[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 98 (Thursday, July 18, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H4925-H4927]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     FOOD CRISIS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I come this evening to talk about a very 
serious problem in this world. Last evening, I watched in horror as 
ABC, the Ted Koppel Show, depicted the food crisis in southern Africa. 
I watched as one woman was identified as having lost one of her twin 
babies to hunger, died from hunger, while the other baby was clinging 
to her breast, attempting to get milk that was not there. I watched as 
a man was shown sitting on the ground sifting dirt to eat, and the man 
said he was eating the dirt because it would fill up his stomach and 
help to do away with the hunger pains. I watched little children eating 
bugs and insects and others trying to find a morsel of some kind in the 
weeds. I watched all of this in horror because I have been working on 
this issue.
  I have met with Mr. Natsios on two different occasions. I went to the 
Committee on International Relations, even though I am not a member of 
that committee, but I wanted to sit in on a hearing that was being held 
about the food crisis in southern Africa. Mr. Natsios was there. I 
heard him testify, I believe at that time, that he was on top of it. 
Mr. Natsios is in charge of USAID, and he said that they were on top of 
it, that they were in front of it, that they had organized the food 
that was to be shipped there, and that they were not worried about 
people dying, that we would not have the kind of devastation that we 
had seen during the starvation crisis in Ethiopia some years ago.
  I was concerned about that, because at that time, I was getting 
information that people were already dying. But he said that he was on 
top of it. We had some of the agencies testifying there who are 
responsible for distribution of the food, but they seemed to talk in

[[Page H4926]]

more cautious terms. They seemed to speak about this crisis with the 
hope that we would be able to keep people from starving and dying, but 
I did not hear the kind of confidence in their tone and in their voices 
that I was looking for. So I continued to monitor what was going on.
  Just last week I went to a meeting that was held where all of the 
ambassadors from the countries that are in crisis attended. There was 
the ambassador from Lesotho, from Malawi, from Mozambique, from 
Swaziland and Zimbabwe and, again, Mr. Natsios from USAID was at that 
meeting. I challenged him about our actions in these countries, told 
him of my concern, and I said to him that I was proposing to put $200 
million in the supplemental appropriations bill to make sure we would 
have enough money for the grain and for the corn, for the food that we 
were going to dispatch to these hungry countries and get ahead of the 
curve so that when the rains come in October, we would not have to be 
worried about the trucks not being able to get where they needed to go. 
I wanted to get ahead of starvation so that we could get the food to 
the villages, so that we could get the grain in the grain storehouses. 
I wanted to avoid precisely what I saw last evening. I did not want 
ever in my life again to see the kind of starvation, the kind of death, 
the kind of devastation that I have witnessed too many times as I have 
watched the stories coming back to us from poor countries across this 
world.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted the United States to be in the forefront of 
helping people in the world, and I want us to use the bully pulpit of 
this great Nation to say to other countries that can be of assistance 
that they must join.
  The Super 8 powers of the world, with all of the resources, must join 
together to help the poor people of this world. This is how people 
define us. This is how people determine whether or not we are caring 
people. As a matter of fact, this is the best kind of diplomacy that we 
could ever employ. When we show that we care about people, that we are 
willing to stop little babies from starving to death, that we are 
willing to lend a helping hand, I think it does more for us than silly 
negotiations where people are not getting anywhere or getting people to 
believe much of anything.
  Mr. Speaker, my grandmother always said, it is not what you say, it 
is what you do.
  So I watched in horror last evening for precisely that which I was 
trying so hard to avoid.
  It is not just I who was concerned about this issue. The gentlewoman 
from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton), the gentleman from Massachusetts 
(Mr. McGovern), and many others have begun to work on this in different 
ways. I know some people were trying to work over on the Committee on 
Agriculture. Some people have tried to work from within the Committee 
on International Relations, and we have gone to people sitting on the 
appropriate subcommittees of the Committee on Appropriations to talk 
with them about this issue. So I know a number of people have been 
trying.
  So I certainly did not expect to see those images broadcast on ABC 
last evening. I certainly did not want to be told by a television 
program that people were already dying, and I did not want to see that 
the food is not getting up to the villages, and I did not want to see a 
woman who walked many miles to get a sack of grain that she placed on 
her head and walked back to her village with, only to have it 
distributed among all of the villagers, and she ended up with a 2-day 
supply, knowing that there would be no more food coming for another 
month or more. She will probably be dead by the time the next supply 
comes, and her babies will be dead.
  We could have avoided this. We could avoid this by, number one, 
making sure that we do what we can to appropriate the dollars that we 
can afford to appropriate, that we talk with the other nations that 
should be contributing, that we give some leadership to this problem. 
We know that we need some more money and we have a supplemental 
appropriation that is coming up, and we know that we are placing money 
in that supplemental appropriations bill for any number of countries. 
We know and we understand that there will be money in there for 
Afghanistan, and it should be. We know that there will be money in 
there for Israel, and it should be. We know that there will be money in 
there for many countries, because there are emergencies in the world. 
But why we have not been able to get the support from this 
administration to make sure that we can meet the needs of the food 
crisis of these very, very poor countries, I will never understand.
  As a matter of fact, when I said to Mr. Natsios at the last meeting 
that I wanted to know if he would support $200 million in the 
supplemental appropriation, he said flat out, no. And he followed it up 
with saying, you are not going to cause me to lose my job. Well, that 
simply means he does not have the support of this administration.
  I did not wish to come to the floor to have to talk about this. I 
have tried in the best fashion possible to address this at every 
possible point that one can inject an issue like this in the Congress 
of the United States.

                              {time}  1900

  But Mr. Speaker, there is a food crisis and people are dying. The 
children of these countries are already dying. Southern Africa is 
facing its worst food crisis in nearly 60 years. Almost 13 million 
people in southern Africa are in danger of starvation. In Zambia, 
people have turned to some of the desperate measures that I have 
alluded to, and they are even eating potentially poisonous wild foods.
  The crisis, as I have identified, very much affects the people of 
Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. The effects of 
the food crisis has been exacerbated by the AIDS pandemic in sub-
Saharan Africa. The AIDS pandemic has created many orphan children and 
left large numbers of African families with fewer productive family 
members to produce food or generate income with which to purchase food.
  Furthermore, high rates of HIV infection have caused many Africans to 
have increased vulnerability to the effects of malnutrition and related 
diseases, such as cholera and malaria. The World Food Program estimates 
that 1.2 million metric tons of food assistance will be needed over the 
next 9 months to meet the minimum food consumption requirements of 
these six countries. Yet, as of July 12, the United States government 
has provided a total of 132,710 metric tons, and that is about 11 
percent of the need. Clearly, we can do more.
  In the midst of this crisis, the administration is proposing to cut 
the total spending on food assistance programs by 18 percent. This 
would reduce food assistance from over $2 billion in fiscal year 2002 
to less than $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2003.
  There it is. This is what we did in 2001, $2,125,100,000; and in 
2002, $2,021,500,000. But now, for 2003, we are only getting from the 
administration $1,652,000,000. This is unacceptable, and it is 
unexplainable. Furthermore, it is unconscionable.
  On June 20, 2002, I sent a letter to the conferees on H.R. 4775, the 
Supplemental Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2002, asking them to 
provide an emergency supplemental appropriation of $200 million to 
respond to the food crisis in southern Africa. An emergency 
appropriation is essential to enable the United States Government to 
provide desperately needed assistance to millions of starving people.
  Sixty-two Members of Congress signed my letter, but I have not heard 
anything. Today, I brought this up in a meeting that was being held, I 
believe it was a whip meeting this morning. Most of the people in that 
meeting were alarmed, and they said they did not know about it and 
immediately said they wanted to do something to help. I went to the 
conference committee immediately following the whip meeting this 
morning, and I gave the information out once again.
  I have been told that, oh, I am a little bit late; that somehow, we 
cannot get back to that section, that we would have to take this up in 
the conference committee.
  I am not late. I sent this letter in June to this conference 
committee.
  I am not late. I had 62 Members of Congress sign this letter.
  I am not late because I went to the Committee on International 
Relations over 2 months ago.
  I am not late because I have been working on this issue long enough 
for this issue now to be taken up in the supplemental appropriations 
bill.

[[Page H4927]]

  Why are we not getting a response? We are not getting a response 
because I suppose people just do not pay enough attention to countries 
that are not politically powerful. I suppose Africa is still at the 
bottom of the list.
  I have lived long enough to see starvation on the continent. I have 
lived long enough to see 1 million people killed in a senseless war in 
Rwanda. I have lived long enough to watch this pandemic, where Africa 
is at the top of the world with HIV and AIDS infections.
  I am watching as we have worked so hard over the years to get rid of 
apartheid in South Africa, and still there are Africans who have no 
place to live, who are living up in huts, and even last night as they 
showed the people of Malawi living in grass huts, one little space for 
families with children, with nothing but a few pots and pans and dirt 
floors.
  Well, I said to myself a long time ago, I may be one person in the 
Congress of the United States, and I may not be able to get the 
assistance that Africa needs, I may not be able to convince my 
colleagues, I may not be able to get the appropriations, but I will 
never stop trying. I will never be quiet. I will never go away. I will 
never allow this kind of devastation to take place and pretend it is 
not happening.
  The people of Africa, many of them in many of these places that I am 
talking about may be poor, uneducated, may not have anything, and do 
not know how to lobby these major countries of the world. They may not 
have representatives that are doing the best job. But that does not 
matter. Those of us who are here who claim to care about people, who 
claim to be about the business of humanitarian assistance to the least 
of these, must speak out. We must talk about this starvation. We must 
talk about this devastation.

  Oh, yes, there are problems in Africa, and some of them are 
political. And, yes, they have, in some places in Africa, leaders who 
do not always do the right thing by their people. When we look at 
Zimbabwe and the problems they are having, there is a lot that we can 
criticize Mugabe for.
  But the little people who are hungry and dying are also at the mercy 
of the leadership. They are not making the decisions. They cannot be 
blamed for the sins of Mugabe and anybody else. The babies do not 
deserve that. The families do not deserve that. We cannot punish the 
hungry and the weak and the ignorant and the uneducated and the poor 
because they happen to have leaders that perhaps we do not like. We 
cannot ignore these countries because they do not have the 
sophisticated lobbying power and the communications and the ability to 
get people to act.
  I am challenging this administration to do the right thing. It is not 
enough to go to the big G-8 conference and stand with one leader from 
Africa, as was done recently, and talk about what we are going to do 
for Africa while we have a crisis going on. The proof of the pudding is 
in the eating: get the food to these six countries. Let us get some 
grain to the farmers, so they can plant the seeds, so they can get 
ahead of the famine. Let us give some support so they can dig the wells 
and have the irrigation.
  Part of what is wrong now in these countries is the fact that there 
is a drought. They have been devastated, first by flood, then by 
drought.
  Then, I want to know about the International Monetary Fund and why 
they told the leaders of Malawi to sell the grain to pay off their 
debt. I want to know why they are part of helping to drive this country 
into starvation.
  There are a lot of powerful forces at work in the world. Whether we 
are talking about the World Bank or the IMF or any of these entities, 
they can find a way to lend money to major corporations to build 
pipelines in Africa so American corporations can get richer and richer; 
but they cannot find a way to irrigate the land and to help bring water 
in so that people can have crops during times of crisis. We have not 
found a way to give agricultural assistance so we can fertilize the 
land and we can have the people plant the seeds so they can produce the 
food that they will need. So we have a crisis and people are dying.
  This administration must step forward and must provide some 
leadership; must use its prestige in the world to reach out to other 
countries and get them to do what they should be doing. I am going to 
talk about this ad nauseum. I am going to talk about it until I cannot 
talk about it anymore.
  I want to say to my colleagues that we cannot sit back and watch 
these images of dying children continue to come on television and say 
that we are legislators doing our job on the domestic and the 
international agenda. I know that we can do better than this. I know 
that we know it is a crisis.
  I know that Mr. Natsios now knows that he is not ahead of this 
problem. As a matter of fact, it is going to get worse. When the time 
comes, after the rains, when the trucks cannot get up into the 
villages, many, many people are going to die.
  So I come this evening to share this information and to sound the 
alarm, and to alert all those within my voice to join me in urging and 
pressing this administration, to join me in getting my colleagues to 
move, to join me in making this Congress what it could be and what it 
should be.
  I am very, very concerned, frustrated, and unhappy about what is 
going on; and I am not going to allow this frustration to cause me to 
walk away. Even though I will go to bed tonight dissatisfied, 
frustrated, and even upset, I am going to get up tomorrow morning and 
start all over again. I am going to get with my leadership again. I am 
going to talk with the leaders on the other side of the aisle. I am 
going to call Mr. Natsios and bug him one more time; and he is going to 
hear my sharp tones, as he did today, every day. I am going back to the 
supplemental conference committee. I am going to keep on working this 
at every turn until I can try and get a real response.

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