STARVING Not an act of god but a

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"Help is arriving" - "You've got it all wrong. It's reinforcements for [the war in/ Chad". From Lutte Ouvriere. 24 African nations face severe famine this year, said the UN food and Agriculture Organisation in a report published last week.

Because of a continuing serious drought, the 1983 harvest of staple crops in those countries was 8 per cent down even on the low level of 1982. Food production per head in many African countries had already declined drastically between 1969-71 and 1979-81: 15% in Ethiopia. 12% in Mali, 13% in Zaire, 35% in Somalia, 27% in Mozambique, 26% in Ghana... according to the World Bank.

Many thousands of people are already dying from starvation in Ethiopia, and hundreds of thousands or millions more could die before the drought ends.

Also seriously affected by five years drought and food shortages is Brazil. In its ten north-eastern provinces, where average income per heaa is only one-third the level in the more developed south, many people face death from starvation. 'If rains do not come this month or next, people will be dyıng ike flies', a Red Cross official has said Rats and lizards are hunted as food, people eat cactus to lessen the hunger pangs and women walk more than 10 miles to fetch water from a truck which might be there once a week.

But nature cannot take the major blame for these horrors.

LES SECOURS ARRIVENT! MAMEL The stagnation of agriculture in Africa is caused by the policies of international capitalism and of local governments - which mean that resources go into cash-crops, bureaucratically botched 'development' projects, and into militarism, instead of basic subsistence agriculture.

Even now, according to the FAO, it would need only 1.6 million tons of food and £91 million aid to solve the immediate problem of starvation. That's small change in terms of the resources of international capitalism. But the millionaires have other priorities... T'AS RiEN COMPRIS C'EST LES RENFORTS POUR LE TCHAD !..

Cancellation of Nigeria's

debts would benefit both the people of Nigeria - suffering because food imports have bee reduced — and Leyland Vehicles workers, at the expense of the international banks. (It would also benefit the corrupt and vicious Nigerian ruling class: but the answer to that is action by the Nigerian working class).

What did AUEW leader Gerry Russell say? He said the job cuts were wrong because they meant that in the event of a further economic upturn (coming from where?) "we" would lose markets to "the French, Japanese, Germans... foreigners .. in Namibia and the very heart of not agree to a settlement for fear of having an "unstable SWAPO government" on their borders' For all its Western backing, the tide is turning against South Africa. It will continue to promote the idea that the Front Line states are launch pads for acts of 'terrorism' against it. While remaining blind to its blatant acts of barbarity, South Africa must one day realise that the forces fighting against apartheid, and for freedom and justice, live not outside but in Namibia and in the very heart of South Africa itself.

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costo 'S CRISIS