News stories by Busani Bafana, page 18

BULAWAYO, Dic 27 (IPS) - That citizens cannot enjoy democracy if they are ruled by an undemocratic party is the warning that got Cont Mhlanga's play "Members" banned from theatre stages in Zimbabwe in 1985.

NDOP, Cameroon, Dic 03 (IPS) - For more than 20 years, Anastasia Ngwakun from Bamunkumbit village in central Cameroon has been farming rice the hard way – using only hand tools. But Ngwakun knows that if she were a man, she would have access to the technology that would not require her to work so hard.

MAPUTO, Sep 08 (IPS) - Africa currently imports almost 40 billion dollars worth of food a year, but it should implement measures to attract private sector investment in agriculture in order to reduce its food import bill and increase its self-reliance, experts in the sector tell IPS.

ROME, Jun 17 (IPS) - The world can satisfy its growing appetite for meat and animal-based products without upsetting livelihoods, especially of developing country farmers, or worsening climate change.

BULAWAYO, Jan 11 (IPS) - It took Gily Ncube's daughters two weeks to sell enough chickens to raise the 18 dollars needed to buy the morphine tablets their mother takes every four hours.

BULAWAYO, Dic 28 (IPS) - "Accelerating environmental pressures and growing economic inequality are triggering huge social changes around the world, putting existing democracies to the test," Halina Ward, director of the London-based Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, tells IPS.

BULAWAYO, Dic 18 (IPS) - Farmers cannot wait much longer for negotiators to reach an agreement on including a work programme on agriculture in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And until one is approved, "it will continue to be difficult for farmers to produce the food needed, and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Nov 27 (IPS) - There is no political will among rich nations to find funding for developing countries experiencing the brunt of changes in global weather patterns, and the current climate change conference will fail to do so, according to Professor Patrick Bond, a leading thinker and analyst on climate change issues.

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 23 (IPS) - South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety's call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified maize. "I eat genetically modified maize, which I have been growing on my farm for more than seven years, and I am still alive," he declared.