- While Ethiopian famine in the 1980s was attributed to natural disasters, in fact it was the brutal policies of dictator Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam that led to food shortages across the country From Fred Bridgland in Johannesburg
Published on 25 Oct 2009
It is quarter of a century since Ethiopia suffered a devastating famine that killed more than a million people and triggered an outpouring of international compassion from ordinary people, but the world has done little to prevent a rerun of the tragedy.
In a new report, Oxfam International makes a scarcely veiled admission that the Band Aid movement and Live Aid concerts, promoted flamboyantly 25 years ago by rock musician Bob Geldof, have done virtually nothing to change things for the better.
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This comes as no surprise to those of us who said at the time that Geldof et al's efforts would end in tears, not theirs of course, but the victims of the continuing tragedy, the poor and destitute as usual.
I suppose that he genuinely thought that he could effect a change for the poor and destitute by organising Band Aid and Live aid, they raised £millions.
But they were taking on the world MARKET system, and we all know? that in capitalism the MARKET is king, and it brooks no competion from charities - no matter how well intentioned the charities may be.
To blame Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam's brutal policies [brutal indeed] for leading to the food shortages across the country is a wee bit misleading, because he was just applying the normal market forces, in the interest of the Ethiopian capitalist class, as does all bourgeois governments across the world.
That's the way the world capitalist market works, profit for the few, poverty and misery for the many, and not only in Ethiopia.
For example, during the Irish Famine, the Dublin government exported hundreds of tons of all sort of foodstuff, grain, meat etc. to the UK instead of using it to relieve the starvation of the poor people, but of course there was no profit in feeding the starving, so a few million of the poverty stricken Irish people starved to death, and the exporters made their PROFIT, and so, all was well in Ireland, for the rich folks anyway?
Also in depression 1930's USA, tons of grain was dumped in the ocean to keep up the price of grain, hence the PROFIT of the farmers and the grain merchants, and the destitute workers had to depend on charitable soup kitchens.
Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam's brutal economic policies? Yes.
However, the global MARKET itself is a very BRUTAL system, and its sole purpose is for the aggrandisement of the RICH and to pauperise the POOR.
The foregoing dosen't let Sir BOB et al of the hook, after all they have benefitted handsomely from the MARKET system.
SGT DAN HAMMER/MOD 
