Rome burns whilst the bishops of Central Africa fiddle.

The analogy between the Rome of the Caesars and the Province of Central Africa and its Bishops may seem contrived but it is not far from the truth if the latest SANF (Southern African News Features) article is to be believed headed Malawi: Climate Change - More of The Same, And Worse and accessible on www. allafrica .com dateline 27th November.

The article points out what is becoming commonplace evidence as the United Nations Development Programme: www. undp. org posted on the same date states:

‘Climate change models paint a bleak picture for Malawi. Global warming is projected to increase temperatures by 2–3ºC by 2050, with a decline in rainfall and reduced water availability.’

The article goes on:

‘A combination of higher temperatures and less rain will translate into a marked reduction in soil moisture, affecting the 90 percent of smallholder farmers who depend on rain-fed production. Production potential for maize, the main smallholder food crop, which in a normal year is the source of three-quarters of calorie consumption, is projected to fall by over 10 percent.

It is hard to overstate the implications for human development. Climate change impacts will be superimposed on a country marked by high levels of vulnerability, including poor nutrition and among the world's most intense HIV/AIDS crisis: almost one million people are living with the disease.

Poverty is endemic. Two in every three Malawians live below the national poverty line. The country ranks 164 out of the 177 countries measured in the Human Development Index (HDI). Life expectancy has fallen to about 46 years.

Successive droughts and floods in recent years have demonstrated the added pressures that climate change could generate. In 2001/2002, the country suffered one of the worst famines in recent living memory as localized floods cut maize output by one-third.’

ANGLICAN-INFORMATION observes: What is a mild inconvenience in many first world western nations, perhaps a summer hosepipe ban, is a matter of life and death for parts of Africa dependent on subsistence farming and the annual monsoon rainy season that becomes more unpredictable by the year, as global warming intensifies.

Ironically, in this year of a La Niña (a vast cooling effect in the Pacific ocean) the rains have been good in Malawi, to the point of flood excess in the south of the country. However, in years of the infamous El Niño (warming effect in the Pacific Ocean) and in normal years, drought or unpredictability of rain is becoming an established pattern.

How unfortunate/fortuitous that Malawi has given this year, 400,000 tonnes of maize, the local staple food, to Zimbabwe. Unfortunate, in that it will prop up the tyrannical Mugabe regime and produce a shortage in Malawi in a year of plenty – fortuitous in that it will go to a starving country – or will this ‘gift’ – there is no sign of payment - more likely be sold on at astronomically inflated prices to the starving, with the profit going towards the Mercedes and Hummer cars of the ruling elite?

In any case the Anglican Church which is one of the principal agents for good in that part of the world is busy, thanks to its leaders, not addressing these issues but wasting time fighting proxy wars for conservative schismatic factions in the United States. The mess that is the Province of Central Africa is directly attributable to the naïve willingness of the former Archbishop Bernard Malango to be seduced into pointless battles over homosexuality, a subject that as Bishop Trevor Mwamba of Botswana has correctly pointed out is “not a priority when starvation, HIV, Aids and poverty rear their heads.”

Bishop Sebastian Bakare, former bishop of the Zimbabwean Diocese of Manicaland and now charged with the invidious task of wresting the Diocese of Harare from the megalomaniac Bishop Nolbert Kunonga has also written: “the fact that homosexuality, currently a non-issue in Zimbabwe, has been brought up demonstrates the total irrelevance of the Church leadership. People are certainly not sleeping with empty stomachs because of homosexuality…..I am deeply concerned about the direction that the Church leadership is taking at such a crucial time in our nation.” ANGLICAN-INFORMATION hasn’t even bothered this time to bore you all with the latest machinations by the former Bishop of Harare, you can read them for yourselves at: www. zimdaily .com/news2/

Even the arch–conservative Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola has said of the issue of homosexuality with perhaps a touch of schadenfreude: “I'm trying to avoid dragging us into unnecessary controversy when there are more profitable things to talk about, this is Africa, and we would rather focus on those important things that affect us Africans."

The problem is that ultra conservative American schismatic Episcopalians value, above all else, the one commodity that the Africans can give them – apostolic succession and consequent ‘Anglican identity’ – and once they’ve got it they’ll dump Africa, as signs are already evident in the pell-mell rush by some American dioceses and parishes to join the numerically tiny 
Anglican Province of the Southern Cone of America and its Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables.

What’s all this got to do with Malawi and the Province of Central Africa? A great deal as it happens, for just as the whole world is caught up in global warming and far off events in the Pacific influence the Indian Ocean (from whence the African monsoon comes) so in-fighting in the United States will battle on ‘till the last African is left standing. It is a disgraceful state of affairs and the end result of the parochialism of dissident American factions results in the neglect of those in need. Let those who have allowed themselves to get sucked into this mad struggle in parts of the Anglican Communion heed this.

Although our concern is primarily in Central Africa ANGLICAN-INFORMATION is also a worldwide phenomenon and our mailings now reach every corner of the globe. Readers in their comeback to us are amazed that the bishops of Central Africa have managed to allow themselves be led by the nose by the outgoing Archbishop Bernard Malango into the present state of affairs. Their inherent conservatism has been exploited to allow hotheads to rule over common sense and the end result is the current chaos. In the meantime the real temperature as registered on the thermometer continues to rise.

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