Because of the on-going Mugabe-bashing campaign by the Western media, important issues are being mixed up and decisions downplayed.

The latest is Zimbabwe's rejection of genetically modified foods which had been donated by the United States to help Harare combat hunger. According to the Western media, it is Mugabe who wants to kill his own people by rejecting food aid.

It is true that thousands of Zimbabweans (and other southern Africa populations) are being ravaged by a famine brought about by drought in the entire region. But anybody taking advantage of such a situation – whether African, Russian or British – to dump genetically modified foods on the starving populations is the real enemy. Here is why?

Many varieties of GM foods have been rejected in the West. in fact, they have to be labelled as such so that anybody eating them is well aware of the possible side-effects. There is a major campaign in those countries to enlighten their people on GM foods; an advantage we do not enjoy in Africa.

So why give these foods to a hungry community deep in Africa? Of course some "wise" people will say "food is food", but hungry as we may be, we cannot afford to be turned into guinea pigs.

The little we know about GM foods is that we know nothing about their side-effects. And that is the point Dr Mugabe's government has made. If food is being given in good faith, let it be real food not the results of Frankenstein experiments.

This is not the first time Western nations have taken advantage of Third World calamities to dump such foods there. According to South Africa's Biowatch: "Africa is treated as the dustbin of the world...To donate untested food and seed to Africa is not an act of kindness but an attempt to lure Africa into further dependence on foreign aid."

Shortly after the 2000 Orissa cyclone in India, environmental activists found out that a huge proportion of the "donated food" had been genetically engineered. This forced a prominent Indian environmentalist, Dr Vandana Shiva, of the country's Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, to accuse the US of using victims of the cyclone – one of the most powerful to hit India in a century – as "guinea pigs".

Dr Shiva accused the US of trying to create a market for its biotech industry outside its territory. Between 1999-2000, some 30 per cent of 500,000 tons of maize and maize products "donated" by the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) to relief agencies, including the World Food Programme, procured under contract with US agribusiness firms, were surplus GM grain stocks.

And this food is never subjected to any test because many African nations have no policy on GM foods.

Recently, Agriculture Minister Bonaya Godana said Kenya was "cautious" that genetic modification could have a "negative impact".

"We are working on a policy to govern administration of this technology" he said, apparently after realising that lack of such a policy leaves us greatly vulnerable.

We have to be extra cautious on what we take as food aid because anything can be sneaked into our midst. In Sudan, expired drugs were found in a large donation. Some of dangerous drugs had already been supplied to southern Sudan.

Britain is also known to have off-loaded tens of thousands of tons of potentially BSE-infected cattle feed in the Third World after deciding such feed was too dangerous for herds in the UK. The bone meal was exported after March, 1988, when the British Government realised that feed made from slaughtered animals was the probable cause of the BSE epidemic (mad cow disease) among UK herds. In July that year, the Government banned its use in Britain, and a week later, officially informed the European Union of its fears.

But it wasn't until March, 1996 – eight years later – that a worldwide ban on the export of MBM, as it was called, came into force. Most of the cargo had been taken to Third World countries by then (Kenya was mentioned as one importer during the inquiry). This is public knowledge today.

A recent Oxfam report titled "Rigged Rules and Double Standards," shows that 128 million people could be lifted out of poverty if trade rules allowed Africa, Latin America, East Asia and South Asia to increase their share of world exports by just one per cent. In Africa, says Oxfam, doing so would generate over $100 billion – five times what the continent receives in aid and debt relief. If we only got an extra one per cent, we would buy our own food. But these issues are usually downplayed as politics of trade take a back seat.

GM crops, we have to understand, are part of the industrialised nations' hypocrisy. They have been subsidising their agribusiness to the tune of $1.5 billion a day and the surpluses are dumped into world markets, depressing prices and destroying local markets.

If wheat is dumped in Kenya, farmers in Kitale will abandon their farms, then we will begin to import GM foods.

We are now reading stories on how the European Union is dumping surplus milk onto the Jamaican economy, ruining the local dairy industry, and how the US has dumped subsidised rice in Haiti, forcing thousands of poor rice farmers off the land. Soon, Jamaicans will start importing milk all the way from Europe.

As the widespread rejection of GM foods by European consumers continues, Africa must protect her own so that the surplus grain is not brought in as food aid. 

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 Mr Kamau is the Editor of Rights Features Service