Drought, Death And Despair

By Pico Iyer

The cruel vagaries of weather

Without rain there can be no crops. Without crops there is no food, no money and ultimately no hope. For millions of people on four continents this summer there is very little hope.

From India to South Africa, from Brazil to the Philippines, the vicious cycle of drought is having a devastating effect. Bush fires have scorched the arid ground in Ghana and Liberia; in Brazil hot winds from the east have made the desiccated ground still dryer. Some 2 million people are seriously undernourished in South Africa; 3 million in Ethiopia are totally dependent on emergency supplies. In India, where crops throughout 75% of the land have been ruined by a dry spell that in one state has lasted five years, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has had to spend $600 million in precious foreign-exchange reserves for food imports this year alone. Indonesia, which finally achieved self-sufficiency in rice last year, will need to import 2 million tons of rice this year at a cost of $700 million. Zimbabwe, which enjoys so regular a crop surplus that it exported food to twelve African nations in 1981-82, is this year for the first time reportedly requesting $25 million in food aid.

Meteorologists suspect that droughts in India, Mexico, southern Africa and the Philippines are attributable to El Nino, the Pacific current that may also account for this spring's record rains in California. But El Nino does not explain the aridity of northeastern Brazil, where rainfall this year is running at one-eighth its normal rate. In most afflicted areas, paralyzing dryness is, alas, endemic. Explains Roman Kintanar, president of the World Meteorological Society: "What we have right now is just one of the vagaries of weather."

All the parched countries face the same sad pattern. Along the "Street of Sickness" in northern Brazil's sweltering market town of Irauc,uba, a family of twelve huddles in a two-room shack, hoping to survive on the $22 a month it receives from the government. The reason: with no vegetation to eat, cattle have collapsed on their feet, or simply died. Some villagers in India are reduced to chewing grass, sucking the roots of herbs and scrambling alongside animals to lap up water that spills out of pumps. In drought-plagued areas of the Philippines that have seen outbreaks of locusts, even those pests have been sold for food. Millions of Africans are aching through a dry spell perhaps less severe but certainly more widespread than the harrowing drought of 1973, which killed more than half a million. Refugees throughout these afflicted areas are often packed so tightly into camps that contagious illnesses spread swiftly and fatally. Kwashiorkor, a protein-deficiency disease, is sweeping through the infant population in South Africa's black rural areas, but many people cannot raise the $3.50 hospital admission fee.

Those who take to the road in search of food fare little better. During each of the past four rainless years, as many as 20,000 peasants have abandoned the nine-state northeastern area of Brazil for crowded urban centers along the coast. There, they are paid 35-c- an hour and condemned to life in shantytowns. Some 50,000 people fled India's northwestern state of Rajasthan (pop. 34.2 million) last spring; those who stayed are often forced to sell their cattle for less than $1 a head or to smuggle them across the border into Muslim Pakistan, where they may fetch $50. In Ethiopia's rugged mountainous region of Gondar, 200 people have been fleeing across the border into Sudan each day.

In most cases, governments have been unable or unwilling to cope with the problems caused by drought. Hoping to mollify the politically volatile inhabitants of urban slums, authorities in Zambia and Zaire have held prices for farm produce artificially low and thus exacerbated rural poverty. Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe, withheld assistance from those parts of the drought-stricken southwestern province of Matabeleland where rebel factions were most active. Ethiopia continues to spend more than 30% of its budget on arms and less than 5% on importing food.

Grim details in five countries:

INDIA. From the Indian Ocean to the Himalayan foothills, villagers are making offerings of rice and flowers to the rain god Varuna, and schoolchildren begin and end their days by praying for rainfall. But the heavens have rarely responded. In the space of six weeks, 100 of the 8,000 inhabitants of the town of Solankiya died of malnutrition and other drought-related diseases. Even when rain does fall, it comes in the wrong place at the wrong time. A sudden torrential downpour in the western state of Gujarat last week caused raging floods that claimed more than 800 lives. Although this year's monsoons have begun, U.S. experts are predicting major droughts during the next two years. In all, the government estimates that more than 250 million Indians are seriously affected by the drought.

Although India has devoted $810 million to drought relief, all too often the assistance has been haphazardly administered. At one time 40% of the trucks used for transporting water into stricken areas were out of commission. Nor has there been much long-term planning. Although the state of Rajasthan has seen almost no water since 1978, the authorities have been slow in implementing schemes to distribute water. So far, says a Madras journalist, "man is the villain, not God."

ETHIOPIA. The long lines of gaunt, potbellied children with matchstick limbs are dispiritingly familiar. During the 1973 drought, 200,000 Ethiopians died; this year's disaster is even more pervasive. Gondar province, once known as Ethiopia's grain basket, has become a shriveled wasteland. Where rain has fallen, there are no seeds to plant; where it has not, there is no wood for building, and nothing but straw and dung for fuel. In addition, the remoteness of the area makes communication difficult and the provision of supplies almost impossible. In some camps refugees must either wait 36 hours for their turn at the local well or walk for three hours over rough terrain to reach the nearest source of water.

Reminded of the horrors of the 1973 drought, which helped to bring down Emperor Haile Selassie, the Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam has succeeded in keeping casualties down by activating a relief commission that has already resettled some 10,000 victims and reforested remote, soil-eroded areas. But such efforts can create new problems: for example, after being uprooted, people without an inborn immunity to malaria often prove more vulnerable to the disease. Meanwhile, international relief agencies charge that supplies are falling into the hands of government troops instead of beleaguered civilians. The rains that finally began last month are, in a cruel paradox, a mixed blessing. Weak and shelterless people in the cool Ethiopian highlands are now falling prey to pneumonia.

SOUTH AFRICA. Rural areas, constituting 70% of the nation, have for two years been weathering a drought that is in some areas the worst in more than two centuries. Homeowners in Johannesburg are not permitted to refill their swimming pools, while residents of Durban must now wash their clothes and nurse their flowers with bathwater. But the effects of drought are most urgent in the black tribal homelands. In Zululand, 200,000 cattle without grazing land are expected to die; 98% of the 68,000 wild donkeys in Bophuthatswana will be shot on government orders so that more pasture will be available for cattle, sheep and goats. In the Orange Free State tribal settlement area of Onverwacht, 4,000 have reportedly died. These hardships are having serious political and social repercussions. Says Bishop Desmond Tutu, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches: "I'm fearful that people will begin to kill for food."

Even as South Africa has been drained of $1 billion in foreign exchange, the consequences of drought are rippling out to its neighbors. The country has traditionally exported up to a million tons of corn each year to other African nations. This year, however, South Africa will have to import corn from the U.S., Argentina and Taiwan.

BRAZIL. Throughout the northeastern area, known as the Polygon of Drought, 21 million people have now endured four years without meaningful rain. As conditions have deteriorated, violence has erupted throughout the hinterland. In the small, cattle-raising town of Monsenhor Tabosa, 1,000 people from the countryside recently sacked a school commissary when the local mayor began distributing rice, beans and flour. Under similar circumstances, 400 angry villagers stormed the local mayor's office in the remote western town of Senhor Pompeu. So far the Brazilian government has spent $800 million to build dams, aqueducts and wells, while trying to create jobs for 600,000 victims. It has tested new methods of planting and new crops. But until the rains return, little that is constructive can be done. Sums up one resident: "It is for God to help us."

THE PHILIPPINES. As the southern island of Mindanao suffers through its worst drought in 50 years, 3 million farmers have lost some 60,000 tons of rice and corn, causing exportable rice stocks to plunge by 69%. Not even faraway Manila is immune: six major dams, the main source of the capital's water and electricity, may soon have to be closed down. As in other blighted areas, the physical wasteland has become a political minefield. President Marcos' wife Imelda perplexed compatriots in May by reportedly pressing the government into phasing out its $320 million U.S. food-assistance program. Citing her husband's ideal of "self-reliance through self-help," the First Lady declared: "There's no reason why the Philippines, which produces enough food, should import from or depend on foreign sources for its food supplies." Among those contesting such logic was Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila. Said he: "At present the full impact of the drought has not been felt, principally because the National Food Authority has been drawing on its stockpiles. But how long will these stockpiles last?" Although rains have begun to fall, many people expect no relief before November.

The worldwide picture is not entirely bleak. China, which suffered some kind of drought every year between 1949 and 1982, received a welcome spate of April showers. So too, the worst drought in Australia's history ended last March, when steady rainfall began soaking much of the country. As new seeds have been planted, optimism has flowered. But Australian farmers estimate it could take seven years to undo the damage. In drought-ravaged areas around the world, such problems would seem like blessings. --By Pico Iyer. Reported by Dean Brelis/New Delhi and Gavin Scott/Rio de Janeiro, with other bureaus

With reporting by Dean Brelis, Gavin Scott This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.