THE GUARDIAN: MOZAMBIQUE'S LONG WAIT:
CHRIS MCGREAL IN MAPUTO UNTIL DISASTERS ARE SHOWN ON TELEVISION NEWS, WE DO NOT SEEM ABLE
TO ACCEPT THAT THEY EXIST
84% match; The Guardian - United
Kingdom ; 02-Mar-2000 12:00:00 am ; 777 words
There is something wearily familiar about the sequence of events in Mozambique. For
three weeks the country laboured under the worst floods in living memory. No one outside
took much notice. South Africa dispatched a handful of military helicopters on rescue and
aid missions. Britain gave some money to cope with the medical emergency. The United
Nations sent a team to investigate.
But it was only when the television cameras arrived, and viewers across Europe and
America got a glimpse of what it is to have your house washed away while you climb the
nearest tree, that the crisis was taken seriously.
It was the same story in Somalia, Ethiopia and Goma. The
Americans were dragged into Somalia by the television
pictures. Western govern ments pretended the Rwandan genocide didn't exist but as Hutu
refugees started dying in their tens of thousands from cholera on the nine o' clock news,
the money gushed into Goma.
A disaster is only defined as such when sufficient numbers of people look its way. But
by then it is often too late for many victims who might have been saved. Each time there
are the same promises that the lessons will be learnt. No doubt some are, but when it
comes to the next crisis, they rarely seem to be applied.
One British official yesterday said the worst case scenario in Mozambique is worse than
anyone predicted. It is true that natural disasters are notoriously difficult to plan for.
But the flooding in Mozambique has been drawn out over four weeks, with sufficient
warnings that it was going to worsen and, that when the time came, help would be required
very fast and on a large scale.
The first floods hit nearly a month ago, turning vast swaths of southern and central
Mozambique into lakes. Cyclone Eline compounded the misery when it ripped through the
country more than a week ago. It wasn't difficult to predict what the effect would be.
The cyclone poured rain on already badly flooded settlements before moving on to
Zimbabwe and South Africa where, in a double whammy, Eline dumped a huge amount of water
into rivers flowing back into Mozambique.
Some of that water hit on Saturday night, consuming large towns such as Chokwe. It left
tens of thousands of people stranded on roofs, in trees and on tiny islands of high
ground. Hundreds of thousands were made homeless.
The United Nations, and British and other foreign officials, insist they were planning
to deal to with an escalation of the flooding. They reel off their donations of blankets
and logisticians and what they are going to do in the coming days. But what really
mattered in the first hours and days were rescue helicopters, and they were not on hand
except for the ones already sent by South Africa. No money had been set aside for
additional aircraft. No one bothered to explore where more helicopters might be found.
On Sunday - a day after the latest torrent of water carried away Chokwe - rescue
workers were not discussing how many more helicopters were arriving but whether anyone was
going to pay to keep the five South African aircraft flying. To its credit, Britain
pledged Dollars 1m but that did nothing to improve the situation.
Yesterday, British officials were trumpeting London's latest donation to pay for
another five helicopters. Even if you take Saturday's night's flooding as the moment that
kickstarted the expansion of the rescue effort, it has still taken Britain four crucial
days. It is an awful long time if you happen to be perched in a tree. And there was no
need to wait until Saturday night to realise the crisis was going to worsen.
The flaw is in the system. Disasters such as the Mozambique floods require a much
larger organisation and funds than individual aid organisations or governments can offer.
It requires a pot of money already to hand, and people with the authority to spend it to
provide whatever is most urgently required.
In Mozambique, it happens to be helicopters and boats. Presumably, that responsibility
should fall to the United Nations. After the first wave of floods hit Mozambique three
weeks ago, the UN sent a team from its humanitarian disaster office which spent 10 days in
the country. Its critics say it left without establishing a means of coordinating relief
efforts. A similar team has now returned to do the same job. The two most senior UN
officials in Mozambique were out of the country as the latest crisis hit.
Like most disasters, we will never know how many lives could have been saved by a
quicker reaction. For the moment, no one even knows if the death toll is in the hundreds
or the thousands.
But you can be reasonably certain of one thing. Afterwards there will be hand-wringing
and meetings and promises that the lessons of Mozambique 2000 have been learnt. Then
sometime in the next few years, another human calamity will befall another African
country. And the victims had better hope that it is a slow news week on CNN.
Report on the Guardian network at www.newsunlimited. co.uk/mozambique