African Pestilence

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-05-24-african-pestilence/

 

Recurrence

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/cartoon/recurrence/

Man must pay son-in-law six cows for convincing daughter to divorce

 

Namibia: Man must pay son-in-law six cows for convincing daughter to divorce

News - National | 2022-01-14

by Eliaser Ndeyanale

SIX cows and N$32 000.

This is how much one man was ordered to pay his son-in-law by a traditional court for convincing his daughter to divorce him after 10 years.

Manasse Mutivali, who lives in Ondangwa, says he suffered emotional damage due to this and approached the Zeraeua Community Court at Omaruru for “justice”.

The court ruled in favour of Mutivali and ordered Alfeus Kamara to pay his son-in-law before 7 July 2021.

Kamara has, however, appealed. The price was allegedly calculated based on the market price of cattle as of 4 March 2020.

According to court documents, a ruling was made in accordance with the Traditional Court Act 16, 4 (2). Mutivali (57) married Martha Mutivali (32) in 2013 in a traditional court at Omaruru. He had paid N$10 000 and an ox for her bride price.

Mutivali said Kamara told a community court in March last year that he was going to end their marriage.

Mutivali said because Kamara and his daughter have not made the payment, the clerk of the Zeraeua Community Court should have issued a warrant of arrest against them. Contacted for comment, Kamara said he did not want to comment, only confirming that he appealed.

ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSE

Kamara's daughter, Martha, told The Namibian that her father ended their marriage because Mutivali was abusive.

She also said they could not pay the money because they appealed.

“When I stayed with him at Ondangwa, he [Mutivali] would throw me out of the house at night. He also used to make death threats against me,” she said.

The woman said there was a time Mutivali scalded her with hot water and raped her while she was sleeping.

“I did not report this to the police because I felt pity for him,” she said.

She said when the court fined her and her father, it did not consider the abuse she was subjected to.

“Before the divorce, we already had a lot of problems in the marriage – we went to the police and physiologists. It's not about my father; he [Mutivali] just wants to drag my parents into everything. When he chased me out of the house, where was I supposed to go if not to my parents' house?” she asked.

She said there was a time Kamara drove from Erongo to Ondangwa to talk to Mutivali, but he allegedly refused to talk to his father-in-law.

“After what my father saw and everything happening in the marriage, he [my father] decided to end the marriage because he was afraid Manasse might kill me.

“I have statements to the police that he was chasing me out in the night,” she said.

She said following their divorce, Mutivali said he would not support their two children because they were not his.

Mutivali, however, denied that he abused her.

Zeraeua Community Court clerk Rukee Haakuria said the appeal brought by Kamara and his daughter is being processed and would be sent to the Omaruru Magistrate's Court for a decision.

He added that if the magistrate court refuses to hear the appeal, a writ of execution will be granted and the family's property would be auctioned to generate money to pay Mutivali.

He added that if the family does not have any valuable property, the case would be closed.

EDUCATION NEEDED ON TRADITIONAL COURTS

Former ombudsman John Walters said if the messenger of the court issues a writ of execution against the respondent's movable property, that property would be auctioned. However, if the respondent does not have any property, then the person who drags them to court will get nothing.

He said people should be educated about the proceedings of the traditional, community and magistrate's courts because if they sue and the respondent has no valuable property, the applicant will not get anything to recover their loss.

Language and culture lecturer at the University of Namibia, associate professor Jekura Kavari, said parents should not break up their children's marriages.

“That is against culture. Culturally, it is the couple that was supposed to take that decision. If the husband decides that he does not want his wife anymore, he pays six herd of cattle to the wife's family,” he said.

https://www.namibian.com.na/109058/read/Man-must-pay-son-in-law-six-cows--for-convincing-daughter-to-divorce

 

Namibia’s community wildlife conservation system has come off the rails, investigation shows

Namibia’s Community-Based Natural Resource Management is seen as a global gold standard for conservation. But a probe has found that it’s falling apart.eyondWords

An investigation into Namibia’s wildlife management policies and programmes by two environmental researchers has found that the claimed success of conservation in the country and economic benefits for poor rural communities are largely a fabrication.

After two months of visiting 29 conservancies across Namibia, Dr Adam Cruise and Izzy Sasada found that – particularly in the northern areas – larger species such as elephants, lions, zebras and oryx were in decline. 

Far from being a success story, Namibia’s much-touted wildlife conservation model had achieved the opposite of what is commonly presented, they say. They found wildlife numbers declining and elephant and other wildlife populations in the Kunene Region collapsing. 

Throughout the country, many rural communities in Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) areas were found to be in worse condition than before independence.

Namibia’s rural poor are getting poorer. (Photo: Supplied)

Minority groups such as San, Himba, Kavango, Caprivian and Damara were being exploited, both by the government and by larger ethnic groups such as Ovambo and Herero “settlers” who had moved into their conservancies to exploit the natural resources. 

These land invasions involved overutilisation of wildlife, mining, oil drilling, logging and other natural resource appropriation.

“Namibia is always presented at CITES meetings as the exemplar of wildlife protection and community upliftment,” says Cruise. “Entities like WWF, USAID and the European Union pour millions of dollars into Namibian conservation. But more and more studies have been questioning the efficacy of CBNRM. I needed to find out for myself.”

He and Sasada chose elephants as a yardstick, since they’re key to measuring the health of Namibia’s biodiversity and take precedence in the perceived earnings and subsequent “benefits” for local communities. At the time of the study, Namibia announced it would auction off 170 wild free-roaming elephants to foreign bidders.

“We wanted to assess the areas earmarked for capture both in terms of how that might affect the elephant populations there and how they ostensibly benefit local communities,” says Cruise. What they discovered shocked them.

Desert elephants. (Photo: Adam Cruise)

They found that all wildlife populations, including elephants and gemsbok, were dangerously low. The people who were supposed to benefit from Community-Based Resource Management were hungry, impoverished and fed up with the government. Unemployment, exploitation and land expropriation were widespread and there were almost zero opportunities in terms of work, health and education. 

The common complaint throughout was that many still felt under the yoke of colonisation, merely that the colonisers had changed. “The pervading mood throughout our travels,” says Cruise, “ranged from resignation and despair (mostly among the San) to anger and even open sedition, as in the Zambezi Region.”

Sasada, an anthropologist, says she found the testimonies of particularly the San people in Nyae-Nyae and N#a Jaqna conservancy difficult to bear. 

“The San people I interviewed had been bullied and marginalised on all sides, both by conservancy managements who disregarded them and accepted bribes from ‘settlers’ (outsiders) in exchange for land, and by the settlers themselves, who bewitch them, underpay them for labour and steal their government pensions and child support money.”

Their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle which tourists come to experience no longer exists in these communities as they’ve lost access to the natural resources on which they depended.

A man was interviewed who had to walk several kilometres each day to collect water, since the tap provided by the conservancy had been blocked off by one of the settlers who now used it for his cattle. He said the cattle devastated the bush fruit on which they had survived and they often entered the homestead and destroyed crop gardens.

Another man said he had been to prison for three months for killing a blue wildebeest because his family was hungry. Traditional hunting had been banned in the area he lived in. He said he couldn’t fathom why a white man could come from abroad to kill an animal for fun when his own family could not hunt “for the pot” as they had done for generations.

The report found that, particularly in the CBNRM-dominated Kunene region, while many wildlife species were in sharp decline, desert-adapted elephants were marked for capture, auction and possible export.

The Namibian conservation model, it says, is an example of an increasingly “neoliberal” global policy framework as applied to biodiversity conservation, using a market-based approach with attendant socioecological effects. The model is considered successful in conserving wildlife and providing economic upliftment for impoverished rural communities. Yet assessment is warped by huge wealth disparities. 

“Namibia  has an annual GDP of about $10.7-billion with an average per capita income of around $5,300 a year. These figures, however, are skewed by 3,300 US dollar millionaires in the country. This hides the fact that about 18% of Namibia’s population live below the poverty line in spite of claims that its wildlife economy has been successful in reducing poverty.”

Under its conservation model, the Namibian government fully supports international commercial trade in wild animals and parts or products derived from them, including from threatened species such as elephants. 

It has regularly proposed a lifting of the ban on international commercial sales of ivory and on two occasions (1999 and 2008) it was granted permission by CITES to sell its national ivory stockpile.

Namibian desert elephants. (Photo: Stephan Scholvin)

Namibia’s recent announcement that it will auction 170 live elephants elicited widespread international criticism and could weaken its tourism sector at a time when it needs to rebuild the sector after Covid lockdowns.

Tourism is a major contributor to the country’s GDP, bringing in an estimated $77-billion (11.7% of the total GDP for 2020). The sector directly or indirectly supports 123,000 jobs (16.4% of all employment). 

The goal of CBNRM was to promote sustainable natural resource management by giving local communities rights to wildlife management and tourism.  CBNRMs are described as “self-governing, democratic entities, run by their members, with fixed boundaries that are agreed with adjacent conservancies, communities or landowners”.

They are managed by committee members and must have wildlife management plans and prepare financial reports. Since 1998, Namibia has created 86 CBNRMs, covering more than 20% of the country and encompassing about 228,000 community members.

The report by Cruise and Sasada, however, concludes that the programme’s perceived success of wildlife conservation and economic benefits for previously disadvantaged rural communities have been grossly misrepresented. 

“Far from being a success story, Namibia’s much-touted wildlife conservation model and its adherence to sustainable utilisation of wildlife through community-based management has, in fact, achieved the opposite of what is commonly presented. 

“Overall wildlife numbers are declining and elephant populations in the Kunene Region are collapsing, while rural communities within the CBNRMs are as impoverished as ever, in many cases, more so.”

Namibia’s ministry of environment and tourism was approached for comment but had not responded by time of publication. DM/OBP

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-12-14-namibias-community-wildlife-conservation-system-has-come-off-the-rails-investigation-shows

 

How big is the Islamist threat in Mozambique? And why are Rwandan troops there?

Phil Clark

Professor of International Politics, SOAS, University of London

Military intervention by Rwanda and SADC only buys time for Mozambique to address lack of development in its northern region.

Rwanda has sent troops to Mozambique to assist the government in fighting against a four-year Islamist militant insurgency. Political scientist Phil Clark provides insights into the threat and why Rwanda is supporting Mozambique.

Do the insurgents in Mozambique represent a new front of Islamic terrorism on the continent?

Since 2017, jihadist militias in the northern Mozambique province of Cabo Delgado have mounted an armed insurgency against the Mozambican government. Their stated objective is to instil Sharia law across northern Mozambique. This is said to be in response to the region’s chronic poverty, unemployment and weak public services under the Frelimo-led government in Maputo.

The Mozambican insurgents represent a new armed Islamic front, with entirely local motivations and command structures. However, their propaganda invokes common tropes of regional and global jihad.

They often claim responsibility for attacks using the name given to them by the local population, ‘Al-Shabaab’. But there is no evidence that they have any direct links to Al-Shabaab in Somalia.et newsletter

Recently, Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for jihadist attacks in Mozambique.

But, again, there appears to be little direct connection between the Mozambican jihadists and the Islamic State. ISIS has previously attempted to claim responsibility for attacks by unassociated Islamist groups elsewhere in Africa, for example the Allied Democratic Forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

How big a threat do they represent?

The jihadists pose a significant threat to local civilians and foreign economic interests in Cabo Delgado. The four-year low-intensity civil war has killed more than 3,000 civilians, displaced 800,000 and caused widespread food insecurity.

Meanwhile, the energy giants ExxonMobil and Total have suspended their liquid natural gas projects in Cabo Delgado. ExxonMobil is investing US$30billion and Total US$20billion.

The insurgents have cited the perception that local people will fail to benefit from government deals with the multinational companies as one catalyst for their attacks.

The combination of widespread violence and threats to foreign businesses have led to a patchwork of international military and security interventions. This includes reports of:

• the Mozambican government’s use of Russian and South African mercenaries

• the presence of Portuguese military trainers, and

• Total’s hiring of a former French foreign legionnaire to coordinate security for its gas plant on the Afungi peninsula.

In addition, Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) –- including South African special forces – have deployed peacekeepers to Cabo Delgado.

This raises major concerns over a seeming lack of coordination among these armed actors.

Why is the Rwandan government getting involved?

There is vociferous debate about this.

The Rwandan government frames this as a ‘responsibility to protect’ mission. This, it argues, has been inspired by the international community’s failure to protect civilians in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

The Rwandan intervention in Mozambique came shortly after French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Kigali in May 2021. Some commentators have suggested that Rwanda, funded by France, has intervened to shore up France’s interests, principally the gas reserves of French-owned Total.

The Rwandan government has chafed against the claim that it is simply doing France’s neo-colonial bidding. It has stressed the humanitarian basis of its intervention.

There is scant evidence of direct French backing for Rwanda’s military campaign. Nevertheless, France held a series of high-level talks with Rwanda and South Africa about the Cabo Delgado conflict in the months preceding their interventions in Mozambique. This suggests close coordination between Paris and these actors, reflecting the enormous French interests at stake.

In May this year Macron discussed military solutions to the crisis with a number of African heads of state at a summit in Paris. They included Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Rwandan President Paul Kagame. This was succeeded by similar talks with Kagame and Ramaphosa in Kigali and Pretoria several weeks later.

Crucial to Rwanda’s involvement in Cabo Delgdao are growing ties between Rwanda and Mozambique after the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding in 2018.

Earlier this year Nyusi made a lightning-stop visit to Kigali to ask for Rwanda’s military assistance in Cabo Delgado. Nyusi had previously stated his preference for bilateral rather than multilateral military intervention. He is perhaps concerned about ceding too much control to a SADC mission led by regional powerhouse South Africa.

He also noted Rwanda’s track record of conducting highly disciplined and effective peacekeeping missions. These have included Rwandan battalions operating in the Central African Republic outside the broader UN peacekeeping mission, similar to Rwanda’s current support for Mozambican forces outside of SADC.

Alongside its humanitarian objectives, the Rwandan government stands to benefit in security and diplomatic terms from its involvement in Cabo Delgado.

The intervention fits a pattern of Rwanda’s ‘responsibility to protect’ role in peacekeeping missions in Darfur, Mali, CAR and Haiti. These have bolstered its international image and afforded it considerable international leverage. For example, in 2010 when foreign donors considered prosecutions and suspending aid to Rwanda because of its alleged crimes in eastern Congo, Kigali threatened to withdraw its peacekeepers from Darfur.

The Cabo Delgado campaign is also consistent with Rwanda’s recent talk of tackling Islamist threats at home and in the wider region.

In regional geopolitical terms, Rwanda will have delighted in reports that its troops in northern Mozambique have proven more effective than those of SADC, with which it has often had a testy relationship.

Finally, Rwanda’s intervention bolsters its bilateral relations with Mozambique and France. A key catalyst for Rwanda’s diplomatic push with Mozambique in recent years has been the concern that Maputo had become a launching pad for exiled Rwandan dissidents. This has included members of the opposition Rwanda National Congress. Closer security ties have included Rwanda’s request that Mozambique rein in opposition members on its soil.

Kagame has for years lambasted France for failing to apologise for its complicity in the 1994 genocide. It therefore took some genocide survivors by surprise when he warmly welcomed Macron’s remarks on the issue. They had misgivings about whether Macron had fully acknowledged and apologised for France’s role in the genocide.

Kagame’s warm comments preceded the announcement of a new €500 million  French development package to Rwanda.

What are the implications of its involvement?

The Rwandan forces have so far proven effective in tackling the jihadist insurgents. This has led the Mozambican government to claim that Rwanda’s entrance has fundamentally altered the direction of the conflict and improved the security situation for civilians and foreign companies.

The concurrent operations by Rwandan and SADC forces, however, could pose problems in the coming months. Various SADC leaders – as well as Mozambique’s largest opposition party Renamo – have criticised the arrival of Rwandan troops. They argue that this should have been an exclusively SADC effort.

These issues were clearly on the mind of Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta who travelled to Pretoria in early June to discuss Rwanda-South Africa cooperation in Mozambique. This came shortly after Rwandan military chiefs conducted their first reconnaissance trip to Cabo Delgado.

But military force can achieve only so much. This has been made clear in comparable cases of Islamist violence in the Horn of Africa, Nigeria and the Sahel.

Systemic political and socio-economic interventions are necessary to address years of Frelimo neglect in northern Mozambique. These have produced the deprivation and marginalisation that underpin the insurgency.

Mozambicans themselves are clearly the key actors in this situation. Nevertheless, Rwanda and SADC should use their diplomatic leverage to encourage Nyusi to address the structural causes – and not only the violent manifestations – of the conflict. This includes ensuring that the immense natural gas wealth that will flow once the conflict abates benefits not only Nyusi’s government and multinational corporations but, most importantly, everyday Mozambicans.

https://theconversation.com/how-big-is-the-islamist-threat-in-mozambique-and-why-are-rwandan-troops-there-168123

King Mswati may need to scrutinise Bhutan’s transitional approach to avoid complete catastrophe in Eswatini

 

King Mswati may need to scrutinise Bhutan’s transitional approach to avoid complete catastrophe in Eswatini (former Swaziland)

King Mswati III of Eswatini. 

The Himalayan nation is a model for transitioning from absolute to constitutional monarchy, but time for this option in Eswatini is running out. 

Up to 60 protesters and rioters were killed by security forces in Eswatini in June. And many government and private buildings and vehicles were destroyed, causing damage estimated at R3-billion. Things have since gone quiet, but for how long? King Mswati III has shown no signs of having learnt any lessons from those events. 

Instead, he has doubled down, appointing a hardline prime minister in Cleopas Dlamini and arresting two pro-democracy members of Parliament, Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube, under the country’s Suppression of Terrorism Act. They were allegedly stoking unrest by calling for the prime minister to be elected by parliament – not appointed by the king. 

Regional intervention seems to have gone nowhere. The violence and destruction of June jolted the Southern African Development Community (SADC) into sending ministers and officials to consult with the government and some members of civil society and the political opposition. 

SADC quietly produced a report recommending that Mswati engage in a national dialogue about the country’s future. But an official noted rather helplessly that, “There will only be a national dialogue if Mswati wants one.” And clearly, he doesn’t, aware that ‘national dialogue’ can only go one way — towards democracy. In the final communique of SADC’s August heads of state summit, there was no mention of the Eswatini matter.

Chatham House scholars, Fundile Maphanga and Christopher Vandome, have recently warned that Mswati is on course for a huge collision with his people. Especially youth, who are disenchanted with their lot as poverty grinds on and much less indulgent of the king’s claims to be the defender of Swazi traditional values. 

Young people are also incensed by the royal family’s ever more Bourbon-esque indifference to their people’s plight. Eleven customised Rolls-Royces were recently acquired — one for the king, one for the Queen Mother, and one for each of Mswati’s wives.

Maphanga and Vandome note that as “the country’s current economic and social trajectory is unsustainable, the king and his advisers may seek to consider various options for reform. Lesotho and Bhutan could offer lessons of monarchical leadership reforms that would allow Eswatini to retain distinctive cultural institutions and practices, while the monarchy relinquishes executive powers within its political system.”

This is an interesting suggestion. All three are tiny monarchies surrounded by bigger states. But although nearby Lesotho seems the more obvious example, it is remote Bhutan — an isolated Shangri-La of Buddhism in the Himalayas — that is probably a better model for Mswati. 

Lesotho is indeed a constitutional monarchy, but it isn’t really clear that it was ever an absolute monarchy. The country has had a messy political history since independence from Britain in 1966. Its kings have occasionally meddled in politics, though power has mainly oscillated between politicians and the military. 

By contrast, Bhutan transitioned quite definitively from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one, over several years. Most remarkably, the change was initiated by the monarch himself, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. In 1998 he devolved some executive powers to a cabinet of ministers and enabled the National Assembly to elect the cabinet. 

In 2001 he launched a constitution-writing process that reflected Bhutan’s Buddhist values and cultural norms. And then Jigme Singye abdicated in 2006 in favour of his eldest son and stood back to let the transition unfold. In 2008 Bhutan held its first democratic elections which the pro-monarchy Harmony Party won by a landslide. Parliament adopted the draft constitution in July of that year.

The country essentially has a conventional democratic constitution, enshrining the usual freedoms, with some Bhutanese idiosyncrasies. The constitution also creates an important place for the monarch as the nation’s unifying force and head of the Buddhist faith. It emphasises the ‘fundamental duties’ of citizens, not only their rights. 

What is most remarkable about the transition though is that it wasn’t the result of popular democratic ferment. It was Jigme Singye’s “top-down gift to his people.” His advisers and the public seemed largely opposed to the idea as the monarchy was so popular. So he had to persuade them of its merits. 

That reminded me of when I asked Mswati many years ago whether he didn’t think a constitutional monarchy would be the best compromise between Eswatini’s traditional values and the rising demand for democracy. He assured me that he’d consulted his people, and they didn’t think that was a good idea.

In retrospect, like Jigme Singye, he should have persuaded them to give it a try. It may now be too late for Mswati to emulate Bhutan’s former monarch. Since the June bloodbath, which many blame on the king, democratic activists have withdrawn the support they might have had for a constitutional monarchy. They now want a democratic republic.

But launching a Bhutan-like reform process may nonetheless be Mswati’s last shot at saving himself and the nation from disaster. The Bhutan constitution shows that traditional values — which Mswati purports to espouse — can be reconciled with conventional democratic freedoms. 

Good alternatives may be closing out for Mswati. And although Jigme Singye appeared to have been motivated by a genuine concern for his people’s welfare, some commentators think he was jolted by events in a neighbouring kingdom. In 2001, Nepal’s Crown Prince Dipendra shot dead King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, seven other royal family members, and himself, in their palace in Kathmandu. This bloodbath precipitated the rapid unravelling of the monarchy and the emergence of a republic in 2008.

And one hears of rumbling among the Swazi royals, particularly by Mswati’s many siblings, who feel they’re being overlooked for patronage in favour of the king’s wives and children. They believe Mswati is jeopardising the monarchy by his autocratic and extravagant lifestyle. 

So perhaps a palace revolt is just another one of those hazards Mswati could avoid by embarking on an — admittedly unlikely — Bhutanese pathway to constitutional monarchy.

Peter Fabricius, ISS Consultant. 

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-10-08-king-mswati-may-need-to-scrutinise-bhutans-transitional-approach-to-avoid-complete-catastrophe-in-eswatini/

 

Philanthropic Jewish Couple’s Private Donation to Christian Medical Missions Is Reportedly Largest Ever

25

MARCO LONGARI/AFP via Getty Images

NICK GILBERTSON

4 Oct 2021

Philanthropic couple Mark and Erica Gerson have donated $18 million to Christian medical missions that work to improve health care in Africa.

The Gersons are a traditional practicing Jewish couple from New York City. According to the Christian Post, Mark, an entrepreneur, and Erica, a rabbi, have already donated millions throughout the years to Christian medical missions to fight a shortage of adequate medical care in Africa.

Gerson called the lack of proper health care in Africa “one of the most significant humanitarian problems in the world,” according to the Christian Post.

Mark Gerson and Dr. Jon Fielder founded a non-profit group called African Mission Healthcare (AMH) in 2010. “African Mission Healthcare partners with mission hospitals to provide quality, compassionate care to patients and to improve healthcare systems throughout sub-Saharan Africa,” according to the AMH website.

The AMH has made a significant impact on African medical care over the past 11 years. According to the Jerusalem Post, the non-profit has poured upwards of $30 million into infrastructure, training, and clinical care, which has resulted in the training of 3,000 medical workers and the treatment of 670,000 patients in 16 different African countries.

Though Gerson is a cofounder of the AMH, the $18 million donation comes from his and Erica’s personal savings account, the Christian Post reports.

“We are delighted to honor our Jewish obligation to ‘love the stranger’ by partnering with the people who do so most effectively, efficiently and devotedly: African Christian and missionary doctors working at mission hospitals in Africa,” Gerson said per the AMH website.

“The best investment that one can make, whether in a business context or non-profit context, is by supporting Christian missionary doctors working in Africa,” Gerson told the Christian Post.

A significant problem regarding health care in Africa is a shortage of specialized surgeons and doctors who can meet specific health needs that different patients might require.

“The implications of this is that if you’re a mother and you go into labor and there is anything remotely complicated, you might not be able to get a C-section,” Gerson said, according to the Christian Post. “And that’s why in Uganda and other African countries, only 20% of women who need a C-section get it, which means that 80% don’t.”

“If you need a C-section and you don’t get it, you will either die in childbirth or you will suffer a number of birth injuries,” he continued. “And this will be with the mothers for the rest of their lives until they get surgery — which she will likely never be able to do because of the lack of surgeons.”

In addition to the $18 million being donated by the Gersons, the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) is donating $2 million to reach a total of a $20 million donation, according to the AMH. The non-profit states that the contribution is the “largest private gift ever to Christian medical missions.”

Co-founder and chairman of GLG Mark Gerson speaks during the book release party for Michael Oren’s “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide” at Gerson Lehrman Group on June 18, 2015, in New York City. (Photo by Donald Bowers/Getty Images for GLG)

Managing Director of the Global head of Philanthropy Services at UBS, Tom Hall, sang the praises of the work done at AMH.

“Transforming health systems that meet the needs of women, children and others at risk in Africa is also one of the critical priorities of the UBS Optimus Foundation,” Hall stated according to AMH. “African Mission Healthcare shares these same priorities, and executes with remarkable effectiveness and efficiency.”

Some funds will be made immediately available to AMH, while others will be used for donor matches.

“$11 million of this total gift will be available to AMH immediately to expand selected high-impact projects,” the AMH website states. “The remaining $9 million will be made available as a donor match in support of AMH’s Transforming Healthcare Campaign, challenging others to expand their support for AMH and its important work.”

“The first $9 million in gifts to African Mission Healthcare’s Transforming Healthcare Campaign will be matched by the funds provided by the Gersons and UBS,” according to AMH. “As a result of the match, a gift of $500,000 can add a training program that makes possible 44,000+ operations, safe anesthesia for 25,000+ surgeries, care for one million patient visits, and mentoring of 1000+ medical students and residents.”

https://www.breitbart.com/africa/2021/10/04/philanthropic-jewish-couple-ubs-donate-largest-private-gift-christian-medical-missions/