COSATU Media Monitor, 12 Feb 2015

[Norman Mampane]

COSATU Media Monitor

Thursday, 12 Feb 2015

 

‘Be an Organizer Day and night’-#COSATU urges all workers to join the drive to organize all vulnerable workers

 

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  Teachers will get lesser sentence if they confess to cheating: Mhlanga

Ø  Parliament staff boycott Sona

Ø  Nehawu and Parliament remain deadlocked

Ø  Agency hired striking staff to break strike

Ø  Proposed govt sanctioned fish farm hits a snag

Ø   Cwele extends Post Office chief's term

Ø  Tax hikes ‘will hurt cash-strapped consumers’

Ø  Consultant in dock over Samwu millions

Ø  Boss picks up the pieces

Ø  Lonmin may cut spending, mulls Pandora option

Ø  Glencore quits Lonmin

Ø  Zim calls for wage freeze as union conflict looms

Ø  Australia's jobless rate rises to 6.4%

 

COSATU

Ø  More jobs and energy security, Cosatu tells Zuma ahead of Sona

Ø  COSATU: LOAD SHEDDING COULD CUT MORE JOBS

Ø  Cosatu: Too early to celebrate drop in unemployment rate

Ø  South Africa: Cosatu must be united, but not at all costs - Zwelinzima Vavi

 

South Africa

Ø  Students want Jews out of Durban University of Technology

Ø  South Africa remains divided: Mogoeng

Ø  Over 80,000 registered for supplementary exams

Ø  Vhembe has ‘highest STI rate’

Ø  Economy flat but positive: Bankserv

Ø  Shoprite challenge over fuel price cuts

 

Alliance

Ø  Mantashe defends visit to Huawei head office in China

Ø  COSAS RENEWS CALLS TO BOYCOTT SCHOOLING IN SUPPORT OF MALAMULELE

 

International

Ø  Greeks flood streets to support government

Ø  West Africa sees spike in Ebola cases as decline stalls

Ø  Thabane condemns attack on bodyguards

 

Comment

Ø  Investment in people keeps news groups afloat

Ø  EDITORIAL: Zuma has his own Rubicon to cross

Ø  Time for ANC-led government to shift into top gear

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1.           Workers’ Parliament

Teachers will get lesser sentence if they confess to cheating: Mhlanga

SABC News, 12 Feb 2015

The Gauteng Education Department has denied offering teachers implicated in the cheating scandal full indemnity.

According to media reports, the department will give full indemnity to teachers who assisted matric learners in group copying, if they tell the whole truth.

The department has been conducting investigations after it established that cheating in last year's final matric exams, took place in seven provinces.

KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape were identified as the worst offenders.

Speaking on AM Live, Basic Education spokesperson Education, Elijah Mhlanga says teachers and matriculants who come forward and confess will get a lighter sentence, such as a warning or a suspension.

Mhlanga says this opportunity has been granted so that the investigations do not drag on.

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Nehawu withdraws its voluntary services ahead of SONA

SABC News, 11 Feb 2015

The National Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) says parliamentary staff will not  provide voluntary services during Thursday's State for the Nation Address (SONA).

This comes after fruitless talks between Nehawu staff members and the Secretary to Parliament for a 13^th cheque for the Union’s members. 

Nehawu's chairperson in Parliament says the withdrawal of services will among other things, affect the ushering and catering services. The union has about 900 members employed in Parliament, some of whom perform voluntary services during  SONA. 

“We are withdrawing our voluntary services because the Secretary to Parliament came to address staff members with  regard to the State of the Nation Address and also with regards to conditions of  service, but he left before he could even respond to the questions that workers ask him,” says Nehawu chairperson in Parliament Sthembiso Mtembhe. -Additional reporting by Sapa.

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Parliament staff boycott Sona

Andisiwe Makinana @City_Press #SONA201511 February 2015

Hundreds of parliamentary workers are set to stay away from Parliament tomorrow, protesting the institution’s alleged failure to accede to demands for improved work conditions.

It will be the first time in the history of the democratic Parliament that staff will not participate in the State of the Nation Address, the highlight of Parliament’s calendar.

The workers, who are members of the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union [Nehawu] say Parliament has failed to meet their demands for better working conditions and mainly a demand for the 13th cheque.

Nehawu leadership in Parliament announced this afternoon that its members with the exception of protection services and few essential staff members, will withdraw from assisting in Sona processes.

Over the years, Parliament employees including admin staff and researchers normally help as ushers among other things during the event.

The resolution to withdraw their services came after a meeting between staff members and the newly appointed secretary to Parliament, Gengezi Mgidlana, who is Parliament’s accounting officer.

Staff members claim that Mgidlana failed to give them a written commitment acceding to their demands. But, what broke the camel’s back was Mgidlana leaving the meeting with staff saying he had to rush to “a more important meeting with ministers”.

Parliament has not responded to requests for comment regarding today’s developments.

“Our demands are the improvement of the conditions of service, in particular the 13th cheque. We also want the management to be co-operative and also stop being arrogant,” said Nehawu branch chairperson in Parliament, Sthembiso Tembe.

“We also demand that the comrades who have been here for 10, 20 or 30 years be given financial incentives when they leave. As things stand, they get a mere certificate, that is unfair,” he added.

He said they also want Parliament to contribute to medical aid and housing subsidy. It has not been doing so for the past seven years, he said.

He said they would not participate in the Sona activities because Mgidlana failed to respond adequately to their demands.

“We had requested him to reduce his commitment in writing and he did not do that. He left before the end of the meeting saying he has another meeting with ministers. He left the workers sitting there, he is arrogant, he undermined the workers,” said Tembe.

A number of employees were more shocked and upset with Mgidlana’s departure from their meeting with him. They said this was a sign of arrogance.

Tembe said protection services staff, because their job description is to be in Parliament 24 hours a day would participate. Procedural officers and chamber assistants will also work as it is part of their job description to work when Parliament is sitting.

Caterers, who normally start work at 4am for Sona to prepare the lavish cocktail dinner for MPs, their guests and invited dignitaries will only work the normal 8am to 5pm shift tomorrow, according to the union.

“But for the rest, there will be no voluntary services towards Sona tomorrow,” he vowed. He said they were recalling drivers who are supposed to pick up guests from the airport.

“Those comrades who work until 5pm will work until 5pm, and will go home whether they have finished what they were doing or not,” added Tembe.

“Not even the parliamentary choir will be participating in the Sona, watch Morning Live tomorrow morning,” added one of the Nehawu shop stewards.

Nehawu claims that it has 960 members out of Parliament’s 1345 staff compliment. This week, they have been wearing red Nehawu T-shirts to work which in itself is uncharacteristic of Parliament employees.

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Nehawu and Parliament remain deadlocked

Sapa, Sowetan, 12 Feb 2015

Talks between Parliament's management team and Nehawu over a 13th cheque remain deadlocked, prompting the union to go ahead with a planned withdrawal of workers' voluntary services from the state-of-the-nation-address (Sona).

"The last meeting we had was last night," National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) Western Cape secretary Luthando Nogcinisa said on Wednesday.

"The secretary to Parliament made commitments that the matters we have raised will be addressed but when we requested him to put these commitments on pen and paper, he refused."

Nehawu denied it was using Sona to bargain with Parliament.

"Our objective is not to disrupt the Sona as it has been reported by some media houses," Nogcinisa said.

"Our only objective is to highlight the plight of workers in Parliament."

The union has over 900 members employed by Parliament, some of whom perform voluntary services during the Sona.

"They include things like the choir, the ushers who would take guests from the airport to Parliament and usher MPs and so on," said Nogcinisa.

It was not clear whether Parliament had made alternative arrangements to offset the effects the withdrawal of services would have on the event.

"We are in talks with them [Nehawu] and we'll communicate with them directly on issues of mutual concern. We will not conduct our negotiations in the media," said Parliament's spokesman Luzuko Jacobs.

Nehawu is demanding a 13th cheque for workers, and that the pay of workers be equalised.

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Agency hired striking staff to break strike

Sapa, Sowetan, 12 Feb 2015

Striking provincial government nurses were hired by a personnel agency and supplied to the KwaZulu-Natal health department to keep hospitals operating, the Durban High Court heard on Wednesday.

Jacobus Johannes Brits, the department's manager for accounts payable and expenditure control, told the court that striking nurses from hospitals as far away as Empangeni were employed by recruitment agency Ambition24. They were sent to Durban's Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital to replace workers striking at that hospital in August 2010.

Ambition24 is taking the department to court to demand payment of R636,000 from the department. It invoiced the department R1.6 million for staff placed at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital. The department however withheld R636,000, for its striking staff moonlighting.

"Hospitals and community centres had insufficient staff," Brits said.

In desperation hospital managers turned to Ambition24 in a bid to keep their institutions operational.

He said the department received an invoice from Ambition24, which detailed the staff who were placed at the various institutions. The department's chief financial officer Mdoda Biyela instructed that the names and identity numbers of Ambition24's staff be checked against the department's personnel records.

This revealed the department was paying Ambition 24 to hire its own staff.

Brits said staff needed to seek permission from the head of department to do other work not in conflict with their work for the department.

The case continues.

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Proposed govt sanctioned fish farm hits a snag

Janine Lee, SABC News, 11 Feb 2015

The proposed government sanctioned fish farm for Nelson Mandela Bay in Port Elizabeth has hit a snag. It is embroiled in sharp disputes with environmentalists and is currently under appeal with the Department of Environmental Affairs. 

The department says they have more information available to them now than when they gave the green light for the project to go ahead. 

The project is the first government-sanctioned project of its kind in South Africa. 

Marine biologist Shirley Parker-Nance explains, “The farm will farm with a predatory fish, a fish that eats other fish. So to feed this fish they need to catch wild pelagics like pilchards and anchovies which are rich in fat and protein. The modest conversion rate is 2.1kg anchovies to 1kg of yellowtail. So it does not alleviate the pressure on our wild stocks at all."

The tourism and water sports industries will be directly affected. 

Tourism expert Peter Myles says, “A zone 2,5km off the main beach front puts a risk for a very lucrative industry and if you do a direct comparison, our fish industry in Port Elizabeth is valued at R34 million and it supports over 1000 jobs. Compare that with the beach front which generates R2 billion and supports 15 000 jobs." 

The Department of Environmental Affairs is currently studying appeals against the continuation of the project

Research shows that worldwide, 80% of tourism is coastal. The Department of Environmental Affairs is currently studying appeals against the continuation of the project.

The department’s Ziyaad Hassam says, “The minister is now in a far better position than when the department was when it made the original decision. So all of this this will be brought to her attention. There are examples where a decision has been overturned on appeal or decisions modified." 

If the project goes ahead it will be rolled out over five years and will consist of more than 315 boom-type structures, each with a diameter of 30 metre and 15 metre long nets. 

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Cwele extends Post Office chief's term

Media24, 12 Feb 2015

Johannesburg - Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele has extended the SA Post Office's (Sapo) administrator's term for three more months, his department said on Wednesday.

Simo Lushaba's term would now run to May 6, Cwele said in a statement.

He was appointed by Cwele and Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene as the head of Sapo's intervention team.

"The past three months have been tough but promising. We appreciate the hard work and sacrifice made by all stakeholders, especially the workers and business, towards returning the post office to the right track."

Government was looking at ways to strengthen Sapo by using it to deliver more services. These would be delivered using already existing infrastructure that had a strong presence in rural and peri-urban areas.

A technical task team was given three months to address Sapo's challenges.

These included normalising labour relations, building revenue streams, resolving the suspension of the CEO and other executive members, filling vacancies, and transforming Sapo into a corporation.

In November, Sapo's board voluntarily resigned. At the time Cwele said this would allow him to take steps to resolve issues at the post office.

The postal strike worsened the Sapo's financial situation. It faces a R400m shortfall as mail volumes continued to decline.

Unions wanted an 8% wage increase and the permanent employment of all casual workers.

In November, MPs were told the cash-strapped Sapo was on the brink of collapse. By the end of that month a wage agreement was reached with two of three recognised unions at the Sapo.

The two unions - the SA Postal and Allied Workers' Union (Sapawu) and the Democratic Postal and Communications Union (Depacu) - agreed to a 6.5% wage increase for the bargaining unit, which would be effective on December 1.

Sapawu and Depacu represent 61% of employees at bargaining level.

Part of the agreement involved converting part-time and casual employees to full-time employees from December 1, with full benefits becoming effective on April 1, 2015. The full conversion would be completed within 24 months.

The Communication Workers Union, which represents 39% of the employees, demanded a 7.5% increase. It refused to sign the agreement.

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Tax hikes ‘will hurt cash-strapped consumers’

 Ntsakisi Maswanganyi , Business Day, 12 February 2015

ANY significant tax changes, such as an increase in personal income taxes, will make consumers more financially vulnerable, University of SA’s Bureau of Market Research (BMR) economist Jaco-lize Meiring says.

Her comments come as the Debt Counsellors Association of SA (DCASA) confirmed on Wednesday that, on average, the number of people applying for debt review was between 12,500 and 14,000 a month and said it was expecting these numbers to increase.

This is up substantially from 18 months ago when about 8,700 people were applying.

"Access to new debt is more difficult and more applications are declined," DCASA director Paul Slot said.

Tax increases, steep electricity tariff increases, load shedding, and overindebtedness would be a burden on consumer finances, said Ms Meiring.

Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene is expected to hike fuel and Road Accident Fund levies during his budget speech on February 25. Uncertainty remains about which other taxes he will raise, although speculation is rife that tax increases will be targeted at the wealthy through the likes of capital gains taxes.

Consumers’ disposable incomes are at least finding relief from lower inflation, a sharp drop in fuel prices, and stable interest rates. These factors will support consumer spending this year.

On Wednesday, the BMR and credit solutions firm MBD’s fourth-quarter consumer financial vulnerability index showed that consumers felt slightly less vulnerable over the period.

MBD business development executive Stephan Venter said, however, they noticed an increase in the volumes of people defaulting on arrears, although he said this was unlikely to "continue forever because credit extension is slowing".

Mr Slot said that debt repayment behaviour among consumers was changing.

He attributed this to changes in the legislation that had enforced responsible actions, awareness created by the National Credit Regulator, the effect of employer financial wellbeing programmes, and the early intervention by credit providers with consumers in trouble, with an offer of practical assistance.

Consumers’ finances are under pressure from too much debt and people spending more than they earn, the index showed.

The benefits of lower fuel prices, which have helped boost disposable incomes and finances, were not being felt by all consumers. The index showed that public transport costs increased 7.4% in the fourth quarter.

The index also showed that consumers’ debt-servicing capabilities remained their biggest concern and the cause of financial vulnerability in the fourth quarter of last year. This was mainly due to the cumulative 75-basis-point increase in interest rates imposed last year.

Banks’ decisions to be stricter on credit extension also played a role in financial vulnerability.

Ms Meiring said the pressure on consumer finances was intensified by, among other things, prolonged labour strikes, some substantial price increases, and slow employment growth negatively influencing income levels.

The index declined slightly to 51.2 in the fourth quarter of last year, from 51.4 points in the previous quarter. A reading between 50 and 59.9 means consumers are feeling mildly exposed financially. "Mildly exposed means they are not feeling secure or very vulnerable in their finances," said Ms Meiring.

The index measures the cash-flow vulnerability status of consumers by measuring how vulnerable they are when it comes to income, expenditure, savings and debt servicing.

Information was collected from 102 institutions, including municipalities, credit providers, banks and cellphone companies.

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Consultant in dock over Samwu millions

Shanti Aboobaker, Business Report, 9 Feb 2015

Johannesburg - The consultant at the centre of the collapse of the finances of the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) has been arrested.

Samuel Phaswane, who provided project management and other services to the union, appeared in the Johannesburg Commercial Crimes Court on Monday. He was denied bail and is expected to face charges of theft involving R7-miilion.

He will be in court again next week Monday.

Disgruntled union members, calling themselves ‘Save Our Samwu’ (SOS), hailed the arrest as a victory.

SOS spokesman Sello Selepe said although Phaswane had been arrested, the organisation would continue to demand an independent forensic audit of the union’s financial state.

The Hawks have been searching for Phaswane for weeks.

Independent Media

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Boss picks up the pieces

Batandwa Malingo , ANN7, 11 Feb 2015

Boss picks up the pieces

Johannesburg: Amanda Nair, the managing director of Joburg’s waste management entity Pikitup, is expected back at work tomorrow after a year-long suspension.

Nair was suspended last March for alleged irregularities in the awarding of a R263m tender.

“The then board of Pikitup, with the city, took a view it would best serve all stakeholders to allow an independent process to determine whether or not Nair had contravened the MFMA supply chain management regulations,” city of Johannesburg’s MMC for environment and infrastructure services Matshidiso Mfikoe said.

The alleged irregularities included the increase in costs of the tender from R42m in 2012, failure to calculate estimates in the supply-chain.

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Lonmin may cut spending, mulls Pandora option

David McKay, Miningmx, 12 Feb 2015

[miningmx.com] – LONMIN had made “good progress” in achieving its three-year, R2bn cost-saving drive, but group CEO, Ben Magara couldn’t say if further capital expenditure cuts would be avoided. He also declined to respond to questions regarding whether the firm’s Marikana mine was cash flow positive.

“We are seeing good progress in that we have lowered the staff by 750 people and re-deployed people to high value areas,” he said. Of the R2bn in savings, some R600m would be through re-deployment of staff to areas of the business where an increase in mining activity had been pinpointed.

In January, Lonmin cut its capital expenditure target to $185m from $250m and said it continued to review spending. Based on earlier budget planning, the company had targeted spend of $400m for the current year.

“We remain responsive to market conditions,” said Magara in an interview. “We will do the right thing to protect the business.

“We want to fund working capital fluctuations from bank facilities, but our long-term projects have to be funded from our own cash flow,” he said. He acknowledged there were “... pressures in the industry today", and estimated about 69% of the platinum industry was loss-making.

Magara was also reticent to say whether Lonmin was making progress on buying the shares in the Pandora joint venture with Anglo American Platinum (Amplats). Amplats has announced its intention to sell the asset over which Lonmin has a pre-emptive right.

“Geographically it belongs to Lonmin,” Magara said of Pandora. “There’s always a seller and a buyer at a certain price in time,” he said.

“It fits our bill: it’s in the right place and we are aware of Amplats’ intentions. We remain exploring all options,” he said.

Magara stood by forecasts that production would be about 750,000 ounces of platinum group metals this year. This is despite downtime at its No.1 and No. 2 furnaces following technical problems in December.

“We have maintained production guidance and sales because we derisked the business with the second furnace which is back to full levels. We are expecting No. 1 furnace to come back in the first week of March,” he said.

Analysts have been critical of Lonmin’s refusal to cut production which Investec Securities saying significant job losses were inevtiable in the long-term.

"We are encouraged to see a cut in the capex and that guidance is being maintained that will help preserve the balance sheet,” the bank said in a report.

"However, given the current PGM pricing environment, we believe the company’s current business plan is unsustainable and will require drastic surgery.

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Glencore quits Lonmin

Daily Mail, Business Report, 12 Feb 2015

London - Commodities trader and mining behemoth Glencore is to offload its stake in under-pressure platinum miner Lonmin to cut costs to cope with the commodity price slump.

On Wednesday Glencore revealed details of the share sell-off and an 18pc spending cut in its budget to around £4.25bn in a bid to deal with the ‘volatile market backdrop’.

Glencore (up 0.65p to 271.7p) will distribute its near 24pc stake in the struggling platinum miner in shares to Glencore’s investors. The distribution is worth around 3 cents per Glencore share. Shareholders will be free to sell or hold the shares once the deal is completed.

Lonmin shares fell more than 8pc or 14.3p to 158.1p on the news as investors feared it will lead to Glencore shareholders selling out.

Glencore chief executive Ivan Glasenberg said: ‘As we do not trade platinum and have no special insight into the market, we believe it is better to leave to our shareholders the decision as to how to manage the Lonmin shares.’

Glencore, which bought the stake via its mega-merger with Xstrata in 2013, also issued a production update and said annual copper production rose 4pc, zinc was flat and coal output rose 6pc.

Daily Mail

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Mining’s alternative summit: Painting a different picture of Africa’s most conflicted industry

Rebecca Davis, Daily Maverick, 12 Feb 2015

How can you tell the difference between the Mining Indaba and the Alternative Mining Indaba? One trick is to look for people who are actually miners, or who come from mining-affected communities. If there are any around, chances are good that you’re at the Alternative incarnation. Another trick is to ask people if they paid up to R23,000 for a ticket to the event. If the answer is ‘yes’, then they’re at the Mining Indaba. REBECCA DAVIS has been at the other one.

In 2002, a young man called Fortunate Siziba was walking home in Mapanzure, Zimbabwe, at night when he fell into an open, unsecured, un-lit pit previously used for chrome mining. The pit was 17 metres deep. Siziba was left partially blind.

In 2012, nine-year-old Asa Mpofu fell into an open, unsecured, un-lit chrome mining pit in the same area. She drowned.

In neither case was any compensation paid by the chrome mine operators, or even an apology given. The most assistance that Siziba received from the mine operator was to be transported “in the bucket of a front-loader” to a nearby clinic.

Over the course of a few days at the Alternative Mining Indaba, you hear so many of these kinds of stories that it becomes hard to keep track of each individual case. The atmosphere here is a world apart from that in the glitzy exhibition halls of the Cape Town International Convention Centre, just a few kilometres down the road, where the Mining Indaba is taking place. There, well-heeled movers and shakers in the mining industry make deals, talk investment, and compare annual returns.

Here at the Alternative Mining Indaba, people are angry. They are so angry, in fact, that the very first address of the first day cannot be completed without activists demanding the microphone, determined to have their say.

At a march to the Mining Indaba on the summit’s first day, placards summed up the range of issues at stake: “Please leave my land, I am using it for agriculture (I am a widow)”. “Stop polluting our water.” “Africa is not for sale!” “Our mineral resources, our future!” “It’s not development when the environment is being destroyed.” “No to tax dodging!”

This year saw the biggest Alternative Mining Indaba yet, at around 300 delegates. It’s growing every year, and every year those attending seem more passionate, more vocal and angrier.

“These companies are in Cape Town [at the Mining Indaba] to discuss how to exploit the natural resources in Africa and all over the world to benefit a few,” the Economic Justice Network’s Malcolm Damon told the audience on the first day. “They may be 7,000 [delegates]. But we represent the concerns of millions of people whose lives are affected by the extractives industry.”

At points the discourse of the Alternative Mining Indaba appears straightforwardly anti-mining. At one stage, mining is compared to rape: violent, penetrative and non-consensual. But that’s not the message at the core of the summit.

“We are not anti-development,” Southern Africa Green Revolution’s Matthews Hlabane said. “We are anti-development we don’t understand.”

“Development” at all is something of a contested term in these circles – promised by mining companies, yet often failing to materialise in the way governments or communities hope.

Southern African Resource Watch’s Georges Bokundu summed it up most flatly in a presentation on the second day, with regards to the situation in his home country: “Mining copper, gold [and so on] has brought no development to DRC. Only more conflict.”

Part of the problem is how little say communities are generally granted into what mining companies do around them. Mining legislation in South Africa and other countries demands that mining companies produce Social and Labour Plans – SLPs – which should lay out their plans for how they will contribute to socio-economic development around the mine. As the Legal Resources Centre’s Wilmien Wicomb pointed out, however, these are generally kept secret from the communities – who then have no way of knowing whether mining companies are sticking to whatever they promised in order to win their cherished mining rights.

This lack of information also affects community-members concerned about the environmental impact of mines.

Lawyer Gilbert Makore, of the Zimbabwean Environmental Law Association, said that “most communities have never seen an environmental impact assessment report”. Even if they are granted access to such a report, the language is often highly technical, and often in English only. Corruption occurs between some environmental consultants, too, who produce copy-paste reports for different mines. Even when such consultants are not corrupt, Makore said, they can “go in, hold one meeting with a local leader, and then pass that off as community consultation”.

What emerges from the Alternative Mining Indaba is not solely a simplistic picture of mining companies being bad and local communities being good. The failure of African governments to protect the interests of their people is also cast into stark relief.

A man from Kankoyo, in Zambia, requested the microphone on the summit’s second day to give his account of the effects of copper mining on his community. They are neighbours to a major copper mine, and the resulting mining activities have had a “devastating impact” on their environment, he said, claiming that the soil can now only support the growth of mango trees and small plants. Residents complain of respiratory problems.

Houses have developed cracks in the walls ranging in size from relatively small to big enough to allow two people to shake hands. The soil erosion which results from mining leaves the house foundations unsupported, he explained.

In 2012 the community presented their problems to the mining company. “But we were surprised,” he said. They discovered that in terms of the agreement signed with the Zambian government, the mine was exempted from environmental liability.

This is an extreme tale, but there is little doubt that governments do not do enough to ensure that environmental or social contracts are stringently adhered to by mining companies.

The LRC’s Wicomb pointed out that erstwhile South African mining minister Susan Shabangu was receiving annual reports from Lonmin, was aware that the mine was failing to live up to its socio-economic obligations in the Marikana area, and took no action for a long time.

Unsurprisingly, the shadow of the Marikana Massacre continues to hang over the Alternative Mining Indaba.

The Bench Marks Foundation’s Hassen Lorgat said that there was a tendency among certain conservative media pundits, government and corporations to see what happened at Marikana as an “aberration” – an unpredictable event spawned by union conflict – to avoid discussing ”corporate neglect of workers, abuse of power and privilege of exploiting our mineral resources”.

In Lonmin’s own 2011 Annual Report, Lorgat pointed out, they had already identified risks including “poor community relations due to internal and external factors that could result in civil unrest”.

What you hear at the Alternative Mining Indaba disrupts a great many seemingly black-and-white media narratives. One is about the zama-zama, or illegal miners, who are continuously vilified and criminalized. Mention of the zama-zama has recurred throughout the summit in tones of outrage or concern about their criminalisation – as if “legitimate” mining activity can only be undertaken by European and North American mining corporations. One delegate summed up what seemed to be a widespread sentiment: It’s like when Europeans kill endangered animals and they call it hunting, but when Africans do it they call it poaching.

The “n” word – “nationalisation” – is one that has cropped up relatively infrequently in discussions, superseded by basic concerns for the environment and human rights, advice on how to litigate against mining houses, and so on. But Action Aid’s Brian Kagoro sounded a note of caution at the summit’s opening.

“We risk here, as the elite of civil society – civilocracy – becoming irrelevant,” Kagoro said, in the face of an “emerging radical critique” – exemplified by political movements like the Economic Freedom Fighters.

“If you want mining to carry on, in just a bit more humane way [than previously], there will be another Alternative Mining Indaba happening in the streets.” 

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Gold Fields delays South Deep break-even

David McKay ,Miningmx,  12 Feb 2015

[miningmx.com] – GOLD Fields returned a 40 South African cents per share total dividend for its 2014 financial year, but the firm's shareholders will disquieted by another delay in the break-even of South Deep, its South African gold mining project.

Nick Holland, CEO of Gold Fields, said the remediation of South Deep's infrastructure announced last year meant it would not meet its planned 2015 production build-up while break-even would be a year later in 2016 assuming current rand gold prices.

South Deep was due to produce between 650,000 to 700,000 oz by 2017 but Holland said the project's final production target was now a matter for conjecture.

"We will focus on reaching 229,000 oz in 2015 which will be a 15% increase over the 2014 production figure. Then we will re-assess where we are. We have not yet seen the productivity improvements. Those targets are all under review," he said.

The delay is the latest setback following an announcement in May last year that up to 70% of the mine's production would be closed for four months as Gold Fields sought to improve safety by fixing 1,000 metres of legacy ground support.

The remediation also involved the retrenchment of about 500 full time staff and more than 1,000 contractors. He didn't think more job cuts were necessary and added that planned capital spending would remain at R1.7bn over the next five to 10 years. Total spend on the mine would therefore stay at previously planned levels of R9bn.

"2014 was the low point really for South Deep," said Holland. "We have to set the mine up for the long-term and that starts today; in fact, it started last year," he said.

Production from South Deep in Gold Fields' 2014 financial year was 200,000 oz, a one third decline over 2013 levels.

Overall, Gold Fields produced 2.2 million oz of gold last year, a 10% improvement over 2013. It hauled in all in sustaining costs, lifted revenue and reduced net debt by $282m to $1.45bn, a 16% reduction.

All in all, this was a strong showing with nearly 50% of group production coming from Gold Fields' Australian assets.

For 2015, Gold Fields had targeted 2.2 million oz in production, despite some ramp-up from South Deep. "That's a realistic target because some mines will produce more, some less than last year. We don't really focus on this; we are interested in increasing cash flow," he said.

Capital spending was projected to be $660m (c.$609m) with an increase in capex planned for Gold Fields' Australian assets as it sought brownfields extensions.

Commenting on the group's net debt, Holland said that as a percentage to net debt to earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation, net debt would be lowered 1:1 against a current ratio of x1.3 (2013: x1.7).

The current financial year represents a period of reckoning with the South African government regarding compliance with the mining charter on black economic empowerment. "We're satisfied that we comply with the requirements. We look forward to engaging with the government which has its job to do as well," he said.

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Zim calls for wage freeze as union conflict looms

Fin24, 12 Feb 2015

 

Harare - In another sign of Zimbabwe's battered economy, the central bank on Wednesday called for a general wage freeze, setting the stage for a bitter conflict with trade unions.

Central bank chief John Mangudya's announcement dealt another blow to elusive hopes of a solid economic recovery in the nation that had to abandon its own currency at the peak of a severe recession and switch to the US dollar instead.

Mangudya said the economy remains too depressed to allow for any salary hikes.

"Given the lack of competitiveness and its negative effects on the economy, we do not see any room for wage and salary increases," Mangudya said.

Private firms expected to follow suit

The wage freeze will apply to civil servants and parastatal companies, but to the dismay of unions, private companies were expected to follow suit.

"What workers currently earn is far below the poverty line," said Raymond Majongwe, secretary general of the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe.

"We are dealing with a government that does not want to respect its workers, so we are not ruling out protests," he added.

The World Bank says 72% of Zimbabweans live below the poverty line, while many economists put the real unemployment rate at 80%, up from an official 11%.

Zimbabwe is slowly recovering from nearly a decade-long crisis, sparked partly by the confiscation of white-owned farms that saw economic output cumulatively decline by nearly a half between 1999 and 2008, according to the World Bank.

Mangudya predicted a growth of 3.2% this year driven by services, mining and manufacturing.

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Australia's jobless rate rises to 6.4%

Fin24, 12 Feb 2015

 

Sydney - Australia's unemployment rate rose from 6.1% to 6.4% month-on-month in January, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday.

The number of people without jobs increased by 12 200 jobs since December, it said.

"The decrease in employment was driven by decreased full-time employment for both males (down 26 000) and females (down 2 100)."

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2.    COSATU

More jobs and energy security, Cosatu tells Zuma ahead of Sona

Thulani Gqirana, Mmanaledi Mataboge, M&G, 11 Feb 2015

As the president's State of the Nation address draws near, the federation is asking for extra government spending to boost the ailing economy.

The ANC’s biggest alliance partner – trade union federation Cosatu – has released its wish list for President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation address, asking the government to pump more money into infrastructure development programmes, find an immediate solution to the country’s electricity problems and implement a national minimum wage.

Zuma is set to deliver his eighth State of the Nation address on Thursday evening to a joint sitting of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces.

 

Cosatu says that although the federation appreciates that the global economy is not recovering quickly enough to help South Africa address the challenges of unemployment, and poverty in particular, the government can do more to stimulate economic growth and create jobs.

“This, among others, requires the government to spend and invest more, particularly in the infrastructure development programme and in capacitating the public service and all state institutions,” according to Cosatu.

Electricity headaches

The federation does acknowledge however, that this expectation “runs counter to the current fiscal stance taken by the treasury, which is one of austerity or cutbacks in real terms”.

Last week the Mail & Guardian reported that the presidential infrastructure co-ordinating commission has raised concerns about delays and poor planning that result in “cost overruns, which pushes up the overall funding needs of infrastructure”.

The government is said to be working against the clock to find money to help power utility Eskom fund its infrastructure development and maintenance programme, amid power cuts that threaten the economy.

Cosatu is also worried that despite Zuma committing the government to “respond decisively” to the country’s energy constraints, rolling electricity blackouts have become the norm rather than the exception.

“This is a matter of grave concern to Cosatu because load-shedding has the potential to result in job losses. The president should reassure the nation that the assets of Eskom will not be sold to the highest bidder as an option to get more funding for Eskom.”  

Cosatu also wants to know why, in the context of the power crisis, aluminium smelters are allowed to consume “massive amounts of electricity at taxpayers’ expense without adding any significant value to the economy. The government urgently needs to look at how to close the remaining smelters down.”

National minimum wage

The federation said the president should provide a strategy to expand the renewable energy sector, outlining how to develop social forms of ownership, create jobs and give the working class more access to energy.

Cosatu also reminded Zuma of the commitment he made in last year’s State of the Nation address to investigate the possibility of a national minimum wage to help reduce income inequality. 

Although it acknowledged that some meetings have taken place regarding this promise, Cosatu now wants Zuma to reassure South Africans that the minimum wage will be implemented “before the end of 2015”.

Cosatu has proposed a monthly minimum wage of R4 500, to move away from percentage-based increases and close wage gaps inherited from the colonial and apartheid eras.

Several Cosatu leaders serve on the ANC’s national executive committee, but it is unclear whether the federation’s influence carries much sway in the party and in Zuma’s government.

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COSATU: LOAD SHEDDING COULD CUT MORE JOBS

Gia Nicolaides, EWN, 11 Feb 2015

Businesses are taking strain and many people are trying to work around electricity cuts during the day.

JOHANNESBURG – As South Africans brace themselves for another day of load shedding, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)says there's a strong possibility that jobs will be lost due to regular power cuts.

Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) on Tuesday reported the unemployment rate declined to 24.3 percent from 25.4 percent, but Cosatu says it's too early to celebrate.

Eskom says load shedding will be a reality for the foreseeable future because it simply doesn't have enough generating capacity to meet electricity demand.

South Africans have had to deal with load shedding for the past few weeks; something Eskom had warned would become a regular occurrence. 

Businesses have taken strain and many people are trying to work around electricity cuts during the day. 

Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven says load shedding could have a major impact on jobs. 

“There’s a strong probability that jobs could be lost as a result and even more, I think jobs will not be created because of uncertainty about the reliability of power.”

Eskom says load shedding is likely to happen today, but it cannot predict what stage or what time this will occur. 

(Edited by Tamsin Wort)

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Cosatu: Too early to celebrate drop in unemployment rate

SAPA, M&G, 11 Feb 2015

·          

·         Cosatu says the crisis caused by load-shedding is sure to slow down the rate of new investment, essential for job creation.

 

The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Tuesday said it was too early to celebrate the drop in South Africa’s unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Cosatu said it was pleased to hear South Africa’s unemployment rate fell to 24.3% from 25.4% in the third quarter of 2014, national spokesperson Patrick Craven said in a statement.

 

Though there was also a small decline in the “more realistic” expanded unemployment rate, from 35.8% to 34.6%, the total number of people without jobs, when taking the expanded rate into account, was a “massive” 8.1 million.

“While any reduction in the number without work is welcome, the federation notes the caution expressed by Kefiloe Masiteng, Statistics SA deputy director general for social statistics [and population],” Craven said.

Masiteng said some jobs created were driven in part by the festive season, through sectors that created mainly casual jobs.

“The DDG also warned that ‘economic growth is not coming at the level that is able to create the jobs that are needed currently for the economy’,” Craven said.

“So it is far too early to start celebrating, especially given the crisis caused by load-shedding, which has put many thousands of existing jobs in peril, and is sure to slow down the rate of new investment which could create more new jobs.”

As such, the next quarter’s statistics would need to be studied very closely.

He said there could be no complacency in pushing forward radical, developmental economic policies to deal with the underlying, structural causes of South Africa’s high unemployment rate.

Earlier on Tuesday, Masiteng told reporters in Pretoria that 242 000 people found work in the fourth quarter last year. A total of 4.9 million people were officially unemployed.

The official unemployment rate is made up of those who are jobless, but are actively looking for work. The expanded unemployment rate includes people who have given up looking for a job. – Sapa

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South Africa: Cosatu must be united, but not at all costs - Zwelinzima Vavi

Crystal Oderson in Cape Town, The Africa Report, 11 Feb 2015

  

 

ZWELINZIMA VAVI GENERAL SECRETARY, CONGRESS OF SOUTH AFRICAN TRADE UNIONS©ZINYANGE AUNTONY/DEMOTIX/CORBIS

General secretary, Congress of South African Trade Unions Cosatu must be united, but not at all costs.

 

The Africa Report: With its current troubles, can the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) really celebrate its 30th anniversary in December 2015?

That's a nightmare isn't it? As a younger general secretary, I always envisaged that part of the plan was to grow the federation to four million members by 2015. We're going to the 30th anniversary [with the] complete opposite. Cosatu membership has grown a meagre 200,000 between the last congress and now. We should not be where we are. That keeps me awake almost every night.

Did you think it would come to this?

I never imagined that Cosatu could be divided over a president who spends R250m ($21.8m) on a private residence and that Cosatu can't be united in its rejection of that. Never did I anticipate that we could be divided over the corruption inside the trade unions.

I never thought that you can have a phenomenon where unions cannot meet for three years – the national executive committee [did not meet] because of divisions linked to corruption allegations against the leadership.

Now that the largest affiliate, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), has been expelled, what are its chances of getting back into Cosatu?

That's political. You can't dismiss 300,000 workers and expect business as usual thereafter. There can be no unity of Cosatu that excludes NUMSA or metal workers and so on. I don't accept that. If we accept that, then we must accept that Cosatu has failed.

Will Cosatu organise a national congress this year?

I hope we'll see a federation decision very early instead of allowing the current status quo to run for months and months. You can't have an organisation of two million people whose leadership de-focuses altogether away from the interest of ordinary workers.

Cosatu remains Africa's largest union federation but is unlikely to stay that way. What is your message to trade unionists on the continent?

Every African trade union has gone through this same way of being split by external political interests. They are fragmented. In Zimbabwe, they're fragmented. In Zambia, it's happened. In Angola, they're also fragmented.

In Namibia, the trade union movement is now a docile friend of government that is not capable of bargaining on behalf of members. In South Africa, we are being fragmented. This is very sad. I had hoped that all of us having looked at what is happening in the rest of the African continent would avoid it, but fragmentation is happening.

What is ahead for Zwelinzima Vavi?

The fight is very clear to me. Cosatu must be united, but not at all costs. I don't want a sweetheart union, and I would rather move away from any organisation that has turned into an apologist for the government. I don't want a darling of an employer, be it in the private or the public sector.

I want to hopefully contribute as part of a collective to ensuring that we can present to workers a united organisation, fighting for their interests. Where I would be individually doesn't matter. What matters is that workers must have an independent, militant, fighting, socialist-oriented trade union movement that cannot be manipulated by any external interest to the detriment of its members. ●

Read the original article on Theafricareport.com : South Africa: Cosatu must be united, but not at all costs - Zwelinzima Vavi | Southern Africa 
Follow us: @theafricareport on Twitter | theafricareport on Facebook

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3.           South Africa

Students want Jews out of Durban University of Technology

Sapa , Sowetan, 12 Feb 2015 

The Durban University of Technology's student representative council has called for the expulsion of all Jewish students who do not support the Palestinian cause, the Daily News reported on Wednesday.

The demand was sent to the university management, according to the afternoon daily.

The newspaper quoted SRC secretary Mqondisi Duma as saying: "As the SRC we had a meeting and analysed international politics. We took the decision that Jewish students, especially those who do not support the Palestinian struggle, should deregister."

The university's vice chancellor Prof Ahmed Bawa told the newspaper the demand was "totally unacceptable".

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South Africa remains divided: Mogoeng

SABC News, 12 Feb 2015

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng says South Africa still remains a deeply divided nation because leaders have for a very long time, left national unity and reconciliation to chance.

He was speaking at an event to mark 25 years since the late former president Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

The event held at the Constitutional Hill in the Johannesburg CBD Wednesday night, was organised by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, as well as the South African Council of Churches.

Mogoeng believes national unity has been neglected.

"Part of the problem is that for a very long time we have left national unity and reconciliation to chance. The time has come for very deliberate programmes to be established, through which strategies could be devised to ensure that on a daily basis."

"South Africans are very aware about the critical need and the urgency to be united and to be a truly reconciled nation that posterity can be proud of."

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Over 80,000 registered for supplementary exams

Sapa, Sowetan, 12 Feb 2015

A total of 85,000 people have registered to sit for the supplementary examinations, the department of basic education said on Wednesday.

The centres implicated in the group copying scandal in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal would not be allowed to administer the supplementary exams, department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said in a statement.

This was based on agreement between monitoring body Umalusi and the department.

"In instances where there was group copying [national and provincial departments] will take over the management of the examinations."

The supplementary exams would be written in 6103 centres around the country, Mhlanga said.

The department announced earlier in the week that pupils involved in the copying scandal in both provinces had been granted concessions to write. They could write supplementary exams in the subjects on which they were accused of copying.

Individual hearings with each of the pupils implicated would begin on February 24 and end on March 16, Mhlanga said.

"This will allow for the evidence with regard to each subject, to be presented to the individual learner, and for the learner to respond to the charge of copying that will be presented.

"Learners will be allowed legal representation," he said.

The hearings would be conducted by the provincial department, under the oversight of the national department and would be monitored by Umalusi, Mhlanga said.

In December, monitoring body Umalusi said group copying was found at 19 Eastern Cape exam centres and 39 in KwaZulu-Natal.

Asked how the irregularities were discovered, Umalusi CEO Mafu Rakometsi said pupils provided the same answers.

"These problems were detected at the marking centres... The students are providing the same answers, the same right answers, the same wrong answers," Rakometsi said at the time.

"It is clear that there is sharing of notes."

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Vhembe has ‘highest STI rate’

Sapa, ANN7, 12 Feb 2015

Limpopo:Vheme district in Limpopo has the highest number of sexually transmitted infections taking a huge chunk of the total 62926 STI infection in the province. 

The Limpopo department of health yesterday revealed this, saying Vhembe was followed by Mopani. 

Spokesperson for the provincial department of health, Macks Lesufi, said MEC Ishmael Kgetjepe, would engage communities in Nwa-Mitwa to speak about the challenges brought about by these infections and how to deal with them as part of the provincial STI Condom Week campaign to be held at Nwamitwa Tribal Authority today. 

Kgetjepe urged people to join the fight against STIs by, among other things, using condoms during sex and testing regularly for STIs and getting treatment. 

He said members of the public should understand that there was a link between STIs and HIV-Aids. 

“People who get STI’s are at an increased risk of contracting HIV. This occurs due to the fact that STI’s damage the lining of the genital tract and make it easier for the virus to gain access to the body. The fight against STIs remains one of the key focus areas for the department of health in Limpopo. 

STIs are a major health concern in SA and more than four million people receive treatment for STIs every year. 

“The challenge remains that many of these cases go unreported due to the stigma attached to the diseases,” Kgetjepe said.

DA leader in Limpopo Jacques Smalle said the recent Health Systems Trust’s 2013-14 report has shockingly revealed that not only does Limpopo has the fifth highest teenage pregnancy rates, more disturbingly, 7.9% of children are born to young school going girls. 

He said this figure exceeded the national norm of 6.8%. Vhembe is at 8.4%, Mopani at 8.1%, Sekhukhune 7.7% while Waterberg is 7.6 % and Capricorn 7.4%. 

He said the answers from legislature questions put to the Department of Education by DA suggest that at least 121 schools in Limpopo had a total of 663 pregnant pupils in 2013. 

Of these, 50 were between grades 4-7, 105 in Grade 8, 197 in Grade 9 and a total of 311 from grades 10-12 became mothers. 

“This begs the question of what action has been taken by the department to ensure that these girls continue with.

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Economy flat but positive: Bankserv

The New Age, 12 Feb 2015

January transactions show that the economy is flat but slowly getting positive, according to the BankservAfrica Economic Transaction Index (BETI) released on Wednesday.

"The latest [index] has revealed that January had 80.7 million transactions via the BankservAfrica payments system, up 1.1 percent on 2014," it said in a statement.

"The standardised monetary value fell below R600 billion for the first time since January last year and sits at R593.5bn."

The lower rate of inflation helped keep the year-on-year BETI positive despite a very flat monthly charge, BankservAfrica said.

Head of fraud and data analytics at BankservAfrica Caroline Belrose said the country's payment system sat centrally in the economy and reflected a flat start to the year but not a decline in economic activity.

"According to the BETI, December 2014 remains the strongest month in nearly two years, so it is relative for January 2015 to show a 0.1 percent month-on-month decline in economic activity compared to December.

"However, against January 2014 there is positive year-on-year growth of 1.1 percent, and quarterly growth is 1.2 percent," she said.

January was traditionally the month with the smallest number of transactions.

The standardised data underlying the BETI for January was 6.3 percent higher than the same month last year.

Economist Mike Schüssler said potential growth was still the best description for the overall economic trend with some upward potential seen in the next month.

"Another big fall in fuel prices could help the South African economy with its high logistics cost," he said.

"Against this is the massive shortage of electricity which will at least counter some of the positive effects of oil price declines. But overall the electricity outages have not caused the economy to go into a declining trend which at least shows a resilience from economic role players."

       
-Sapa

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Shoprite challenge over fuel price cuts

Nompumelelo Magwaza, Business Report, 12 Feb 2015

Nompumelelo Magwaza

SOUTH Africa’s biggest food retailer Shoprite has challenged other food retailers and food companies to pass on the fuel price savings to consumers.

However, Abri du Plessis, the chief investment officer at Gryphon Asset Management, thought of this challenge as only “a good ad campaign”.

In line with the fuel savings, Shoprite’s internal food inflation has slowed each month since the August 2014 reduction and has reached a 13-month low of just 4 percent in December last year.

Petrol prices have dropped by as much as R2.20 a litre over the past two months.

However, the rally in the international oil price has the Department of Energy projecting that the local fuel price could rise by 48c a litre early next month.

“Consumers have had an average saving of almost R200 each time they fill up their tank. The distribution cost of food suppliers has fallen simultaneously and Shoprite believes that these saving must be passed on to consumers,” the retailer said.

Du Plessis agreed that food companies had benefited from the lower fuel price.

“However, it will take more than the fuel price for food prices to go down.”

Pick n Pay group strategy and corporate affairs director David North said: “Pick n Pay always tries hard to keep prices as low as possible for our customers. We welcome any reduction in fuel costs, which helps us and our suppliers to bear down on inflation.”

Massmart’s spokeswoman Annaleigh Vallie said: “It goes without saying that we pass, as a matter of course, savings achieved on to our customers.”

Vallie said Massmart, which competes with Shoprite through its Cambridge stores, had noted Shoprite’s challenge.

However, Vallie said Massmart would like to challenge them to distance themselves from the lease exclusivity agreements which impede free competition to the disadvantage of the same consumers whose interests they were currently championing.

A Woolworths spokesperson said in terms of the supply chain there should be a positive impact, “but again it has to be considered in the context of other input price factors, and in clothing particularly the impact of exchange rates”.

The Woolworths spokesperson added that it was always committed to offering its customers good value for its quality standards adding that drop in fuel price was not a significant element of its overall costs base.

Pioneer Food chief executive Phil Roux said despite the reduction in the company’s fuel cost it would take time for the price of food to go down.

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SA ranked 39th on worlds best and worst press freedom list

AFP, Sowetan, 12 Feb 2015

Here is a ranking of 180 countries and territories evaluated by the Paris-based media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) for press freedom in its latest annual report, from best to worst: 

1. Finland

2. Norway

3. Denmark

4. Netherlands

5. Sweden

6. New Zealand

7. Austria

8. Canada

9. Jamaica

10. Estonia

11. Ireland

12. Germany

13. Czech Republic

14. Slovakia

15. Belgium

16. Costa Rica

17. Namibia

18. Poland

19. Luxembourg

20. Switzerland

21. Iceland

22. Ghana

23. Uruguay

24. Cyprus

25. Australia

26. Portugal

27. Liechtenstein

28. Latvia

29. Suriname

30. Belize

31. Lithuania

32. Andorra

33. Spain

34. United Kingdom

35. Slovenia

36. Cape Verde

37. Organization of Eastern Caribbean States

38. France

39. South Africa

40. Samoa

 

41. Trinidad and Tobago 42. Botswana 43. Chile 44. Tonga 45. El Salvador 46. Burkina Faso 47. Niger 48. Malta 49. United States 50. Comoros 51. Taiwan 52. Romania 53. Haiti 54. Mongolia 55. Mauritania 56. Papua New Guinea 57. Argentina 58. Croatia 59. Malawi 60. South Korea 61. Japan 62. Guyana 63. Dominican Republic 64. Madagascar 65. Hungary 66. Bosnia and Herzegovina 67. Serbia 68. Mauritius 69. Georgia 70. Hong Kong 71. Senegal 72. Moldova 73. Italy 74. Nicaragua 75. Tanzania 76. Northern Cyprus 77. Lesotho 78. Armenia 79. Sierra Leone 80. Togo 81. Guinea-Bissau 82. Albania 83. Panama 84. Benin 85. Mozambique 86. Ivory Coast 87. Kosovo 88. Kyrgyzstan 89. Liberia 90. Kuwait 91. Greece 92. Peru 93. Fiji 94. Bolivia 95. Gabon 96. Seychelles 97. Uganda 98. Lebanon 99. Brazil 100. Kenya 101. Israel 102. Guinea 103. East Timor 104. Bhutan 105. Nepal 106. Bulgaria 107. Republic of the Congo 108. Ecuador 109. Paraguay 110. Central African Republic 111. Nigeria 112. Maldives 113. Zambia 114. Montenegro 115. Qatar 116. Tajikistan 117. Macedonia 118. Mali 119. Algeria 120. United Arab Emirates 121. Brunei 122. Afghanistan 123. Angola 124. Guatemala 125. South Sudan 126. Tunisia 127. Oman 128. Colombia 129. Ukraine 130. Morocco 131. Zimbabwe 132. Honduras 133. Cameroon 134. Thailand 135. Chad 136. India 137. Venezuela 138. Indonesia 139. Cambodia 140. Palestinian Territories 141. Philippines 142. Ethiopia 143. Jordan 144. Myanmar 145. Burundi 146. Bangladesh 147. Malaysia 148. Mexico 149. Turkey 150. Democratic Republic of Congo 151. Gambia 152. Russia 153. Singapore 154. Libya 155. Swaziland 156. Iraq 157. Belarus 158. Egypt 159. Pakistan 160. Kazakhstan 161. Rwanda 162. Azerbaijan 163. Bahrain 164. Saudi Arabia 165. Sri Lanka 166. Uzbekistan 167. Equatorial Guinea 168. Yemen 169. Cuba 170. Djibouti 171. Laos 172. Somalia 173. Iran 174. Sudan 175. Vietnam 176. China 177. Syria 178. Turkmenistan 179. North Korea 180. Eritrea  (Source: Reporters Without Borders 2015 World Press Freedom Index; country/territory names have been altered in some cases in line with AFP style)

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Africa Diaspora Forum to march for tolerance

Lerato Diale, ANN7, 12 Feb 2015

Johannesburg:
The Africa Diaspora Forum, a civil society organisation, is expected to march today in Johannesburg in solidarity with migrant communities whose shops were looted in Soweto last month.

The Forum’s chairperson, Marc Gbaffou, said the march was aimed at encouraging tolerance and social cohesion between local communities and migrant communities.

Faith-based and human rights’ organisations are expected to join.

The march comes as some foreign shop owners have already begun going back to Soweto after being forced to flee after violent looting targeting their shops was sparked by the shooting of Soweto teenager Siphiwe Mahori.

The march will start at Empire Road and end at Carlton Centre in the Johannesburg CBD.

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We must get smarter in our negotiations – Machel

Banele Ginindza, Business Report, 12 Feb 2015

Former first lady Graça Machel yesterday reiterated the call for communities to be involved in negotiations with multinational companies for benefits arising out of investments on their land.

Speaking to civil society and communities attending the Alternative Mining Indaba (AMI) held in Woodstock, Cape Town, Machel said benefits including rent and royalties for mining operations had to be sustainable for future generations.

“We have to be smarter than we have been before, we have to be more targeted than we have been before, the development plans have to be tested against measurable facts,” she said.

Her comments come as the AMI has resolved to press for more inclusive negotiations with mining companies for benefits accruing from investments in local communities as opposed to leaving the task to government only.

Machel said communities and civil society had to know how the mining contracts were established, question whether they were understandable, also that the government signing on their behalf understood the content and context of the agreements and that if a contract were unfair, ensure there would be remedies for correcting it.

“If we do not understand the technicalities of things signed on our behalf, how can we question our leaders. We are the owners of these resources,” she said.

She said communities in particular had to know the costs of resettlements they were being asked or forced to make and that what they received as compensation corresponded with the impact to be felt by the community for generations to come.

She saw the need for building of civic consortiums with many disciplines to engage multinational companies on all aspects of contracts entered into.

“We need to have the technical ability to argue for ourselves,” she said stressing that there needed to be a viable checklist of criteria that companies met from Cape to Cairo and beyond.

“Otherwise we get left with big holes and no skills and no value chains,” she said.

Machel said investments in mining should “leave no one behind”, ensure dignity for all and be sustainable in meeting the needs and aspirations of future generations.

“My suggestion is that the mining industry must move from the isolated, insular concept of only providing royalties and revenues.

“It means yes, it will contribute, but its impact has to be measured in relations to the quality of life of the people.

“We must know how the mining industry is part of the package that will improve the lives of millions of our people,” she said.

She said this completely changes the narrative in that changes would no longer be the directive of the government only but would bring in the private sector to the national level, especially the addition of local content.

“It is my belief that for governments, the private sector, even for civil society organisations, it is no longer business as usual, the rules of the game have to change, we must acknowledge our own weaknesses and we must learn how to work with one another,” she said.

Machel was largely preaching to the choir as the AMI had over the past few days been discussing the negative impact and destruction brought on to communities by multinational companies who focused mainly on obtaining profit from their investment at the expense of the health and food security of communities.

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Zuma should change economic policy: Afribusiness

Sapa, Times Live, 12 February 2015

President Jacob Zuma should have the courage to announce -- at the state of the nation address -- changes to economic policy that will benefit the country, Afribusiness said on Wednesday.

“The economic stability of the country is held hostage by a government ideology that creates a bad economic policy," CEO Cornelius Jansen van Rensburg said in a statement.

"The low economic growth of the country, unemployment and the derelict infrastructure are mere symptoms of this."

Jansen van Rensburg said there were three things Zuma could do to turn around the economic situation: privatise the electricity supply industry, entrench property rights and expand them to all South Africans, and reconsider black economic empowerment in total.

“Only the private sector and more specifically local enterprises, can make the biggest contribution in the relief of unemployment and poverty,” he said.

“The state-of-the-nation address gives the president the opportunity to make it possible for businesses to invest in the future of the country and as such create job opportunities."

Zuma is expected to address the nation on Thursday evening.

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TUT protests spills over to other University campuses

Sapa, Times Live, 12 February 2015

Protests at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) spread to its Ga-Rankuwa, eMalahleni and Pretoria campuses, it said in a statement.

"The protest action, which has already resulted in the suspension of business at the Soshanguve North and South Campuses last week, started to spill over to other University campuses today [Thursday]," TUT said in an early morning statement.

University management met student leaders on Wednesday evening in a bid to resolve points of contention, primarily student funding.

"Although progressive proposals from the University's side were tabled, these were rejected by the student leaders."

The SA Students Congress last week criticised university management for failing to help needy students.

"It is outrageously irresponsible for university management to provide students with no alternative than sending them home," Gauteng deputy chairman Sthembiso Ndlovu said in a statement at the time.

"Students are cancelling their academic courses due to outstanding fees and NSFAS budget cuts."

In September the university was forced to close some of its campuses when protests about student funding became violent. The protests lasted almost three weeks and 18 cars were torched.

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Eskom CEO’s ‘doable job’

Sibonelo Radebe, ANN7, 11 Feb 2015

Eskom CEO’s ‘doable job’

Johannesburg:When a coal-carrying silo collapses at Majuba, wiping out more than 1 000MW of power, that was his ‘eish’ moment A siren that seems to be wailing on forever should solicit some form of panic at a national key point.

That was not the case at Megawatt Park, the Eskom headquarters in Johannesburg on January 21, this year. Instead, a communication lapse defined the moment as the siren wailed on. The two security guards manning the reception point appeared to be confused as they went on with business as usual.

No indication of protocol was in place in what became a perfect symbol of the challenge facing the new Eskom CEO Tshediso Matona. The day of the alarm was the day that saw Matona open himself up to reveal “a child of the struggle” who became the most important corporate leader in the country. Matona fancies himself as a change agent and a fixer. It is an impression bursting out of a struggle narrative mixed with practical life and work experiences.

“If you take on good jobs and do your best all the time they (good jobs) will follow you,” the man who became a political prisoner at the age of 17 says. Matona has been at the helm of the power utility for about four months. His tenure at Eskom is building up to be a period of most severe turbulence in the history of the 91-year-old power utility. Eskom is suffocating under a pile of well-known financial and operational challenges.

The utility has, over the past four months, recorded the most concentrated and elongated phase of load shedding in living memory. Eskom is flirting with insolvency. Its business model is unsustainable in reflecting a funding shortfall in excess of R200bn. In Matona’s sense of “the struggle continues”, no task is too big. It is a sense which can be traced back to the experience of a young lad. Born in 1962 in Naledi, Matona noted that he was 14 years old when Soweto exploded in 1976. He was already politically aware and part of the legendary Soweto uprising.

At 17 he was arrested for furthering the aims of the ANC. “It (tackling the Eskom job) goes back to the life journey that one has been on.” That journey, Matona says, “goes back to when I was 14 in 1976. Having been exposed to politics I knew even at that early age, that things were not how they should be. I was going to be part of the process of fixing them.” And so he was arrested at 17, having been a founding member of the original Congress of South African Students (Cosas).

This could have condemned his personal fortunes as happened to many other comrades who had to trade school uniform for the then military green prison garb. Matona’s schooling was disturbed for about five years. Upon release from jail, Matona says, “no school wanted to accept me because I was branded a troublemaker”. So he became a “full time political activist” when the uprising was peaking in the 1980s.

Remarkably, Matona was able to change course from his non-schooling tenure, that he found unbecoming, when it was easy to fall into the fatalistic mind set of ‘freedom first and education later’. “I could see things were climaxing towards victory. I decided I needed to equip myself for the reconstruction,” he said. He then enrolled for matric via correspondence. He is quick to point out that while he was out of formal schooling for five years his education never stopped.

From his language, tone and outlook it is clear he was fed Karl Marx at a tender age inside the political school of the congress movement. So he was able to ace his matric. He then proceeded to Khanya College, a pre-university college that once stood as a beacon within South Africa’s education system. From there he was set to become a politics and economics student until honours level at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Matona said he had calculated that Cape Town as opposed to other closer locations of study would be better in posing less distractions.

However, he could not avoid the politics in UCT where black students were facing a number of difficulties. And so he was approached to lead the Black Student Society. When the Congress for a Democratic South Africa was nearing its peak and comrades were coming back from exile, Matona left to study in the UK at the University of East Anglia.

“Some people questioned the rationale of me leaving when it was clear that the struggle was about to bear fruit,” Matona said. He came back in 1994 with a Masters degree in economics. This was just in time to join Trevor Manuel who was the first post apartheid minister of trade and industry. At the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Matona rose to become the directorgeneral. He has fond memories of the DTI where he, among other things, practised as a trade diplomat. He cites as key achievements, the creation of policies, programmes and institutions that laid the foundation for post 1994 economic development and transformation.

These policies included frameworks for international trade, industrial development, investment facilitation, enterprise development, infrastructure development, economic regulation and broad-based black economic empowerment. Matona says the DTI exposed him to considerable power and strategic leadership, a point he uses to deflect the observation that he came to Eskom with negligible leadership experience.

“When I joined the DTI, it was not what it is today. A lot of what you see there (policies and institutions) today was built from scratch.” He says, like Eskom, the DTI was in the news a lot for the wrong reasons. “All that noise is gone now. I look back with pride at the job we did there.” It also exposed him to the private sector.

He had to interact with captains of industry who would be impacted by DTI regulations he drafted. Besides, he was overseeing a number of critical agencies who act like private companies. These include the Industrial Development Corporation, the National Empowerment Fund and the South African Bureau of Standards. Matona’s overseer position was boosted when he moved to become the DG of the department of public enterprises in 2009. He supervised a number of major state-owned enterprises including Eskom, South African Airways, Transnet, Denel, Safcol and Alexkor.

“I had a really fulfilling and empowering career in government,” Matona said. I knew that it (public sector) will build a platform for me to do other things outside government. I’ve also seen how technocrats across the globe develop and get deployed into running organisations in the real economy. I knew I was not going to be in government forever. I was loosely thinking about such a development (a move into an SOE) for a while when the Eskom opportunity came.” He reminds people that leading a big organisation like Eskom is not about addressing an assembly of 50 000 people every day.

Much like the structure of the government departments his job is more about formulating and leading corporate strategy. “By the time I came here we (Department of Public Enterprises) had been part of the recapitalisation process. That gave me a big insight into where some of the problems lay,” he says. But not even Matona could have seen the magnitude of the troubles at Eskom. As soon as he took over, a coal-carrying silo collapsed at Majuba wiping out more than 1 000MW of power from the national grid. “That (Majuba) was my ‘eish’ moment.”

It makes the job even more daunting. “But it is a doable job,” he said. More so if you have the required support from Eskom people and the broader public. The people are a critical factor. His talk about the people took me back to the wailing alarm.

As it wailed on, one senior-looking chap tried to register the apparent seriousness of the situation to the two indifferent guards. His main concern was us, a group of visitors waiting for Eskom aides inthe lobby. “If something happens to these people, Eskom will be in trouble. Get them out,” the concerned chap said.

He was ignored as he proceeded in his lone quest at evacuation. My aide came to pick me up after about five minutes into the alarm bell. A guy watching the line separating the lobby and the inside of Eskom head office tries to order us out, with no success. He is told: “I’m here to see the CEO.” He backs off reluctantly retorting: “The CEO should also be on his way out.”

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Discovery backs government patent plan

Andile Makholwa, Business Day, 12 February 2015

MEDICAL aid administrator Discovery Health has backed government’s plan to introduce a patent examination system instead of the one in place where companies merely register "new" drugs that they want to introduce in the market.

In its submissions to the inquiry probing the private healthcare industry, Discovery Health says the present system has a number of flaws which adversely affect medicine prices in SA.

Discovery Health is one of three biggest administrators with a market share of 25.7%. Its stance will bolster government’s plan to scrutinise applications for patents amid opposition by the industry.

Medicine accounts for 15.8% of health expenditure by medical schemes.

Discovery Health says the registration process, which takes five years or longer, inhibits the entry of new products and damages competition. In addition pharmaceutical companies that want to register new medicines do not need to prove novelty or added clinical value.

"The inappropriately easy access to patent protection and the practice of patent ever-greening harms competition and precludes access to affordable medicines.

"The patent registration process for medicines should be strengthened by a shift away from a depository system of registering pharmaceutical patents, towards a substantive patent examination process," Discovery says.

It says SA grants more patents than its BRICS peers and other countries because it does not examine patents applied for. Patents give originators a 20-year monopoly so that they can recoup their investment and make a return.

During that period no company can copy the formula to make a cheap generic version.

But some companies abuse the system by making smaller changes on old discoveries and request the extension of the patent. This is called patent ever-greening.

In September 2013 the Department of Trade and Industry released a draft intellectual property policy containing the proposal to set up the patent examination system.

But the pharmaceutical industry raised a number of concerns with the draft policy and very little has happened since then.

Konji Sebati, CEO of the Innovative Pharmaceutical Association SA (Ipasa), which represents multinational drug makers, says Ipasa is not opposed to the principle of a substantive search and examination system.

Instead it sought to draw government’s attention to certain repercussions that would arise from the "inherent very high costs" to implement this system.

SA does not have infrastructure and highly skilled people — trained in law and pharmaceuticals — to roll out a patent examination system.

"It will take a lot of time and training to be up and running. We need to not only have 20 graduates in the technical fields but they must also be highly experienced in their fields," Dr Sebati said.

The Medicine Control Council, which does registration of medicine, is overwhelmed with work. Plans to replace the organisation with a bigger and more resourced agency have yet to come to fruition.

Dr Sebati said IPASA had not received any feedback to its comments after the Department of Trade and Industry commissioned a Regulatory Impact Assessment on the more than 2,000 comments.

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Conversation with a revolutionary icon: What makes Leila Khaled still run?

J Brooks Spector, Daily Maverick, 12 Feb 2015

Leila Khaled shot to a kind of global fame (or infamy) forty-five years ago, while she was still in her mid-twenties. During her trip to South Africa, J. BROOKS SPECTOR had a conversation with Leila Khaled, once the young Palestinian woman with the Kalashnikov.

The iconic photo from that moment when she posed with a Kalashnikov automatic rifle and participated in aeroplane hijackings is now long in the past. Still, that black-and-white, faintly demure image lingers like the pale shadow on a palimpsest. And that image can still be seen, here and there, on old copies of the poster or the occasional T-shirt, even as the real person depicted has lived on for nearly a half century more in the meantime.

Leila Khaled is now seventy and a grandmother, a new grandmother at that, she says, beaming with pride about a five-month-old granddaughter. While she is carrying no picture of this grandchild on her, she insists she does have many of them on her laptop. Those are sent to her, almost reluctantly, by a son who protests that his daughter – her grandchild – really doesn’t change very much from one day to the next. These must be the same heartfelt responses of any grandmother – whether living in exile with a grim historical moment attached to her or simply in a home that has been the site for a lifetime of birthdays, festivals and just quotidian, everyday life. And just by the way, like any other couple, she is also intensely proud of her spouse, a health care professional, a poet, a columnist – and a novelist, she says. To round out the picture, she admits that she loves to cook big meals for family and friends. “I like to cook everything!” she adds.

But of course, Leila Khaled is not just any grandmother. She is, and has been, a lifetime member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and an aeroplane hijacker. Sitting at our interview, she wears a carefully placed scarf bearing those familiar red, green, black and white colours and the scarf shows a small map sketched on it. It is a map designed to show a country labelled Palestine - in place of another nation in the same geographical location, but more usually called Israel. Even Khaled’s clothing bears a message.

 

She is now in South Africa as part of what is described as a fundraising tour on behalf of the local version of Boycott Disinvestment Sanctions movement (BDS) - in support of the South African version of BDS’ campaign to make dinner tables particularly unwelcoming to those Israeli tomatoes on sale in neighbourhood Woolworths grocery stores, among other things. Not surprisingly, her ongoing visit is not without controversy. Various Jewish organisations in South Africa have roundly denounced her visit, of course, but then, so has the African Christian Democratic Party.

In fact, the wider rumblings about Khaled’s visit have included the irony of her warm embrace by various senior government officials (including scoring an official invitation for a seat at President Zuma’s State of the Nation speech); this in some very sharp contrast to the deep reluctance of the South African government to countenance a visit of the Dalai Lama, even for a conference of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, let alone a premier moment of South African political life. And her visit has come in the face of the country’s denunciations of all forms of terrorism. Of course, Khaled and her schedulers would deny she has been engaged in terrorism. Rather, from her vantage point, her actions, and those of the PFLP more generally, have come in the form of a strenuous effort to release a lost homeland from its occupiers.

As we size each other up, she is asked if, as is the case with so many other displaced Palestinian families, she continues to hold onto the key from her family’s former home in Haifa. There is a barely audible sigh - almost certainly not staged, not feigned - and she replies that key, left with her mother, along with so many photographs, personal documents, and other mementos for a family were all lost in fighting in years gone by in Lebanon, in the midst of a raid by the Israeli army. “They didn’t even want us to keep our archives. They stole some of it; they destroyed the photos of the family; letters I received from different parts of the world. I think they thought they would destroy our memory,” she says, barely raising her voice.

We talk about her politics as a member of the PFLP with its Marxist Weltanschauung and she says that living in Jordan, as she does, she has had to accept the Jordanian government’s restrictions on not speaking in public about political and social circumstances in Jordan, although she insists they now have an agreement she can talk about purely Palestinian issues in Jordan. This, she says, has come about as part of her efforts on behalf of the PFLP over the years, after her rise to international notoriety.

She is asked about those aeroplane hijackings so many years ago - and especially whether or not she still believes it was a useful, effective strategy. “I am asked about this all the time,” she says. Not surprisingly, perhaps. “Now, it is not of a use for hijacking. If anybody asks, now, I say I am against hijacking.” But contemplating this question in its historical context, she insists itwas right for its time, then; right as a tactic to bring her cause to international prominence and to goad the world into doing something about the plight of her fellow refugees – “who are the Palestinians?” – a group she reckons has now reached a total of some six million people – what with all the children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of those who left, back in 1948.

Regarding the hijackings, “I don’t regret it, I was honoured by that mission - for fifteen years we had an armed revolution and now the Intifada - I don’t regret that I had that mission. At the same time it was a clean operation; we didn’t hurt anybody - I had two hand grenades and I didn’t use them. I don’t know why they gave them to me, but they kept reminding me - we had very strict instructions: ‘Never hurt anybody.’ ”

After her participation in a second hijacking of an El Al airliner that was effectively foiled by on-board sky marshals in 1970, she was detained in Britain and eventually released as part of a prisoner exchange. Asked what would have happened if she had used the grenades, she insists she was committed to her movement and that she would not have made that mistake, even as her Nicaraguan-American co-hijacker was killed by the sky marshal.

“I think that tactic spread the idea that there was a Palestinian people.” But now, is it appropriate to employ different tactics? “Yes. I am very much involved in women’s issues and organising activities for my party and any other missions and it is all peaceful means.” Still, asked if she ever actually used a weapon, as opposed to that iconic poster pose, she says, “Yes of course, we used it all the time in the wars.”

Turning to that rather vexed question of the “right of return”, Khaled is asked just how many of her people should – or could – claim such a right in reality, should there be a peaceful settlement. (This question has been among the most intractable during the many different negotiations between Arabs and Israelis.) Khaled offers no compromise on this. She insists it must be everyone - all of the refugees, anywhere, regardless of whether they are actually among those who left - or are numbered among their descendants, generations later. The UN, after all, has issued IDs to signify their status as refugees - or the descendants of refugees, she says. There are still those people in those refugee camps and “it is their human right” to be able to return.

The conversation takes a detour. Turning to organisations like ISIS and Boko Haram, both of whom insist they are fighting on behalf of their religion, she is asked about her own reaction to the barbaric acts of such groups and what the world should do about them. In response, Khaled says, “First of all, IS, for an example, is an American industry. [I’m] positively sure about this. Since 2003 they established it after Al Qaeda - They did it themselves. Even Hillary Clinton recognised that. Because it wasn’t there, and they established it in Iraq; and now, they are supporting them through Turkey, with arms. Where these arms come from? From the arms industry, whether in the West or in Israel. They have tanks; they are now an army.” Challenged about where IS’ weapons come from; that IS’ weapons came from the retreating Iraqi army rather than any other secret source, Khaled insists that only some weapons came IS’ way. The rest, she is certain, must have come from America and its allies in the region. She argues IS was supported by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, America’s allies “who planned the thing”.

Gathering momentum, she expands her analysis. “But at the same time they have a mission to do. The Americans made a coalition to invade Iraq, and they did it, and they destroyed Iraq. The second step is to destroy the society. How to destroy it? To bring such tools in Iraq and Syria… At the same time they [the Americans and Zionists who created such groups] used religion, not the Christian religion, to show the brutal thing in Islam. They want to show that this is Islam.” (Asked about such assertions, the US Embassy replied that per America’s National Security Strategy, “we have undertaken a comprehensive effort to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIS/ISIL.”)

Khaled goes further, saying, “How to stop this is to have a unity among different groups in the society. But unfortunately the division in the society is a secular one, Sunni against Shia, Turkey against the Kurds. This reminds me of history of Europe in the Hundred Years’ War between France and Britain, according to religion and the sect.

“As for Boko Haram, it is very easy in Africa to have a group to raise the emblem of religion and to work under it. It’s the same thing that whether American industry or not, it is supported. We are against it of course, of all these kinds of groups who use religion to face the people. It reminds me of the Zionists who use religion to occupy a country, of Zionism, of Nazism.”

Is her group religious or political? “It’s political.” By contrast, for Hamas, “it is from the religious angle - there are differences in ideologies, but now it is for the liberation stage. I don’t believe religion is a source of attracting people to one side. Because who was born Muslim, who was born Christian, who was born Jewish, is Muslim, Christian and Jewish” - so that while the religions may contradict, it is the politics that matters, she says. “For us it is the homeland we are looking for, it’s politics,” she adds.

And again, about the repatriation of most of those classified as refugees, say if five million people are repatriated, where are the people already there now supposed to go? Some 13 million people in that rather small space will make it rather crowded – something close to Manhattan’s population’s density. “No, not so crowded. They will throw some of them outside. Before 1948, when the Zionist movement called Jews to come to the ‘Promised Land’, some people said they were crazy - but it became practical. They kicked us and they brought them. If we are speaking of the numbers, it is not the issue; it is an issue of rights - Gaza’s very crowded. India is crowded and they are living there; China is like an explosion of people - and the growth rates are high. But in Palestine it is the right, maybe not all Palestinians will go there. But some other people will go to their homeland. No one can deprive someone of their homeland.”

And about the different tactics, political orientations and objectives of the various Palestinian groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, where does her group, PFLP, fit? She responds that Hezbollah is a “sister party, yes… Many differences afterwards, but now we are all in the trench of resistance and we should be there all together.” And what of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority? Would she feel warm towards them?

Khaled responds, “No! They are - I recognise Abbas as the president, but he did not learn from the negotiations. He is sticking to the idea that life is negotiations, but not for all issues - like the Palestinian issue. We learned from the negotiations of the ANC and the Vietnamese… The first thing they [the Vietnamese] said was ‘withdraw’ and when the Americans said no, the first time [negotiation session] was for five minutes, but they were on the ground changing the status quo. Nelson Mandela was in prison while they negotiated, but there was struggle on the ground. Now, Mr Abbas and Mr [Saeb] Erakat went to the Security Council and they asked for the end to occupation in 2017, but the change was not on the ground.”

Of Israeli domestic politics, conversation turns to the upcoming election there on 17 March. From the ensuing discussion is clear Khaled follows Israeli politics very, very closely. What is her view of the movement among the various Arab parties in the Israeli polity to come together for a unified slate in the upcoming election, as well as the Labour Party’s alliance with Zipi Livni’s smaller party? Is there any chance for the evolution of a new political landscape in Israel?

“No. I don’t think so. I think that society is still going to the right - and this government is a government of the settlers and will keep Netanyahu as prime minister as he is on their side - Look at the line of elections in the past twenty years.” She is rather dismissive of Arab participation in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), arguing that they have been part of a parliament that has been responsible for discriminatory rules against Arab Israelis. As a result, those Arab MPs effectively were part of an effort to create a Potemkin village of democracy in Israel.

And as for her purpose in being in South Africa at this point, she explains that it is to assist the BDS movement to be in solidarity with her Palestinians. As far as the Americans go, she has never visited the country.

(The US Embassy noted, “although she doesn’t appear to be listed individually on the official Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (‘SDN List’) which is part of the Dept. of Treasury’s ‘Office of Foreign Assets Control,’ she is a member of the Politburo of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which is on the SDN List as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organisation.’ Being on this list means any US person or entity is prohibited from engaging in financial transactions…the PFLP remains on a terror watch list,” although they would not confirm her presence – or absence – on any no-fly list.)

Further, she acknowledges that she really has no contact with Americans, even though representatives of the Palestinian Authority like Saeb Erakat do meet Americans, of course, as part of the negotiations process and in other forums. Having said that, she seems dismissive of America’s role in any future Middle East peace deal. She argues, instead, that the real problem is that the US simply does not wish to end the Israeli occupation (presumably of the West Bank, although she would probably say publicly of the entire area from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River). Moreover, she calls attention to the fact that some in the US Congress wish to cut off the current US appropriation of $400 million worth of aid to Palestinians.

Our conversation ends on a sombre note as she asks the writer what he would do if he were suddenly dispossessed of his home: Move on, accept it, fight back, and live on in a soup of anger and agonies? Yes, it’s a question. But one also wishes she would similarly contemplate the circumstances of those Middle Eastern Jews who had similarly fled their homes in the 1940s and 50s, but that inevitably would have become yet another debate over whether these people had fled from lands from Morocco to Yemen, or had been enticed to come to Israel by nefarious outside forces.

And so, we part company. At the end, the writer is left to contemplate the mix of Marxist thinking, conspiracies in international affairs, and nationalist fervour that motivates Leila Khaled, and generates her worldview. This is a place where everything that happens is either part of a Western plan to oppress her people further and thwart their just aspirations – or supports their legitimate aims. And she, perhaps, was left to consider whether she had met a sympathiser or antagonist in this earnest conversation. 

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Lord Renwick on Mining Indaba: It’s not about the numbers - it’s about the real deals

Marianne Thamm, Daily Maverick, 12 Feb 2015

While a reported 7,000 people attended the Investing In Africa Mining Indaba in Cape Town this week, those in the know say those with the money are “sitting on their hands” and taking a “wait-and-see approach” to government policy on key issues such as beneficiation, strategic minerals, re-empowerment and developmental pricing. By MARIANNE THAMM.

Many of the key influencers in terms of where financiers seek to invest and sink their money were milling around the iconic Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town this week. High-powered meetings, breakfasts and lunches, involving some of the most influential people in local politics, international finance and investment (including American financier, Robin Saunders), took place in and around the hotel’s various terraces and restaurants.

Government officials who are in Cape Town and who have attended meetings are Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and ANC Treasurer-General Zweli Mkhize.

Someone who has a deep and abiding relationship with South Africa and who is keenly interested in promoting investment in the country is Lord Robin Renwick, former British ambassador to South Africa and later to the United States.

Renwick has a metaphorical black book of anyone who’s anyone in the international arena and who can make a difference, and uses his considerable diplomatic charm, to persuade or convince those he hopes to influence.

Renwick is also in Cape Town promoting his most recent book, Mission to South Africa – Diary of a Revolution. It is also somewhat synchronous that Renwick finds himself in Cape Town on 11 February, on the anniversary of the delivery of Nelson Mandela’s speech at the City Hall. Renwick developed a close relationship with Mandela who often confided in and “used” him. Renwick’s book provides an insider’s account of the behind-the-scenes negotiations and meetings in the run-up to Mandela’s release as well as events shortly afterwards.

But Renwick says the most pressing concern at present for investors as well as the Chamber of Mines after the third day of the Indaba currently taking place at the Cape Town Conference Centre, is the uncertainly created after Minister of Mineral Resources, Ngoako Ramathlodi’s official welcoming address on Tuesday.

The minister’s comments that the issue of developmental pricing as contained in the current draft of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Amendment Bill, would be re-opened - which has been referred back to parliament in order to address constitutional concerns – has unsettled the Chamber of Mines as well as investors.

Ramathlodi this week said that while in the current draft, the developmental price is set at the mine gate price, this was being “contested vigorously”. Government would prefer developmental pricing, which is lower than mine gate. This would result in producers of precious metals selling at reduced prices, a situation, Renwick sternly warned, that would simply “switch off investment in South African mining.”

Renwick said that the Department of Trade and Industry had put pressure on the Department of Mineral Resources to alter the wording of the bill.

“This is a real worry to investors and it is very important that it gets worked out in a sensible way. Of the 7,000 people attending this conference in Cape Town, not a lot of them are looking to invest in South Africa. Most of them are looking for investments in other African jurisdictions that are less complicated. We have to get clarity,’ said Renwick.

Another issue was Ramathlodi’s comments that his department had wanted the bill to be tested in the Constitutional Court to determine if provisions with regard to mineral beneficiation violated the country’s treaties under the World Trade Organisation.

Of concern also to investors was Ramathlodi’s hint that government would declare certain minerals as “strategic” – a matter President Zuma will address in his SONA on Thursday. This would provide for these minerals to be sold at set prices.

“Look, government is sovereign and can enact what it likes but the point is investors vote with their feet. They decide ‘are we going to invest here or in Mozambique or Namibia?’ That you can simply declare a mineral strategic at a Minister’s discretion is a worrying proposition to the mining companies. It is related to a very strong push from the DTI about beneficiation.”

The argument from the industry is that beneficiation is costly and energy intensive and would require subsidies.

“How does that work? If the government wishes to encourage beneficiation it should be introducing tax breaks rather than by other means. There is not enough energy and that is a worry. It means you will get beneficiation but you will lose jobs.”

Despite these concerns Renwick said his “job” was to promote investment in South Africa.

“I keep saying these investors are wrong to prefer the rest of Africa right now because there is here, a much stronger financial system than any other African country.”

Renwick said that government had been in a continuous dialogue with industry players about mining in South Africa about what needs to be accomplished.

“The government itself says it has lost out on a decade of strong mineral prices. In other mining jurisdictions employment increased while in SA it decreased. The reason for that is partly declining grades and damaging strikes as well as the power crisis.”

He said, however, that investors had been encouraged by Ramathlodi, who was viewed as an “energetic” Minister who clearly understood the industry and “the importance of keeping it in a healthy state from an investment and job creation point of view.”

The department’s announcement that the granting of permits to new mines had been overhauled to facilitate the simultaneous processing of permits – from the Departments of Environment and Water Affairs – was also welcome and “a big step forward”. This would cut the process down from a three-year wait to 12 months and needed to be speedily implemented.

Government also deserved praise, he said, for separating oil and gas from minerals in the bill, as well as removing requirements that would have discouraged investment in off-shore and on-shore oil and gas developments.

“This, if it had continued, would have been an absolute tragedy because there are huge oil and gas developments off the East Coast of Africa these days and the amount that will be going into Mozambique oil companies may be around $50 billion dollars over next ten years. SA would have lost out completely,” said Renwick.

It was thanks to Minister in the Presidency, Jeff Radebe, that industry arguments had been heeded, he added.

The terms of the new regulations for oil and gas exploration and development needed to be something that the world’s four biggest investors – Andarko, Exxon, Shell and Total – could live with, he said.

“If 50 percent of your export earnings come from minerals export and a huge amount of balance of payments is badly affected by imported energy costs, this could be game changer for South Africa if you encourage these companies to invest and explore.”

How government intended to implement its new policy of “re-empowerment” so that it not only benefitted a few individuals also needed more clarity.

“I firmly agree with government that there has to be a better distribution of resources. Re-empowerment is a very specific issue. Having delivered 26 percent of the stakes to a whole array of entities…if you actually say to mining company you have to do it all over again, in the end it is 52 percent. And if you say that the deal has to be vendor financed, then that regime becomes unattractive to the investor. I am being told the idea would be to say 26 percent must still be achieved but it can be done so by the purchasing of the shares. Financing is a critical issue.”

Renwick said he hoped to see more deals like SABMiller’s 2009 R6 billion empowerment deal – a deal that President Zuma had said should serve as a future model – and that was truly broad-based.

The next legislative cycle in parliament in relation to mining, he said, would be “make or break” for the industry.

“If we get a pretty balanced outcome which balances empowerment with greater benefits for a much larger number of people as well as growth and jobs by June, we will have a much more successful Indaba next year”.

The test of a successful Indaba was just not the numbers who enjoy coming to Cape Town in February anyway, but how much investment flowed into the country as a result of the gathering

“At the moment it is ‘wait and see’. All these investors are sitting on their hands waiting to see how this legislation turns out.”

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Consumers remain sensitive to debt

Sapa , Times Live, 11 February 2015

South African consumers' biggest concern remains servicing their debts, credit solutions firm MBD said on Wednesday.

"The pressure on consumer finances was intensified by amongst others prolonged labour strikes, some substantial price increases, and slow employment growth negatively influencing income levels," MBD said in a statement.

It said the latest Consumer Financial Vulnerability Index (CFVI) was virtually unchanged during the fourth quarter of 2014, and remained in the "mildly exposed" category.

The CFVI measures the state of consumers' cash flow.

The overall index declined to 51.2 points in the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to 51.4 points in the previous quarter.

"Despite some lower index values, consumers remained feeling mildly exposed with regard to their income, expenditure and savings.

"Debt obligations on the other hand continued to place significant pressure on consumer finances, as consumers continued to feel very exposed in terms of their debt servicing capabilities during Q4 2014."

Although 2014 proved to be another difficult year for the average South African, optimism and positive changes outweighed the negatives.

This caused consumers to generally perceive their cash flow to be in a slightly better position in the second half of the year than during the first half, and far more so when compared to 2013.

The CFVI research was conducted by the Bureau of Market Research and the department of taxation at Unisa on behalf of MBD.

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4.    Alliance

Mantashe defends visit to Huawei head office in China

 Setumo Stone, Business Day, 12 February 2015

AFRICAN National Congress secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has defended his visit to telecommunications infrastructure multinational Huawei’s headquarters in China, saying the governing party has a responsibility to promote SA as an investment destination.

Huawei, which has committed to growing its workforce by 50% in SA in the next five years, employs 1,028 people in the country.

This week, Huawei said Mr Mantashe visited its headquarters for talks with senior vice-president Dafeng Li on "deepening co-operation in building out SA’s national telecommunications network and ICT (information and communications technology) infrastructure".

Huawei, one of the world’s biggest telecommunications infrastructure providers, is entrenching itself in Africa and over the past few years has significantly grown its market share in SA, having secured some of the country’s lucrative contracts to roll out fixed and mobile networks.

The government is planning a massive roll-out of broadband to have each citizen connected to a high-speed internet network either through fixed-line or mobile services by 2030.

Mr Mantashe said his trip was hosted by the Communist Party in China, which "works hand in hand with everybody in China, including business".

"The problem is that here in SA, you do not understand how a governing party works," Mr Mantashe said, adding that he was able to meet the vice-president of Huawei through the connections of the Communist Party of China.

Huawei has also defended the meeting with Mr Mantashe, saying it would welcome anyone interested in using its technology products.

The company said on Wednesday that many global government representatives had visited its head office or communicated with its executives.

The group said it was a major supplier for both wireless and fixed networks in SA, and that its products and solutions were now serving about 40-million South Africans.

The multinational shrugged off criticism that its commitment to SA was an attempt to make up for restrictions on its expansion in the US due to concerns about its closeness to the Chinese state.

It said this year was the "Year of China in SA".

"China has seen an influx of South African leaders from various sectors," it said.

Huawei has launched smartphones and tablets in the past few years and claims to have sold 1-million of the devices last year.

The company also supplies enterprise solutions such as data centres, servers and routers to help improve the efficiency of enterprises in fields ranging from finance, energy, transport and government.

* This article was amended to indicate that Huawei has committed to growing its workforce by 50% in SA in the next five years

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COSAS RENEWS CALLS TO BOYCOTT SCHOOLING IN SUPPORT OF MALAMULELE

Emily Corke, EWN, 12 Feb 2015

MEC Panyaza Lesufi says he will take legal action to protect the rights of students.

JOHANNESBURG – While student body Congress of South African Students (Cosas) has renewed its call to pupils to stay away from school in solidarity with their counterparts in Malamulele, the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) says this is making the problem worse. 

Malamulele has been on complete lock down for more than a month when protesters took to the streets demanding their own municipality because the current municipality has failed the students.

Cosas has encouraged pupils to march to police stations until President Jacob Zuma answers their demands for Malamulele pupils to begin their school year. 

Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi says he will take legal action to put a stop to this to protect the rights of students who want to go to school.

“We are very sympathetic to the issue of Malamulele, but by stopping more children from going to school they you are worsening the situation, you can’t broaden the problem. 

“We need to solve the problem and that is why we want to ensure that our children in Gauteng must go to school and I can assure you they will go to school.”

Pupils were dispersed by metro police Tuesday who said the protest was illegal and unregistered with reports of looting and business disruption by protestors. 

The GDE condemned this saying Cosas had reneged on a previous agreement to protest peacefully. 

Four schools have been set alight since January.

Malamulele residents claim services are being given to Tshivenda speakers to the detriment of their own community.

(Edited by Leeto M Khoza)

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5.    International

Greeks flood streets to support government

Foreign Staff, Business Day, 12 February 2015

ATHENS/NEW YORK — Thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Athens on Wednesday to support their new anti-austerity government, which was locked in tough negotiations with eurozone partners in Brussels.

Standing in front of parliament, protesters unfurled banners reading "Bankrupt but Free" and "Stop Austerity, Support Greece, Change Europe". Greece’s government, led by the radical left-wing Syriza party, won power last month on a wave of anger over austerity imposed under a European Union (EU)-International Monetary Fund bail-out programme.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras tweeted a picture of the Athens protest, saying: "In the cities of Greece and Europe the people are fighting the negotiation battle, They are our strength."

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was attending a meeting of his eurozone peers in Brussels to press for a new debt deal and an end to many of the tough reforms required by the bail-out deal.

The building tension between Greece and its debtors roiled markets on Wednesday. Greece has been trying to drum up support for a €10bn bridging plan to stave off a funding crunch and buy time to win less austere terms from creditors.

Protesters in Athens singled out German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has led demands for Athens to keep promises made by the last government under the deal.

A poll on Tuesday showed 75% support in Greece for the government’s stance.

However, Greece’s EU partners have shown little sign of meeting the demands from Athens.

The standoff boosted market volatility, leading to investors exiting emerging markets. Emerging-market currencies slumped to the lowest level in more than a decade.

"Today is probably one of the most significant days of the decade for Europe, as politicians gather to determine the future of the eurozone and Ukraine," Simon Quijano-Evans, an emerging-market analyst at Commerzbank, said.

"Failure to reach a peace deal (in Ukraine) will likely to lead to further economic sanctions on Russia and possible delivery of arms by the US to Ukraine, which would translate into escalation on the ground."

AFP, Bloomberg and Reuters

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West Africa sees spike in Ebola cases as decline stalls

Reuters, Sabc News, 12 Feb 2015

The number of new Ebola cases rose for the second week in a row in West Africa, nearly doubling in Guinea, suggesting declines in the disease seen earlier in 2015 had stalled, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Efforts to wipe out the deadly virus were being hampered by people’s mistrust of health workers, and the number of people continuing to hide sick friends and relatives from authorities, particularly in Guinea's capital Conakry, officials said.

West Africa recorded 144 new confirmed cases of Ebola in the week to February 8 compared with 124 the previous week, the WHO said in a report.

"Despite improvements in case finding and management, burial practices, and community engagement, the decline in case incidence has stalled," the UN agency said.

In Guinea, where the outbreak began, there were 64 new cases compared with 39 the previous week.

"The main threat to achieving our goal of zero cases in 60 days is this resistance in Conakry," Dr. Sakoba Keita, national coordinator for the fight against the epidemic in Guinea, said.

Guinea's President Alpha Conde has announced a plan to have no Ebola cases by early March.

But in an illustration of the remaining challenges, youths from the Conakry suburb of Yimbaya spilled onto the streets on Monday, burning tyres after an imam suspected of conducting a secret Ebola burial was detained by authorities.

The UN said this week that 70 schools across the country had been unable to open because of local suspicions of medical kits being distributed to students.

The worst outbreak on record has now killed at least 9 177 people out of  22,894 recorded cases, mainly in the three worst-affected West African nations, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

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Thabane condemns attack on bodyguards

Nthakoana Ngatane, SABC News, 11 Feb 2015

Lesotho Prime Minister Tom Thabane has condemned the attack on his two bodyguards, and passed condolences to the family of the private security guard killed in attacks on February 1, 2015.

Spokesperson for Lesotho's Prime Minister, Thabo Thakalekoala, says Thabane will do everything in his power to protect the integrity of King Letsie III, who is being sued by the Attorney General for appointing President of the Court of Appeal.

Thakalekoala says Thabane is concerned about the situation ahead of Lesotho's elections at the end of the month.

“As things stand right now some politicians are not able to campaign freely because of security concerns and that includes the Prime Minister himself. So it is the feeling of the Prime Minister that this period leading to February 28 elections should be as free as possible (and) as comfortable as possible for anybody, any political party or for any individual who wants to stand for elections to campaign freely in all parts of the country without any fear,” adds Thakalekoala.

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Euro weakens as Greek debt talks fail

Fin24, 12 Feb 2015

 

Tokyo - The euro weakened on Thursday after talks between Greece and its European creditors on restructuring the country's bailout broke up without an agreement, with talks set to go down to the wire next week.

In Tokyo, the common currency bought $1.1310 and ¥136.02, down from $1.1332 and ¥136.37 in New York where it had strengthened on hopes for a breakthrough in Europe.

In other trading, the dollar fetched ¥120.27, slightly down from ¥120.35.

Currency markets were largely focused on the meeting where eurozone finance ministers were unable to hammer out a renegotiation of Greece's bailout terms.

Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said six hours of talks produced no deal on an extension of Athens' €240bn EU-IMF rescue programme.

Greece's bailout is due to expire at the end of this month and failure to agree on an extension would see Greece default on its giant debts, almost inevitably meaning that it would crash out of the eurozone.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras led the hard-left Syriza party to victory in elections last month vowing to bring an end to austerity measures imposed under the bailout.

Germany, the eurozone's main paymaster, has so far resisted Greece's bid to change the terms of its international rescue.

"Everyone is waiting to see whether the high line stance from Germany and Greece waivers, and who waivers the most," Evan Lucas, a markets strategist at IG Ltd. in Melbourne, told Bloomberg News.

The talks are set to resume on Monday.

The dollar was higher against key Asia-Pacific currencies.

The Australian dollar tumbled to 76.50 US cents from 77.74c as official data showed the country's unemployment rate jumped to a more-than 12-year high of 6.4% in January.

The dollar rose to 62.44 Indian rupees from 62.14 rupees on Wednesday, to Tw$31.60 from Tw$31.54 and to 32.72 Thai baht from 32.64 baht.

The dollar also climbed to 1 109.14 South Korean won from 1 096.41 won, to 12 850.10 Indonesian rupiah from 12 701.30 rupiah, to Sg$1.3629 from Sg$1.3564, and to 44.42 Philippine pesos from 44.34 pesos.

The Chinese yuan edged up to ¥19.25 from ¥19.15.

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6.    Comment

Investment in people keeps news groups afloat

Anton Harber, Business Day, 12 February 2015

AT A Future of News seminar at the University of the Witwatersrand last week, Financial Times (FT) of London managing editor James Lamont told how they had turned that operation around.

There were three key elements to their strategy of dealing with the loss of print readers and the difficulty of generating revenue on the internet. First, they charged for online access from early on, unlike the many who give away their online product. They ensured that the content was good enough to make their readers happy to pay for it. And they are working hard to engineer innovation and experimentation in what was a staid, old-style operation.

About two years ago, they hit the turning point when they started to earn more from their online subscriptions than the print product, and now they have rising profitability. Almost everyone’s job at the FT has changed significantly, but they still employ about 600 journalists around the world. Lamont — a former editor of our local Business Report — describes his function as preserving journalists’ jobs.

They make their profit not despite having so many people, but because of it. And that is what South African newspaper owners seldom realise — and why our industry is on a downward slide.

Almost across the board, the strategy of our news media companies has been to cut costs to maintain profitability in traditional media, without putting these resources into new media. Serial retrenchments have taken place in the past few years, and this shows in the product quality. It is a myopic approach that dooms them to a slow and painful death. Unless there is investment in the content people need and want and delivering it in the ways people want to consume it, there is no reason for people to take out their credit cards to pay for it.

The attitude of most local owners is captured by last week’s announcement that the national news agency, the South African Press Association (Sapa), will close. When Sapa needed investment to change its business model, it was not there. When other news agencies, such as Bloomberg and Reuters, were adapting to the changing world, the newspaper owners who controlled Sapa were cutting costs. Now there is not much left to save, and what should be a foundational news institution will be lost.

Every day I pick up our newspapers and — with only a couple of exceptions — I find stuff I have read via social media, where it is faster and often has more depth and complexity because of a wider range of sources and angles. Our newspapers are almost all being run for short-term profit, and with very little smart investment to take them into the new era.

The lesson from around the world is that those institutions — such as the Guardian and New York Times — that spend on quality content are the ones that are pulling through. Of course, these are international titles with masses of money to spend, and it is difficult to compare our local products in a small market, but most of our industry seems to know only how to slash costs.

Never mind the sclerotic print products. Local news websites are almost all dull and badly produced. You only have to read a story or two to know that there is little investment in the skills and talent it takes to do it half well. There is lots of opinion, because that’s cheap, but very little of the hard reporting and imaginative storytelling that is the lifeblood of journalism. The Daily Maverick website stands out, but that’s largely for its analysis rather than on-the-ground reporting.

The new owners at Independent News & Media are investing in technology and platforms to try to make up for years of neglect, and hopefully this will be followed by investment in people.

Media24 has appointed respected editor Andrew Trench to put together a new online newsroom, and that is promising. Though this company has always paid more attention to new technology than its counterparts and, as a result, its News24 site dominates the online news market, it is not because of the quality of the reporting, writing or editing. I hope this will be changing now.

• Harber is Caxton Professor of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand.

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EDITORIAL: Zuma has his own Rubicon to cross

Business Day, 12 February 2015

THREE decades ago this year, on the evening of August 15 1985, former president PW Botha stood up before an international television audience to deliver a highly anticipated speech.

Foreign diplomats based in SA had been briefed by the then governing National Party about a package of reforms that had been discussed by its leadership as a means of defusing mounting political tension, stopping violent resistance to apartheid, and bringing to an end financial sanctions and boycotts that were crippling the economy.

The world had been led to believe that the government was preparing to release Nelson Mandela, abolish discriminatory laws and open negotiations with representatives of the majority black population; that white SA was ready "to cross the Rubicon" to rejoin the league of nations.

It may have been, but Botha was not. To the surprise of even members of his own cabinet, the ageing, curmudgeonly and increasingly erratic "Groot Krokodil" gave the world the finger. He would not abolish apartheid, Mandela would stay in jail until he renounced violence and anyone who objected could go to hell.

The result was almost a decade of violent resistance and mounting repression by the apartheid security apparatus that brought SA to the brink of a catastrophic civil war.

In the end it was only Botha’s failing health that allowed his successor, FW de Klerk, to take the reins and nip across the Rubicon in the nick of time.

This evening, almost exactly 25 years since Mandela was released from jail and the process of negotiating a democratic dispensation began, President Jacob Zuma finds himself with a Rubicon of his own to cross. It is not as deep or treacherous as the divide that separated the National Party from the world, and the consequences of failing to cross it are unlikely to be as dramatic or calamitous in the short term. But it is there, and everyone knows it is there.

The means of crossing Mr Zuma’s Rubicon are no secret — the National Development Plan (NDP) sets out a clear path, even if the details are still to be filled in. What is missing is the will to do so, and the fact that the problem does not lie solely in Mr Zuma’s refusal to put the country’s best interests ahead of his own or those of the African National Congress (ANC).

Unlike the National Party of 1985 the ANC has not seen the writing on the wall, or if it has, has chosen to ignore it. Certainly, the party is aware of what needs to be done to get the economy back on track, avoid looming public insurrection, restore the process of racial reconciliation started by the late Mandela and Mr de Klerk, and reverse the growing inequality that is rapidly taking SA back to the madness of the 1980s.

The ANC was responsible for the NDP, after all, and has repeatedly come up with proposals to clear the obstacles that are preventing SA from progressing politically, socially and economically. But for every step forward there is invariably a step back. There are elephants in every room, and none among its senior leadership who is prepared to acknowledge their presence.

Mr Zuma himself has grown into the biggest elephant; his efforts to avoid playing by the rules are a constant distraction for the party. But he is not the only one. Even if he were to go tomorrow, the problems would remain. The party has proved to be unable to choose a team capable of leading SA according to a set of rational policies. Their weaknesses and failures are a reflection of the party’s flaws, and the example set by its president. The biggest obstacle to the ANC crossing its Rubicon is the party’s own culture and how it manifests in the way the government functions. Or fails to function.

Sadly, Mr Zuma is as incapable of taking the bold steps SA’s current circumstances demand, as Botha was 30 years ago.

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Time for ANC-led government to shift into top gear

The Times Editorial, 12 February 2015

 

No matter what happens when President Jacob Zuma gives his State of the Nation speech today, we expect South Africa to enter a new phase.

We expect to see the emergence of a government that is able to act decisively and give clear marching orders. Today cannot be "business as usual".

Not only must our leaders stand up and be counted, they must put their personal ambitions aside and remember the oath they took when they took office.

If truth be told, ours is a ship in distress.

This nation cannot be held hostage to the chaos that Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters have threatened to unleash.

Unable to rise above the challenges of the day, weak organisations tend to retreat to the security blanket of their tried-and-tested tactics.

The biggest threat we face today is not from the opposition benches but from the ruling party, which is stuck in one gear.

Men and women of courage have, it seems, been suborned by the trappings of power. The name of the game today is how to survive politically without rocking the boat.

Zuma might not be the architect of this chaos and confusion but he is the driver of a bus that is taking us nowhere fast. We must not allow ourselves to be driven into a corner of unreason. Our history is full of heroes who, in time of need, though their position was unpopular, put their best foot forward and challenged the status quo.

Where would we be today if Nelson Mandela, Anton Lembede, Walter Sisulu, Ashley Peter Mda and Oliver Tambo had not challenged ANC leaders who saw nothing wrong in how they sought to bring about change in this country?

We are all descendants of men and women who walked where others feared to tread. Today, that same spirit is needed to pull the nation out of the mud.

As Zuma enters parliament tonight he must take the responsibility on his shoulders.

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Everyone loses with one-size-fits-all approach to teacher training

Michael Rice, Business Day, 12 February 2015

THE Department of Basic Education’s decision to take grade 8 and 9 mathematics teachers out of schools for one day a week and train them in how to teach their subject, points to a fundamental flaw in the government’s approach to upgrading teacher skills and to their professional development.

The proposed strategy to train mathematics teachers is a typical knee-jerk reaction by the department. Since 1994 the South African government has spent more than R30bn on in-service teacher training with little reward. A major contributor to this is the fact that many of the administrators charged with identifying the skills up-grading needs of teachers are far removed from the day-to-day realities of the classroom, if they ever had any experience of it at all.

Teachers are obliged to attend courses regardless of how relevant they are to their day-to-day classroom practice, or where they are in the syllabus. As a result, upgrading programmes are generally resented.

Because programmes tend to be centralised, they are inevitably disruptive. Teachers are taken out of their schools and teaching time is irretrievably lost when it occurs during school hours. Teachers’ personal lives are also disrupted, as they have to leave their families and communities, especially when workshops happen at weekends or during holidays.

The dearth of suitable, high-quality, properly evaluated training programmes means teachers are treated as passive recipients. Their particular needs are not consulted. Courses tend to be of the one-size-fits-all variety and, in the present case, remedial action is aimed at the wrong teachers.

The problems with maths teaching start in the primary school phase. I know of grade 3 and 4 teachers who cannot tell which is greater, three-quarters or two-thirds. Fractions are fundamental to everything that follows in the maths curriculum. In addition, and this is one of the most damning flaws in the system, there is no accountability or evaluation. That is, no follow up to see if teachers are applying what they have learnt in the classroom.

The current approach is also extremely costly, requiring transport, accommodation, catering and the like. It is not unknown for teachers to use these occasions as extended holidays. A refusal to acknowledge these realities has resulted in countless millions being spent on workshops and upgrading programmes to little, if any, effect.

In-service teacher education (Inset) and continuing professional development are essential for the effective functioning of any educational system. The skills of in-service teachers need to be continually upgraded and the teachers must be kept motivated if they are to retain their focus and enthusiasm for what is one of the most rewarding but exhausting professions. Above all, teachers need to feel they are getting something worthwhile out of Inset. Unless they come to Inset with a positive attitude and high expectations that their needs will be fulfilled, that all their sacrifices are worthwhile, efforts to upgrade their skills are likely to be a waste of time and money. Buy-in is essential.

How can the department ensure buy-in? A big change in philosophy is required. There are no quick fixes, no instant solutions. Change happens slowly in education. Teachers must see that what is on offer is going to have a positive effect on their lives in the classroom. It is only when teachers feel that what they are learning is relevant to what they need in the classroom that they will engage positively with a programme.

Therefore, teachers should be involved in deciding what they need and in designing the programmes they wish to follow. This will encourage them to take responsibility for their own learning and professional growth. They must become active rather than passive participants in the acquisition of new knowledge and understanding.

One-size-fits-all approaches, apart from being enormously expensive, achieve little and are most often resented and resisted. Different teachers in different schools have different needs and different limitations. While it might not have been possible in the past to target specific individuals with specific challenges, the technology now exists that makes this possible.

Having said that, there is still a strong case to be made for groups of teachers with similar needs and limitations getting together and working through their challenges as a learning community. The important thing is to identify common needs/problems/issues within a potential learning community. This should be a departmental function. Learning in a safe, supportive community of like-minded individuals can enhance learning in unexpected and exciting ways.

The department should be putting its energies into encouraging, supporting, nurturing and making teachers feel valued by facilitating the creation of teacher learning communities within a school and/or school district.

Furthermore, their professional and personal lives should be disrupted as little as possible. Teachers should remain in their schools and communities as much as possible. They can then test and implement immediately what they are learning. This is important because as things now stand there is little if any follow-up to see if teachers are implementing what they have supposed learnt. Where there is little accountability there will be little commitment.

Accountability cannot be separated from evaluation. Unfortunately, accountability and evaluation have become areas of extreme contestation with severe consequences for our education system. However, as with other reforms, making them voluntary could deflect confrontation. Inset programmes need to be constantly evaluated against clear criteria to assess whether they are relevant and are meeting teachers’ real needs. Such an assessment should include subsequent teacher performance in the classroom. Evaluation is key not only to improving quality, but also to providing data for identifying further interventions.

Teacher development must be continuous. Professional development must be written into the school calendar with full-scale planning beforehand to identify specific needs and to design a year-long programme accordingly.

The technology now exists to provide personalised feedback to every teacher in the country. Support should include classroom observation, mentoring, assessment and research projects. All of which would be more cost effective than the department’s current approach as well as educationally sound.

For all that, without the active support of politicians, the trade unions and the bureaucrats responsible for the administration of education, none of the above can be achieved. Political will must be coupled with a genuine commitment to, and understanding of, the importance, nature and complexity of continuous professional development. Equally, there must be the will to take tough decisions and hold teachers and administrators to account.

Unfortunately, this is, for the most part, not the case in SA where a one-size-fits-all approach and short-term expediency are the norms.

• Rice is the chairman of the Programme for Educational Tablets in Schools Foundation.

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Op-Ed: Twenty-five years after Mandela's freedom, SA media struggle

Anton Harber, Daily Maverick, 12 Feb 2015

Media ownership, control and influence is a contested space in a democracy, and so it should be. In the case of South Africa, recent developments are of particular interest: the ANC has put away the big stick, and is now using state resources, patronage and state power to reshape the media to its liking. The result has become dramatically visible in recent months, with a tangible diminishing of the space for critical, independent, accountability journalism. This new approach was crafty, insidious and more effective. By ANTON HARBER.

On a recent morning, I woke up and over a cup of coffee turned to social media. It was a few days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and within a few minutes I was alerted and linked to multiple layers of argument over the issue: those expressing sympathy, those expressing difficulty with sympathising, those who expressed sympathy with others … it was rich, complex, informative, cosmopolitan and challenging.

I also found and watched our local comedian Trevor Noah’s wonderful performance on the Daily Show in the US, a few interesting local articles and some quirky links to entertaining material I would not otherwise have known about. Since these had been posted or ‘liked’ by my ‘friends’, it was quite likely that they would entertain me.

Then my morning newspapers arrived. I could flip through the city’s morning offerings in minutes. The important stuff I had already read online, where I found a much richer, more varied selection of interpretations than could possibly fit into the papers. The lesser stuff was barely worth my time. And the interesting opinions and columns I had already read online.

I have known it for some time, but our newspapers are sclerotic. They are failing to rise to the challenge presented by online and social media, still living in an age where they could define and control the news flow. They are dull. They are not telling us much beyond the surface of what is happening in our country today. They are failing us as citizens, and failing our democracy. No wonder my students look at me with amazement when I suggest it is a good idea to read newspapers.

To understand what lies behind this, one has to track the change in the ANC’s media strategy, a shift in the way they fight what they have called in policy papers “the war of ideas”.

ANC media policy has gone through three phases since their return from exile. When they came to power, they had a very open and progressive media policy: open up broadcasting, transform the SABC into an independent public broadcaster, give support and subsidy to build community media. They engaged with the private media – particularly newspapers – but essentially left them alone. They pushed for transformation, but did not interfere.

The second phase came a few years ago. Fed up with the criticism and scrutiny they were getting from quite a hostile newspaper sector – and let’s face it, it was quite hostile – they threatened intervention. They called for an inquiry into a Media Tribunal, which would have dismantled the press self-regulatory system and replaced it with a statutory one; and they drew up the Protection of State Information Bill – “known as the Secrecy Bill” - which was a direct threat to the investigative journalism which was making the lives of ANC leaders so uncomfortable.

Those measures ran into strong opposition, including within the ANC itself, and it was doubtful whether they would pass constitutional muster. The threat of a Media Tribunal – always a crude and unworkable idea – was moved to the backburner, a silent, background threat; a watered-down but still problematic Secrecy Bill has been on the president’s desk for over a year without signature, and without explanation. So the tough strategy had not got very far, mainly because of what it was. It only earned the governing party worse media coverage.

That led, I believe, to a third phase, unannounced, subtle and only discernable now that it has been in place for a while, operating below the radar. The ANC saw how it could use its power, influence and access to state resources to support the emergence of more friendly media and put the squeeze on those who were more critical. This happened in a number of different ways:

• Instead of complaining about the influence of advertisers, the government began to realise it was a power they also held, since collectively they and the parastatals they controlled were one of the biggest media spenders. But this power was dispersed among scores of different departments and institutions, so they moved to centralise control over media buying. This allowed them to shift their spending to media they wanted to support and withhold it from those they were angry with. This had to be done discreetly, as it could fall into conflict with the Public Finance Management Act if they were seen to be making party-political decisions about spending public money. The most egregious example of this was the R43-million sponsorship by Eskom of New Age business breakfasts – a massive overpayment from a parastatal that was not flush with cash. It emerged last week that the government was giving New Age with its 150,000 readers 10% of its spending, about the same as the Daily Sun, which has about five million readers. It was reported this weekend that the Minister of Communications had overridden her officials to run a large and “totally unnecessary” campaign in New Age in December. This has not been verified but it points to an emerging pattern.
• The ANC also used its influence in the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) and its allies in China to put public money behind the purchase by an ally of Independent Newspapers, one of the biggest newspaper groups. Again there was serious overpayment and dubious use of public monies. It was key ANC leaders who put this coalition together. It is no coincidence that the structures of ownership in the Sekunjalo Independent Newspapers are murky; this is part of the pattern of back-door influence. The new chief executive, Dr Iqbal Survé, moved quickly against independent and critical voices on some of his newspapers.
• At the same time, there began a much more direct and aggressive move to seize control of the SABC and bring it into line. This involved intervention in the SABC board and executive appointments, and the promotion and protection of individuals who could be relied on to deliver suitable political content, even if they were manifestly unfit for the job.
• Critical decisions over set-top boxes were held up, putting an embarrassing and costly delay on the migration of broadcasting to digital. Why was this? Was this just dithering? It gave the government a stick to wield over television companies. It emerged that e.tv, lobbying hard for regulation in its favour, was pushed into running unannounced editorial puffs on its news to curry favour with ministers who would be important to the decision. Its independence and credibility was quietly compromised.

The ANC has put away the big stick, and is now using state resources, patronage and state power to reshape the media to its liking. Control of Parliament gives the party considerable influence over key appointments and public funds and they appear to have shifted from trying to find the best person to do these tasks to favouring those who can be relied on to deliver at key moments, like elections. The result has become dramatically visible in recent months, with a tangible diminishing of the space for critical, independent, accountability journalism. This new approach was crafty, insidious and more effective.

Of course, some of this is legitimate politicking. Media ownership, control and influence is a contested space in a democracy and so it should be. The government and the ruling party are entitled – even obligated – to lobby and push for more and better media coverage as much as anyone else. Independent media are always under pressure from every quarter wanting to compromise their independence. Where it is of concern is where government activity crosses the line into the abuse of public money and position – such as when the Minister writes to SABC board members to call them to account, or parastatals waste money on overpriced advertising and sponsorship.

This comes at a time when other institutions of accountability – such as Icasa, the broadcast and telecoms regulator – are either neutered, and ineffectual, or under attack for showing critical independence – like the National Prosecutions Authority and the Public Protector. At a time like this, the private media is particularly important: it is one of the very few powerful institutions of accountability which stands outside of direct state control. It has a special role at a time when other institutions are under pressure.

You also have to place this against the background of what is happening in media and journalism globally. The media is under severe financial pressure, and therefore more vulnerable to political and financial manipulation.

In dealing with this situation, we have three important assets:

• We have our freedom, the protection of our constitution and our constitutional court. So there may be fewer outlets which will publish challenging material, but if they do, we at least now have the protection of the law.
• We have a long and rich traditional of investigative and accountability reporting, and in recent times we have had three to four powerful investigative teams doing invaluable work. A golden era of exposé might now be under pressure, and might be coming to an end, but we have a tradition of feisty independence in at least some quarters to draw on, and this is very important.
• We have always had and still have a number of dedicated, committed journalists, many of them frustrated, many of them hiding in the corners of our mainstream media, a good number even in the SABC, sometimes battling to make a living, but determined and skilled and eager to join the battles of the Fourth Estate.

In other words, the spirit of Sol Plaatje, Henry Nxumalo and Nat Nakasa lives on. And that is our best hope in tough times. 

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Greece is no Germany

*Leopold Scholtz, Fin24, 12 Feb 2015

 

IN SPITE of getting a collective cold shoulder in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and Rome last week, the new Greek government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has indicated that it is pressing on with its refusal to continue to follow the austerity demands put by the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In fact, in his first speech in the Athens parliament Tsipras defiantly said that Greece would not accept the extension of the international bailout which had kept the country from falling into an abyss since 2012, as the price was too high. (The bailout would in any case have had to be renewed at the end of February, as it runs out then.) Instead, he announced that he would seek a bridging loan to give him time to negotiate a new deal.

This has already been given the thumbs down in most capitals, but what is especially interesting is some of the arguments put forward by Tsipras. As Germany, the most powerful country on the continent, hitherto was the main moneylender, the Greek leader referred extensively to German history.

His argument more or less runs like this: after World War I, Germany was slapped with war reparations totalling 132 billion Reichsmark which, according to some, would today be worth some $436bn. This was clearly hopelessly too much for a Germany impoverished by the war, and the amount was successively lowered until Adolf Hitler simply cancelled all payments when he took over the government in 1933.

After World War II, the victors at first demanded that the payments be resumed. However, in 1952-53 a big debt conference was held in London. After some tough negotiations, the victors acquiesced to forgiving half of the debt – about 65 million Reichsmark, or 65% of Germany’s gross national product in 1953. The last reparations were finally made as late as October 2010.

Tsipras made the point that the excessive debt burden on Germany directly led to Hitler’s rise to power. His Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yanis Varoufakis, alluded to this too when he told a press conference in Berlin that the hardship accompanying the economic crisis in Greece had led to the third-biggest party in parliament being a bunch of unashamed Nazis – the extremist Golden Dawn party.

Why can't Greece be approached in the same conciliatory way as Germany in 1953, he asked. What happened in Germany in the early 1930s may also happen in present-day Greece, Varoufakis intimated.

Indeed; is it not true that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander?

The problem is that Tsipras and Varoufakis were comparing apples to pears. Germany, whether in the early 1930s or the early 1950s, cannot be compared to the Greece of today.

Firstly, Germany – then as now – was one of the most powerful and influential countries in Europe. When Berlin coughed, Europe - so to speak - caught a cold.

On the other hand, Greece represents only 2.5% of the EU’s economy. And over the past few years European leaders worked hard to build walls around Greece to prevent a Greek cold from infecting the rest of the continent.

Free-wheeling Greece versus hard-working Germany

More importantly, in 1953 the Germans were busy effecting the 'economic miracle' which transformed a country full of smoking ruins into the leading European economic power. The reasons why they were able to do it is no secret: financial discipline, frugality, wise spending on the restoration of the infrastructure, excellent education, an efficient state administration which collected taxes from rich and poor alike, and a hard-working population.

What does Greece have to offer? A free-wheeling population where the rich (and many poor!) bribe tax collectors and successfully evade taxes, demand to retire at the age of 50 and are then conveniently kept by the state.

In fact, Greece is a corrupt shambles. Tsipras has vowed to tackle the problems and one supposes he must, for the time being, get the chance to prove he can do it. But he also wants to rehire the laid-off state officials, many of whom were on the books but never did a day’s work. He wants to throw around like water money the government doesn’t have.

And then he gets angry because the Germans do not want to subsidise his Marxist ideas?

The former head of the US central bank, Alan Greenspan, recently predicted to the BBC that Greece would have to leave the eurozone. He is probably right.

Tsipras and Varoufakis will have to learn that being good rabble-rousers in election time is not conducive to governing well. Of course, this is never easy. It is a lesson even our own ANC has not yet learnt properly.

* Leopold Scholtz is an independent political analyst who lives in Europe. Views expressed are his own.

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