Drive for peace and ultimate dream

DESPITE the challenges that will inevitably loom in the future, President Thabo Mbeki will be well satisfied with the initial progress made in halting the festering civil strife in the Ivory Coast.

The African Union mandated Mbeki to negotiate an end to the hostilities as the situation continued to deteriorate in the west African state.

The AU is well aware that successes recorded – such as the recent elections in Botswana, Namibia and Ghana that were relatively free and fair – will continue to have little or no impact on an Afro-pessimistic world for as long as areas of the continent are plagued by civil and ethnic strife.

Nor will the continent prove attractive to investors and record the kind of economic growth required to address the appalling levels of poverty, disease and hunger, for as long as it is seen as a playground for dictators and warlords.

The creation of the AU, which replaced the tired and essentially ineffective Organisation of African Unity, was recognition that if Africa’s potential is ever to be realised, it will be as a result of the efforts of African nations rather than the intervention of the major powers.

It is against that background that South Africa has led the way with initiatives in the Great Lakes region, for example, geared to bring peace to an area where it is estimated that in the DRC alone 31 000 people die every month.

Mbeki will be under no illusions about the challenges that lie ahead, not only in Ivory Coast, but elsewhere.

But as he seeks to drive the dream of an African Renaissance, he will take heart from the celebrations of democracy recorded in recent months in Botswana, Namibia and Ghana and the steps, albeit tentative, being taken elsewhere on the continent. And he will know that slowly the frontiers of Afro-pessimism and cynicism are being pushed back and that the dream of an African century can become a reality.

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Tragic threat to our young

WHERE is the swift and decisive action that the United Nations Children’s Fund says South Africa will have to take if ever we are to stem what it calls the tidal wave of HIV/Aids infection and loss?

And it’s not only South Africa that Unicef is troubled about. Our continent is rife with the disease.

We recently marked World Aids Day. But how are we to stem the tide of this cruel killer which deprives children of their parents and parents of their children – and all of them of the future which should have been of such bright promise on this continent? It is a continent which has transformed itself politically– but it has also become aware too late of the horror of this killer which lies latent in so many healthy-seeming young people, waiting to shorten their lives and the lives of others who might have been infected by them?

And many such people have already lost their mothers and fathers to the disease.

According to the Unicef statistics, about 1,1 million children in South Africa lost their parents to Aids last year.

It’s something that must be understood as the prosperous and healthy prepare to enjoy Christmas and the holidays.

Those who know and understand the danger must teach the young to be vigilant and take the trouble to care for the infected.

At Christmas time, many remember the birth of one remarkable baby. We must also remember those who will need the care our civilisation owes them.