April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

Ben Ali and Mubarak were little more than co-opted Bantustan leaders in a
system of global apartheid. Gadaffi’s oil funded cruelty, megalomania and
opportunism has taken him in many directions in his 42-year reign but
have, in recent years, been leading him in the same direction.
Democratising a Bantustan is progress. But democratising a Bantustan is
not enough. The whole global system needs to be democratised.
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Richard Pithouse teaches politics at Rhodes University.
This article was originally published by The South African Civil Society
Information Service.
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Pambazuka News.
Climate’s Strong Fingerprint in Global Cholera Outbreaks
Sonia Shah 25 February 2011
For decades, deadly outbreaks of cholera were attributed to the spread of
disease through poor sanitation. But recent research demonstrates how
closely cholera is tied to environmental and hydrological factors and to
weather patterns — all of which may lead to more frequent cholera
outbreaks as the world warms.
Since cholera first erupted from India’s Ganges delta in 1817, the bacterial
pathogen has swept across the globe in no fewer than seven worldwide
pandemics, afflicting hundreds of millions of people and killing more than
70 percent of its victims within hours if left untreated. The seventh
pandemic — the longest one yet — began in Celebes, Indonesia in 1961,
and has spread to more than 50 countries and 7 million people. That
pandemic continues to this day, staking its latest beachhead in
earthquake-ravaged Haiti, where a cholera epidemic occurred last year
after a reported absence of some 100 years.
Historically and in the modern popular imagination, cholera has been
considered a disease of filth carried in sewage. And yet, over the past
decade, research on cholera’s natural habitat and links to the climate have
revealed a revolutionary new understanding of the disease as one shaped
just as much by environment, hydrology, and weather patterns as by poor
sanitation. And as temperatures continue to rise this century, cholera
outbreaks may become increasingly common, with the bacteria growing
more rapidly in warmer waters.
The University of Maryland cholera expert Rita Colwell, a former director
of the National Science Foundation, pioneered the study of Vibrio
cholerae, the bacteria that causes cholera, in the environment. She and
others have discovered the bacteria in water bodies untouched by human
waste, its abundance and distribution fluctuating not with levels of
contamination, but with sea surface temperature, ocean currents, and
weather changes. After several centuries during which cholera’s spread
has been attributed solely to human activity, it has been paradigm-shifting
research. “Thirty years ago, we were ridiculed to even say that the
bacterium existed in the environment,” Colwell says. “But now it is in
textbooks. The evidence is so overwhelming, it is understood.”