Coming up on
Special Assignment (18 August 2009):
Episode Title: The Forest Pygmies
Broadcast date: Tuesday, 18 August 2009
The Baka, one of 15 ethnic groups, who traditionally have lived as hunters and gathers in the forest of central Africa, confront two grave dangers: their traditional habitat is shrinking as commercial logging continues to expand and when they do leave the forest, they are often left landless, impoverished and exploited.
The “Pygmy” became well known in the nineteen century colonial imagination as being “short, subhuman and backward”. These deep seated prejudiced attitudes continue. Today, it is the country’s majority population, known as the Bantu that benefit from their ongoing economic and social exclusion.
Dependent on the occasional visit by mobile teams of NGO and missionary health workers, they suffer from long eradicated tropical skin diseases like yaws and leprosy that remain common amongst forest dwelling communities. Mortality rates are higher when measured against Congo’s national averages. Malaria and measles are also common.
Likoula Province is part of the world’s second largest rainforest, the Congo Basin forest. A pristine rare ecosystem that is home to enormous bio diversity and critical for reducing climate change.
It is also now a giant logging concession. Seven companies control an area slightly larger than Switzerland. The Government has put in place regulations to make sure all exported hard wood timber is certified and the EU has signed a new agreement to help enforce it. Yet environmentalist worry that the ‘selective logging’ of larger areas of forest for rare timber, is causing long term damage to ecosystems.
There are small signs of hope. A national association of indigenous peoples known as RENAPAC that started just a couple of years ago is gaining strength and campaigning for an end to discrimination.
A draft law outlining indigenous rights lies ready to be approved by Parliament. It acknowledges their special grievances in health, education and economic status and seeks to address them. And the Government also has agreed on a National Plan of Action, which with the support of UNICEF and other development partners, is starting to translate into targeted social services for these marginalized communities.
For Congo’s indigenous people, the fight to protect the forests is intrinsically linked to providing them with new opportunities to choose alternative lifestyles. It is one complicated by poverty and exclusion, as well as the lucrative profits that come from logging.
Tonight's Special Assignment puts the spotlight on the people to look at the situation from various angles.
Special Assignment is on SABC on Tuesdays at 20h31