Haste appel til præsident Biden:
Tiden er inde til afgørende handling for at imødegå truslen om folkemorderisk affolkning i Afrika

På engelsk:

Jan. 31 (EIRNS)—I am Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane, the leader of the LaRouche movement in South Africa.

I lend my support to warnings delivered by our President, Cyril Ramaphosa, of the need for urgent action to get vaccines to Africa, and to nations elsewhere in the South, to fight the deadly COVID-19 virus. He delivered his warnings and demands to the world’s nations in his Special Address at the virtual Davos Conference of the World Economic Forum (see video excerpt here.).

As quoted by the South African daily, Business Day, President Ramaphosa warned on Jan. 26, “We are all not safe if some countries are vaccinating their people and other countries are not vaccinating,” urging that nations that have oversupplies of vaccines make them available to those who do not have them. This hoarding can have disastrous consequences, as will the continued use of patents by big pharma to restrict production and to overcharge the poorest nations. Speaking on behalf of the African Union, which South Africa currently chairs, Mr. Ramaphosa has called for those patents to be released or seized, so that production, and sale at cost, can take place in countries like South Africa, which have the necessary production facilities.

Mr. Ramaphosa reported to the World Economic Forum that the AU’s African task team for COVID-19 vaccine acquisition has secured a provisional 270 million doses for the continent directly through vaccine manufacturers. This is in addition to the 600 million doses expected from the COVAX initiative. But that is still well short of what is required for the 1.2 billion Africans to receive two doses each.

“Through its participation in these continental and global initiatives, S.A. continues to promote the need for universal, fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines,” he said. “We all must act together in combating coronavirus, because it affects all of us equally, and therefore our remedies—our actions to combat it—must also be equal.” (Se her. )

Three months ago, I issued an urgent appeal to then-President Donald Trump, calling on him to take bold and decisive action to deal with the twin crises of the COVID-19 virus pandemic and the conditions of starvation that were already beginning to ravage the African continent. Making vaccines available at low cost, with financial aid as needed, is a central feature of my proposal.

I pointed out that the U.S. Presidency, with its vast executive power, has the ability to address these problems with measures that would get medical aid and food to people who need it, and thereby save perhaps hundreds of millions of people facing certain death, as has been warned of, loud and clear, by no less an authority than former South Carolina Governor David Beasley, who is now Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme. I made this case once again in December.

The capacity of the United States—working with other nations to supply the medicines and health supplies, as well as the staffing needed to administer them—needs to be mobilized to avert the worst genocide in human history. The power of U.S. farmers to produce needed foodstuffs and the U.S. military’s marvelous logistical capabilities to get food and medicine to where it is needed, could be mobilized by the U.S. President. I have since submitted the outlines of a plan to accomplish this and I am working to refine the proposal with a group of experts and others on the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, created by international Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. (The plan is appended.)

For whatever reason, President Trump failed to act on my proposal, or any proposal, to deal with these crises. As a result, Africa is stalked by mass death on a scale unprecedented in human history. I can say with the assurance of certainty that this is and will be the case if action is further delayed.

There is now a new Administration in Washington, so I must place this crisis before the new President, Joe Biden, and his staff, and say that the world will judge harshly, indifference to these crises. The plan I propose offers the new President a chance to do something both great and important. Such is the responsibility that all who take the Presidential oath of office must face and act upon. The Presidency of the United States is the most powerful institution on the planet. The power of the Presidency gives the President a moral responsibility for the well-being of people beyond the borders of the United States. While respecting the sovereignty of nations, the President must seek cooperation to save the lives.

Read the words of a truly great American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking to his fellow Democrat successor across time, who in his acceptance speech for renomination to the Presidency in 1936, said:

“Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity, than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”

Heed this sage advice! I speak not only as a representative of South Africa, but on behalf of all Africans who are calling on President Biden to act now to save lives. Tomorrow will be too late!

Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane

29 January 2021