CHILDREN OF AIDS
Africa’s orphan crisis
Emma Guest

RAINBOW VICE
The drugs and sex industries in the new South Africa
Ted Leggett

RE-DEFINING LEGITIMATE STATEHOOD
International law and state fragmentation in Africa
Obiora Chinedu Okafor

HUNGRY FOR TRADE
How the poor pay for free trade
John Madeley

CHILDREN OF AIDS
Africa’s orphan crisis
Emma Guest
University of Natal Press
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 2002

Emma Guest’s book on Africa’s AIDS orphans gives us a close up view of the lives of the survivors of the African AIDS epidemic, using case studies from Uganda, Zambia and South Africa. This is a compelling, grassroots look at the survival strategies of not only the victims, but the beleaguered families, orphanages, group care centres and individuals who dedicate themselves to the care of what is fast becoming Africa’s new lost generation.

In her introduction, Guest offers an overview of the crisis that gives reason for alarm: statistics extrapolated from pockets of data, such as HIV prevalence among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics, the prevailing stigma that prevents diagnosis and rarely results in the attribution of deaths to AIDS, and the denial and impotence of governments faced with incomprehensible human tragedy. The challenge of tracking and comparing the epidemic in different countries lies with UNAIDS, which offers but “a useful impression of the scale and trends of the epidemic on a continent where the vast majority of HIV positive people don’t know they’re infected”. She touches on the reasons for the rapid spread of HIV in Africa, among them denial at the highest levels, fatalism, poverty and armed conflict. A rather brief mention of armed conflict alludes to the presence of Zimbabwean troops in the Congo, of whom around 80% were estimated to be HIV positive as they and other armies “cut, shoot and rape their way through” the jungle. The impact of the epidemic is generally described in macro-economic terms; loss of skilled and unskilled workers and reduced per capita growth rates that countries in sub-Saharan Africa can ill afford.

But the real strength in this book is its quantum leap between dire predictions and the impact of the epidemic on the lives of children, families and communities. It is easy enough to detach oneself from apocalyptic predictions, not so the plights of the children, grandmothers, brothers and sisters who have seen their families decimated by a little-understood plague.

While the stigma of an AIDS-related death in the family still hangs heavy in many communities, Emma Guest tells of the slow, sad, solidarity that builds among survivors. Grandmothers still cling to their euphemisms yet support widow’s groups and other community organisations that can often give little more than spiritual comfort to the most needy. She warns us that the frayed remains of the social fabric must somehow survive for the next generation, the orphans whose children will have no grandmothers.

The need for parents and grandparents to take on extra children has grown acute in places like Uganda, where, although the number of cases is dropping, the orphan burden, like the disease itself, has peaked. Formal procedures for fostering children in some countries are bureaucratic and often hindered by overworked or just plain jaded government child welfare workers. Concern over cross-cultural adoption emerges in the case of Lawrence and Fiona Smith, who, only after months of heartbreaking, hair-tearing bureaucracy and frustration, legally fostered an HIV positive baby of Zulu descent. While screening processes for potential foster families needs to be stringent, the message is that concern and generosity is out there but needs to be managed by enough, efficient, properly supervised social workers, or babies will languish and die in hospitals and care centres.

Chapter 4, ‘Childcare by committee’, describes the monumental challenge of extending the South African adoption and fostering system to serve the whole country rather than its five million white citizens, who benefited from a Western-style adoption service in a time when trans-racial adoption was banned. In the context of South Africa’s AIDS epidemic, child welfare has taken on a developmental approach aimed at “spreading welfare services thinner … in order to reach more orphans, and getting communities to take care of children so they’re kept out of costly orphanages”. But working with communities involves a long process of building trust and restoring social cohesion undermined by the apartheid system and factional violence. Innovative community efforts relying on committed volunteers have thus far been given scant support from the Department of Welfare.

Chapters 7 and 8 examine international responses: from grassroots-level income generation projects that help to support families and schools caring for orphans in Uganda, to the “infiltrate and agitate” tactics of a UNAIDS country representative determined to extract commitments from often inert Zambian politicians and in getting AIDS recognised as the national disaster that it is. At all levels, unco-ordinated and inappropriate intervention has hindered efforts. Gaining trust and an attentive ear is a challenge for activists working with communities and governments alike, suggests the author.

The final two chapters describe the lives of children alone. The growing phenomenon of child-headed households scraping for survival shows the determination of the remnants of families to stay together, living off the kindness of strangers and the scant attention of social workers. Alienated by the stigma of parents who have died of AIDS, the Sebokeng orphan family described in chapter 9 is a group of children “burdened beyond their years”, who nonetheless carry on attending school, nurse an HIV positive younger sibling and cope, more or less. The final chapter gives insight into the lives of children who face a violent and uncertain life on the streets, where sex often buys food and rampant sexually transmitted diseases leave orphans themselves at risk of becoming infected with HIV.

Although she acknowledges the epidemic, the resulting orphan crisis that will exacerbate poverty and insecurity and that Africa will become an “unpredictable place”, Emma Guest is doubtful that the continent will be reduced to anarchy. Despite fears of a ‘lost orphaned generation’ alienated then implicated in power struggles when the restraining ties of community are broken, AIDS orphans remain isolated, suffering behind closed doors and unlikely to organise themselves. She believes in small acts of generosity and small initiatives, unattractive to the corrupt and adapted to suit different environments. A big obstacle, she maintains, is stigma—something that even the poorest governments are able to overcome.

Guest acknowledges that the book is “shamelessly anecdotal”, but for the remaining few whose lives have not been touched by AIDS, it is a reminder that reining in seemingly apocalyptic statistics can only occur through acts of courage, such as governments facing down stigma, activists taking on big business and grandmothers taking in children.

Angela McIntyre
Institute for Security Studies

RAINBOW VICE
The drugs and sex industries in the new South Africa
Ted Leggett
Zed Books, London & New York
David Philip Cape Town

Vice and the law regulating it are difficult topics to discuss anywhere in the world, and South Africa is no exception. But in South Africa, the discussion of certain forms of vice is further complicated by the rifts and divides apartheid left in its wake. Segmented communities practised different forms of vice before the end of apartheid. After almost eight years of democracy and an open society, the sale of drugs and sex are not only increasing, but also diversifying across ethnic and regional lines. Rainbow Vice provides an intimate look at the history and development of the sale of sex and drugs in South Africa, while discussing possible solutions for controlling them. The book is also an excellent guide for parents, educators, police and others who potentially interact with drug users.

Ted Leggett is an American academic who has lived in South Africa since 1995. He has conducted years of research and written extensively on drugs, prostitution and security. Rainbow Vice is a culmination of his countless interviews and focus groups with sex workers, drug users, drug dealers, drug counsellors and law enforcement personnel. His research was also supplemented with observations in areas where drugs and sex are sold.

Rainbow Vice is divided into three parts. The first deals with drugs, starting with a general discussion of drug facts and history in South Africa and then moving on to discuss in detail the markets for dagga, mandrax and club drugs. The second section discusses sex work with an exploration of the ways the markets for hard drugs and prostitution interact in urban residential hotels. The final section deals with vice policy as it currently exists in South Africa and Leggett’s summary of recommendations for the ways government should be approaching these issues.

The first part of Leggett’s book provides an excellent, detailed and easy to read description of a variety of drugs. Cannabis is discussed in great detail, including its global market and health implications, as well as its traditional uses in both rural and urban South Africa, its current use which is crossing ethnic lines and its extent of production mostly in rural South Africa. Cannabis is exported from South Africa to the UK, often in exchange for club drugs like ecstasy as well as possibly other, harder drugs. Leggett argues that the greatest threat posed by South African cannabis is that it may be the currency with which the country is purchasing more dangerous drugs, not its widespread use. Research into the overseas connection has not been conducted, but Leggett recommends looking into it. He also recommends that the government practice demand reduction, especially among the youth, if it wants to reduce the consumption of dagga.

Rainbow Vice next explores the world of Mandrax, and the white pipe phenomenon, which is distinctly unique to this country. White pipe is the term used for smoking dagga and powered Mandrax together out of a broken glass bottle. Leggett delves deep into the history of Mandrax use in South Africa, discussing the theories of apartheid chemical warfare against the majority population, and leading into the current phenomenon of white pipe gangsterism and anti-gangster groups. Unlike cannabis, Leggett argues that the Mandrax market is violent with gangs fighting for turf from which to sell the drug. To deal with this problem, he recommends supply reduction, by following the precursor chemicals from which the drug is made as well as the distribution networks through forensic labelling. Large seizures of Mandrax tablets and precursor chemicals have been proven to cause prices to rise and the drug to become temporarily scarce. Leggett also argues for social efforts to recognise and harness positive human impulses that often lead young men into gangs.

Leggett spends a considerable amount of time dissecting the phenomenon of raves and club drugs like ecstasy, LSD, speed and many others. Club drug users are mostly young people attending extended, crowded, dance parties known as raves. As in the previous sections, Leggett divulges the chemical composition and effects of club drugs, concluding that the most pressing problem with this sector of drug use is that the users often do not know what they are ingesting. He argues that the state and users could work together to clean up the rave scene so long as the state is willing to make a distinction between the dangers of different types of chemicals. This would not require a change in the law, but would require a change in enforcement policy. The one danger Leggett sees in this sector are the Nigerian dealers who are continuing to expand into this market, bringing their highly addictive drugs—heroin and crack cocaine—with them.

Sex work is the next topic discussed in Rainbow Vice. The first section provides an intimate look into the underworld of prostitution in South Africa, giving personal testimonies from 14 different sex workers of varying ethnic and regional backgrounds. In this section Leggett also touches upon the major issues affecting sex workers today: their relationships, income and clients, street work versus brothel work, police harassment and HIV/AIDS.

Next, Leggett explains how sleazy hotels in South Africa’s urban centres have become a central nexus for the trade in cocaine and heroin, as well as related enterprises such as prostitution, fraud, theft and robbery. The daily accommodation residential hotel has become an integral part of crime in the new South Africa. The influx of Nigerian criminals into these areas post-1994 has also contributed greatly to the crime problems in these areas. Leggett acknowledges that the sleazy hotel syndrome and its spin-offs pose the most serious challenges to the state. And while he has advocated mostly social solutions to the drug and sex problems discussed above, he argues for creative law enforcement actions in these cases.

First, Leggett recommends that the state target the Nigerians who are managing the sex and drug trade (among other criminal activities) inside the hotels. He also recommends that outsiders be used in this effort due to widespread corruption among South African Police Service officials working regularly in these areas. He offers the Scorpions as one possible solution. Optimistically, Leggett predicts that with accurate intelligence, a series of buy and bust operations could “rip the heart out of” the crack and heroin market in a city like Durban. Most of the Nigerians operating in the sleazy hotel business are in South Africa illegally and could be deported to Nigeria. In addition, Nigerian drug law stipulates that any Nigerian national convicted of a drug offence in another country will, upon being repatriated, serve another sentence in Nigeria.

Second, Leggett recommends the state utilise the asset forfeiture provisions of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, since every sleazy hotel fostering drugs and prostitution can potentially be forfeited to the state. He argues that most hotel owners can be identified and most know what is going on in their establishments. Without the sleazy hotels, Legett opines that the crack and heroin dealing will take a giant step backwards in South Africa.

Finally, Rainbow Vice describes the current laws and actions governing the sale of sex and drugs. In Legett’s opinion, South Africa’s present law and policy on vice are a mix of apartheid-era legislation and recent innovations, many of which were implemented to satisfy international conventions. He advocates reviewing the policies surrounding these problems and tailoring specific solutions to each distinct issue.

Rainbow Vice is a fascinating read. Legett takes the reader through back alleys and into decrepit hotels giving insights not often accessible in normal every day life. It is a poignant and educating glimpse into the underworld of South Africa’s major cities.

Susan Snyder

RE-DEFINING LEGITIMATE STATEHOOD
International law and state fragmentation in Africa
OBIORA CHINEDU OKAFOR
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague, 2000

International law has for a long time been a neglected subject in Africa, despite the fact that the continent has produced a crop of eminent international lawyers such as TO Elias, Boutros Boutros-Ghali and John Dugard. The role of international law as a mechanism to settle conflicts, both inter- and intra-state, has also been neglected in the discourse on Africa. This work by Obiora Chinedu Okafor of the Department of Law at the Carleton University in Ottawa, based on a doctoral thesis, is therefore to be welcomed.

The aim of the book is to examine how international law and institutions have responded to the problem of intra-state fragmentation in Africa’s post-colonial multi-ethnic states. Its basic premise is that the traditional responses have contributed to the existence and/or intensity of the current crisis regarding the structural legitimacy (also defined as legitimate statehood) of the African state by limiting the choices available to sub-state groups, so helping to generate violent outcomes in the relationship between the state and sub-state groups. However, intergroup friction need not necessarily degenerate into internecine violence, and a further aim of the work is then to map the actual and potential contributions of African multilateral institutions to the reduction of internecine violence within the state. Lastly, the work aims at making some practical policy recommendations on how international law and multilateral institutions can contribute to solving the crisis of structural legitimacy/legitimate statehood in Africa. The author therefore sets himself an ambitious agenda, which requires an interdisciplinary approach based upon an original analysis of international law as well as social science.

After the introductory chapter, the author examines the roots of the crisis of legitimacy experienced by the African state, finding that already from pre-colonial times, African statecraft was pre-occupied with the domination of resistant sub-units by empires or empire-like formations. This structural situation continued in the post-colonial state, as a result of its inability to reconfigure itself and attract the allegiance of its constituent groups. The uti possidetis (sanctity of existing borders) principle of international law assisted coercive and often violent nation-building and homogenisation programmes, which in turn ignited the massive eruption of intra-state conflicts of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The next chapter explores the concept of legitimate statehood in both traditional and contemporary international law and its relationship with socio-cultural fragmentation within states. A number of interrelated traditional international law doctrines that constituted the dominant response of international law to the problem of fragmentation and that served to enhance intra-state conflict, are identified, as well as new normative approaches in contemporary international law that could serve to reconfigure the relationship between the state and its constituting groups. The traditional international law approach of deference to peer review holds that the legality of a state’s existence in international law depended only on recognition by other states (peers), irrespective of its record of treatment of sub-state groups. However, a turn towards limited infra review is discernible in contemporary international law under the influence of norms favouring the protection of minority groups and the emerging norms aimed at limiting the recognition of states created in violation of fundamental human rights norms.

Another emergent shift in contemporary international law and the practice of international organisations concerning statehood regards a move away from a deference to the criterion of effectiveness as underlying the existence of statehood, to a more normative approach that does not recognise illegitimate avenues to statehood, like the acquiring of title by force or the denial of self-determination (the classic example being the South African homelands).

The doctrines of international law’s glorification of empire and its homogenisation of socio-culturally differentiated groups are closely connected. The first holds that international law traditionally supported strong, centralised states, allowing for the suppression of socio-cultural groups in order to effectively impose the power of the central authority. The latter holds that the European concept of the nation-state, where the territorial unit coincides with the social group, was transplanted to Africa by colonialism, finding contemporary expression in the principles of uti possidetis and the sanctity of the territorial integrity of the state. However, also in this respect international law is renewing itself, by means of the emerging norms of minority group protection, a more liberal attitude to secession (as the case of Eritrea illustrates) and the provision of a voice for minority groups at international human rights fora.

The major discourses on the problems of socio-cultural fragmentation within states are subsequently explored. The author finds that the traditional doctrines of international law have encouraged African governments to resort to the use or excessive force in order to homogenise their culturally divergent populations and give legal justification to these actions, which in turn fuelled internecine violence and the under-development of the continent.

The next chapter focuses on the changing norms of international law. As a result of this changing normative climate and attitude towards state fragmentation, international law and institutions, also in Africa, could reconfigure the relationships between the state and sub-state groups. The actual and potential contributions in the prevention of internecine strife of three African institutions—the Organisation of African Unity, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Economic Community of West African States—are discussed. (The Southern African Development Community is considered to be of too recent origin to warrant inclusion). The author discerns a marked turn from the traditional to the contemporary norms of international law in the practice of these organisations, which are now for the first time focusing on the situations within African states.

However, in contrast to this optimistic assessment, the concluding chapter takes a somewhat less idealistic view of the prospects of the existing African multilateral machinery in sustaining the changing normative climate in Africa. The author concedes that these organisations have structural limitations and argues for the creation of a special structure specifically aimed at the protection of national minorities in African states. Such a structure should be based upon a special treaty on the protection of national minorities in Africa, as the existing provisions of the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights are considered to be too limited in nature and scope. The author argues that such a step will enhance the consolidation of the emerging transition of international law within the African context.

Okafor presents an original and thought-provoking analysis of Africa’s problems. The material is well organised and logically structured and enhanced with detailed footnotes. The book contains a thorough bibliography and index. While its message may sound somewhat idealistic, it should be read bearing in mind the adage so fitting to Africa, namely that a person who does not believe in miracles, is not a realist.

André Stemmet
South African Department of
Foreign Affairs

HUNGRY FOR TRTADE
How the poor pay for free trade
John Madeley
Zed Books, 2000

The free trade in food, particularly between rich states and poor states, is John Madeley’s subject. The effect of that trade, he says, is disastrous, and is the result of valuing trade above food. The “poor look for bread”, he says, “but they are offered the stone of free trade”. The core of the problem, according to Madeley, is the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and greedy transnational corporations (TNCs) who seek profit from others’ hunger.

The argument is unconvincing and often contradictory; ignoring the benefits of trade and adopting an angry, activist approach. The issues Madeley raises are important, though, and need to be debated openly. Genetically modified foods, WTO reform, export policies and intellectual property rights need to be understood, and while Madeley seldom limits himself to the facts, the salient points are made clear.

Hungry for Trade is essentially about the link between poverty and trade and whether one (free trade under the WTO) causes the other (poverty). Madeley’s view is that “the planet earth has a system which trades its most vulnerable people into hunger”. That system, he says, is the steady liberalisation of trade that has been designed by the rich states and is carried out by the WTO that excludes the needs of the poor. For Madeley, the critical evidence is that “while most have gained, the poorest 800 million hungry people have lost”. The other 5.2 billion are held responsible for this. He sneers at the “old argument” that “free trade will benefit us all” and almost completely ignores the effects of war, poor governance, inefficiency and authoritarian government.

Trade, under WTO rules, does have its drawbacks and these should be addressed where possible. What free trade does offer are opportunities, not guaranteed income. Madeley criticises states that sell their surplus of food in other states at prices cheaper than the local market offers. This may keep the farmers in business but it rewards their inefficiency and denies the local citizens of access to cheap food. As the author notes, there is sufficient food but insufficient money to purchase it. The supply of cheaper, better quality food than can be produced internally is surely a good thing. It allows the local population, the market, to decide on price and quality. To forbid cheap imports is to take away that choice and give internal producers a monopoly on supply.

Food trade affects the rich and the poor. The EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) is a good example of how the rich also lose. While the CAP denies much of Africa a very lucrative export market for their grains, also affected by the CAP are the citizens of Europe. They pay high prices for their fruit and grains as well as paying for the farming subsidies through taxation. The CAP encourages inefficient farming and takes a huge part of the national budget that could be better spent. European governments do not yet have the political will to remove the subsidies and face the anger of their farmers. Much the same is true of governments in poor countries. They lack the political will or courage to deal with factors affecting their own economies such as corruption, excessive bureaucracy and political expediency. These are very often the reason that hunger becomes a problem in the first place.

That the WTO talks in Seattle were disrupted by angry protesters and eventually suspended is seen as a significant victory for the poor by the author. Quite obviously pleased with the collapse of the talks, Madeley chalks this up as a victory for democracy. While participation by all parties is an obvious requirement of any agreement, it is naïve to think that many ‘developing world’ leaders are in favour of the democratic process when they so obviously deny it to their own citizens. To suggest that even despotic leaders of violent regimes be pandered to at global trade forums is folly. The WTO is a handy whipping boy for Madeley’s description of how Zimbabwe changed from a food-exporter to being in dire need of food imports. His conclusion: it was a World Bank programme that “started the rot” and made people poor.

The chapter on food insecurity highlights genuine cases where populations, at the mercy of the weather, their government, and foreign aid are often left without the means to grow food or buy it. Many of the old methods of farming were abandoned for good reasons when modern techniques proved more efficient, but Madeley rightly focuses on how much communities still need to use their inherited, indigenous knowledge. The acceptance of modern farming techniques must depend on their suitability for local conditions. Madeley is puzzled that some ‘hungry’ states export their food to ‘well-fed’ Western states instead of eating it themselves, and blames it on the lure of lucrative Western markets. That some ‘poor’ people could want more than just food seems not to have occurred to the author.

Agriculture in Cuba is held up as a good example for others to follow. Unable to import from the US or sell sugar to Russia, Cubans have had to become self-sufficient. The positive side of this is that some farmers have turned to sustainable organic farming without needing to buy herbicides and pesticides. But oxen now replace tractors and modern machinery cannot be used to increase efficiency. The result is a largely peasant society where cheap food cannot easily be bought but must be grown, through hard labour. No mention is made of the repressive political and economic controls that have shaped Cuba’s society.

In his conclusion Madeley returns to Soviet-style thinking: the government must provide the food and it must be distributed according to need. Profit-based activities, he says, simply make the rich richer and should be stopped. He sees no place for any large-scale global trade regulation or, indeed, for large corporations. Hungry for Trade is angry about trade, and is good at identifying the problems. The West should be careful to build trade that is sustainable, the WTO needs to consider how it can offer more opportunities to the poor and TNCs will fail unless they are responsive to their markets. Where Hungry for Trade fails is in identifying the real causes and is content to heap the blame at the feet of the usual suspects: the West, the WTO and the TNCs.