.

Many white farmers in Limpopo say the Commission takes too long to decide claims, leaving farmers unable to refurbish their property, invest in farms or plan for the future.

Despite repeated official assurances no further land claims will be lodged, many white farmers fear more will follow in time —something Mokomo denies.

Some early land transfers were handled badly, leaving a number of farms in the hands of new black farmers who lacked the skills to run them profitably, officials say.

Animal rights group the national society for the prevention of cruelty to animals says that in some cases cattle and pigs have had to be destroyed because new farmers have been unable to look after them.

"These people don’t have the skills, the training or the know-how of how to farm," says celeste houseman, manager of the NSPCA’s farm animal unit. "Animals need basic requirements — food, water and veterinary attention — and without these the animals suffer."

Mokomo says new landowners in Limpopo will now need to find a straegic partner to facilitate funding, training and an organised handover. Firms like South African farm management, a private company, say they are ready to step into the breach, providing essential help in return for a stake of between 40 and 49 per cent of the farm business for a 10-20 year period.

Some white farmers have also agreed to come on board as managers and advisors, Project Director and Pentecostal Preacher reverend David Gondwe says.

"We need all these skills," he said. "But sometimes the new owners don’t want the previous owner to stay on because the Communities don’t trust them." (AGENCIES)

Magical machi may cure any ailment in chile

SANTIAGO, CHILE, Oct 26: Manuel Lincovil is one of the most sought-after doctors in La Pintana, an area of Chile’s capital Santiago known for its poverty, alcoholism and gang violence.

But you won’t find this soft-spoken elder in any health clinic and his remedies are not found in any ordinary drugstore.

Lincovil is a "Machi" or Shaman from Chile’s Mapuche indigenous culture and has a month-long waiting list of patients wanting his cures for everything from high blood pressure to cancer.

"Our way is to not just to look at the body but the whole person and that’s called spirituality. It’s not something you study. A person is born a machi and acquires knowledge through the spirit," said Lincovil, who is also a trained accountant who says he resisted his calling for many years.

The Machi is a central figure in a spiritual revival in the making among Chile’s urban Mapuche Indians, who represent over half of the country’s 600,000 Mapuches.

His hugely popular practice in La Pintana, a hardscrabble district on the outskirts of Santiago, is a response to demands by Mapuches for better health care in the smog-filled capital where, far from their historic lands in the south, traditions are easily lost.

Those demands convinced Chile’s Government and international organizations such as the inter-American Development Bank to fund a 2 million dollars intercultural health initiative that supports 120 different projects nationwide to revive Mapuche health practices.

"There are barriers to access that are of a cultural nature and have to do with language and cultural beliefs regarding illness and health," said Claudia Padilla of the health ministry’s unit on indigenous peoples’ health.

Unlike its neighbours Peru and Bolivia, Chile’s indigenous population is a small minority of the country’s 15 million inhabitants.

Mapuches life expectancy is lower than the national average and the infant mortality rate is higher, according to Government statistics.

The loss of traditional medicine is due partly to the disappearance of Machis, persecuted as "witches" for centuries by the Catholic Church. The machi acquires healing abilities through dreams or visions and his or her knowledge cannot be passed down from one generation to the next.

Lincovil, who says his mother knew before he was born that he had magical powers, sees patients in a spacious thatched-roof building, or "Ruca", on the grounds behind the public health clinic. Inside, several big pots of water and herbs brew on gas stoves as the Machi’s wife scoops out an amber-coloured infusion and pours it into empty coke bottles for a crowd of patients waiting outside.

The Machi sits with a patient beside the Ruca’s eastern door to be nearer to good spirits, according to the Mapuche cosmovision.

"One aspect of the project is to recover ancestral knowledge that was being lost and provide broad, integrated health care with a psycho-therapy component," said Eduardo Sarue, an anthropologist involved in the project.

Not only Mapuches are turning to the Machi for help. Lincovil says 85 per cent of the people on his four-week waiting list are non-Indians.

"People are looking for someone who will listen. The Machi is more like a father who listens and doesn’t judge, or a pastor," Lincovil says.

Like all Machis, Lincovil views illness not as a physical affliction but the result of an imbalance in the person’s lifestyle, family relations or surrounding community.

Wearing a ceremonial necklace of silver coins and a colourful scarf, the Machi makes his diagnoses by listening to patients describe their ailments and looking at a urine sample and the palm of their hand. He is considered an intermediary between the spirits and the patient.

When herbal remedies are not enough, Lincovil recommends healing ceremonies with music, rhythm and incantations.

That holistic approach is welcomed by many chileans who are fed up with an overstretched public health system where doctors rush to see as many patients as possible before sending them off to buy expensive drugs.

"I’ve only been coming for three weeks and I’ve been getting good results," said Guillermina Jeria, 60, who suffers from uterine tumours. "I trust more in the herbs than in pills.

The success of the Ruca in La Pintana exposed the failings of the health system, producing some resistance among health officials and doctors.

"There was fear on both sides. It was the first time in the history of Chile that something like this was done," said the Machi. "Nobody ever imagined the impact it was going to have," he said. (AGENCIES)

Crusader defends free speech in China

BEIJING, Oct 26: After Pu Zhiqiang graduated from China’s top law school in 1991, it took him years to find a job and a place to live because his dossier contained an official warning over his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Today, the 39-year-old former student leader is a partner at a law firm and helps money-losing state-owned firms declare bankruptcy. But he has not forgotten his past.

Last year pu took up the cause of free speech, a battle-cry of the Beijing demonstrations brutally crushed by troops on June 4, 1989. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed.

He defends journalists and authors, without a fee, against libel suits brought by officials or state firms accused of wrongdoing.

"Without freedom of speech, there is nothing," the chain-smoking lawyer said in an interview at his 23rd-floor office in Beijing. "Freedom of speech is an indispensable condition if Chinese society is to become more open.

"Society needs to be tolerant, respect and protect the right of people to speak up ... No one is obliged to say (politically) correct and great things" about the party, said Pu, who like many frugal Chinese sips tea from a used glass jar.

Free speech is enshrined in China’s constitution, but those challenging the Communist party’s monopoly on power are either jailed or banished into exile. Libel lawsuits are almost always won by the plaintiffs.

Yet in a landmark ruling, and a sweet victory for Pu, a court cleared China reform magazine this month of libel charges filed by state-owned real estate developer Guangzhou Huaqiao, which had sought 5.9 million yuan (711,000 dollars) in damages.

The monthly, quoting company and official documents, reported in July 2003 that Guangzhou Huaqiao had been stripped of its assets, posted losses and laid off workers after its ownership changed hands several times.

The court ruled that journalists enjoy legal immunity if a news story is backed up by a source which is reasonably believable and is not based on rumours or fabrication.

"The court concluded that a fair commentary does not constitute infringement on the rights of another," said Pu, who wears a crew cut and looks like a heavyweight boxer standing 1.88 metres and tipping the scales at 102 kg.

The ruling is unlikely to immediately usher in a free press in China. Western rights groups say more journalists and writers languish in Chinese jails than in the rest of the world combined.

While all media in China are controlled to varying degrees by the state and required to sing the Communist party’s praises, many newspapers, magazines and publishers have been left to fend for themselves after state subsidies were cut in recent years.

Some progressive ones have grown increasingly bold in reporting news that is less than flattering to the Government or exposes low-level corruption scandals.

"It’s not that the Communist party doesn’t want to control society completely. Rather, it’s unable to do so," Pu said.

Pu is also defending Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, husband and wife authors of "an investigation of China’s peasants" — a banned bestselling expose on corruption, abuse of power by officials and the plight of farmers.

Zhang Xide, vice-chairman of an advisory body to the Fuyang city legislature in the eastern province of Anhui, sued the couple and the publisher for libel, seeking 200,000 yuan (more than 24,000 dollars) in damages.

Zhang denies accusations that he ignored Central Government directives to ease the burden on farmers and arbitrarily fined peasants for violating state family planning policy when he was party boss of linquan county in Fuyang in the 1990s.

In a statement circulated at a four-day trial in August, Zhang took offence at descriptions of him in the book. He wrote that the authors "uglified my image" when they wrote that he was "short" and "does not have a single iota of culture when he deviates from his prepared speech".

The trial has burned the couple’s fingers.

"Our witnesses were all farmers working odd jobs nationwide. We need to pay for the travel expenses and accommodation of our peasant brothers who came to testify," Chen said.

"We’ve already spent double the amount of royalties we made," said Chen, who received about 20,000 yuan for the book. "We are fighting for peasants. We cannot increase the burden on them."

The book was an instant bestseller with 150,000 copies sold out in one month. While China’s propaganda tsars have banned reprints and media reports on it, the authors estimate that almost eight million pirated copies have since been sold.

The high-profile trial is seen as a litmus test of the boundaries of China’s official tolerance of free speech after Communist party Chief Hu Jintao further consolidated power in September by assuming the top job in the military.

Hu Shuli, publisher of Caijing, a bestselling weekly magazine, is no stranger to libel lawsuits. Having lost two, she was frustrated and ready to give up when she was sued by private construction company Kaili, which was seeking to list.

"You practise freedom of speech. I defend freedom of speech," Pu said he told her when he offered his services pro bono.

Pu is walking a political tightrope with his links to democracy campaigners, but he says he is not looking for trouble.

"I have nothing against the party. It’s not my enemy. I just want Chinese society to be more harmonised and better," said Pu, a cadre of the Communist youth league for 10 years until he was penalised for his role in the 1989 protest. (AGENCIES)

Violence stalks Cairo street children as numbers rise

CAIRO, Oct 26: Strung up by his ankles and taking a beating on the soles of his feet is how one homeless egyptian boy describes the treatment he regularly receives from police.

"This is how they did it," 10-year-old Hussein said, helpfully recreating the scene with a handstand against a wall.

Social and human rights workers accuse the Egyptian police of addressing the growing problem of children left homeless by sweeping social and economic changes with methods they have also been condemned for using on criminals.

Orphaned and abandoned children traditionally sheltered in the homes of relatives in Egypt now find themselves living under bridges, in doorways and at the mercy of authorities, who resort to beatings and detention alongside adult criminals where they are exposed to further violence and sexual abuse.

"Sometimes they beat us on the street, sometimes in a cell where no one can see," Hussein said. "In the cells it’s worse... I don’t know why they do it, maybe they think it’s fun."

Interior Ministry officials say police abuse and torture is not a systematic problem in Egypt and that those caught mistreating citizens are prosecuted through the courts.

One police official said the policy is to send street children back to their homes and that those accused of mistreatment will be investigated and prosecuted if necessary.

New York-based group human rights watch accused the Egyptian police in a 2003 report of subjecting Cairo street children to beatings with batons, whips, rubber hoses and belts and subjecting them to sexual abuse.

"In some cases this ill-treatment, aimed to punish, was so severe as to constitute torture," the report said.

Mohamed-tag-el-Din, manager of a drop-in centre in the Cairo suburb of Nasr city, said the number of homeless children among the city’s vast population of 17 million alone varied anywhere from 10,000 to 90,000.

Social workers say the law which governs how street children are treated conflicts with the UN convention on the rights of the child, which Egypt ratified in 1989, by allowing police to criminalise children on the street.

"They should not be handled by the police but by social workers," said Moushira Khattab, Secretary-General of the official National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM).

The council helped draft Egypt’s present child law, and Khattab says it is working on drafting a new law which will limit the power of police in dealing with the children.

The police response to reports of homeless children is a reflection of how they are viewed by most people.

"Some passers-by tell the police that you are troubling them and then the officers come and put you in their police vans and beat you inside where no one can see," said 16-year-old Mohamed, who sells flowers on the bank of the Nile.

Girls living on the street run the added risk of random sexual violence as well as the usual police beatings.

"I was cut in the face with a razor blade when four boys tried to carry out a sexual attack on me," 17-year-old single mother Reham Abdel Hameed said.

She and her six-month-old baby girl sleep under a bridge.

"Society is changing. There are fewer extended family units with all the support people can get from these structures. You see more and more nuclear families and incidents of divorce and separation," said Seham Ibrahim, Director of the Tofulty Foundation, which deals extensively with street children.

Many of the children say they were often told at home, mostly by step-parents, that they consumed valuable resources without contributing to the family income.

Abdel Hameed said that when her parents divorced and remarried, neither of the new partners wanted her.

Step-parents are not the only ones casting unwanted children out of the family home and some parents take drastic measures to get rid of them, Ibrahim said.

"One man left his seven-year-old son on a railway line. The boy survived but his legs were cut off," she said.

The ability of officials to deal with the problem is also limited by a lack of information about street children. Khattab says no reliable statistics exist and surveying frightened children, who are constantly on the move and wary of officials remains a difficult task.

One thing social workers can all agree on is that the current perception of street children as a criminal element must be changed and that when society’s most vulnerable are taken into custody by the state they should not find themselves shackled to adult criminals, or exposed to rape and violence.

"The main thrust is to change society’s perception of the street child. The street child is treated as a criminal, as a threat to society," Khattab said. (AGENCIES)

US seeks Seoul’s support for hard line on N Korea

SEOUL, Oct 26: Secretary of State Colin Powell sought South Korea’s support today for a US hard line on North Korea after China said Washington must be more flexible to entice the reclusive state back to nuclear arms talks.

On the final leg of a trip to north Asia to try to revive six-party negotiations on scrapping North Korea’s arms programmes, the top US diplomat has won pledges from Japan and China to put pressure North Korea, and was expected to secure Seoul’s help too.

On Tuesday, Powell was meeting South Korea’s unification minister Chong-dong-Young, who also chairs the National Security Council. He was due to meet President Roh-moo-Hyun later.

The top US diplomat was under pressure to find an opening after he rejected North Korea’s conditions for returning to the stalled talks and left the two nations deadlocked.

Powell said after meeting Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing on Monday that China had considerable influence with North Korea.

"I hope that as a result of our conversations, both of us will energize the other members of the six-party framework to resolve the outstanding issues that keep us from setting a date for a meeting," he said.

South Korea, a military ally, persuaded Washington in June to allow an offer to North Korea of aid incentives to break the impasse. But the superpower refuses to yield more ground.

"We wish the US side would go further to adopt a flexible and practical attitude on the issue," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said after meeting Powell on Monday. North Korea’s huge Communist neighbour is its biggest benefactor.

The United States believes North Korea has a small number of nuclear weapons and Pyongyang warned during Powell’s trip that it could double its "deterrent." (AGENCIES)

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