Vanuatu must erupt inside Africa too

On 17th March, 2015, Vanuatu was devastated by Cyclone Pam. Its Prime Minister, Joe Natuman, heard those words relayed from the top of the island country’s tallest mountain, Mount Tabwemasana, and winced a little. His people needed the touch of ‘’ubuntu’’. President Baldwin Lonsdale  claimed that under a category 5 cyclone, 90 per cent of […]

On 17th March, 2015, Vanuatu was devastated by Cyclone Pam. Its Prime Minister, Joe Natuman, heard those words relayed from the top of the island country’s tallest mountain, Mount Tabwemasana, and winced a little. His people needed the touch of ‘’ubuntu’’. President Baldwin Lonsdale  claimed that under a category 5 cyclone, 90 per cent of building in the capital Port Vila were damaged, and all recent developments  ‘’wiped out’’.  On Tanna, the southern- most island with 30,000 residents – as well as on Erromango and Efate islands – winds roaring at 168 miles per hour, had smashed tropical forests and torn food-crop gardens; and  wrecked 90 per cent of homes, hospitals, schools and churches.
With over 80 per cent of the population being self-reliant subsistence farmers, the cyclone decimated the bananas, sugar cane, cabbage, yams, carrots, eggplants, pineapple, groundnuts, water melons and other tropical food crops they grow. Pigs, chickens and cattle perished from winds and injuries from broken branches of trees and flying corrugated iron roofs. UNICEF estimated that over five thousand of these Africa’s Diaspora people lost their water wells and were desperately in need of drinking water.
 With nine active volcanoes, notably: Yasur, Aoba, Ambryam, Epi, Gaua, Kuwae, Lopevi, Suretamatai and Traitor’s Head -the horrendous cyclone   blew acidic volcanic ash over food plants that had survived. Vanuatu’s total population of 266, 937 (as estimated by the CIA in 2004), suffered only a total of 24 deaths – thanks to ancient architectural skills for defensive local shelters in homes. They are in urgent need of investments and food support from mother Africa.
Vanuatu’s fate is part of a grand historic crime by millions of factories in industrialised economies which shoot toxic fumes into skies; injuring global economic and human relations. China has been forced to admit her responsibility for fighting the massive pollution of the very air her hundreds of millions of citizens must breathe; and emerging health hazards through strange forms of cancer and asthma-related illnesses.
President Obama is said to have defeated Romney in the 2012 elections through the intervention of gales which destroyed properties and paralysed normal urban life on the east coast of America. The gales became ‘climate violence’ inflicted on the environment by industrialists that refuse to replace coal and old manufacturing machines with new; and non-toxic waste products.  
Horrendous bouts of ice-cold winds; unprecedented volumes of snow (which paralyse school attendance; block road transport and airline traffic), have continued to dramatise collective calamities resulting from climate violence.
Africa’s sea-level urban communities in Lagos, Durban, Dar-es Salaam and Mombasa join African Diaspora island of Barbados, , Guyana, Vanuatu and others in fearing well documented rises in sea level due to huge volumes of ice melting from the north and south poles. Corporations salivating over prospects of mining raw minerals from under Antarctica have wished for the vast coats of ice to melt. Africa’s youth must fight for reparations by these greedy companies and their share holders who have also become grand mockers of democracy as a tool of governance in the United States and Western Europe.
A diversionary campaign has emerged which blames climate violence primarily on ‘’fossil fuel’’. One such campaign seeks support global pressure on the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust to withdraw their investments from ‘’the top 200 fossil fuel companies within five years’’. This campaign – led by students in Oxford, Stanford and other top universities – is coming at a time when NATO is seeking to weaken Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The Arab states are accused of financing violent Islamists, notably: Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and other allies of ISIS. This war of wrecking earnings from oil sales is coming at a time of a boom in oil exploration all around Africa’s coastline states. Mozambique, Tanzania and Egypt are also holding vast deposits of natural gas. Africa is seen as a magnet for capital flows from Euro-American economies. This diversion of blame away from Euro-American industrial manufacturing as the main source of climate violence is cynical, racist and dishonest.
Vanuatu must erupt from inside Africa’s election speeches, diplomacy and fights for reparations against climate violence.