COSATU Media Monitor, 23 August 2013

[Norman Mampane]

COSATU Media Monitor

Friday, 23 August 2013

 

COSATU Listening Campaign and organizing of vulnerable workers is underway….Join a Trade Union today!

 

COSATU National Collective Bargaining, Organizing and Campaigns Conference Special Declaration

 

http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=7062

 

COSATU has served a Section77 Notice at Nedlac on the 11^th December 2012

http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=6785

 

COSATU E-toll Campaign goes ahead in 2013.

http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=6793

 

Stop Commodification of public goods!

 

The articles in the Media Monitor do not represent the views of COSATU. They are selected because we believe they deal with topics of interest to our readers, who will then be informed on how the media is reporting and commenting on these topics. It will enable them, if necessary, to respond to inaccurate, misleading or biased reports or comment.

If we have excluded other articles which readers wished could have been picked, this was not intentional but because of tight time-frames. If you have seen article worth to be shared email it.

 

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Contents

 

Workers’ Parliament

Ø  Strike fever hits SA as unions go into battle

Ø  Is there hope for the Marikana Commission?

Ø  Deaths unrelated to unions: police

Ø  Marikana 2 out on bail

Ø  Radebe on commissions: State money only for state employee

Ø  Full state funding sought for Marikana lawyers

Ø  No money for Marikana miners: Radebe

Ø  Gold Fields CEO waives bonus

Ø  Salga retreats from ‘mistake’ in pay deal with municipal workers

Ø  EDITORIAL: ‘Winner takes all’ is bad for Lonmin

Ø  Numsa ‘will not budge’ on double-digit wage increase

Ø  Strike season in full swing as construction workers also prepare to down tools

Ø  Gold sector strike looms

Ø  NUM set to rock construction sector

Ø  Gold Fields buys Aussie mines after loss

Ø  Former Madoff employees seek details on claims

Ø  Gold Fields board rebukes CEO for empowerment deal controversy

Ø  Massmart hits back at Basson

 

COSATU

Ø  Nzimande warns of ‘imperialist plot’ to divide Cosatu

Ø  Don’t let Vavi sex scandal derail Cosatu – Blade Nzimande

Ø  Power-hungry personalities will be the end of Cosatu, says Gwede Mantashe

Ø  ANC, SACP, Cosatu: Who moved my Left?

Ø  OPINION-Cosatu not to be taken for granted

Ø  Labour movement must return to basics

 

South Africa

Ø  Pact on Western Cape gang wars eludes Zille, Mthethwa

Ø  General Household Survey 2012: Arrested Development?

Ø  South Africa's hidden textbook crisis

Ø  Proposed carbon tax rate for SA too low, say researchers Third new coal power station ‘to help remove energy constraints’

Ø  New system cuts delays in customs clearance

Ø  Jimmy Manyi: Gupta TV's Oprah

Ø  FIVE MINUTES: South Africa

 

Alliance

Ø  ANC lays complaint against DA MP

Ø  Zuma under pressure as Mkhize quits

Ø  ANC MPs spring to Dina Pule's defence

 

International

Ø  Mugabe thanks Zuma & Mbeki

Ø  US reflects on anniversary of Martin Luther King march

Ø  Cuba still battling cholera a year after first cases reported

 

Comment

 

Ø  COSATU E-toll Campaign goes ahead in 2013

Ø  COSATU Section77 Notice served at Nedlac on the 11th December 2012

Ø  Agang SA must also declare donors

Ø  Mpofu overshadows miners’ plight

__________________________________________________________

1.                  Workers’ Parliament   

Strike fever hits SA as unions go into battle

Mark Allix, Razina Munshi, Karl Gernetzky, Allan Seccombe, Maarten Mittner And Ntsakisi Maswanganyi, Business Day, 23 August 2013

SOUTH Africa’s fragile economy faces a tidal wave of industrial action in coming weeks as trade unions flex their muscles in key sectors, with potentially devastating consequences for exports and the country’s image among investors.

About 30,000 workers in the export-intensive vehicle sector have been on strike since Monday, and they are set to be joined by tens of thousands more workers in the gold, construction and, possibly, textile sectors.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is also planning to march on Eskom on Saturday, to protest against the parastatal’s declaration of a dispute after Eskom had offered a 5.6% pay rise. The NUM, however, has abandoned percentage wage demands and is seeking, among other things, wage levels of R3,200 and R3,500 for lowest-paid workers.

The unions’ high wage demands are being seen partly as a result of internal friction within the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), whose general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, has been suspended, prompting threats of a breakaway by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, a Vavi backer.

Cosatu heavyweight the NUM is also fighting a rearguard action to protect its turf against further inroads by militant newcomer the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu).

"The gloves are officially off, the battle lines are drawn and the fight will be taken back to the mining, construction and Eskom oligarchy," NUM general secretary Frans Baleni said on Thursday.

Analysts said the industrial unrest was likely to further taint South Africa’s image as an investment destination, and have a severe knock-on effect on the currency, which is already under pressure at the prospect of the US scaling back its bond-buying programme.

London-based research consultancy Capital Economics’ Africa economist, Shilan Shah, said the rand could weaken further. "Strikes are particularly worrying from a sentiment point of view. The rand has been weak in past few weeks. If there are strikes, investors could get nervous, which leaves the rand under even more pressure," Mr Shah said.

Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus has on a number of public platforms expressed concern at the damaging effect of strikes on economic growth and jobs.

On Thursday, the rand clawed back against the dollar in late trading after weakening to its worst level in more than four years. It sank as low as R10.44/$, surpassing the previous low of R10.36/$ of early June. It later recovered to R10.27/$, while the JSE all share index closed 252.07 points, or 0.59%, higher at 43,014.

Gold shares were hit hard, but spot gold recovered to $1,377.24/oz in late trade. Gold has fallen 20% this year, amid a gloomy outlook for resources.

In the gold sector, companies are being squeezed between growing worker militancy over wage claims that have added to costs, and falling bullion prices.

The NUM, which represents two-thirds of gold miners, will get feedback on Friday and at the weekend before deciding on Monday whether to issue a strike notice, said spokesman Lesiba Seshoka.

It would take 48 hours before workers could down tools, the NUM spokesman said.

"It looks very likely there will be strike action in the gold sector because workers have said it is do or die this year for the companies to meet their demands," he said.

"The reality is the Chamber of Mines wants to convince us that the gold companies have no money but they have no credibility because they have been saying the same thing for so many years."

A certificate of nonresolution has been granted by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to the NUM and Uasa, allowing them to strike.

The chamber, which represents the seven gold firms, has raised its wage offer to entry-level workers and rock-drill operators to 6% from 5.5%, as well as their living-out allowance, taking their total salary to R9,120 a month. The offer was rejected.

Amcu, the second-largest union in the sector with 17% representation, and Solidarity will both continue talks with the chamber on Monday. Solidarity general secretary Gideon du Plessis said the union would recommend to members that they not go on strike because the companies were close to meeting its demands. The outstanding issue was its demand for a 10% wage hike.

Amcu is demanding that entry-level wages rise to R12,500 a month, which is a 150% increase.

The NUM has also given notice to construction companies, represented by the South African Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors (Safcec), that workers will strike.

On Thursday, the union said construction firms such as Wilson Bayly Holmes-Ovcon (WBHO), Group Five, Murray & Roberts and Aveng would be affected.

Late on Thursday, Safcec said the NUM and the Building, Construction & Allied Workers Union (BCAWU) wanted a 14% increase for this year, while employers have offered 7.5%.

BCAWU general secretary Narius Moloto said perceived gains by workers in mining were putting pressure on the construction industry.

"At the moment, workers expect a lot from us. There is a danger of unions taking a tougher stance than they ordinarily would because they want to hold on to their members."

Pressure is also building for industrial action in the textiles sector, with 86% of workers having voted to go on strike, the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union said this week.

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Is there hope for the Marikana Commission?

Xhanti Payi, Daily Maverick, 23 August 2013

It is usually easier to be dispassionate about the high drama which unfolds in South Africa almost on a daily basis. But the events surrounding the Marikana tragedy, and in particular, the decisions of our government in this regard, have left a bitter taste in my mouth and a sharp pain in my heart. It has been an emotional time for many, and being dispassionate has been impossible.

Some years ago I learnt that my late father, as a young rising star, worked in the mines in an effort to pay for his university education. By the time he died in his late twenties, he was working as a state prosecutor in the former Transkei, with a wife, a son, and one unborn child. The mining sector, which at the time represented the main hope for employment and economic wellbeing in that part of the world, did so for my father.

In my last year of university, the pension fund to which my father belonged while working in the mines in the Witwatersrand paid out to me some R6,000, which had over the years accumulated interest from whatever little sum it would have been when he left the mines.

My years at university were not always easy, with a single mother working as a domestic worker. Anyone who has made an attempt at a university education will tell you that it is not cheap. But my father, in his lifetime, worked hard, and in some small way that paid off. I used the money to pay off some of the fees, and to buy textbooks and a music player. It was a wonderful moment for me.

It is in this context that I’ve found the sting of the government’s decision not fund the legal fees of the Lonmin workers who were involved, killed or injured during that terrible time particularly unbearable. Those men were not just “miners”. They were human beings with hopes and dreams, and represented hopes, dreams and livelihoods of families. There are many lives affected by this tragedy, and many people want to know how and why. All of our country wants to know why and how this happened to us, and the hopes our nation carried through those men who were killed during that time.

The impasse in Marikana, whose aftermath was the end of many South African lives, represents fundamentally in my mind social problems which lie directly at the doorstep of government. I do not doubt that what we saw in Marikana was a result of the failure in the management of industrial relations, as well as the frustrations of many with regards to their aspirations and social conditions. It is the state’s job to protect human life, as well as to ensure that our people relate to each other in ways that are conducive to social order and prosperity for all. This failed in Marikana.

President Zuma appointed a commission of inquiry out of concern arising from the tragic incidents at the Lonmin mine in Marikana, as is clearly stated in the term of reference. In setting up the commission, the president suggested that we didn’t know the truth about what exactly happened. In that sense, he asked South Africans to be calm, and trust his resolve to get us the truth so that we may find some way to deliver answers, and ultimately the justice so many longed and were calling for.

It therefore seems a cruel twist that the government refuses to provide the “other side” funding for legal representation, while, as Minister Jeff Radebe states, it provides for those in the employ of government. How can he claim that evidence leaders in the commission are adequate for “the other side” but not so for those in the employ of government? How is this commission to be understood to be and fair and just if the government pays for one party, and not others? The minister made the assertion that the cycle of budgeting didn’t allow for planning of funding. Yet it did allow for the support of those in the employ of government.

By these statements, are the mine workers to believe that the commission, constituted by the government, is impartial to all, and wishes to deliver fairness to all?

Efforts to force the government failed, but the court made bold to say that, “ordinarily, a functionary setting up a commission has to ensure an adequate opportunity to all who should be heard by it.” The court went on to say that “This means that unfairness may arise when adequate legal representation is not afforded.”  Thus, the minister’s assertion that evidence leaders are adequate for the miners, but the state will pay for its employees out of budgets that are limited is unconvincing both logically and morally. As one legal analyst asserted, some of the miners appearing in the commission face criminal charges with respect to events of that period, and therefore need adequate legal representation so that their rights are protected and they do not prejudice themselves in the criminal cases which are likely to be pursued by the state against them.

Further, the minister celebrated that the court did not force the government to pay. It is a heartbreaking twist of history that save for a court order, the government would refuse to do whatever it can to make sure that justice and fairness is served.

This inquiry, in its simplest form, is based on the fundamental desire for truth. It seeks to find the facts of what happened during those very sad and dramatic days. It also seeks to find ways to make sure that we prevent a repeat. It is about building a good, safe, fair and just society.

Over the period over the past year, it occurred to many people that at the hands of the police, dozens of lives perished. Consider also that there are many people who died during the cruel years of Apartheid at the hands of the police. Many of those stories are still untold, and their families are still in the dark about why and how their loved ones were killed. That formed much of the cruelty of that system - that human lives went unaccounted for, and justice failed. The inquiry, to many of us, promised to deliver answers to such questions.

In our current dispensation, which in its womb is the hope and promise of a just society, it is a cruel shock that we may be expecting a stillborn. As former president Thabo Mbeki put it when he paid tribute to President Nelson Mandela, “…that the great masses of our country everyday pray that the new South Africa that is being born will be a good, a moral, a humane and a caring South Africa, which, as it matures, will progressively guarantee the happiness of all its citizens.” What of that prayer amidst these decisions by the government?

It is worth reasserting that any conflict in society, in cause or solution, is the responsibility of the government. In setting up this commission, it seemed that the government had understood this. Somewhere within these tensions, the government of the people failed to act in such a manner that the loss of human life would not occur. This comes from the notion that miners are more than just workers, they represent humanity and the hopes of a better society.

What happened in Marikana to those Lonmin miners and the effects on their families and the hopes of the children cannot be underestimated.

The question of funding the legal representation of the miners has placed to the test the decency and humanity of our government to the test - and it is wanting.

The question in my mind is: can we still hope for truth, fairness and justice from the Marikana Commission? Are we building a society in which all South Africans are served and protected by the state?

_________

Deaths unrelated to unions: police

Sapa, Times Live,  22 August 2013

The deaths of two men reported to be shop stewards within the Association of Mineworkers and Construction (AMCU) was unrelated to labour union unrest, North West police said on Thursday.

Brigadier Thulani Ngubane said police attended a crime scene on Saturday at an informal settlement in Phokeng, near Rustenburg.

He said police believed, following preliminary investigations, that the two deaths were as a result of a quarrel arising from a social gathering that took place the weekend before.

At the time of the incident, the two men were also in the company of another man and a girlfriend of one of the men. They were both unharmed.

"The incident is not related at all to the situation within the labour unions or the mining sector," said Ngubane.

"It is disingenuous for anybody to suggest that the incident in question is related to the labour unions or mining. They are not related."

Amcu president Joseph Mathunjwa was not immediately available for comment.

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Marikana 2 out on bail

SAPA, Sowetan, 23 August 2013

Two men arrested in connection with the murder of NUM shop steward Isaiah Twala were released on bail by the Ga-Rankuwa Magistrate's Court on Thursday, police said.

Simphiwe Booi, 44, and Khanyile Kayisa, 35, were each granted R2500 bail, Brigadier Thulani Ngubane said.

"Their lawyers' arguments were that these men were witnesses in the Farlam Commission. We don't have proof of that," Ngubane said.

Their case was postponed to October 24. They were arrested on Wednesday evening at the Nkaneng and Marikana West informal settlements in connection with Twala's murder.

Twala was shot and hacked to death on August 14 last year. Police found his body on the side of a hill in Marikana with the skull of a bull.

Ngubane said 25 people had been arrested for various murders that took place before August 16, 2012.

The latest arrests brought to 27 the number of people arrested and charged with murder alone. In total, 574 people had been arrested in Marikana.

Earlier, Ngubane said bail would be opposed, as the two men were allegedly linked to other cases police were investigating.

Forty-four people were killed during a wage-related strike at Lonmin's platinum mining operations at Marikana last year. Thirty-four were killed on August 16, 2012 when police fired on them while trying to disperse and disarm them during a strike. Ten people, including two security guards and two policemen, were killed in the preceding week.

Lonmin workers wanted a R12,500 monthly salary during the strike. They had gathered on top of a hill near the Nkaneng informal settlement armed with knobkerries, pangas, iron rods, and spears.

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Radebe on commissions: State money only for state employee

Greg Nicolson, Daily Maverick, 23 August 2013

Two commissions investigating two of the country’s biggest controversies are in shambles. On Thursday, justice minister and acting president Jeff Radebe addressed concerns over funding in the Marikana and Arms Procurement commissions of inquiry. Money is in short supply, he said. It looks like the same will happen to the truth. By GREG NICOLSON.

The Marikana Commission is hamstrung as advocate Dali Mpofu’s legal team for 270 injured and arrested mineworkers seek funding. Just days after starting, the Arms Procurement Commission is already being criticised and Former President Thabo Mbeki’s legal team has withdrawn after a dispute over funding.

Jeff Radebe felt compelled to step into the public debate on Thursday. Both commissions were established outside of the budgeting cycle and are being covered by the department’s already reduced existing budget, he said. On Marikana, he explained the State Attorney Act does not allow the department to pay for legal teams of those who are not state employees.

Legal Aid South Africa (LASA) faces budget constraints and denied Mpofu’s legal team funding after it “applied itself fully and rationally” while looking at its policy that does not make provision to fund expenses at commissions, said Radebe. LASA is funding the lawyers of the dead mineworkers because they lost breadwinners and need to understand the proceedings in case civil liability claims arise.

The Department of Justice wants the injured and jailed mineworkers to be represented by the state’s evidence leaders. “The evidence leaders have a particular responsibility to gather evidence, analyse it and present it to the commission impartially and without bias, to enable the commission to determine the facts and to make the necessary findings and recommendations. In this regard, the evidence of the injured miners could be ably dealt with by the evidence leaders,” Radebe said in a statement.

The police and Department of Mineral Resources are funding their own legal teams from their own budgets, he said. The SAPS is said to have spent R7-million on its legal team including seven advocates.

Mpofu slammed Radebe’s suggestion the mineworkers be represented by the commission’s evidence leaders. “If one party has seven advocates and the other party has zero how are you going to get the truth?” he asked on Talk Radio 702. “If evidence leaders are to represent parties, that can’t apply to people because they are poor. That must apply to everyone… The issue is do you want the truth or don’t you want the truth?”

The Marikana Support Campaign issued an open letter on Tuesday demanding government pay Mpofu’s legal bill. It was signed by over 40 well-known members of the media, civil society, the arts, labour and politics. “Without legal representation for the injured miners, there can be no level playing field. Should the hearings continue without the participation of the legal teams representing the victims it would be a travesty of justice,” it read. Rumours an anonymous donor will fund the lawyers are yet to be confirmed.

Speaking at the one-year commemoration of the Marikana Massacre last week, mineworkers were clear they wanted independent representation at the commission. They called for donations and buckets were handed through the crowd. In dealing with their loss, mineworkers spoke of the commission of inquiry as being crucial to finding truth and justice. The state’s latest move to suggest they don’t need independent counsel is likely to further their mistrust.

Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko called Radebe’s decision a “slap in the face of the mineworkers”. “The fact that the government claims that it cannot find funds to assist the Marikana mineworkers in getting proper legal representation is reason enough for both the minister and President Zuma to hang their heads in shame,” she said Thursday. Mazibuko said evidence leaders are tasked with extracting evidence and cannot replace legal representation.

In the Arms Procurement Commission, headed by judge Willie Seriti, it’s the cost of Mbeki’s lawyers that has caused a stir. The state wants to save money and have all state officials, current and former, represented by a single legal team, said Radebe. Ronnie Kasrils, Mosiuoa Lekota, Alec Erwin, Trevor Manuel and Mbeki will all need to appear. Using one state legal team avoids multiple voices looking at what “was a single procurement transaction by government through Cabinet, and its successors in title, acting as a single entity,” Radebe concluded.

“Naturally there may be those who wish to be provided with private legal representation outside of or in addition to the state attorney team. This is perfectly permissible in terms of the regulations, however under these circumstances, the costs for such legal representation shall be borne by the person requesting such additional support,” he added.

The former president’s spokesperson Mukoni Rashitanga was with Mbeki at Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s inauguration ceremony on Thursday and would not comment on the matter until he had time to look at Radebe’s comments. Mbeki will have to appear at the commission next year whether he decides to have his own legal team or not.

But arms deal activist Terry Crawford-Browne told Daily Maverick the Seriti Commission has so far “confounded my worst expectations”. He sees the issue of legal fees as yet another way the state plans to drag out the inquiry while exhausting its critics legally and financially. Those in charge of the commission were deployed to destroy its chances of finding the truth, he said. “I don’t think so,” Crawford-Browne responded when asked whether it can salvage any legitimacy. He is, however, speaking with his lawyers to look at how to improve the process.

The Arms Procurement Commission and the Marikana Commission were supposedly established to shine a light on issues of grave importance. Finding the truth, however, seems unlikely, as the state can’t find the money to support the Marikana legal team or the skills to overcome the simplest administrative tasks in Seriti’s commission. 

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Full state funding sought for Marikana lawyers

Yadhana Jadoo, Citizen, 23 August 2013

 

Attorney Henry Msimang, who is in the legal team lead by advocate Dali Mpofu representing over 200 arrested and injured Lonmin miners, confirmed yesterday that lawyers would approach the North Gauteng High Court on Monday to set a date for a main application which seeks full state funding in the matter.

“Its not over or the end of the road for us just yet,” Msimang said. The Farlam Commission has been tasked with uncovering the truth behind the Marikana killings by police during dispersal operations last year.

“The legal team will approach the Deputy Judge President of the North Gauteng High Court to allocate a date were we can argue the main application for state funding.”

Justice Minister Jeff Radebe announced yesterday that the state would not fund the miners and added that their evidence could be dealt with by evidence leaders at the commission.

“The North Gauteng High Court dismissed an urgent application that was brought before it to force the state to pay for the legal representation of the injured and arrested miners. The North Gauteng High Court endorsed the principle that it is not generally within the domain of the courts to determine how the state utilises public funds,” Radebe said.

“This duty lies with the executive arm of government. The Constitutional Court subsequently refused the injured and arrested miners leave to appeal against the High Court judgment.”

Msimang said that Radebe had not understood completely a Constitutional Court ruling this week which dismissed an appeal for interim funding. In clarifying the issue, he explained that Mpofu’s team only sought interim, and not full funding, from the State in the period prior to the main application.

This was, however, not granted by the North Gauteng High Court and that was when lawyers decided to approach the Constitutional Court in the matter.

The Constitutional Court in its ruling had also not dismissed the merits of the application. There was no word as yet over a potential funder, said Msimang, adding that the entire situation was frustrating as lawyers had other matters to attend to.

“But what else can we do? The miners need high up legal representation, as the police have,” he said. SA Council of Churches president Bishop Joesph Seoka said mineworkers deserved to qualify for Legal Aid.

“If their story is not heard, what is the point? All this says is that we are not really equal before the law.” He charged that the government had the money to fund the miners but that it “wanted to suppress the truth” by not doing so.

“So far all indicators point to the fact the workers were shot at without provocation. If the state is committed to the truth they would make money available,” said Seoka.

“These workers were hurt, arrested and died because they were fighting for a living wage. Never again should anyone die for their own rights. A living wage is a human right,” said Seoka.

Mpofu had referred all questions to Msimang when contacted by The Citizen.

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No money for Marikana miners: Radebe

SAPA, Sowetan, 22 August 2013

Miners wounded or arrested in last year's Marikana violence should rely on State evidence leaders to represent them, Justice Minister Jeff Radebe said on Thursday.

Addressing a media briefing in Cape Town, Radebe said budgetary constraints made it impossible for the State to pay for private legal representation for the workers at the Farlam Commission.

"The department of justice and constitutional development is not any different from other departments in terms of the expectations to spend its resources prudently throughout its operations, including the operations of commissions," Radebe said.

The State could also not act outside of Monday's Constitutional Court ruling.

The court dismissed an application for leave to challenge a ruling by the High Court in Pretoria against the wounded miners.

"The [High Court in Pretoria] endorsed the principle that it is not generally within the domain of the courts to determine how the State utilises public funds," Radebe said.

"This duty lies within the executive arm of government."

Radebe said government was not "unsympathetic to the cause of the injured miners".

"Our duty is to expend public funds within the legal framework which sets the parameters for spending public funds and how the said funds can be spent."

Government was confident the interests of miners would be protected by the Farlam Commission of Inquiry evidence leaders.

"The evidence leaders have a particular responsibility to gather evidence, analyse it and present it to the commission impartially and without bias, to enable the commission to determine the facts and to make the necessary findings and recommendations," Radebe said.

The commission is investigating the deaths of 44 people killed during strike-related unrest at Lonmin's platinum mining operations at Marikana, near Rustenburg in North West, in August last year.

Police shot dead 34 people -- almost all striking mineworkers -- on August 16, 2012, while trying to disperse and disarm them. Ten people, including two police officers and two security guards, were killed in the preceding week.

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Gold Fields CEO waives bonus

iAfrica, 23 Aug 2013

The chief executive officer of gold producer Gold Fields, Nick Holland, has offered to give up his bonus in the wake of an investigation into the company's Black Economic Empowerment transaction at its Deep South Mine.

According to Fin24, the investigation revealed that the BEE transaction did not comply with the company's standards.

"In recognition of the concerns which have been generated around the Black Economic Empowerment transaction relating to South Deep, Holland has offered to waive his bonus in respect of the 2013 financial year end," Gold Fields reportedly said in a statement.

The investigation was started after former Gold Fields chairperson, Mamphela Ramphele, said that the government had forced the miner to accept a list of BEE shareholders or it would be denied a mining license. Gold Fields at the time rejected the reports as untrue.

The board's investigation has found that the transaction benefited the company.

"The board continues to believe that the BEE transaction is one of lasting benefit to the company and its BEE stakeholders," Gold Fields said in the Fin24 report.

Gold Fields added that its internal policies would be reworked to increase transparency and improve communication between the board and management.

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Salga retreats from ‘mistake’ in pay deal with municipal workers

 Carol Paton, Business Day,  23 August 2013

THE South African Local Government Association (Salga), which negotiates wages and conditions of service with the employees of the 283 municipalities, is trying to extract itself from an agreement it made with unions last year "by mistake", in which it undertook to increase employer pension fund contributions to 18%.

The undertaking, which is binding on all municipalities, has serious implications for their wage costs, which have been steadily eating into budgets, crowding out spending on other priorities. As most contributions are about 14%, the agreement will raise the wage bill by four percentage points, on top of annual wage increases.

The South African Cities Network, which monitors the finances of the big cities, said in a report published two weeks ago that staff costs have increased 50% since 2005, "putting pressure on everything else in the budget".

Salga executive director Rio Nolutshungo said on Thursday the intention of the agreement had been to "arrest, or at least contain, the increasing costs" of municipalities’ pension fund liabilities. The idea was to put a ceiling on contributions for new entrants, not to raise everybody to the level of 18%, he said.

"The text of the agreement omitted the second part, which concerned how existing employees should be dealt with," he said. In a circular following last year’s agreement, Salga told municipalities the agreement was "erroneously drafted" and "it had never been the intention of the negotiating parties to elevate employer contributions to 18%".

But unions are holding employers to the deal. South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) general secretary Walter Chiledi said: "We don’t believe it was a mistake. They knew what they were signing for. This is typical of Salga … always coming up with funny stories."

Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union communications officer Anja Muller-Deibicht said it appeared that Salga had tried to back out of the agreement without informing the unions, by sending a circular to municipalities only.

The Independent Municipal and Allied Workers Union and Samwu have declared a dispute with Salga over its refusal to implement the increases. After a year of wrangling, an arbitration hearing at the South African Local Government Bargaining Council is set for October.

Mr Nolutshungo said Salga would argue that even though it had put the clause into the agreement, it did not have the legal standing to make such a commitment on behalf of municipalities as it required pension funds to change their rules. Salga could not force them to do this, he said.

The employer contribution made by municipalities to employee pension funds is already high by private sector standards. Independent consultant Dave Crawford of Crawford Employee Financial Guidance said that "on average, employers contribute between 9% and 11% of an employee’s salary to the pension fund".

"Eighteen percent is very high," he said.

Wages and conditions of service in the municipal sector are far better than in the private sector, a result of a range of factors including union strength and centralised bargaining. All municipalities are bound by the agreed-upon wage increase regardless of their financial situation.

The minimum municipal wage is R4,927 a month, putting unskilled municipal workers in the top 20% of entry-level wages in South Africa, equivalent to an underground miner.

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EDITORIAL: ‘Winner takes all’ is bad for Lonmin

Business Day, 23 August 2013

AFTER Lonmin formally recognised the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) as the majority trade union at the company last week, CE Ben Magara enthused that the agreement was "excellent news for Lonmin, for our employees and for all our stakeholders".

He could not be more wrong. Amcu, which now represents about 60% of the workforce, probably agrees with him. But the rest of Lonmin’s employees, represented mainly by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) with 20%, but also Solidarity and Uasa with about 4% between them, certainly don’t consider the Amcu recognition agreement to be "excellent news".

That is because their recognition by Lonmin has been summarily revoked, in line with the "winner takes all" principle incorporated in the Labour Relations Act. This means Lonmin has gone from being an NUM-dominated company to an Amcu-dominated company at the stroke of a pen, with no attempt to recognise the tragic and tumultuous events that led to Amcu’s rise.

That is extremely short-sighted on both Lonmin’s and Amcu’s part, because those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. And nobody, surely, wants a repeat of the massacre of violently protesting Lonmin employees that took place at its Marikana mine a little over a year ago. It would be a gross over-simplification to attribute the Marikana killings solely to our archaic labour legislation — a range of factors played a role in creating the conditions that resulted in almost 50 lives being lost in a matter of a week, as is emerging, gradually, from the Farlam Commission of Inquiry into the incident.

But the fact that the disgruntled miners were unable to express adequately their unhappiness with their work and living conditions via the union they identified with at the time — Amcu — was to a large extent a result of the inflexibility and antidemocratic nature of the system. The NUM was the majority union, and Amcu’s memorandum to management was simply not taken seriously enough as a result.

Majoritarianism has other implications, and none of them should leave Mr Magara feeling so delighted. While dealing with just one union may be simpler for the company, it results in issues that do not concern that union being swept under the carpet. For instance, Solidarity and Uasa may only represent a small fraction of the Lonmin workforce, but they have historically attracted more skilled and middle management-level employees who have influence over the fortunes of the company disproportionate to their number. It makes no sense to alienate a union that could cripple operations by pulling a handful of its members off site.

In addition, while the NUM’s Damascene conversion to a more democratic recognition system since it lost its majority should be treated with scepticism, it too has the capacity to disrupt Lonmin’s operations if its members are unhappy. The tit-for-tat murders of rival union members that continue at Marikana to this day are testimony to that. The NUM’s position at Lonmin today is little different to that of Amcu’s a year ago — must its members now arm themselves and take to a koppie to ensure their grievances are heard?

Recognising that the right to freedom of association includes ensuring that people’s voices are heard is not the only labour market reform needed. As has been argued before in these columns, compulsory, anonymous strike ballots would also help ensure that individuals could express their opinions without being intimidated. It is also against the spirit of the constitution and the right of freedom of association that the labour minister is empowered to impose wage agreements negotiated at sector bargaining councils on nonparties. It is in government, business and labour’s best interests that these flaws be addressed without delay.

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Numsa ‘will not budge’ on double-digit wage increase

Karl Gernetzky, Business Day, 22 August 2013

THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) said on Wednesday it would stand firm on its demand for a double-digit wage increase in the motor sector, as a nationwide strike that has halted manufacturing plants entered its third day.

Sabre-rattling looks set to continue as Numsa prepares for a series of protest marches next week while posturing by negotiating parties has led to conflicting reports on the wage increase offers on the table.

Numsa chief negotiator Alex Mashilo said on Thursday that the union had dismissed an unofficial offer from employers of a 10% increase, as it formed part of a formal three-year agreement.

Mr Mashilo said that offer had been made last week during a review meeting between the CEOs of manufacturers and Numsa’s national office bearers.

This offer had to be rejected as Numsa had a mandate to seek a one-year agreement, he said.

Numsa treasurer Mphumzi Maqungo said on Wednesday that employer representatives had reverted to an initial offer of an 8% increase.

Vehicle manufacturers represented by the Automobile Manufacturer Employer’s Organisation had previously tabled an offer of 10% for the first year and 8% for the following two years, he said.

Numsa, he said, was still demanding a double-digit wage increase, having previously reduced its opening demand of 20% to 14%. The union also wants a monthly housing subsidy of R750 and a weekly transport allowance of R125.

Up to 30,000 Numsa-affiliated workers downed tools on Monday in a strike that analysts warned could affect economic growth if it continued for long.

Global car makers, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, General Motors, Volkswagen, Nissan and Ford, and some truck and bus makers, including MAN Truck and Bus South Africa, have been affected by the strike.

The National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa) has said the strike is expected to cost South Africa R600m a day in lost vehicle production and through downstream effects on related industries, such as component manufacturing.

Manufacturers have raised fears over the reputational damage to their brands, saying delayed exports or the need for international facilities to substitute for South African plants could prejudice future investment in the sector.

The Automobile Manufacturers Employers’ Association could not be reached for comment on Wednesday, but has previously declined to comment on wage offers from employers.

With Bloomberg

________

Strike season in full swing as construction workers also prepare to down tools

Karl Gernetzky, Business Day, 22 August 2013

STRIKE season in South Africa is entering full swing, with 90,000 construction workers to down tools from Monday, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said on Thursday.

NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka said the union’s members in the construction industry would embark on a strike after three months of wage negotiations had reached deadlock.

The NUM has, among its other demands, asked for a 13% increase for 2013 and 14% in 2014. Employers, which include Wilson Bayly Holmes Ovcon, Aveng and Group Five, have countered with an offer of 6% for 2013 and an inflation-adjusted increase for 2014.

News of the industrial action in the construction sector came as a strike in the motor manufacturing sector by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa entered its fourth day on Thursday.

A possible strike looms at platinum producer Lonmin’s North West mine after it issued minority unions with derecognition notices last week.

The NUM is also consulting its members over a strike in the gold sector, where negotiations between seven producers and four unions reached deadlock on Wednesday.

And in the clothing industry, 50,000 members of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union are to strike from next week.

Stand-off in gold industry

In the gold sector wage talks, the NUM and the United Association of South Africa have received certificates of non-resolution from the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.

The Chamber of Mines said on Wednesday that talks with Solidarity and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) continued.

The NUM, with two-thirds representation, is demanding increases of between 15% and 60%. The highest demand is for an increase for entry-level underground workers to R8,000 a month, or a 60% increase.

Amcu has demanded entry-level underground wages increase by 150% to R12,500, while Uasa and Solidarity are asking for 18% and 10%, respectively.

Employers have tabled a revised offer of 6% for category-four and -five employees and for rock-drill operators, with increases in living-out allowances in line with inflation.

The chamber said on Wednesday: "The offer would increase the basic wage for underground entry-level employees to R5,300 per month, and the living-out allowance to about R1,730 per month."

With Reuters

___________

Gold sector strike looms

Govan Whittles, EWN, 23 August 2013

JOHANNESBURG – The South African mining sector is bracing for another wave of strikes in the gold sector after wage talks deadlocked between unions and the Chamber of Mines.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the United Association of South Africa (Uasa) have already been issued with non-resolution certificates and are expected to issue a 48-hour strike certificate on Monday.

The unions have rejected the chamber's latest offer of about six percent after they demanded hikes of 60 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

The chamber's chief negotiator Elize Strydom said talks with the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) and Solidarity will continue next week.

“Solidarity and Amcu indicated they still wanted to [talk to] the chamber and to revert on Monday regarding their response to the improved wage offer.”

'CHAMBER IS UNREASONABLE'

The unions and the chamber have been engaged in wage negotiations for a number of months.

Various unions have different demands ranging from a 10 percent increase to 100 percent.

Earlier this month, the chamber made a revised wage offer of 5.5 percent in order to avoid a strike.

The NUM rejected a wage hike offer of four percent last month from gold sector mining companies “with the contempt it deserves”.

The NUM's Lesiba Seshoka said they expected the chamber to make a more substantial opening offer, saying the employers' body was “totally unreasonable".

“As far as we are concerned, we are going nowhere with this discussion.”

(Edited by Gia Kaplan)

___________
NUM set to rock construction sector

Govan Whittles, EWN, 23 August 2013
JOHANNESBURG – Eyewitness News has learnt the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) plans to issue its intention to call a strike in the construction sector today.

Talks between the NUM and construction companies have deadlocked after the union asked for a 15 percent wage hike and employers offered nine percent.

The union's General Secretary Frans Baleni said they've been part of fruitless talks for the past three months and the strike will now kick off on Monday.

He said the strike will be preceded by a march this weekend.

“We are likely to issue a notice so the strike can commence next week Monday. We will be marching in the streets of Johannesburg this coming Saturday for the three sectors which are energy, construction and mining. We will also be submitting memoranda.”

Meanwhile, more than 1,000 NUM members at Village Main Reef’s Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mine in Carletonville plan to march to the company's headquarters to demand that the looming retrenchment of 1,800 employees be cancelled.

The NUM has claimed the mine is currently under judicial management and is in the process of being liquidated.

In 2011, Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mine dismissed 1,000 NUM members. 

The union has now claimed the rest of its membership will soon follow.

The NUM’s Lesiba Seshoka said: “Village Main Reef is closing down and liquidating the mine and going away. It’s doing the same at Limpopo’s Consolidated Murchison Mine. Clearly there’s no down-scaling. It’s just a matter of shutting down the operations.”

The NUM has also threatened mass strike action at Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) mines after it announced earlier this week that it planned to cut more jobs than it had initially agreed to.

After months of discussions with government and unions, Amplats announced earlier this week that it aims to cut about 7,000 jobs at its South African operations. It had initially planned to shed 6,000 jobs but increased this figure in recent weeks.

Seshoka said if an agreement was not reached, workers would embark on a strike.

“The national office bearers of the union will look into this and we will announce the way forward. Clearly we will have to take this matter to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), to the court and then go on strike if need be.”

Amplats said the ultimate number of retrenchments would however depend on voluntary severance packages, early retirement and redeployments.

However, the NUM said they agreed that only 3,000 jobs would be affected through voluntary severance packages.

“We’ll look into the issue because they didn’t raise it with us that 7,000 jobs will be cut. We’ll also look at the statements being issued about workers being forced out because the agreement doesn’t have that option.”

(Edited by Gia Kaplan)

____________

Gold Fields buys Aussie mines after loss

Reuters, Business Report, 23 August 2013

Reuters

Hit by lower gold prices and rising costs at home, Gold Fields reported a second-quarter loss yesterday and said it was expanding abroad with a $300 million (R3.1bn) deal to buy three Australian mines from top producer Barrick Gold.

The company said it made a net loss of $129m in the three months to June compared with a net profit of $27m in the previous quarter and $105m in the same quarter last year.

Earlier this year Gold Fields separated off the bulk of its assets in South Africa, where labour and political risks are seen as relatively high in the context of a sharp fall in gold prices, a point underlined this week by a new strike threat.

“The gold industry [in South Africa] is frankly in crisis at the moment,” chief executive Nick Holland said.

Gold Fields’ shares fell by 9.13 percent to close at R59.89 yesterday, with the strike threat in South Africa hitting the shares of other producers in the country.

The company said the Barrick acquisition, which would be 50 percent payable in shares, would add 452 000 ounces to its annual production and make it Australia’s third-largest gold producer. The company expects to produce between 1.83 million and 1.9 million ounces this year.

Following the acquisition, Australia would be Gold Fields’ largest regional production centre, it said, accounting for 42 percent of group production, with Ghana decreasing to 34 percent and Peru and South Africa remaining largely unchanged at 13 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

“The acquired assets are located in a preferred jurisdiction that we know well and where we have significant operational and management experience and infrastructure to maximise the value of the acquired assets,” Holland said.

“This acquisition further repositions Gold Fields as an international gold producer with a well-balanced global footprint, which should enhance our risk profile and global credit rating,” he said.

The company said its second-quarter loss was mostly due to impairment charges in Ghana of $143m at its Tarkwa mine and $127m at Damang.

The charges related to its decision to curtail processing activities at the operations because of the lower gold price.

The average gold price in the June quarter was 13 percent lower at $1 405 an ounce and the spot price has lost about 30 percent since its record high of just more than $1 920 scaled in September 2011.

Rival AngloGold Ashanti also has troublesome assets in Ghana and its chief executive said this week that its flagship Obuasi mine there was unsustainable.

But Holland said Gold Fields remained committed to the west African country, which is the continent’s second-largest bullion producer. Tarkwa’s total cash costs are relatively low at just more than $800 an ounce.

“Tarkwa is still a great operation and we are not concerned about Tarkwa,” Holland said.

Damang’s road to solid profitability would be a longer one.

“I think we have done a lot of capital stripping to uncover what we believe is still a world-class ore body and the challenge now is for us to bring that to account in a profitable mine. It’s got good grades,” Holland said.

Holland said Gold Fields was looking for a buyer for its Arctic platinum project in Finland.

n Sapa reported that Holland had offered to waive his bonus after an investigation into the company’s black economic empowerment (BEE) transaction at its South Deep mine.

“In recognition of the concerns which have been generated around the BEE transaction relating to South Deep, chief executive Nick Holland has offered to waive his bonus in respect of the 2013 financial year end,” Gold Fields said.

The investigation revealed the deal was not consistent with company standards. The company’s board initiated the investigation into the BEE deal last December after it was questioned in media reports.

__________

Former Madoff employees seek details on claims

Bernard Vaughan, Business Report, 23 August 2013

New York - Five former employees of Bernard Madoff responded on Thursday to government assertions that all but one of them and Madoff were involved “in romantic and/or sexual relationships” with each other and that Madoff himself was ensnared in a “love triangle”.

In short, they want more details, according to a court document filed on Thursday.

Madoff pleaded guilty in March 2009 to running a fraud of up to $65-billion at his investment firm and is serving a 150-year prison sentence. While Madoff said he acted alone, prosecutors have since charged 13 individuals in connection with the fraud. Five of them - two women and three men - are set to go on trial in federal court in New York on October 7.

The employees are former investment advisory employees Joann Crupi and Annette Bongiorno, former operations manager Daniel Bonventre, and former computer programmers Jerome O'Hara and George Perez.

Lawyers for the employees either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday night.

Earlier this month, prosecutors who accuse the former employees of helping Madoff execute his Ponzi scheme asked to exclude from trial evidence that all but one of them and Madoff were at various times “in romantic and/or sexual relationships with one another”, and that one of the defendants was in a “love triangle” with Madoff.

On August 13, the government identified for defence lawyers the employees they said were involved in each of the relationships, according to the court document filed by defence lawyers on Thursday.

But the lawyers for the five defendants demanded more details.

“We still have no information regarding the timing or duration of the relationships or the source of the information, and these facts are critical to the defendants' decision whether or not to cross examine the government's witnesses concerning the allegations,” the filing said.

The defence lawyers also said there was another relationship the government had not mentioned, but they did not provide details in the filing.

“While the government identified certain relationships,” Thursday's filing stated, “there is still another relationship not embraced by the government's motion and about which it presumably wishes to introduce evidence at trial”.

Lawyers for the former employees outlined how details of the relationships could prove relevant at trial.

If a government witness had a relationship with someone at Madoff's firm, for example, it could influence their testimony regarding one or more of the defendants, the lawyers said.

The Manhattan US Attorney's Office declined to comment. - Reuters

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Gold Fields board rebukes CEO for empowerment deal controversy

Allan Seccombe, Business Day, 23 August 2013

GOLD Fields CEO Nick Holland and his management team have been "strongly censured" for the way they handled the controversy around the empowerment deal at its South Deep gold mine.

Mr Holland had told the board he would forgo his bonus this year due to his role in mishandling the matter in public, and the board had accepted his offer.

His bonus for this year will only be decided next April, but for 2012 he received a R8.46m bonus out of a total package of R45m.

Gold Fields chairwoman Cheryl Carolus said on Thursday the formal examination of the 2010 deal, which included key figures in the African National Congress (ANC) and involved convicted bank robber Gayton McKenzie as an adviser, had been concluded.

Mr Holland and his management team, which had been involved in setting up the deal, came in for criticism from the board, which investigated the transaction and involved law firms locally and abroad.

The findings would not be made public despite the board concluding that it had to improve its transparency, said Ms Carolus, a former anti-apartheid activist and member of the ANC.

It is understood there is no single final report, but the board came to its conclusions after hearing presentations over three days from law firms that had investigated the deal. The presentations were subject to legal privilege and would not be made public.

"We’re quite comfortable that we have examined the facts quite carefully and no further steps are necessary," Ms Carolus said.

Asked if Gold Fields was not at risk of being accused of shielding management or of a "whitewash", she said: "I can promise you that I will not put myself at risk of going to jail for Nick Holland — as nice and as decent a person as he is. I’ve been to jail before and I’m not about to do so again. We have censured management quite strongly about their communications."

The investigation revealed shortcomings that Gold Fields’ board will have to urgently address as it expands in Australia and elsewhere. "The areas that should worry us are around deficiencies in our internal processes, particularly around timely communication between board and management, and issues of transparency," Ms Carolus said.

"As a board, we felt we were poorly served," she said, and the company felt its reputation had been damaged by the way management had handled the matter in public.

The board criticised Mr Holland’s decision to not disclose the beneficiaries of the transaction, despite requests from numerous media outlets for the list to be made public and which led to negative stories about the deal.

"It looked like, if we were being foolish about that then, what on earth else were we being cagey about," Ms Carolus said. "It was a very bad judgment call and goes against the transparency principle. We want to be seen as people who will not lie to anybody."

The board would take lessons from its past experiences.

"The big thing that hit us right between the eyes is that we are going to have to get a lot more up to speed in training the board in the jurisdictions in which we operate, particularly around areas of corruption and compliance," she said.

No evidence was found of wrongdoing by those in Gold Fields involved in drawing up the transaction.

"If we had any reason to believe there was wrongdoing, I promise you we would not have hesitated one minute in acting," Ms Carolus said. "We really have to tighten up our internal processes because those can spell a lot of trouble for us down the line."

She declined to comment on former chairwoman Mamphela Ramphele’s comments that a list of preferred candidates had been "shoved down" Gold Fields’ throat with the threat that it would not secure a mining right if it did not include them.

The board was satisfied with the composition of the empowerment partners, with controversial figures making up just a small percentage of the beneficiaries, she said.

_________

Massmart hits back at Basson

Craig Wynn, EWN, iAfrica, 23 August 2013

Massmart CEO Grant Pattison says it’s too early to ask whether the company’s relationship with Walmart has been beneficial and that compared to the western operations of the US company, Massmart is "way behind."

Massmart is 51 percent-owned by the world’s biggest retailer, Walmart.

Pattison spoke to 567 CapeTalk/Talk Radio 702’s Bruce Whitfield on Thursday night following news that his company has posted a 10 percent fall in first-half profit, hurt by a weak market and slow expansion into other African countries.

Given South Africa’s dismal growth prospects, investors are keen to see evidence of retailers expanding into fast-rising sub-Saharan economies.

But Massmart has been slow to deliver, losing ground to domestic rival Shoprite which on Wednesday laid out an ambitious plan to open 47 stores outside of South Africa.

Shares in Massmart, which are down about 20 percent this year, dropped further throughout the day, reaching nearly 3 percent less by 4pm.

Questions have been raised about Walmart’s presence in Africa, while the impact it might be having on Massmart itself is not clear, but Pattison says it’s too early to speculate about this.

"It would be wrong at this point to say Walmart has either helped or not helped Massmart. I think maybe from next year it would be fair to start saying, 'is the performance somehow related to Walmart?'"

He also admitted that Massmart has a lot of catching up to do with its American owners and their counterparts in other major western countries.

"One of the things that I’ve discovered personally is just how far companies like ASDA [Walmart’s UK unit], Walmart USA and Walmart Canada are ahead of us. I would have said we’re a world class retailer, but sitting around the table with those companies I’ve realised we’re way behind."

Meanwhile, at a presentation earlier in the day, Pattison said: "We want to slightly shift our focus away from South Africa and put more resources into African growth."

The company said all but 10 to 15 stores to be opened over the next three years would be in South Africa.

Analysts said Massmart’s expansion could be quicker if key markets such as Nigeria had modern shopping infrastructure for its flagship Game stores.

"If Massmart considers smaller, standalone stores they would probably expand faster," said Patrick Ntshalintshali, a portfolio manager at Vunani Fund Managers.

Massmart runs 29 stores in 11 African countries outside South Africa which contribute about 8 percent to its total sales.

Shoprite, by contrast, runs 153 supermarkets and could double that number in three to four years, CEO Whitey Basson earlier said this week.

On Tuesday, Basson, also speaking to Whitfield, criticised Walmart’s apparent lack of presence on the continent so far.

Referring to his own presence in other African countries Basson said, "I don’t see them in the same hotels or being bitten by the same mosquitoes as I do when I’m in those places."

He added: "I just read that they’re conquering Africa, I’m not seeing much of that at this point of time. It’s the flavour of the month."

But Pattison shot back on Thursday, saying of Basson, "First of all, he’s just wrong."

He explained that he’s spent a lot of time in west and east Africa, where Basson claims never to see him.

"I suspect he doesn't see us because I fly commercial and stay in cheap hotels. We spend a lot of time in Africa and we’re making good progress on our plans."

He revealed that on top of the growing number of markets already open in Africa, food retail stores would soon be opened in west Africa.

"If it works, we’ll immediately move that format to east Africa."

Massmart could also boost presence on the continent with acquisitions but, at the conference earlier in the day, Pattison said there were few retailers that would fit into its stable.

He declined to comment on news that Massmart is looking to take a controlling stake in Kenyan supermarket chain Naivas, a deal which could double its foreign outlets.

Massmart, which sells everything from groceries to televisions, said headline earnings per share fell 9.9 percent to 181 cents in the first six months of the year.

However, sales increased 8.9 percent to R32.4-billion and the company maintained its dividend payout at 146 cents per share.

"There’s little on the macro-economic horizon that suggests any improvement," said Massmart. "We believe the remainder of the year will continue to see sales under pressure."

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2.                 COSATU

Nzimande warns of ‘imperialist plot’ to divide Cosatu

 Natasha Marrian,Business Day,  23 August 2013

SOUTH African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande said on Thursday the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) was being used in an "imperialist offensive" that sought to unseat the African National Congress (ANC) from power.

Much of his criticism, while indirect, appeared to target suspended Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.

Speaking at a political school for members of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), Mr Nzimande warned of hailing civil society organisations as "good" and the state as "bad". Such labelling was a veiled attempt to drive a wedge between the ANC and Cosatu.

"There is also an imperialist offensive here," Mr Nzimande said. "Imperialists have never liked liberation movements staying in power for too long. Ours is in power for 20 years, it’s too long (for them). But it’s too short for us."

Leaders of the ruling a lliance used the political school session to air their views on the deep divisions in Cosatu, which reached a tipping point last week after Mr Vavi was suspended for his admission of an affair with a 26-year-old subordinate. Mr Vavi has accused fellow Cosatu leaders of a systematic campaign to oust him because they believed, as stated in an "intelligence report", that he was working with "imperialists" to weaken the trade union federation’s ally, the ANC.

Last Friday Mr Vavi said he would use the same "intelligence report" to prove in court that there was a political conspiracy against him.

On Wednesday ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe blamed the running battle in Cosatu on the emergence of a "cult of personalities" and the abandonment of the principle of worker control. The latter had led to the general secretary, a paid "official", being more influential than the president, who was meant to be a "worker leader" on secondment.

Mr Nzimande said imperialists were behind divisions in the tripartite alliance. " They drive a wedge within the trade union and (one) between the communists and the trade union movement."

But he said South Africa’s alignment with the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India and China and South Africa) countries meant that it was "sleeping outside of the hands of imperialists".

The reason some wanted to foment division within Cosatu was its push for affiliation with the World Federation of Trade Unions, which was historically Soviet Union-aligned. That was its "cardinal sin", Mr Nzimande said.

Some of the unions in the north affiliated to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), to which Cosatu is also aligned, were allied to "imperialists". The affiliation to ITUC was apparently among the sticking points between Mr Vavi and his co-leaders.

Mr Nzimande said imperialism sought to encourage trade unions to define themselves as civil society, which was "naturally in opposition" to the liberation movement and its government. He laid into those critical of the government.

"The working class can’t cherry-pick by only claiming and taking responsibility for the advances and victories," Mr Nzimande said. "When it comes to setbacks and weaknesses it acts as an outside and oppositionist force.

"This is not leadership but dangerous opportunism. The working class can’t opportunistically regard itself as part of the NDR (national democratic revolution) when it suits it, but where there are difficulties it takes itself to be part of some independent civil society.

"We must dismiss this notion that to be outside government is to be clean and revolutionary and to be in government is … problematic."

Mr Nzimande’s decision to take up a position in the Cabinet came under fire from sections of Cosatu that believed he would be more valuable as a full-time general secretary of the SACP.

In a tacit reference to the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, which has hinted at a split should charges against Mr Vavi proceed, Mr Nzimande said the SACP would not "lie down" when there were attempts to "steal workers" through breaking off from Cosatu.

"Sometimes it’s easy to gamble with what we have built. But you don’t know that once … it is destroyed, it is hard to rebuild, if ever you get to rebuild," he said.

Those threatening to walk out of Cosatu were "enemies of the revolution", Mr Nzimande said. "Who are these leaders speaking for?

"Those threatening to walk out of the federation will first have to open this red door (the SACP). Workers are not stupid. Cosatu is not for sale. It was built in blood."

__________

Don’t let Vavi sex scandal derail Cosatu – Blade Nzimande

Sabelo Ndlangisa @Bhintsintsi #PopcruCityPress, 22 August 2013

 

SA Communist Party boss Blade Nzimande says Cosatu should not allow Zwelinzima Vavi’s sex scandal to distract the federation from its attempts to find unity.

The federation’s central executive committee suspended Vavi last week pending disciplinary proceedings for bringing Cosatu into disrepute.

This is after he admitted to having sex with a junior employee at the federation’s Johannesburg headquarters in January.

Nzimande told a Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) gathering in Benoni the federation was on the right track by embarking on a mediation facilitated by lawyer Charles Nupen and veteran unionist Petrus Mashishi – to look at the ideological and administrative issues facing the federation.

He said this discussion was good to address a number of problems, including Cosatu’s stance towards President Jacob Zuma’s government.

“We are concerned that the sex scandal may derail it because it may defocus from this process that Cosatu has. And that enemies of the federation may exploit this … No matter how Cosatu decides to deal with the sex issue, but it must not be derailed from dealing with the challenges inside itself,” he said.

Nzimande later told City Press on the sidelines of the event the Vavi scandal came at an “unfortunate time”, which explains why Vavi felt “it was being abused to fight different battles”.

However, he said it did not mean the SACP wanted to tell Cosatu how to deal with its internal issues.

Nzimande told Popcru delegates those who suggest the SACP wants to weaken Cosatu were merely resorting to apartheid tactics of invoking a “rooi gevaar”.

The leadership National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) has accused some ANC and SACP leaders of wanting to reduce Cosatu into a “toothless labour desk”, and have called for meeting in December with its membership to discuss whether or not it should remain an affiliate of the federation.

Although he did not mention Numsa by name, Nzimande warned against its threat that it will walk out of the alliance or review its support for the ANC.

“None of the Cosatu affiliates must even contemplate walking out of the federation. Those who do so or are planning to do so are part of the enemy to destroy our revolution. There can be no problem that is bigger than the unity of Cosatu … Cosatu is not for sale,” he said

Nzimande also urged workers to remain in Cosatu, saying their federation played an important role in swinging electoral support in the ANC’s favour in KwaZulu-Natal by recruiting IFP-aligned fellow workers.

“If you get out of the ANC as workers, you are selling out,” he said.

He said it was wrong to encourage union members to “swell the ranks of the ANC”, and yet discourage them from assuming positions of responsibility in both the party and government.

“Taking responsibility for our revolution means you take responsibility for both the good things and bad things, the advances as well as the weaknesses … we cannot only claim that we are part of the alliance when good things are happening. And when bad things are happening, we stand outside as if we are part of the opposition

“We resist this idea that to be outside government is to be clean, and to be inside is to be dirty,” he said.

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Power-hungry personalities will be the end of Cosatu, says Gwede Mantashe

Sabelo Ndlangisa @Bhintsintsi #PopcruCityPress, 21 August 2013

 

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe says personality cults in union federation Cosatu are going to kill the labour federation.

He said unions should reconsider conferring too much power on their general secretaries, and give those powers to members instead.

Addressing Cosatu-affiliated police union Popcru’s political school in Benoni today, Mantashe said moving away from trade union principles and creating cults around individual leaders would destroy unions in the federation.

He was speaking at a time when Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has been suspended for bringing the federation into disrepute after he had sex with a junior Cosatu employee at work. There is a also a parallel “facilitation process” that is looking into the divisions in Cosatu.

“Others belong to Vavi and others to (Cosatu president) Sdumo (Dlamini). Then you are going to kill the federation because it was not meant to be like that,” he said.

He added it will also important to separate the duties of the president and the general secretary as outlined in the federation’s constitution to avoid personality cults.

He told City Press on the sidelines of the indaba that “worker control” was important in Cosatu to limit the influence the employed bureaucracy has in the federation, saying its decline impacts on the federation over time.

“It’s like me in the ANC, I know what to do. I am not the president of the ANC, and I don’t pretend to be one … It’s a conscious decision. You must be conscious about it first as the general secretary.

“That’s why there’s a term ‘cult of personality’ because when you get addicted (to) power you don’t see anything in front of you. You run over everything,” he said.

Mantashe also took a swipe at the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), which said it would meet in December and review its decision to support the ANC in the polls, saying deserting the ANC will make it a conservative organisation.

“If you look at the ANC, it is one of the six authentic liberation movements in Africa … You will move it to the right (of the political spectrum),” he said.

He also poured scorn on Numsa’s claim that the unionists who were elected on to the ANC’s national executive committee in Mangaung in December are spearheading attempts to reduce Cosatu into a “toothless” ANC labour desk.

Mantashe said labour would have more than 10 people in the ANC’s most influential leadership structure were it not for the divisions that plague it.

“Those leaders are leaders of the ANC in their own right. They should be in the NEC in their own right. They are not there as the Cosatu faction in the ANC … It is important for a working class formation to be united,” he said.

- City Press

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OPINION-Cosatu not to be taken for granted

 David Gleason, Business Day, 23 August 2013

THE Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) was formed in 1985. Its founders included current African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa (at the time the National Union of Mineworkers’ first secretary-general) and Jay Naidoo, Cosatu’s first general secretary and later a minister in Nelson Mandela’s first cabinet.

Cosatu-affiliated trade unions account for nearly 2-million members and it is part of the tripartite alliance (with the ANC and the South African Communist Party), which some of its leaders claim provides its members with political influence they would not otherwise enjoy. Cosatu’s heyday was between its launch and Nelson Mandela’s release, when it played a major role in organising general strikes, wage strikes and in mobilising support among workers across the country. Cosatu was a significant contributor to the success achieved by the United Democratic Front, a coalition of hundreds of civic organisations, in its opposition to apartheid.

There’s nothing surprising about the involvement of trade unions and their federations in politics and political organisations, usually on the left of the political spectrum. The Labour Party in the UK is closely tied up with the union movement, from which it receives substantial financial support and which requires that its preferences be accorded pride of place in the party’s policies. Inevitably, this creates a tension between leaders of the two groups.

Under Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu’s currently suspended general secretary, this tension between Cosatu the ANC has become both pervasive and profound. Vavi has not hesitated to attack the ANC for what he sees as its unwillingness to confront corruption. His own political focus is on the increasing socialisation of the state, a position from which he has frequently chastised the ANC and its commitment to the National Development Plan.

Vavi has long been at odds with Cosatu’s president, Sdumo Dlamini. Observers have noted that Dlamini is the principal representative of the public service unions, which have grown in stature and power. Vavi has accused Dlamini of wanting to turn Cosatu into the ANC’s tame labour desk, which he has, of course, strenuously denied.

It is usual to find among strongly opinionated individuals powerful differences of opinion, whether these have their origins in personal ambition or divergent world views. But the degree to which these have become entrenched and are now exercising influence over the positioning of the various factions has suddenly become front and centre of the 2014 general election drama.

The ANC, said its secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, this week, will shift to the right if the working class abandons the party. That would be "brutal on the working class". This is the voice of deep concern. The ANC has never had to fight an election in which the very core of its support is troubled. As though to underline this, Mantashe referred to Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, previously a member of the South African Democratic Teachers Union, "and now that she was a minister the union was fighting her".

The ANC has long been regarded as monolithic, in much the same way as its immediate predecessor, the National Party, was.

But the broad church Mandela once identified as its overarching strength can also be its weakness. The deep disconnect between "workers" and union bosses is being felt at many levels in business.

Because of the overt fraternisation between organised labour and the ANC, this translates into suspicion verging on dislike at the street level, and explains, partially at least, why next year’s general election is shaping up to be a watershed for the country.

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Regulators need ethics too

REGULATION has become one of the great expansion industries of the 21st century. The cry of many politicians seems to be: if it moves, regulate it. They figure it’s safest (and simplest, for them) that way.

But, in a profound and pleasantly short paper, Chris van der Walt of ISS Compliance argues that South Africa is being force-fed a diet of business ethics through regulation — but that scant attention is paid to the ethics of regulation. As he puts it, unethical conduct by a single corporation affects many, but a lack of regulatory ethics affects everyone.

Business ethics consists of three principles — utility, right and justice. An individual will favour one of these; the same applies to a company. An individual’s bias is influenced by his personal value system, a company’s bias by the nature of its business.

Utility requires conduct that will generate the most good for the largest number. The principle of right means an emphasis on conduct that least interferes with individual rights. Justice means just that — the fairest and most equitable solution.

In South Africa, utility is the weapon of choice for regulators — regulate to bring the most benefit to the biggest number with the available resources. This has become so entrenched that it’s no longer questioned. As Van der Walt asks, it may bring the most votes, but is it really the best way?

The trouble is that utility-based regulation can’t accommodate everyone. So it aims to satisfy the majority, which almost always brings it into conflict with whether it is right and whether it is fair.

A feature of regulation is the punitive powers applied. Take a look at those available to the South African Revenue Service. The more power used, the more we work to overturn the existing order. It is a feature of the human condition that the value we accord institutions diminishes in proportion to the force applied by the institution.

Regulation often relies on offences and penalties. That brings about breaches, and criminals, and that requires more regulation. But, by itself, more regulation isn’t the answer to problems.

And there is a new belief in a holy trinity — licensing, supervision, enforcement — all under the same roof. Dispenser, prosecutor and judge in one. The imposition of administrative sanctions, such as the enforcement committee of the Financial Services Board (FSB), has become all too pervasive.

It’s as though we’re being told that one institution (the FSB) doesn’t trust another (the justice system). This really isn’t good for society.

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ANC, SACP, Cosatu: Who moved my Left?

Ranjeni Munusamy, Daily Maverick, 23 August 2013

The turmoil within Cosatu has reached the level where the big guns in the ANC and the SACP have had to jump in to cushion the impact on the alliance. The biggest concern, it would seem, is a breakaway or split in the trade union federation and the consequences at the 2014 poll for the ANC. So even if the relationship within Cosatu and the alliance is untenable, those wanting to leave are a “threat to the revolution”, according to ANC general secretary Gwede Mantashe and the SACP’s Blade Nzimande. It’s a pity Mantashe and Nzimande cannot say what they really mean, which is that Zwelinzima Vavi and his band of merry men should get out and leave behind a compliant “Left”, but in name only. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY.

“Better Fewer, But Better” was the title of Russian communist leader and political theorist Vladimir Lenin’s last writings in March 1923, and was an outspoken attack on then Communist Party general secretary Joseph Stalin and the party bureaucracy. Decades later, the term was used by former president Thabo Mbeki in a speech at the ANC policy conference in 2002, ironically to infer that the Left in the alliance was a nuisance and no longer wanted.

“Our movement and its policies are also under sustained attack from domestic and foreign left sectarian factions that claim to be the best representatives of the workers and the poor of our country. They accuse our movement of having abandoned the working people, saying that we have adopted and are implementing neo-liberal policies.

“On the basis of a false presentation of what is happening in our country, they have chosen to direct their offensive against our movement rather than the political and other domestic and international forces that, objectively, constitute an obstacle to the achievement of the goals of the national democratic revolution,” Mbeki said.

“We are permanently interested in increasing the size and strength of our movement. Nevertheless, I am convinced that we must also pay particular attention to the principle – better fewer, but better!”

The dynamics in the alliance have changed dramatically in the last 11 years. In 2002, the targets of Mbeki’s ire were the SACP and Cosatu, which were fiercely opposed to his macro-economic strategy and, generally, his leadership. It was clear that he thought the ANC would make better progress without its leftist baggage.

In 2013, many of the people who got under Mbeki’s skin back then are in the ANC leadership and government. These days, Left is difficult to define in the alliance. The SACP is completely imperceptible and dysfunctional with most of its top leadership in the state or Parliament. The internal turbulence within Cosatu is primarily between the unions that want to fall politically in line with the ANC, which is not Left, and those who ascribe to radical and militant leftist polices.

Quite strangely, the new ANC leadership now have similar criticisms of Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and the leadership of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) as Mbeki had of them over a decade ago. Mbeki’s line: “They accuse our movement of having abandoned the working people, saying that we have adopted and are implementing neo-liberal policies” could very well have been uttered by ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe this week.

But unlike Mbeki, Mantashe and the rest of the current ANC leadership do not want the Left – or what’s left of the Left – to breakaway. The ANC faced no threat to its dominance in 2002, but in 2013 the political scene is quite different. Next year’s national and provincial elections will be the first real challenge to the ruling party, and its leaders cannot afford to dabble or take the worker vote for granted.

Following the suspension of Vavi last week pending the outcome of a disciplinary hearing, unions aligned to him such as Numsa and the Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu) have rallied to defend him against what they say is an onslaught to silence the working class. These unions want to call a special Cosatu congress to re-elect its leadership, as they are quite confident that the mass membership of the federation would come out in support of Vavi. They also want Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini booted out.

In order to call a special congress a minimum of seven affiliates need to submit a request in writing to the Cosatu leadership. While Numsa and Fawu might be able to convince other unions to support the idea in principle, the factors standing in their way include the affordability of a special congress. While Cosatu foots the bill for the venue, affiliate unions have to bear the costs of travel and accommodation of their delegates. Some unions are already battling to pay their subscription fees to Cosatu.

So as Vavi’s troubles intensify, Numsa and Fawu have upped the tempo with talk of a split in Cosatu. Both have also intimated that their electoral support for the ANC was no longer guaranteed.

Mantashe did not take this well, and had some not-so-subtle warnings for labour leaders. Even the SACP came out from its long hibernation to rail against talk of a split in Cosatu. And President Jacob Zuma, who has remained aloof from the convulsions in Cosatu, was on hand to offer some friendly advice to the union movement.

Speaking at the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) political school on Wednesday, Mantashe said a breakaway from the ANC could have serious consequences, and if the working class pulled out other interests would fill the void.

“It’s a gamble – head or tails – with the revolution. You can’t gamble with the revolution because you leave the space, other conservative forces will close the vacuum.

“You have made an assumption that if you decide to leave the ANC, the ANC will become static. (However) you will have an ANC that will grow more and more conservative and once it is more conservative it will be brutal on the working class,” Mantashe warned.

“If you think it’s neo-liberal now... You will push it (ANC) to the right,” he said. Mantashe also warned against union leaders determining who their members would vote for in the elections, saying this was an individual’s choice.

Speaking at the same meeting on Thursday, SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande denied that his party was behind the divisions plaguing Cosatu. Nzimande, who is also a member of the ANC national executive committee, said affiliates should not contemplate leaving the federation because of differences.

“You must stand strong because the unity of Cosatu as a federation is not up for sale, nor can it be recklessly gambled with to satisfy short-term and opportunistic objectives. Any threats to split the federation must be exposed for what it is: an enemy plot to defeat organised workers and our revolution!”

In a possible over-estimation of the SACP’s strength and influence, Nzimande said: “If some leaders think that they are going to take certain affiliates out of Cosatu then they will find the Communist party first. Those who are threatening to walk out, they will first have to open this red door.”

Zuma, speaking at the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union national congress in Durban, did not touch on Cosatu’s troubles directly. However his advice was for the union movement to butt out of politics and focus more on their core function of representing worker interests in the workplace.

“If you shift too much to political work, you leave the space at the factory floor. You are likely to have unprogressive unions taking the space and therefore recruiting your own members to them because you are no longer paying attention.

“That’s the reason why we have this beauty (sic) entity called alliance in South Africa, so that those who are political entities do more of the political work,” Zuma said.

The messages to Cosatu from the political heads in the alliance are clearly aimed at reining things in to settle the discord. While the threats of a split or breakaway seem to be causing anxiety, they also do not want a volatile Cosatu causing trouble for the ANC and government.

What is ironic, though, is that all three leaders, Zuma, Mantashe and Nzimande, do not recognise that the hollowing out of the Left has a lot to do with their abandonment of their own constituency. It was Cosatu that drove the pre-Polokwane campaign, which resulted in all three being elected to the ANC leadership on the Left ticket. But as a result of the disconnect between them and their base since then, Cosatu’s leaders have had to keep up a juggling act of managing the frustrations of the workers and maintaining support for the ANC, a difficult job.

Having their leaders in powerful positions in the ANC and government resulted in no tangible benefit for the workers. The pressure was therefore on Vavi to speak up to get their attention, but this just cast him as a troublemaker. If Vavi is silenced or driven out of Cosatu, the assumption in the ANC leadership is that the federation would go back to being a compliant partner.

Which could turn out to be a fantasy. The rise in militancy in protest action and the emergence of new ultra-left unions such as the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and political formations such as the Economic Freedom Fighters and the Workers and Socialist Party signal shifting sands on the ground. Cosatu’s own research has been redlining the social distance between the leadership and ordinary workers.

Mantashe’s warnings about the danger of the Left being displaced in the ANC has no bearing in reality. The Left has already dwindled or has been gravitating out of the alliance for some time, and its custodians have developed other interests. The Left is now a just romantic notion of a socialist revolution that never was.

By clinging onto a non-existent Left, the alliance is going nowhere. For months now they have been trying to hold an alliance economic summit to smooth out their differences over economic policy, but there is a real danger that if this meeting is held it will end in stalemate. This will expose the façade.

For now it appears that the goal is to keep things together until after the 2014 elections, and the pressure is off the ANC. But it is clear that the centre cannot hold for much longer. For Zuma, Mantashe, Nzimande and Vavi, it certainly would be something if after all this time, Mbeki would be proved right after all. Better fewer, but better. 

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Labour movement must return to basics

Terry Bell, Business Report, 23 August 2013

‘One is workers’ unity and evermore shall be so.” So goes an old labour movement song summarising the prime goal of trade unionism. It is also captured in the slogan: “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Equally, however, a disruption to one usually means a disruption to all.

By the egalitarian standard of solidarity, the South African labour movement is in crisis, despite constant denials that this is the case. However, if this reality is confronted and most unions return to basic principles, it is possible that a strong, democratic and united coalition of trade unions will emerge in future.

And this would include not just Cosatu unions, but also those of the Federation of Unions of SA (Fedusa), the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu) and the independent organisations. Together they comprise the 196 bodies recognised by the registrar of trade unions.

At the moment, there is no sign of this. Even the rush this week by both the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Cosatu to support the strike call by the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa) is an indication less of solidarity than of a desperate attempt to ensure the federation does not come apart at the seams.

And the main seam that appears in danger of being rent from the fabric of Cosatu is Numsa. It is against this background of hostility between the Numsa leadership and that of Cosatu and NUM, that this gesture must be seen.

It ties in with the statement made on Monday by Bheki Ntshalintshali, the man who has stepped into the shoes of the controversially suspended Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi. On a national radio programme Ntshalintshali noted: “Unity and cohesion are very important.”

If anything this is an understatement, given the dominant ideological strain within the tripartite alliance.

Dogmatic adherence to the ANC and its allies is a legacy of the days of exile when opposition to apartheid was the only glue that bound together official communists, socialists, capitalists, nationalists and political opportunists in the ANC’s broad church. Among this host were idealists, cynics, thieves, rogues, the craven and the brave. In short, a good cross-section of an authoritarian and racist society.

Added to this mix were individuals who served the interests of the apartheid state and had been infiltrated into the exile ranks from as early as 1963. Awareness of this created an atmosphere of paranoia in which anyone who dared to challenge or criticise the policies of the leadership – invariably not the infiltrators – would be labelled an anarchist, an agent or a counter-revolutionary.

This reinforced the concept that there was “only one true way forward”, a concept promoted by the SACP that saw itself establishing an SACP-led socialism after first helping to institute a black (ANC) republic. This remains the dominant underlying dogma.

However, there have been times when reality finally made it impossible to persist with even the most dearly held beliefs. But adapting to reality has seldom meant admitting errors; new myths worryingly make way for old, but usually only after lengthy denials.

So it is that the ANC, SACP and Cosatu continue to deny that any crisis exists. Yet all are aware that a major research project, scheduled for release next Thursday, apparently reveals that the majority of Cosatu shop stewards favour an independent “labour party”.

This report seems to highlight the widespread disgruntlement with the status quo in the labour and political environments. The greatest evidence of this came with the upheaval and horrific loss of life at Marikana.

A year on, there was a knee-jerk reaction from the SACP. The party again labelled the newest major labour player in the mining sector, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), as “vigilantes” and “counter revolutionaries” responsible for “killing workers”.

The fierce reaction of the SACP and, to a lesser degree, the ANC, is perhaps understandable when it is realised that two former NUM general secretaries, Kgalema Motlanthe and Gwede Mantashe, now hold, respectively, the positions of deputy president of the country and secretary-general of the ANC. The president of NUM, Senzeni Zokwana, also took over the chair of the SACP from Mantashe and the controversial general secretary of the union, Frans Baleni, is an SACP central committee member.

What this means is that the disintegration of NUM affects not only Cosatu but also the SACP and the ANC. The ruling alliance and the government, therefore, face the same crisis that reverberates throughout the labour movement.

Amcu has clearly benefited in membership terms from desertions from NUM, but so too has Numsa, with former NUM members swelling Numsa’s numbers to a claimed 320 000. However, the labour movement overall has been weakened as many former union members have simply opted out.

And while Amcu has provided the biggest ever membership boost to Nactu, this federation is still struggling. After flirting with Black Consciousness and the also once exiled PAC, Nactu opted to be politically non-aligned, but failed to attract any large unions. The present general secretary of Nactu, Narius Moloto, also holds the same position in the PAC, although he insists this is temporary and in no way compromises the federation.

Nactu and the bigger second fiddle in the labour federation business, Fedusa, have also been trying in recent years, with little success, to launch a united front, the Southern African Confederation of Trade Unions. However, in the process, Fedusa has lost, to independent status, both its largest affiliate, the PSA (formerly the Public Servants Association), and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union.

The growing call now is back to basics: back to democratic control, to accountable and recallable union leaders. This would almost certainly mean an end to party political manipulation and to the expense account lifestyles of union bureaucrats.

These are tall orders. But if a start is not made soon, the immediate future for the labour movement and South Africa’s fledgling democracy could be bleak.

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3.                  South Africa

Pact on Western Cape gang wars eludes Zille, Mthethwa

Bekezela Phakathi, Business Day, 23 August 2013

WESTERN Cape Premier Helen Zille and Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa are still at loggerheads on how to tackle the gang violence and drugs problem in the province, with the premier insisting that the army be temporarily deployed to the affected areas.

Mr Mthethwa, Ms Zille and Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille met on Thursday to discuss the crisis that has left several dead and communities, especially in Manenberg, living in fear. There was an agreement that the province, the city and the police should work more closely together, but there was no consensus on the role the security forces should play in the crisis.

The recent spike in gang violence in hot spots around the Cape Flats has been largely attributed to the drugs trade as gangsters fight each other for control of the lucrative business. The crisis reached such a pitch last week that the provincial government took the "extraordinary" decision to close schools in Manenberg temporarily.

The closure of the schools was because of concerns about the safety of pupils in the area. The schools reopened on Monday, with the city and police beefing up security in and around the area.

Ms Zille was scheduled to attend a media briefing with Mr Mthethwa and Ms de Lille, but could not because she had another meeting to attend. She briefed the media earlier outside the press conference venue and described the meeting with Mr Mthethwa only as "fine".

But Ms Zille said the situation in Manenberg had stabilised only "because everyone who could have been killed, has been killed … and that is the tragedy". The government should bring back the specialised drugs and gang units, she said.

Mr Mthethwa said there was no need to bring the army because the problem was a socioeconomic one.

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General Household Survey 2012: Arrested Development?

Paul Berkowitz, Daily Maverick, 23 August 2013

On Thursday Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) released the results of its general household survey (GHS) for 2012 and a second report which highlights a number of development indicators in the GHS. The GHS is a sort of annual mini-census that StatsSA has administered since 2002. PAUL BERKOWITZ examines the development trends of the last decade.

Development can be an amorphous concept. Most of us share the hope that tomorrow will be better than today and that our children’s lives will be richer than ours. Where we differ is how to measure this progress.

There’s the standardised human development index (HDI) released annually by the UN. It ranks countries’ development by life expectancy, literacy rates and per capital income. It has nothing to say about the quality of life in this country compared to that one, nor does it comment on the distribution of income in a particular country. It has nothing to say about the distribution of wealth in a country or its citizens’ ability to create wealth or remain trapped in poverty.

Development is also a controversial topic, charged with ideologies and politics. The HDI is probably the most popular development index with the widest scope but it has its critics, as do most development measurements and studies. The results of the GHS will be viewed through many different lenses.

Here’s a summary of the GHS (or rather, the report released by StatsSA based on the GHS). The GHS is an annual survey that covers tens of thousands of households across the country. It does not cover the whole country.

It covers the entire country but only presents an analysis at a provincial level of disaggregation. There is no real urban/rural split in the analysis, so the results of some indicators are an average of the rural and urban figures in a particular province.

This leads to a wide range of provincial averages for particular indicators. In particular, the performance of Gauteng and the Western Cape is very different from the other provinces for many indicators. Sometimes it’s better (mostly for health, wealth and education measures), sometimes it’s worse (prevalence of informal housing, exacerbated by high rates of in-migration).

The strong urban bias of these two provinces must be considered when comparing results with more rural provinces. In general, the report does not say much on how different communities and economies experience development, or which models of development are working.

Many of the indicators are for the basic services provided by municipal government (i.e. water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal). The provincial level of analysis is therefore of limited use in tracking basic service delivery.

There is detailed information on development through the provision of socio-economic rights in the form of basic services, health and education. The report tries to measure the degree to which the state provides these services but it’s not always possible to separate this from private spending.

To some readers of the report, this distinction is important insofar as it can provide evidence of the state’s role in development. Other readers are more interested in the quality of the services provided and whether the households receiving these services are satisfied. There are some measures of the perceived quality of the services, but overall the focus is on the aggregate provision of the services.

In education there are a few interesting trends. There has been a sharp rise in the percentage of pupils that attend no-fee schools, from just 3% in 2006 to 57% in 2012. The proportions vary across the provinces, from Limpopo (89%) and the Eastern Cape (74%) to the Western Cape (27%) and Gauteng (32%).

There’s clearly a greater propensity for parents in Gauteng and the Western Cape to pay for private education, so you could argue that there’s a greater need for subsidised education in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape. But what is the value of this free education?

The GHS has a table that compares the problems found in public schools (there are no figures for private schools) across the provinces. The results are not conclusive; some provinces score very badly in some measures and very well in others.

For example, Limpopo public schools have the highest percentage of learners without books (11%) followed by the Eastern Cape (8%), compared with a national average of 6.5%. On average, 5% of learners felt that classes were too big, but this rose to 7% in KwaZulu-Natal and 6,5% in the Western Cape, while only 2.5% of Limpopo learners thought that big classes were a problem.

A total of 30% of learners in the Eastern Cape have experienced corporal punishment in the last four years, but only 4.5% of learners in Gauteng and the Western Cape. The links between educational performance, development and corporal punishment remain unclear.

The repetition rates of grades 10, 11 and 12 are high, and are cause for concern. A total of 22% of all grade 10 learners repeat that academic year, but this rises to 37% in the North-West and 34.5% in Limpopo. A total of 33.5% of all grade 11 pupils in Limpopo (30% in North-West) repeat that year of study too.

When it comes to healthcare about 30% of households use private healthcare and 70% use public healthcare. This ratio has been consistent over the last eight years. While 79% of people using public healthcare reported being ‘very satisfied’ or ‘somewhat satisfied’ with the service they received, 97% of all private healthcare users declared themselves satisfied to a greater or lesser degree. And while only 2% of private healthcare users said they were ‘very unsatisfied’ or ‘somewhat unsatisfied’ with their experience, 13% of public healthcare users were similarly unhappy.

In terms of social grants the percentage of individuals receiving grants has risen steadily from 13% in 2002 to 30% in 2012. The percentage of households receiving grants has also risen during the period but has stabilised at 43% - 45% over the last five years. This could suggest that average household sizes are shrinking, or that the size of the average grant is shrinking in real terms.

Gauteng (27%) and the Western Cape (34%) have the smallest proportions of households that receive social grants. Limpopo (59%) and the Eastern Cape (58%) have the highest proportions.

An unexpected trend in housing is that the North-West has overtaken Gauteng and the Western Cape as the province with the highest proportion of informal housing. As much as 23% of all households in the North-West live in informal dwellings compared to 21% in Gauteng and 15% in the Western Cape. The sharp increase in the North-West is largely due to the mining boom in the province over the last decade.

The good news about the provision of free basic services is that service delivery backlogs were tackled aggressively over the past decade. Only 56% of households in the Eastern Cape had access to piped/tap water supply in 2002. By 2012 this figure had risen to 79%. However, the province also has had the largest percentage of households who have consistently complained about the quality (colour, taste and smell) of the water provided.

This last indicator might be a good example of the pitfalls of the bureaucratic process and the actions that flow from that process. Reducing the service delivery backlog has been a goal in and of itself, and in some cases this has meant that the maintenance of new (and old) infrastructure has taken a back seat.

The last indicator is also an example of the limitations of the numbers to provide context. The Eastern Cape has had the worst delivery record for water and sanitation services, but this has been largely due a historical lack of service delivery. It’s had to catch up and correct for the underdevelopment of the past, particularly in the former independent homelands.

In contrast, 99% of Western Cape households received adequate water services in 2012. Then again, the same 99% received adequate services in 2002. Remember that the ANC ran the province until 2009 and the DA has run it since. The levels of service delivery in the Western Cape might have had more to do with the economic and historical structures in the province and less to do with the government of the day.

Of course, such a notion may be heresy to some. The latest reports on development have been completed by a government department that is tasked (among other tasks) to report on the progress made by other divisions of government. To suggest that the success or the solution lies outside of government is to defeat the whole point of the exercise.

On Friday morning the minister of the department of performance monitoring and evaluation (DPME), Mr Collins Chabane in partnership with The Mail and Guardian Critical Thinking Forum will hold a discussion forum. He’ll be discussing the development indicators that his department launched earlier this month, the ones that will be used to track the success (or otherwise) of government policies and interventions.

His department has invited debate from the broader public. Next year the DPME will consolidate its findings and have a full review of the last 20 years of South Africa’s development. Hopefully the story of this development will be told by a wider group of narrators.

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South Africa's hidden textbook crisis

Bongani Nkosi, M&G, 23 August 2013

 

·         Basic education's "challenges" shows government has allocated only 50% of the money needed to supply all pupils with books in all subjects.

 

The government has allocated only about half the money needed in 2013/14 to supply all pupils with textbooks in each subject that they study, unreleased official data in the Mail & Guardian's possession show.

The same data show that, without intervention, next year's grade 12 class will be undersupplied with the books they will need to write matric.

The figures originate from the basic education department itself – its officials made a presentation on August 6 at a workshop with the KwaZulu-Natal education department.

The presentation referred to the "challenges" of achieving "universal coverage" – the official term for providing a textbook to each child in every subject. Such coverage would be achieved by 2014, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said last year. But the financial allocations the presentation specified for all nine provinces tell another story.

About R3.3-billion is available in 2013 nationally for textbooks, it said. But this leaves what it called "shortfalls", which amount to about R2.9-billion in two crucial areas.

The first is the money needed to rectify (or "top up", in officialese) the ongoing undersupply of textbooks in grades one to six and grade 10 – that is, the grades in which the new curriculum (known as "Caps") has already been implemented. About R1.2-billion is needed here, the presentation said.

The second is a shortfall of about R1.7-billion needed to achieve "full provisioning" of textbooks in the grades where Caps will be implemented next year: seven, eight, nine and 12.

Another official document the M&G has obtained provides a shocking glimpse into how these shortfalls are devastating textbook provisioning in KwaZulu-Natal. Entitled Discussion on Mechanisms to Increase Textbooks in the Hands of Learners, this document was presented by the province's top education officials at the same August 6 workshop.

In each of the five grades where Caps has already been implemented, less than half the necessary textbooks has been purchased, the document showed. This analysis focused on more than half of KwaZulu-Natal's 6 000 schools – namely, the 3200 schools whose budgets are managed by the province (so-called "section 20" schools).

Books shortage problem
Central to the problem is that "the amount of money allocated for textbooks has not increased", the document said. Yet the "number of learners each requiring a textbook in each of the subjects had increased", and "the unit price of textbooks in 2013 is more than in 2012".

One consequence is "an increased number of learners sharing textbooks". Making a dreadful situation even worse is that schools have not yet purchased textbooks in natural science and technology for grades four, five and six "due to the late arrival of [the nationally] approved textbooks [catalogue] in 2012".

 

Graphic: John McCann

A teacher in Senekal, Free State, told the M&G that pupils sharing textbooks was a common trend among schools in the region. "This does not prevail in my school only. It's a systematic problem because learners in other schools here are also sharing."

He said the books shortage problem has bedevilled pupils for years. "In my 12 years of teaching in Senekal, there has not been a year in which learners had all the textbooks they needed. This is why the system continues to produce learners who can't read and write."

The two official documents as well as testimonies, including one from the Senekal teacher, collectively paint a picture that wildly contradicts the rosy update on textbook delivery the basic education department gave Parliament on May 28 this year.

KwaZulu-Natal had received 100% of its textbooks and the national average was 99.9% delivery, the department told the basic education portfolio committee.

Disingenuous and misleading
But these figures are both "disingenuous and misleading", said the Democratic Alliance's education spokesperson Annette Lovemore, who sits on the portfolio committee.

They are percentages of how many books provinces ordered, which is limited to what funding allocations they receive for such orders, she said.

Such data therefore does not closely match "what is [actually] needed in schools", and provinces struggle to buy sufficient books because most of their budgets go to salaries, Lovemore said.

A textbook publisher who asked not to be named told the M&G: "It seems clear that the government has not been able to purchase a textbook for every learner in every subject that he or she takes."

The fact that KwaZulu-Natal's most severe shortage was in grades where Caps had been implemented this year (four, five, six and 11) suggested that the national department had failed to plan properly in its rush to implement the new curriculum, the publisher said.

Nikki Stein, attorney at rights organisation Section27, said: "What this confirms is that reliable systems to monitor textbook delivery are not in place, and so it cannot be determined each year which schools have received their textbooks and which schools are still waiting."

Stein and Lovemore expressed caution about extrapolating from the shortfalls in funds allocated for textbooks to how many of the country's 12-million pupils are affected.

"It is dangerous to do so because there has not been any kind of independent audit looking into the numbers of textbooks in the hands of learners across the provinces," said Stein.

Lovemore pointed to extreme regional variations in delivery: "You'll find that coverage is far better in well-resourced areas – that in the Eastern Cape urban areas have better coverage than rural areas. I would not like to estimate, but I'll ask the minister in formal questions."

Basic education spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi told the M&G:  "As matter of principle and policy of the department, we don't glorify so-called leaked documents with comments. However, for the record, all funds needed for the rollout of learner and teacher support materials have been secured through the pending budget adjustments from national treasury as well as provincial treasuries and we remain on course to deliver [these materials] to our learners as from the beginning of September 2014."

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Proposed carbon tax rate for SA too low, say researchers

Amanda Visser, Business Day, 23 August 2013

THE effective rate for the carbon tax to be introduced by January 2015 is too low and the proposed design is complex and not easy to understand, says the Energy Research Centre of the University of Cape Town.

In comments on the Treasury’s policy paper issued earlier this year, the centre calls for a simpler tax, but applied at the absolute level of R120 per metric tonne on 40% of carbon tax emissions, rather than the proposed minimum of R48 on 100% of the emissions after exemptions.

The centre said the effective tax rate, given the "complex set of exemptions" of between R12 and R48 per metric tonne of carbon dioxide, is too little to transform South Africa’s energy economy. The tax would not make a sufficient contribution to bending the curve of national greenhouse gas emissions, it said.

Energy and chemical company Sasol recently told Parliament that the implementation of the carbon tax in 16 months’ time was premature, too onerous and not backed up by adequate analysis.

Sasol’s presentation came after the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry warned of the significant negative effects the tax might have on the economy and job creation.

ArcelorMittal SA has also warned that the proposed tax could cost the group R600m a year.

South Africa is well ahead of other countries in introducing a carbon tax. The level at which the Treasury is pitching the tax is also much higher than in other jurisdictions, Parliament’s trade and industry portfolio committee has been told.

The first period is from 2015 to 2019, with the rate increasing 10% per year until the end of 2019.

The rate of increase for the second period from 2020 to 2025 will be announced by February 2019 at the latest. The carbon tax is to be implemented as a fuel input tax and in principle will be levied across the South African economy.

"However, with all sectors receiving partial exemptions, some full exemption and some additional allowances, the tax base is less clear," the centre said in its report submitted this month.

All sectors will receive exemption on 60% of the emissions, with the electricity sector receiving an additional 5% or 10% exemption, and petroleum getting an additional 5% or 10% exemption as well as an additional 10% for the fact that it is a trade-exposed sector.

Iron and steel, cement, glass, ceramics, chemicals and fugitive emissions from coal mining will receive exemptions of up to 85%, while the agricultural and waste sectors will be fully exempt.

The centre said the "basic tax-free threshold" of 60% means the effective tax rate is between R12 and R48 per tonne of emissions.

________

Third new coal power station ‘to help remove energy constraints’

Paul Vecchiatto And Sikonathi Mantshantsha, Business Day, 23 August 2013

THE Cabinet has approved the building of a third coal-fired power station by Eskom, freeing the parastatal to take its infrastructure investment programme beyond the two coal-fired power stations being built.

Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said at a post-Cabinet briefing on Thursday there was no time-line, schedules or costs approved for the project yet. He said the building of the new power station would probably start once Eskom’s Medupi and Kusile projects are complete in 2018, adding a combined 9,600MW to the national grid.

Eskom has been struggling to meet electricity demand since rolling blackouts hit South Africa in 2008, costing the economy billions of rand in lost production and economic growth.

Mr Davies said the power station was part of the government’s overall strategy to remove energy constraints. "We had to take a clear decision of the building of the third coal-fired power station after Medupi and Kusile," he said.

A decision on the size and funding for the new power station still has to be made by the government, the company’s sole shareholder.

But Accenture senior partner Ken Robinson said to meet the integrated resources plan vision to generate 55,000MW of electricity, the government and Eskom should be planning to commission the equivalent of one Medupi power station every two years. He said the announcement could be too little as some of the other coal power stations may be decommissioned.

State-owned Eskom has for the past two years, through CEO Brian Dames, been saying repeatedly that it needs to be allowed to start planning for the construction of new power stations now if the nation is to avoid further power shortages after the build process ends.

The company needs to replace its ageing generating fleet, as its existing power stations are on average 30 years old.

Immediately after completing the Medupi and Kusile power stations in 2018, Eskom will start decommissioning, or destroying, some of the old infrastructure that has already reached the end of its design life.

That will further reduce installed generating capacity, pushing the reserve margin back to below the required 15% of total capacity, meaning security of electricity supply will continue to be problematic.

"We must work with stakeholders to commence the financing and the procurement arrangements for Coal 3. We must also work to unblock the various decisions necessary for co-generation projects," Mr Davies said on Thursday.

Also announced by Mr Davies was that the government was finalising the process of authorising shale gas exploration in a responsible and environmentally friendly manner.

Last year, the government lifted the moratorium on shale gas exploration, but has not yet licensed any energy company to start exploration. Royal Dutch Shell is still awaiting a response to its application to explore for shale gas in the Karoo.

Accenture’s Mr Robinson said including renewables, hydro-power, nuclear and shale gas would help broaden the energy mix and lessen the risk of depending only on one technology. However, he said that most of those plans would take at least 20 years to start generating sufficient energy.

________

New system cuts delays in customs clearance

 Amanda Visser, Business Day, 23 August 2013

A NEW automated customs management system introduced by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) will eliminate lengthy delays and reduce red tape at the country’s border posts.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan unveiled a new digital system on Thursday that would centralise the clearing of all import and export declarations and would use a single process engine.

The R350m system is estimated to reduce border turnaround times from two hours to six minutes on average, and inspection processing from eight hours to two hours, with mountains of paper being eliminated.

The new system became fully operational last weekend and dealt with more than 500,000 consignments and close to 100,000 import and export declarations without any glitch.

Goods with a total value of R40bn moved through South Africa’s borders since implementation on Saturday afternoon, Mr Gordhan announced at a press conference in Johannesburg on Thursday.

SARS acting commissioner Ivan Pillay said the system was bound to increase South Africa’s competitiveness and decrease the cost of doing business. The Durban Citrus Growers’ Association has estimated that border delays in the region during 2010 cost growers $10m each season.

More than 4-million containers with goods worth R2.5-trillion moved across South Africa’s borders during the 2012-13 fiscal year, with SARS handling 16-million pieces of paper to process 5.5-million declarations.

Several industry players, including auditing firm Deloitte, the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (SAAFF), Bidvest Panalpinia Logistics and Samsung hailed the system as "world class" and described its introduction as a milestone in South Africa’s customs history.

SAAFF CEO David Logan said the sheer size of the system made collaboration with traders and businesses imperative.

Jed Michaletos, tax director at Deloitte, said the system will help South Africa to truly be the gateway to Africa.

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Jimmy Manyi: Gupta TV's Oprah

Ruwaydah Harris, M&G, 23 August 2013

·          

Former government spokesperson Jimmy Manyi has traded in the whirligig of state spin for an anchored spot on ANN7.

 

The owners of Africa News Network 7 (ANN7) or “Gupta TV”, clearly have a lot of faith in former government spin doctor, Jimmy Manyi. 

Not only did they headhunt him to anchor their weekly interview show, Straight Talk, they’re also putting him up against the likes of Chiefs, Pirates, the Boks, the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods.

·         Read: The ANN7 diaries – where the truth really does unfold

The show is scheduled to go out every Saturday afternoon at 3.30pm on DStv channel 405 — when other channels have their premier sport offerings.

ANN7, an initiative of Infinity Media — a joint venture between India’s Essel Media and Oakbay Investments, which is owned by the influential and controversial Gupta family — was launched at a glitzy gala dinner at the Sandton Convention Centre on August 22. 

Grand event
The event featured performances by Zulu dancers, singer Zahara and new rapper on the block Kwesta — whose spirited performance seemed slightly incongruent to the grand and formal setting of the launch venue. 

South Africa’s new communications minister, Yunus Carrim, delivered the keynote speech and launched the channel with ANN7 editor in chief, Moegsien Williams.

Other guests included former minister in the presidency and current editor of The Thinker magazine, Essop Pahad; ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu; and the Indian high commissioner, Virendra Gupta.

No sensationalism
Manyi, looking dapper in a tailored black suit, worked the room at the ANN7 launch, and spoke candidly to theMail & Guardian about his new career.

“I was headhunted,” he says matter-of-factly. 

“They were looking for someone fresh and bold who is able to deal with different and difficult issues.” 

He adds that the show’s name is modelled on his character.

“You get it how it is. With me it’s black or white, right or wrong. I’m genuine; when I smile I’m sincere and not buying face.” 

And don’t expect sensationalism on his show, warns Manyi, who says Straight Talk will draw from Oprah Winfrey and Larry King’s styles.

“I’ve never seen them [Oprah and King] covering the superficial and sensational side. They get to the substance of the issue and that’s what I aim to do. There are enough shows on the market for those who want sensationalism,” Manyi says. 

Some may argue that Manyi was “headhunted” purely because he is such a controversial figure.

The 49-year-old ruffled some feathers last year when he told motorists e-tolls in Gauteng are a reality. 

“It’s a fact of life and it’s going to happen,” he said. 

Disappointed
But Manyi was more notoriously known for a statement he made during his tenure as director general of labour in 2010 — about there being an oversupply of coloured people in the Western Cape. 

In response to a question pertaining to his controversial statement and life thereafter, Manyi said: “If such a honourable man such as Jesus Christ, who brought good news and salvation, was harmed very viciously on the cross, who am I?

“I apologised because people got hurt by that statement. However, I was grossly misrepresented and I must voice my disappointment towards academics and analysts who formed their opinions on a 30-second clip and didn’t bother to take the time to listen to the whole clip. 

“I lost all respect for these so-called experts and their inability to make an informed decision shows the shallowness we have in this country.” 

_________

FIVE MINUTES: South Africa

Daily Maverick Staff Reporter, 23 August 2013

A round-up of the day’s news from South Africa.

ZUMA TO APPEAL SPY TAPE DECISION, AGAIN

President Jacob Zuma’s lawyers will apply for leave to appeal a North Gauteng High Court decision that compelled them to hand over the controversial spy tapes that led to the dismissal of corruption charges against him in 2009 to the Democratic Alliance. “We are advised by our lawyers that their grounds for this appeal are flimsy and it remains unclear on what basis they can appeal at all. This can be therefore interpreted as nothing more than a delaying tactic, at the taxpayer’s expense, to prevent this crucial information from being made public,” said chairman of the DA federal executive, James Selfe. He said the party would “vigorously” oppose the application and fight the case “for as long as it takes and whatever it costs…”

SOUTH AFRICA FACES WAVE OF STRIKES

South Africa faces a wave of strikes across leading sectors of the economy as the labour unrest threatened to hit the struggling gold industry, already squeezed by rising costs and falling bullion prices. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has announced said its members in the construction sector would down tools from Monday. The union said it was also consulting its membership on a strike in the gold industry, which could start next week following an impasse in salary talks with mining companies. "We trust that working together, all parties will cooperate and see value in promoting lasting labour peace in our crucial mining sector," President Jacob Zuma said at a gathering of the 85,000-member Sactwu textile workers' union, which is also considering a strike.

ZUMA, RADEBE SHOULD ‘HANG THEIR HEADS IN SHAME’ OVER MINERS

Government’s refusal to fund the legal fees of miners injured during the Marikana massacre is a “slap in the face” for mineworkers, says Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader, Lindiwe Mazibuko. President Jacob Zuma and justice minister Jeff Radebe should “hang their heads in shame”, Mazibuko said. “Denying the mineworkers' right to legal representation is not only unfair, but could threaten the credibility of the findings of a commission…” she said. Radebe announced that evidence leaders at the Farlam Commission of inquiry into the massacre in which police killed 34 miners would suffice for the miners. Lonmin and the police both have teams of lawyers representing them at the commission.

ANC LABELS RAMPHELE’S DISCLOSURE A ‘SHOW OFF STUNT’

The ANC has labelled AgangSA leader Mamphela Ramphele’s disclosure of her personal wealth a “show off stunt”. Spokesman Jackson Mthembu was reacting to Ramphele’s call for President Jacob Zuma to be open about his financial interests. Mthembu said South Africa’s challenges needed dedicated men and women to work to eradicate poverty “not politics of personality and flaunting one`s personal wealth in the face of our people”. The presidency responded to Ramphele’s challenge by saying Zuma submits his disclosure annually to the Secretary of Cabinet as required by the Constitution of 1996 and the Executive Members Ethics Act, 1998.

ANC: KOHLER-BARNARD VIOLATED ETHICS IN FACEBOOK POSTS

The ANC says DA MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard has violated her oath of confidentiality during the recent ethics committee hearings into the former minister of communications, Dina Pule. “It has come to our attention that Ms Kohler-Barnard violated her oath to confidentiality and the ethical code of conduct by disclosing sensitive information to her friends on social media during the course of the hearing on the former minister of communications,” ANC chief whip Stone Sizani said in a statement. Sizani referred to a story published in The Post by one of Kohler-Barnard’s Facebook friends that claimed the party’s police spokeswoman  “regularly posted updates on the proceedings of the hearing”. Sizani has asked the speaker to investigate.

KZN PREMIER ZWELI MKHIZE RESIGNS

KwaZulu-Natal premier Dr Zweli Mkhize has resigned his position to concentrate full time on being treasurer-general for the ANC. Spokesman Jackson Mthembu said Mkhize had been juggling the two roles since he was elected to the top six at the party’s elective conference in Mangaung in December. Mthembu said each job had “immense responsibilities” that placed a strain on Mkhize and that he would now be able to focus on “the political guidance of our structures, the daily operations of the organisation, and during this period, leading and resourcing the elections campaign of the African National Congress.”

NZIMANDE: UNIONS LEAVING COSATU ARE THE ‘ENEMY’

General secretary of the South African Communist Party, Blade Nzimande, warned trade unions wanting to leave Cosatu that they would have to deal with the communist party first. Nzimande told members of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union political school “Those who are threatening to walk out, they will first have to open this red door,” Sapa reported Nzimande saying.  “Those who are planning to do so, they are part of the enemy that wants to destroy our revolution,” he said. The powerful National Union of Metalworkers of SA has expressed it lack of confidence in Cosatu president Sidumo Dlamini following the suspension of general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.

MTHETHWA MEETS ZILLE, DE LILLE OVER GANGS AND DRUGS

A decision to set up a joint operational unit to tackle Cape Town’s spiralling drugs and gangsterism problems has been welcomed by police minister Nathi Mthethwa and Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille. “We want to ensure that we work with whoever wants to work to fight crime,” said Mthethwa, who acknowledged the deep-seated roots of the city’s problem with gangs. Mthethwa attended a meeting with premier Helen Zille and De Lille in which they agreed that the provincial government, the city’s metro police and the national police should to work together. Mthethwa said deploying the army would not solve the problem of gang violence. 

________

4.    Alliance

ANC lays complaint against DA MP

Paul Vecchiatto, Business Day, 22 August 2013

AFRICAN National Congress (ANC) chief whip Stone Sizane has asked National Assembly Speaker Max Sisulu to remove Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Dianne Kohler Barnard from Parliament’s ethics committee, alleging that she has transgressed the members’ code of conduct.

Ms Kohler Barnard was one of the ethics committee panelists who conducted the investigation into disgraced former communications minister Dina Pule.

The hearings were conducted in camera and members of the panel, under the chairmanship of ANC MP Ben Turok, were sworn to secrecy until the final report was released.

The essence of the ANC’s complaint against Ms Kohler Barnard is an article published in The Post newspaper that said Democratic Alliance MP Dianne Kohler Barnard "provided informative enough updates about the matter (of how the former minister nearly pulled the wool over the ethics committee’s eyes) through Facebook posts".

"It has come to our attention that Ms Kohler Barnard violated her oath to confidentiality and the ethical code of conduct by disclosing sensitive information to her friends on social media during the course of the hearing on the former minister of communications," Mr Sizane said in a statement issued on Thursday.

ANC Parliamentary spokesman Moloto Mothapo said the ANC had received the information during Ms Pule’s hearings but had decided to only lay the complaint against Ms Kohler Barnard now so as not to disrupt that process.

"We wanted to separate out the two issues. This complaint does not alter our position on the integrity and fairness of Ms Pule’s hearings " he said.

Ms Kohler Barnard called the accusation "baseless" and referred further enquiries to the DA chief whip Watty Watson.

Mr Watson said he would be writing to Mr Sisulu asking for an investigation even though he believed the accusation was false and based on no real evidence.

"All this is, is a means by Mr Sizane to try to divert attention from having not taken any real action against his own disgraced members," he said.

__________

Zuma under pressure as Mkhize quits

Charles Molele, Matuma Letsoalo, M&G, 23 August 2013

·          

·         Replacing KwaZulu-Natal's premier will not be easy as the president and ANC members have contrary views on who should take Zweli Mkhize's seat.

 

President Jacob Zuma will have a difficult time choosing KwaZulu-Natal Premier Zweli Mkhize’s replacement.

Mkhize announced his resignation on Thursday. He will now take on his full-time position as ANC treasurer.

The ANC provincial executive committee will decide on three names for the top government position in the province.

Most ANC members in the province prefer ANC provincial chairperson and education MEC Senzo Mchunu, but Zuma is said to be in favour of Willies Mchunu, who lost the provincial chairmanship to Senzo Mchunu at the recent provincial general council.

Acting premier
Senzo Mchunu was sworn in as acting premier on August 22 in Durban.

Senzo Mchunu has never come out publicly against the ANC president, but those close to him described him as an independent-minded politician who could not easily be controlled by Zuma and his allies. 

Attempts by Zuma’s supporters before the provincial general council to persuade Senzo Mchunu not to contest Willies Mchunu for the position of ANC chair failed. 

Zuma and his allies in the province seem to be uncomfortable with the perception that Senzo Mchunu was close to former human settlements minister and business tycoon Tokyo Sexwale, as well as former police commissioner and ANC national executive committee (NEC) member Bheki Cele.

Senzo Mchunu’s supporters believe that, as ANC chair, he should replace Mkhize because this would help the ANC’s election machinery in KwaZulu-Natal to achieve a decisive majority during the 2014 general elections.

Anti-Zuma faction
After Senzo Mchunu’s victory as ANC provincial chairperson, the anti-Zuma faction in the ANC said his elevation was a positive step towards tilting the balance of forces within the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal and nationally towards them.

“This victory has serious implications for 2017 [ANC elective conference] and the unity and cohesion of KwaZulu-Natal towards the ANC national conference and the future role of Zweli [Mkhize] and the diminishing influence of Zuma,” a senior member of the anti-Zuma faction in the province said. 

“This victory of Senzo’s and the potential it represents will be remembered in historical terms as the defining moment or breakthrough in the arrest of the manipulative, toxic influence of the Zuma coterie, which has amassed unfettered power in the looting of the public purse and corrupting organisational processes in the ANC.”

ANC provincial secretary Sihle Zikalala praised Mkhize’s leadership and wished him well in his full-time position as ANC treasurer.

“Under Mkhize’s stewardship, our province implemented measures to ensure that KwaZulu-Natal does not fall into financial doldrums,” he said. 

“Since the beginning of his term of office, he ensured that KwaZulu-Natal paid [off] an overdraft of R3-billion,” said Zikalala. 

“It is worth noting that KwaZulu-Natal has on several occasions been praised by the auditor general, Terence Nombembe, for major improvements in managing public funds.”

ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu said Mkhize’s resignation was correct in terms of the ANC’s constitution, which stipulates that, as treasurer, the elected person should work full-time at Luthuli House.

“Between December 2012 and now, Zweli has had to juggle two positions, each with immense responsibilities, undoubtedly placing a strain on him as an individual,” said Mthembu. 

“His recent resignation will afford him ample time and opportunity to concentrate on his functions and tasks as treasurer of the ANC.”

________

ANC MPs spring to Dina Pule's defence

 Andisiwe Makinana, M&G, 23 August 2013

·          

·         Ethics committee heads Ben Turok and Lemias Mashile were grilled by angry ANC MPs on why law enforcement was brought into the Dina Pule scandal.

 

The day before disgraced former communications minister Dina Pule was reprimanded and apologised to Parliament, the men who brought her to book were taken to task by their ANC counterparts for the way in which they handled the matter.

Angry ANC MPs sympathetic to Pule accused Ben Turok and Lemias Mashile, who co-chaired Parliament’s joint committee for ethics and members’ interests, of relying on patriarchal rules and possibly being culturally insensitive.

Three ANC MPs told the Mail & Guardian that Turok had been grilled on two occasions since releasing the findings on Pule earlier this month, firstly at a meeting of the ANC whips on August 14 and again on Monday, the day before he presented his report to Parliament.

The MPs questioned the airing of Pule’s personal affairs in the report as well as the presentation of the findings to the media before they were presented to the party and Parliament. They also questioned the recommendation that the case be referred to law enforcement agencies.

Cultural limitations
They also questioned whether the committee had considered cultural limitations, especially regarding single women, in their judgment of Pule.

On August 7, Turok and Mashile told journalists the allegations against Pule related to the nondisclosure of the financial interests of her boyfriend, Phosane Mngqibisa, who benefited from several privileges during his association with Pule, including gaining financial, material and business benefits.

Pule has been dogged by allegations of funnelling contracts worth millions and government resources to Mngqibisa, primarily during the Information and Communication Technology Indaba last year.

“Pule did not declare her association with Mngqibisa as she was obligated to do in terms of the code of conduct,” said Mashile.

Long standing friendship
Pule has repeatedly denied that Mngqibisa was her boyfriend but confirmed that she has a long-standing friendship with him.

“As a result of lengthy and detailed investigations, the panel found that Mr Mngqibisa was the de facto permanent companion or spouse to Pule,” found a seven-member panel, which was appointed by the ethics committee to investigate the matter.

“Through that relationship, he was able to obtain government funding for overseas trips and participate in official meetings despite having no formal department role in respect thereof.

“He was further able to obtain financial benefits for himself and his company, Khemano, as a result of his relationship with Pule,” the panel found. 

Code of conduct patriarchal
But ANC MPs have a different take on the matter. 

They believe that limitations — both cultural and patriarchal — are placed on unmarried women about publicly declaring their love interest.

Sources say MPs were asking whether the code of conduct for MPs, the rules of Parliament and the Ministerial Handbook were sensitive to all cultures and perhaps patriarchal in their nature.

“That’s why you saw sympathy towards Dina on Tuesday,” said one MP, explaining why some of her colleagues sympathised with Pule.

Unfair treatment
Sources claim that the chief whip of the National Council of Provinces, Nosipho Ntwanambi, who is also the deputy president of the ANC Women’s League, allegedly led the attack in the August 14 meeting, asking why Pule had been treated differently from ANC MP Yolanda Botha. 

The ethics committee disciplined Botha, who disregarded tender procedures while she was head of the social development department in the Northern Cape, and signed lease agreements that benefited a company called Trifecta Investment Holdings. In return, Trifecta apparently made renovations worth about R1.2-million to her house.

The committee found that the benefits Botha received “accrued from an improper or generally corrupt relationship” with Trifecta and handed her the maximum penalty of a reprimand and a fine of 30 days’ salary.

The ethics committee initially proposed that aspects of Botha’s conduct be referred to the police, the Public Service Commission and the South African Revenue Service, but the ANC interfered and forced the committee to change its recommendations so that the matter was not referred to law enforcement agencies.

Ntwanambi also allegedly asked about the public airing of Pule’s personal affairs and the referral of the case to law enforcement agencies.

Ntwanambi refused to comment, saying: “We don’t talk about the ANC internal things.” Ben Turok also refused to comment, saying the organisational processes of the ANC “were not your business”.

_______

5.    International

Mugabe thanks Zuma & Mbeki

Eyewitness News, 22 August 2013

HARARE/JOHANNESBURG – Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has thanked South Africa for the mediation role it has played in his country.

The Zanu-PF leader was sworn in for a seventh term as leader of the troubled nation on Thursday at Harare's giant National Sports Stadium.

The 89-year-old says the political facilitation was a trying task but statesman Thabo Mbeki and President Jacob Zuma bore it with “amazing patience and perseverance,” adding, “I’m sure today is a happy day for both of them.”

He also says he is sure “today is a happy day” for the various members of the South African Development Community (Sadc), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern (Comesa) and the African Union (AU).

In his speech Mugabe also lashed out at homosexuality, calling it “filthy” and slammed western critics of the elections in Zimbabwe as being “vile” people.

He also spoke about the violence in the Middle East saying smaller nations like Egypt are being wrecked by high-handed powers.

“The current western policy of sponsoring conflict in the Middle East must be condemned, as the desperate situation in Syria, Egypt and other countries has shown.”

Thousands of his supporters have been celebrating throughout the day, which was declared a public holiday while free transport was provided from all corners of the nation.

The day was a sweet moment of victory for Mugabe after five fraught years of power sharing with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)'s Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister, and he smiled and paused before taking his oath of office.

Only dishonest western countries opposed his win, he told thousands of people gathered at the stadium.

He said Tsvangirai was a “bad loser” for disputing his election win in a court challenge that was thrown out earlier this week.

But in the same speech he said he owed nothing but praise and respect to Tsvangirai and the leaders of a smaller MDC faction for working with him to draw up a new constitution.

(Edited by Craig Wynn)

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US reflects on anniversary of Martin Luther King march

Sapa-AFP , Times Live, 23 August 2013

The United States reflects on one of the turning points of its recent history starting this weekend when it marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s March on Washington.

Some 150 000 are expected Saturday on the National Mall to re-enact the moving civil rights rally where King delivered his iconic I Have a Dream speech from the Lincoln Memorial.

Then on Wednesday, the anniversary, church bells will peal across America while President Barack Obama, the first African American in the White House, will speak from the same steps.

Many other events are planned around the country, giving Americans a chance to reflect on how far they have come in terms of race relations — and how far they still have to go.

“I have always stated that we have made great progress in this country, but to blindly believe that our work is over is foolish and naive at best,” said civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton, a co-organizer of Saturday’s event.

“If this year has shown us anything, it’s that the work of the 1963 march is not yet finished,” added Benjamin Jealous, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of America’s oldest civil rights organizations.

“Voting rights are under attack, black unemployment continues to soar and thousands of black children are living in impoverished neighborhoods and attending segregated schools ... black youth are being gunned down each and every day in senseless acts of violence.” 

An estimated 250,000 people of all races descended on the Mall on a sweltering August 28, 1963 day, chanting “Equality now!” and singing “We Shall Overcome,” in what was officially billed as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Millions more watched on television — among them President John F. Kennedy, who until then had been dragging his feet on legislation to end racial segregation in conservative Southern states.

King, 34, was the last speaker of the day.

Departing from his prepared text, he famously declared: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ’We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal’.”  Within three months, Kennedy would be assassinated, and King himself cut down by a sniper in Memphis, Tennessee in April 1968.

But the march helped set the stage for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed major forms of racial discrimination, followed a year later by the Voting Rights Act designed to guarantee the franchise for all black US citizens.

The future of that law has been called into question after the US Supreme Court told Congress earlier this year to rewrite a key section regarding federal oversight of voting practices in mainly Southern states.

African Americans, who make up 14.2% of the overall population, according to the US Census Bureau, meanwhile still lag in socioeconomic terms, despite the growth of a black middle class.

Their 12.6% seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in July was double the national figure, and the median income of a black household is two-thirds that of the earnings of the average US household.

On the other hand, the poverty rate for blacks has fallen over a half-century from 41.8% to 27.6% — still much higher that the national rate for all races at around 15%.

The National Park Service, which oversees the National Mall, has issued a permit for 150 000 people for Saturday’s re-enactment of the March on Washington, which organizers are calling a National Action to Reclaim the Dream.

King’s son Martin Luther King III is among the participants, along with Sharpton, Attorney General Eric Holder and the family of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, killed last year by a Neighborhood Watch volunteer who was later acquitted of murder.

Next Wednesday’s event, known as the March for Jobs and Justice, is to include former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter as well as Obama, who some critics say has failed to make full use of his position to correct some of the lingering wrongs of a country where race is still very much a divisive issue.

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Cuba still battling cholera a year after first cases reported

Reuters , Times Live, 22 August 2013

A year after the first cholera cases in decades were reported in Cuba, the country is still struggling with outbreaks in various provinces, health workers and residents told Reuters on Thursday.

On Tuesday the United States issued a health advisory urging U.S. citizens living in or traveling to Cuba to take appropriate precautions such as the frequent washing of hands and avoiding untreated water, street food, undercooked shellfish and uncooked foods.

Last week the Pan American Health Organization reported five confirmed cholera cases among travelers to the Caribbean island this summer, an Italian, two Venezuelans and two Chileans.

They were the first tourists known to have contracted the illness since cholera's appearance on the island in July 2012.

The Cuban government has yet to publicly respond to the reports and officials were not immediately available for comment.

Cholera is generally not fatal but can kill in just a few hours when diarrhea and vomiting cause dehydration, especially among the elderly.

The illness runs its course within a week, making it relatively easy to track.

"There is cholera in various places and you can imagine we are having a very busy summer," an employee of the public health ministry told Reuters, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to comment to the media.

"Many of us think the government should stop keeping it a secret. Cholera is very unpleasant, but rarely lethal, at least here in Cuba," he said.

Tourism is an important source of revenue and employment in Cuba, attracting more than 2.5 million visitors in 2012.

The United States slapped travel restrictions on Cuba soon after the 1959 revolution prohibiting most Americans from visiting the communist-run country, however a loosening of rules by the Obama administration has allowed Cuban-Americans to return home at will, as well as licensed groups of other U.S. citizens to travel there for specific academic, cultural and other reasons, resulting in more than 70,000 visiting in 2012.

LOTS OF CASES          

Public health workers in Camaguey province in central Cuba said they had to postpone vacations when they were mobilized due to an outbreak in July.

"There were lots of cases, but it was not a very virulent strain of cholera so to be sure it was very unpleasant but no deaths that I know of," a local nurse said.

Another July outbreak was reported by residents in western Matanzas province.

There was an outbreak in Havana in January, the only one reported to date by the government after cholera first made its presence felt in eastern Granma province in July 2012, sickening close to 500 people and killing three, according to the government, and earlier this month another outbreak when locals and tourists became ill after eating at a Havana restaurant.

The restaurant was closed for a week, its employees tested, and eateries within a few blocks also closed and inspected.

Cuban health workers have ample experience dealing with cholera in Haiti and elsewhere, and are well organized and drilled to respond to outbreaks of disease on the island.

The cholera protocol includes isolating suspected cases and tracing their activity and contacts, issuing water purification tablets, and other measures such as decontaminating the shoes of train and bus passengers.

There had been no cholera outbreaks reported in Cuba since well before the 1959 revolution and the creation of a national health system by the communist government.

Current cases of the disease in Cuba may stem from Haiti, where there has been a cholera epidemic since 2010 which sickened 635,980 people and killed 7,912 through 2012.

Thousands of Cuban health workers have been stationed in Haiti since it was devastated by an earthquake in 2010.

Cuba lies closer to Haiti than any other Caribbean country, with the exception of the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the crisis-stricken country and reported 29,433 cholera cases and 422 deaths from 2010 through 2012.

_________________________________________________       

6.    Comment

COSATU E-toll Campaign goes ahead in 2013

 

For more information, contact COSATU Offices

                                

Come one…..Come All!

 

Stop Commodification of public goods!

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COSATU Section77 Notice served at Nedlac on the 11th December 2012

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Agang SA must also declare donors

 Sipho Hlongwane, Business Day, 23 August 2013

THE move by Agang SA leader Mamphela Ramphele to publicly declare her assets and net worth was a commendable attempt to shape the discourse of the coming elections. The ruling party was ripe for targeting with its profligate MPs, Cabinet ministers and president, and the catchy "I’ve shown you mine, now show me yours" headlines are exactly what she would have wanted.

But the success of her strategy will depend on much more than that.

At the press conference where Ramphele announced that her net worth was R55,436,063 on June 27, she challenged President Jacob Zuma to follow her lead and declare his own worth.

"We must have leaders who set the right example. That is why today I am opening my finances up for the South African people to scrutinise. This is what Agang SA means by a government that listens to the people and answers to the people. I call on President Zuma to disclose his finances immediately. What is there to hide?" she said.

She singled out the R270m spent on upgrading Zuma’s home in Nkandla as an example of the corruption that her party was aiming to end.

What Ramphele did is what every politician in South Africa should do. In many respects, they already do. All MPs have to declare their interests, and the joint committee on ethics and members’ interests deals directly with these concerns.

The list of MPs’ interests is publicly available (http://www.parliament.gov.za/content/Ethics_Full_Report_2012.pdf) if you know where to look. Some of the entries are quite fascinating. Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, for example, declared no shares or financial assets, no employment outside Parliament, no directorships or retainerships or consultancies, and no sponsorships. His declared gifts included memory sticks, cups and pens.

Other members had substantially more to declare. The Democratic Alliance’s (DA’s) Lindiwe Mazibuko declared campaign sponsorships received from colleagues for her 2011 caucus leadership campaign, on top of the usual bric-a-brac (such as pens and carved kangaroo figures) that comes with parliamentary office. The point is that this exercise is not unique to Ramphele.

The Presidency’s reply to the Agang SA boss was to say that Zuma declared his interests annually to the secretary of the Cabinet.

This is not the first time that Zuma has been challenged to declare his assets. It was a big point of controversy in 2011, involving the far more influential DA and the public protector. After erstwhile DA parliamentary leader Athol Trollip announced in Parliament that the president had not made a declaration within the 60 days as prescribed by the executive members’ ethics code, he called on Thuli Madonsela to investigate.

The public protector found there was ambiguity in the rules but that Zuma had breached the code. Despite attempts by Trollip to keep the matter alive, it fizzled out eventually and he moved on to other things.

The Mail & Guardian’s investigative team later questioned (http://amabhungane.co.za/article/2011-07-29-all-the-presidents-assets) the extent of the declaration by Zuma. A copy of his 2010 declaration (obtained via the Institute for Security Studies) showed that "the president failed to openly disclose companies for which he was still listed as a director, gifts received during eight months of the year, his and his wives’ benefactors in the cases of more than a dozen gifts, his own properties, and whether or not he has a pension".

I daresay Zuma can swim through the waves made by Ramphele’s latest announcement without too much fuss. This, after all, is a man with an uncanny ability to remain unaffected by the scandals that follow him everywhere. He is a master of political survival.

The public’s general fatigue with Zuma’s financial scandals may damp enthusiasm to make him respond as substantially as Ramphele would have liked.

To place corruption front and centre stage in the upcoming elections, Ramphele will need to release the party funding list for Agang SA. That is where she can create a proper uproar. Neither the ANC nor the DA will tell the nation where they get their money. Both are parties of governance with considerable influence. It boggles the mind that we allow this state of affairs to continue when most countries that take democracy seriously oblige parties to disclose their donors.

The difficulty for Agang SA is that it could eventually be the only party with a public list of donors. The DA has demonstrated that it is too politically timid to do this, and the ANC simply will not.

The victory for Agang SA would be the kind of moral high ground it was aiming for with Ramphele’s declaration. It would occupy this alone, and carve out a space for itself that even the main opposition party dare not touch. That is the kind of bravery that would impress the country.

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Mpofu overshadows miners’ plight

Nathan Geffen, IOL, 22 August 2013

Advocate Dali Mpofu has effectively stolen the limelight from Marikana miners and their families, says Nathan Geffen.

Pretoria - I enjoy lawyer jokes, but in my time with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) the lawyers I worked with didn’t fit the stereotype. They often represented TAC pro bono or at reduced fees. They put money aside to fight for justice, especially for poor people. They were also modest. In our high profile cases, the TAC’s lawyers were not the centre of attention. Nevertheless, TAC won most of its cases and all the key ones. We were very ably represented.

In TAC’s litigation, people living openly with HIV, like Hazel Tau and Zackie Achmat, were the main focus of media attention. That was achieved through deliberate effort and made strategic sense.

So in the grim aftermath of Marikana, I would have expected that in the public mind the salient names of the tragedy would be surviving miners or the widows and children of the dead miners.

But it’s not. Instead it’s been Advocate Dali Mpofu. Somehow, he has placed himself at the forefront of media attention covering the commission of inquiry.

Recently, Mpofu’s remuneration for representing the miners at the commission has attracted notice. Not what the police did at Marikana. Not the lives of the family members of the deceased. Not the post-traumatic stress and anguish of the survivors. No. Instead it has been Mpofu and his fees.

A Business Day editorial said: “What is most certainly undermining the inquiry’s credibility is the tussle over whether the Legal Aid Board should be obliged to pick up the tab for Mr Mpofu’s not inconsiderable fees.” It also says, “The legal issues are complex, and it is by no means certain that Mr Mpofu will win. But the government should relent – it is common knowledge it has already paid the police’s legal team as much as R7 million.”

The lawyers for the miners brought an urgent application before the North Gauteng High Court. They asked for urgent temporary relief compelling the state to pay their legal fees and, ultimately, final relief. The High Court has ruled only on the claim for interim relief. It dismissed the case “on the basis that it was constitutionally inappropriate for a court, in interim proceedings, to direct the Executive on how to expend public resources in the absence of proof of unlawfulness, fraud or corruption”.

On August 19, the Constitutional Court dismissed an appeal by the miners on very much the same basis.

Nevertheless, perhaps the Business Day editorial is correct. Maybe the state should pay Mpofu’s “not inconsiderable” fees – even if the law doesn’t compel it to. The issues are complex.

But what is striking is this: Mpofu has not worked free of charge for the miners. From October last year, he and his “team” have received more than R2.5m from the Raith Foundation to represent the miners. They have also been offered R2m more since. This was to pay Mpofu, his junior counsel and three attorney firms working on the case.

The lawyers are not working solely on the Marikana Commission. It is reasonable to assume that a large chunk of the money has gone to Mpofu personally. Now it’s true that some lawyers make considerably more money than Mpofu would have earned in the months that he has worked on the commission, a point that raises questions about legal fees generally. But, by any standards, Mpofu has nevertheless received a large amount of money.

By contrast, lawyers representing TAC seldom earned more than a few tens of thousand rands in fees for a case – and certainly never millions. Although the Marikana Commission may be more time-consuming than the average court case, Mpofu is being very well paid.

Representing the Marikana miners should be seen as a great honour where the fees are secondary. Advocate Mpofu’s remuneration should not have taken centre stage.

* Nathan Geffen is the editor of GroundUp. This article first appeared on www.groundup.org.za

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.

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Norman Mampane (Communications Officer)

Congress of South African Trade Unions

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