JOHANNESBURG, Sept 6: Africa has slammed the Bush administration’s slow response to the hurricane disaster, saying it revealed the ‘racist’ character of American society.

“Washington, in a bizarre display of uncaring aloofness in their hour of need, appeared unable to respond to the crisis until days later,” the Johannesburg-based The Star newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday.

“The disaster also revealed the racial fissures in American society. Most of the hapless survivors who filled New Orlean’s Superdome were black, with the more affluent white residents able to flee in their SUVs (sports utility vehicles) before Katrina brought her misery,” it added.

“The fact that New Orleans is a southern town predominantly populated by African-Americans... explains why President George Bush did not see the need to cut short his holiday... being in America does not make a black man an American,” Zimbabwe’s state-run Herald daily wrote.

Zimbabwe’s acting information minister, Chen Chimutengwende, said ‘the position of the black people (in the United States) has always been a very sad case’.

“This hurricane has once more exposed the racism of the American administration against black people because if it had been white people affected they would have moved faster and there is no reason why Bush could not have done so in his own country,” Mr Chimutengwende said.

A Kenyan foreign affairs official said: “There is no evidence to prove that the US government delayed to assist the people of New Orleans because they were blacks, but given the history of the United States, everything points at racial profiling.”

“But at the moment, unless we are given a watertight excuse, it is racism at its worst. It is a lesson to minorities in the US and other rich countries,” he added.

In Rwanda, opinion was divided, with some linking the slow response to racism while others believe it was because the New Orleans population was poor.

“My initial reaction is that there was a racist element,” a government official said. “The Bush administration is doing everything in its power to convince people that was not the case, but it is too late. They seem embarrassed on the subject.”

Angolan radio interviewed academic Mario Pinto de Andrade, who said the sluggish relief effort was a serious indictment against Mr Bush.

In Morocco, the Opinion daily drew a parallel between Katrina and the famine in Niger, saying assistance usually depended on ‘the area, the race and perhaps the religion’.

The African Union (AU) expressed concern at the disaster, saying the aftermath would be hard to deal with.

“We are not indifferent. Hurricane Katrina struck a very important partner of the AU and a region which is inhabited by our diaspora,” said Adam Thiam, spokesman for the president of the AU Commission, Alpha Omar Konare. —AFP