COSATU Media Monitor, 20 June 2014

[Norman Mampane]

COSATU Media Monitor

Friday, 20 June 2014

 

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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  Solidarity index shows little wage and job security confidence

Ø  Trend shows teachers resigning early to access pension funds

Ø  Obama wants daughters to get a taste of life on minimum wage

Ø  Lonmin seeks intervention in mine strike

Ø  US says government lab workers possibly exposed to anthrax

Ø  Ramatlhodi asks Zuma to hold mines bill

Ø  Doctors blame provincial bosses for equipment shortages

Ø  Limpopo farmers fined for underpaying employees

Ø  SA mines TB highest in world: Motsoaledi

Ø  Salary protest case against 58 soldiers dropped due to weak evidence

Ø  NUM: Limiting strike lengths threatens organised labour

Ø  Marikana: Gory details emerge as Mr X testifies

Ø  'SA employee confidence has fallen'

Ø  Too few public order police: Union

Ø  BP and Exxon pull staff from Iraq

 

COSATU

 

Ø  Metrorail ticket hikes to go ahead

Ø  Commuters face double blow - Cosatu

Ø  Inside Labour: Promises but no solutions

 

South Africa

Ø  INFOGRAPHIC: The 2013 General Household Survey

Ø  Marawa leaves Brazil to pay tribute to Eddie Zondi

Ø  Zondi’s colleagues share their memories

Ø  Former Rustenburg mayor’s murder conviction set aside

Ø  Joburg metro to remove election posters

Ø  Veteran MP fears South Africans could lose respect for Parliament

Ø  Social grants beneficiaries more than doubled in 10 years

 

Alliance

Ø  Post-SONA Debate, Day 2: The overalls are over it

Ø  ANC condemns EFF behaviour

 

 

International

Ø  Fifa investigating Mexico over alleged anti-gay slurs

Ø  Mugabe succession battle fuels media crackdown

Ø  SA will not intervene in Lesotho’s disputes

Ø  African World Cup fans fear for their lives

Ø  Cameroon coach slams 'disgusting' players over conduct

 

Comment

Ø  The inequality debate

_________________________________________________________

1.           Workers’ Parliament

Solidarity index shows little wage and job security confidence

 Karl Gernetzky, Business Day, 20 June 2014

THE weak economy and labour instability are eradicating employee confidence in wage and job security, according to trade union Solidarity.

The Solidarity Research Institute on Thursday released its labour market index for the second quarter, which showed a worsening trend in perceived job security, as economic indicators deteriorated and the five-month-long strike in the platinum sector continued.

The union said it expected long-term difficulties in the labour market as recession threatened growth.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) is talking to the world’s largest platinum producers about an agreement that would end the strike. The union met Amplats and Lonmin on Thursday, and is expected to meet Impala Platinum on Friday.

Solidarity’s index‚ which was compiled in collaboration with market strategy agency ETM Analytics‚ forms part of the union’s quarterly labour market report.

It has sub-indices on employee confidence‚ labour affordability and the business cycle. The collective index climb ed to 45.5 in the first quarter, from 44.9 last year.

The 40-50 level shows job and wage insecurity, and stagnant to rising wages, with retrenchments in some sectors.

Employee confidence decreased to 45.7 in the first quarter from 44.9 in the last quarter of last year.

Solidarity senior economic researcher Piet le Roux said the sustained score below 50 for each of the index’s components pointed to a worsening trend in job security.

"The index has been below 50 for a prolonged period," he said.

"In the first quarter of 2013, for example, the index was just 46.1 and has been below 50 in all quarters except the second quarter of 2011."

The labour affordability index, which measures the ability of companies to hire more staff or offer higher wages, remained at 45.7, as labour affordability relative to economic output remained weak.

The business cycle index improved to 45.0 from 42.4.

ETM market strategist Chris Becker said in the report that evidence pointed to a cyclical slowdown and the possibility of a recession. This slowdown could be more broad-based than the one in 2008-09, as this had been cushioned by resilience in the retail sector.

Retail growth could be sustained if consumer spending continued and banks injected more credit into the economy, he said.

_______

Trend shows teachers resigning early to access pension funds

SABC News, 20 June 2014

Thousands of teachers are resigning earlier in order to get their hands on their pension savings.

The disturbing trend shows that many actually return to the system once they settle their debt.

The government is now considering ways of arresting the trend.

Spokesperson of the Department of Education, Elijah Mhlanga says: “This is a situation where the system shows a person who has resigned as a permanent staff member after having left the department. However, the next day when you check, you find that the vacancy is there in the system but there is someone on that vacancy who happens to be the same person who resigned yesterday...”

But the National Union of Teachers is pushing for government to make it possible for teachers to access their pensions while they are still working.

Union vice president, Allan Thompson says this will solve the problem of resignations and simultaneously alleviate the shortage of teachers.

“We want to protect our children from losing well qualified and suitably experienced educators due to the demand and the high level of debt they are faced with. We are saying the pension benefit belongs to the employees - so we have to come up with a way of saying: how do we begin to assist them to use their own money for pension?”

_____

Obama wants daughters to get a taste of life on minimum wage

REUTERS, SABC News, 20 June 2014

President Barack Obama and wife Michelle both worked minimum-wage jobs before they got law degrees, a character-building experience they said they also want their teenage daughters to share.
   
The president scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, waited tables at an assisted-living facility for seniors and also worked as a painter.

The First Lady worked at a book binding shop.
   
"I think every kid needs to get a taste of what it's like to do that real hard work," Michelle Obama said in an interview with Parade magazine.
   
"We are looking for opportunities for them to feel as if going to work and getting a paycheck is not always fun, not always stimulating, not always fair," the president said.

"But that's what most folks go through every single day."
   
The first couple has taken pains to keep their daughters Malia, 16, and Sasha, 13, out of the public eye while in the White House.

But Malia was recently spotted on the set of a CBS television program, working as a production assistant for a day.

The Obamas gave the interview to promote a summit the White House is holding on Monday to discuss policies to help working families.
   
"There are structures that can help families around child care, healthcare, and schooling that make an enormous difference in people's lives," Obama said in the interview.    

This year, Obama has tried to focus on issues such as ensuring equal pay for women, expanding early childhood education and hiking the minimum wage

______

Lonmin seeks intervention in mine strike

SABC, 20 June 2014

Platinum Producer Lonmin, spokesperson Sue Vey says any intervention to help break the deadlock in wage talks between the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) and the three platinum mines would be appreciated.

The mines say one of Amcu's latest additional demands is that mineworkers be paid for the period they were on strike.

However, the mines say this is not affordable and would breach the "no-work-no-pay" principle.

"We don't have a deal until we can iron out these issues"

The union responded to the offer of the employers earlier this week.

Vey says they hope to find a sustainable solution very soon. “It took us a little bit by surprise. We believed that we had an agreement last Thursday, but we are hoping to iron out these issues.”

She adds: “We don't have a deal until we can iron out these issues. We obviously welcome any involvement of the government. It’s been a long and process by all accounts and so any intervention that can bring finality to this is welcome.”

Amcu went on strike on January 23 demanding a basic monthly salary of R12 500.

______

US says government lab workers possibly exposed to anthrax

Reuters, Sabc, 20 June 2014

As many as 75 scientists and staff in United States (US) government laboratories in Atlanta may have been exposed to live anthrax bacteria after researchers failed to follow safety procedures, prompting an investigation by federal authorities.

Researchers working in a high-security bioterror response lab at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were preparing inactivated samples of the deadly organism, the CDC said on Thursday. But the bacteria may still have been infectious when the samples were transferred to lower-security CDC labs not equipped to handle live anthrax.

Two of the three labs conducted research that may have aerosolized the spores, the CDC said. The agency first detected the exposure on June 13, when live bacteria were found on the original slides used by scientists. Environmental sampling was done and the lab areas remain closed for decontamination.

"No employee has shown any symptoms of anthrax illness," Dr. Paul Meechan, director of the environmental health and safety compliance office at the CDC, told Reuters. "This should not have happened," he said. For those exposed, "we're taking care of it. We will not let our people be at risk."

The safety breach in the nation's premier bioterror lab raises new doubts about security measures at the CDC, whose infection control protocols are held up as a model to the world.

The FBI is working with CDC to investigate the incident, but has no evidence of foul play, a spokesman for the bureau said. US lawmakers said they would be monitoring the situation.

The threat of insiders having access to lethal bioterror agents led to a crackdown on lab security

“There is no room for error or negligence when it comes to bioterror research and every precaution must be taken to ensure the safety of our scientists," House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton said in a statement.

Meechan said the CDC is conducting an internal investigation and that disciplinary measures would be taken if warranted. He stressed that there is no risk to the general public.

The handling of pathogens inside US government laboratories has been a growing concern since 2008, when the FBI identified Dr. Bruce Ivins, a US Army anthrax researcher, as the prime suspect in a series of anthrax letter attacks in 2001.

The threat of insiders having access to lethal bioterror agents led to a crackdown on lab security. The Ivins case touched off fears that “malicious actors” would use the substances to harm humans, according to a 2009 report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The CDC said that once the live bacteria were discovered, it immediately began contacting people working in the labs who may have been exposed. Meechan said seven researchers are the most likely to have come into contact with live anthrax, but the agency is casting as wide a net as possible to offer treatment to anyone who may be at risk.

_____

Ramatlhodi asks Zuma to hold mines bill

Paul Vecchiatto, Business Day, 20 June 2014

MINERAL Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi has sent an official request to President Jacob Zuma to delay signing into law the contentious bill that will govern the mineral resources sector.

The Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) Amendment Bill was passed by Parliament in February as part of a raft of draft laws that were rushed through the legislature ahead of the May 7 national and provincial elections.

MPRDA detractors have said the bill is flawed on constitutional grounds in that it was not processed by the legislature properly and would scare off international investors, especially in the nascent oil and gas sector.

The procedural concerns relate to the National Council of Provinces not having held public hearings on the proposed changes. Further, there were last-minute changes to the bill — rushed through without the portfolio committee on mineral resources having discussed them.

Since the beginning of this month, Mr Zuma has signed at least seven bills into law, including the Employment Equity Amendment Act, various amendments to the environmental management acts, and the Infrastructure Development Bill.

Among the bills awaiting Mr Zuma’s signature are the Private Security Industries Regulation Amendment Bill, which like the MPRDA has the potential to bring South Africa into conflict with its international obligations such those it has to the World Trade Organisation.

Mr Ramatlhodi said on Thursday he was studying the minerals bill. "I have sent a request to the Presidency via my director-general to hold onto the act.

"I am studying it."

While he had not received any formal requests to stop the bill being signed into law, he had heard that there were a lot of complaints about it, Mr Ramatlhodi said. Further, he had heard "rumours" that Parliament had not processed the bill properly.

During the MPRDA’s progress through Parliament, proposals were made by industry and both African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA) MPs to separate out the oil and gas sector and have it governed under its own legislation.

Mr Ramatlhodi said separating the oil and gas sector would depend on whether the MPRDA did go back to Parliament for redrafting. "I have not made up my mind on that.

"However, I ask myself: ‘how do you separate thermal gas from coal?’."

When the bill was initially introduced last year by former mineral resources minister Susan Shabangu, now minister in the Presidency, it had two main objectives. These were to increase the beneficiation of minerals in South Africa and to make it easier for companies to apply for licences for exploration and mining.

During Parliament’s public hearings, mining and oil and gas companies raised numerous objections to the MPRDA.

Negotiations between the Chamber of Mines and the Department of Mineral Resources ironed out most of the differences by the end of January. But during the mineral resources committee deliberations in February, a proposal that was initially endorsed by ANC MPs, that the oil and gas sector should be regulated under a different bill, was rejected.

Furthermore, the ANC increased the state’s free-carry interest (the amount of oil production revenue that accrues to the government from new oil production without it contributing to exploration and development costs). The interest was hiked from 20% by a further 80%, meaning that the entire production could be handed over to the state.

This, the bill’s detractors argued, effectively meant the nationalisation of the country’s nascent oil and gas sector, before it had even started.

This issue and the wide discretionary powers that the act gave the minister of mineral resources prompted the DA and the Legal Resources Centre to petition Mr Zuma not to sign the law into effect.

The two parties also took issue with the fact that the bill did not take into account the rights and interests of those who lived on and owned communal land.

DA mineral resources spokesman James Lorimer said he could count at least eight instances where the MPRDA might be unconstitutional and it should be rewritten entirely.

Former ANC MP and mineral resources committee chairwoman Faith Bikani said last month that she believed the MPRDA should be returned to Parliament for reprocessing. "That bill was not good and it needs to be reworked," she said at the time.

Webber Wentzel partner Peter Leon said on Thursday he commended Mr Ramatlhodi for asking Mr Zuma to delay signing the bill. "There are two options here — either the president just sends the bill back on constitutional grounds, and those are fixed, or he just does not sign it at all and Mr Ramatlhodi introduces a new draft bill that has to go through a new parliamentary process.

"The latter would be far better," Mr Leon said.

____

Doctors blame provincial bosses for equipment shortages

Katharine Child , Times Live, 20 June 2014

Fifty-three million rand. That's how much of the R80-million budget for equipment for the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital was not spent in the 2013-2014 financial year.

But it is apparently not the hospital's fault that money allocated for expensive purchases such X-ray machines was not used.

Several sources said the Gauteng department of health had not approved orders placed by several of the hospital's departments.

Instead, claim the sources, the department withheld the money.

Normally, the department will keep money that is not spent by hospitals.

But in this case, doctors claim, the department did not release the funds.

The Times is not disclosing the doctors' names to prevent victimisation.

One source said heads of department had submitted order forms for equipment but had heard nothing from the department of health.

Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital is in dire need of colonoscopes, gastroscopes, beds for the intensive-care unit, and operating tables, to list but some of the equipment.

A shortage of diagnostic equipment affects every department at the hospital because doctors must wait longer to discover what is wrong with their patients.

The wait for access to a CAT scanner used to diagnose many forms of cancer can be four months, according to figures released in the Gauteng legislature in 2012.

In private hospitals the wait is seldom much more than a day.

"Every day a cancer patient waits for diagnosis he is one day closer to death," said the CEO of Campaigning for Cancer, Lauren Pretorius.

She said the Gauteng health department has been aware of breakdowns in machinery at all its tertiary hospitals from 2012.

The department did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Provincial and central hospitals did not spend R257-million of the R419-million budgeted for machinery and equipment in 2011 and 2012.

Section 27 researcher Daygan Eagar has repeatedly said the health department is underfunded and uses each year's budget to repay old debt - and then runs out of money before year end. Money for medicines and supplies is often spent on the growing wages bill.

________

Limpopo farmers fined for underpaying employees

Sapa, Times Live, 19 June 2014

At least 10 Limpopo farmers have been fined, some over R1 million, for underpaying their employees, the labour department in the province said on Thursday.

Labour inspectors discovered gross violations of basic conditions of employment during a three-day blitz in farming areas, spokesman Joe Mokou said.

The department issued spot fines to recoup salaries due to workers. Some fines reached at least R1 million because of the number of employees involved, said Mokou.

The farmworkers were allegedly underpaid by at least R1427 each and employers failed to contribute to the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), despite deducting this from their salaries.

The operation aimed to determine whether employers in the farming sector were complying with the R2227 monthly minimum wage set by the department.

"When we discovered that they were not paying their workers accordingly, and also not paying UIF, we then issued spot fines, enforcing legislation for employers to make outstanding payment undertakings," said Mokou.

Limpopo farmers employ thousands of workers, for produce ranging from citrus to tomatoes, and also employ seasonal workers during harvest season.

The department ordered farmers not complying with UIF regulations to do this. Documents given to inspectors showed some workers had yet to be registered after having worked for years at the same farm.

Mokou said inspectors found cases of employees working without protective clothing and some of their housing was not fit for human habitation.

"We are not looking for luxury accommodation, but what we find here is unacceptable, not even suitable for dogs."

Some employers were deducting more than 10 percent, the legally designated amount, from workers' salaries for sub-standard accommodation.

________

SA mines TB highest in world: Motsoaledi

Sapa, Times Live, 19 June 2014

For every worker who dies each year as a result of an accident on a South African mine, nine more die of tuberculosis, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said on Thursday.

"There are 41,810 cases of active TB in South African mines every year. It is eight percent of the national total, and one percent of the population, very unfortunately," he told MPs at Parliament.

Speaking during a second day of debate on President Jacob Zuma's state-of-the-nation address, Motsoaledi said the incidence of TB among the country's mineworkers and their partners and children was the highest of any working population in the world.

"It is the highest incidence of TB in any working population in the world. It affects 500,000 mineworkers, their 230,000 partners, and 700,000 children."

Mining unions tended to focus on mining fatalities, which were emotive and provoked much anger.

"If you talk to any [union] leader about some of the hazards in mines that workers are faced with on a daily basis, they will immediately cite mining accidents."

In 2009, there were 167 fatalities that occurred in the mining sector due to mining accidents.

"But, in the same year, there were 24,590 cases of TB, which resulted in 1598 TB fatalities."

The gold mines were the most affected.

"In the gold mining industry in [2009], there were 80 fatalities due to mining accidents. But the TB cases were 17,591 in this sector alone, and [these] led to 1143 deaths.

"So for every death of a mineworker due to accident, there are nine who die of TB."

Motsoaledi said there were 59,400 orphans "currently in care" as a result of TB-related deaths in the mining sector.

The health minister told the House his department was geared up to tackle the problem.

Having secured half a billion rand in international funding, it had identified six districts -- in Gauteng, North West, Limpopo and Free State -- that had "a very high concentration of mining activity".

The districts had a total population of 600,000 people residing in so-called peri-mining communities.

New technology had been deployed in these districts. This had revolutionised the diagnosis of TB "by reducing the period of the diagnostic process from a week to only two hours".

At the end of last month, the department had also deployed 1534 "outreach" teams to municipal wards to perform primary health care tasks, including combating TB.

On multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB, Motsoaledi said this was a huge problem within BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] countries.

"Around the world, the problem of MDR is huge within BRICS. It accounts for 60 percent of the global problem, and as you know, we are part of BRICS."

MDR was having a "huge economic impact" in these countries due to the sheer amount of resources needed to deal with it.

Nine MDR facilities had been established in South Africa, where infected people spent 18 months before they were cured.

Motsoaledi called on MPs to help mobilise communities within their constituencies "for this major task of reclaiming our mining communities from the jaws of TB".

In his address on Tuesday evening, Zuma announced the establishment of an inter-ministerial committee to promote the revitalisation of distressed mining communities.

Motsoaledi's is one of the nine ministries serving on the committee.

_____

Salary protest case against 58 soldiers dropped due to weak evidence

Sapa, Times Live, 19 June 2014

The case against 58 soldiers implicated in a salary protest at the Union Buildings in 2009 was dropped in the military court in Heidelberg, Gauteng, Sandu said on Thursday.

SA National Defence Union national secretary Pikkie Greeff said justice had been served after it was found that the soldiers had been granted a leave of absence on the day.

"The evidence presented by the State in this trial was so weak that the court found it insufficient to even constitute a prima facie case against the soldiers concerned."

He said the proof was in the SANDF's own documentation.

"This belies the public claims, made all along by the SANDF, that these soldiers had deserted their bases and had thus endangered their own country," Greeff said.

"Clearly, the SANDF lied publicly about this issue."

SANDF spokesman Brig-Gen Xolani Mabanga could not immediately confirm the court's decision.

Greeff called on the SANDF to recall more than 500 soldiers who had allegedly been placed on special leave as a result of the protest, back to work.

Mabanga said the soldiers were recalled in 2012 and had chosen not to return to work, on Greeff's advice.

"They are not on special leave. They have defied coming back to work."

In August 2009, more than a thousand soldiers intended to protest over pay and working conditions, but an 11th hour court application by the SANDF saw the Pretoria march banned and permission granted by the metro police cancelled.

According to television footage, shortly after that a group of people, thought to be protesting soldiers, was seen scaling the fence at the Union Buildings, and the interior of a police car was set alight, with police firing rubber bullets to bring the group under control.

The protesters were reportedly trying to take their grievances to President Jacob Zuma, whose office is in the buildings, and who was also commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Three separate cases were established to deal with the matter.

Mabanga said after the protest the SANDF had called on all soldiers who had taken part in the protest to come forward.

Some did and those who did not were assumed to be defying instructions. The SANDF sought to administratively discharge those who had failed to come forward, in one case.

A second case, which was heard on Wednesday, addressed those accused of being absent without leave (AWOL) on the day.

The third case would address those who were found to have taken part in the protest itself, Mabanga said.

Greeff said the two other cases would still be heard.

_________

NUM: Limiting strike lengths threatens organised labour

Sarah Evans, M&G, 19 June 2014

·          

·         In the face of SA's longest-running strike, organisations mull rumours of government contemplating regulating the duration of industrial action.

 

As President Jacob Zuma took to the podium to deliver his State of the Nation address (Sona) on Tuesday, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) listened intently, waiting to hear if he would confirm the rumours. 

There was talk in alliance circles, the union’s parliamentary officer Woody Aroun told the Mail & Guardian, that government was thinking about legislating the length of strikes. This, as the platinum strike – South Africa’s longest-running strike – begins to wane, and government attempts to find ways to deal more assertively with possible future protest action like it. 

Any moves to limit the length of time a strike could continue before parties were forced into arbitration would be a direct limit on the constitutional right to strike, and Numsa would have none of it, Aroun said. 

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has heard the rumours, too. NUM general secretary Frans Baleni told the M&G: “We have heard that government officials are starting to ask these questions at Nedlac [National Economic Development and Labour Council]; questions like: ‘What do we do when there’s no end to a strike?’ That tells you that there is something coming.”

The NUM is preparing to discuss this at a meeting in July, although it has not taken steps to raise its concerns externally, or with the ANC, yet. It is waiting to see what government’s next move will be. 

‘Threat to all organised labour’
“It is a threat to all organised labour,” Baleni said. “The problem with this [platinum] strike was not the duration, it was the violence that was the problem. In any case, in the United Kingdom there are strikes that go on for a year. It is not ideal, of course, but duration is not the problem.”

Zuma did not show his hand on Tuesday, and only those who may have been listening for it would have heard him talk about the “duration” of strikes: “The economy has grown below its potential over the last three years and many households are going through difficulties. 

“The slow growth has been caused in part by the global economic slowdown and secondly by domestic conditions, such as the prolonged and at times violent strikes, and also the shortage of energy. 

“Given the impact of the untenable labour relations environment on the economy, it is critical for social partners to meet and deliberate on the violent nature and duration of the strikes,” said Zuma.

‘Idealogical fog’
Reacting to the Sona this week, Numsa, who did not endorse the ANC in the 2014 elections, said Zuma’s speech was filled with the “idealogical fog of ‘a good story to tell’”.

The union said the speech had confirmed their suspicions. “While calling for the social partners to resolve what he calls an ‘untenable labour relations environment’, the president has reinforced some of the remarks made recently by his colleagues presumably over the duration of the mining strike. 

“Both the minister of labour and the newly appointed minister of mineral resources have raised issues over the right to strike; fuelling our suspicion that government intends to limit this right by making further amendments to the Labour Relations Act.”   

After Sona, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe reportedly said there would be nothing wrong with putting a two-week limit on the length of strikes. This would require amending the Labour Relations Act. 

“There would be nothing wrong with allowing a strike to go for two weeks and after two weeks you say there must be mediation … there must be arbitration to settle this strike so that a strike cannot be used to break the economy down and actually deepen the crisis,” Mantashe said. 

Suspend industrial action
Aroun said this thinking was based on the Australian model, where a government commission may suspend industrial action. In limited circumstances, parties can be forced into arbitration. 

Apart from Mantashe’s comments, if the ANC is thinking about legislating the length of strikes, it isn’t saying so explicitly. 

Head of the ANC national executive committee’s subcommittee on economic transformation, Enoch Godongwana, said the issue had tangentially been discussed at the party’s recent lekgotla. 

It was not mulled in great detail, he said, but the discussion is gaining traction at government level. He said the discussion is less about limiting strike times specifically, and more about trying to get parties to the negotiating table, sooner. 

Broadly, government policy gurus know that the collective bargaining system needs to be made more efficient. 

“Among other things [being discussed] is, how do you deal with the level of violence and how do you deal with a situation when people aren’t talking to each other. This is when parties become desperate and violent. So what mechanisms do we have at our disposal to assist them?” he said, explaining the context of the talks. 

Time limit on strikes
He said there were “other jurisdictions” that had systems in place that South Africa could consider. Baleni said the last time a time limit on strikes was discussed was in the pre-1994 negotiations.  

“We discussed this thing for two weeks: whether or not the right to strike should be in the Constitution. And the other side argued that it could potentially be abused by right-wing elements wanting to overthrow the democratically-elected government,” he said.

In the end, the right to strike was written into the Constitution, and has been closely guarded ever since. Steven Friedman, director for the Centre for the Study of Democracy, writing in Business Day on Thursday,said changing the Labour Relations Act would not address the core issues that drove workers to strike.

“As previous columns have pointed out, conflict in the workplace happens not because the law allows or encourages it, but because factors rooted in our past ensure that relations between workers and employers are often no less hostile than they were 20 years ago. If we want fewer strikes, we need to examine why this is so and what can be done to change it,” he said.

________

Marikana: Gory details emerge as Mr X testifies

Gabi Falanga, M&G, 19 June 2014

                       

·          

Mr X, a miner under police protection, has testified about removing "pieces of flesh" from a murdered security guard to make their muti stronger.

 

“We took some of the flesh of the security [officer]. It was to make our muti strong.” 

This was one of the confessions made by Mr X during his first day of testifying at the Marikana commission on Thursday.

Mr X, who was one of the striking miners at Marikana in 2012, is under police witness protection and his long-awaited testimony is now being heard in-camera.

While his evidence was being led by Advocate Frank Mathibedi, who represents the South African Police Service (SAPS), Mr X told how they took pieces of flesh from one of the Lonmin security guards who was killed by the striking miners on August 12 2012. They did this on the instruction of inyangas (traditional healers) to make the muti, used during the rituals with the strikers, strong.

According to Mr X, the muti and rituals were to protect the strikers. “An inyanga would make people brave, who would lead the warriors,” he told the commission through an isiXhosa interpreter. “The inyanga was going to make us not subject to being shot [and] lock the fire arms if we’re being shot at.”

Upon being shown a photo of the inyangas’ rag with lions printed on it, Mr X slowly started singing a song the strikers made up while on the koppie taking part in the rituals. “The lion from Bezana, the lion that eats people,” he sang in his low, husky voice. The significance of this song has not yet emerged.

A “committee” of 15 people were chosen by the strikers to undergo these rituals. It was these 15 who were the leaders of the strikers, and responsible for conveying messages between the inyangas and other strikers. 

March to NUM 
When questioned by Mathibedi on why the mine workers marched to National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) offices on August 11 2012, Mr X insisted that “we had gone to kill [them]”.

Mathibedi referred to three instances where other mine workers testified to other reasons why they had marched to the NUM offices, namely to ask them why the union was preventing the mine workers from talking to Lonmin management; and to deal with allegations that strikers had been assaulted and forced to go to work by NUM officials while they were on strike.

But Mr X remained insistent that the reason they marched to the NUM offices was to kill the people inside. “We were armed, Mr Chairperson, with pangas and spears. We were going to kill [them] in the office,” he said.

Initial meetings 
Mr X also spoke about the initial meetings held by the mine workers on August 9 and 10 2012 to discuss their wage demands and plan of action with each other.

It was on August 10 that miners marched “peacefully” to the offices of Lonmin management to make their requests known, by writing their wage demands on a piece of cardboard.

Mr X told how after 15 minutes a “white man” – one of Lonmin’s management – emerged from the office. “He said the demands would be addressed by the union in 2013, and that is the agreement with the union. [He said] go back to work [and that] our strike is illegal.”

The miners then decided they would take action against those miners who returned to work and would also take steps against the refusal of Lonmin to address their wage demands. 

Objection 
The testimony of Mr X got off to a slow start, as technicians fine-tuned the video link through which he is testifying, but also due to a lengthy objection by Advocate Dali Mpofu, who represents the injured and arrested mine workers. 

Mpofu asked the commission to exclude the statements of six of his clients who are mentioned in Mr X’s statement because he says they are “clearly self-incriminatory” and were “obtained by the use of very graphic torture”.

Retired judge Ian Farlam judged that Mpofu should hand over the names of the miners whose statements he would like to be excluded before he makes a ruling on the matter.

As the day wore on, Mr X grew increasingly weary, rubbing his face regularly and leaning forward in his chair – leaving those sitting in the commission with a view of the top of his head. 

Mr X’s testimony continues on Friday.

_______

Miners believed sangoma could make police guns jam: Mr X

Sapa, Times Live, 19 June 2014

 

Protesting Marikana miners were advised that a certain sangoma had the ability to cast a spell that would make police firearms jam, the Farlam Commission of Inquiry heard on Thursday.

A witness brought by the SA Police Service, only identified as Mr X, said even the most religious miners contributed to a fund for the sangoma's payment.

"A decision was taken among the miners that we needed a tight (reputable) inyanga. Kaizer said he knew one from Bizana called Nzabe," said Mr X.

"He said the inyanga would make people brave. He would make the police guns lock if we are being shot at."

These were days before August 16, 2012. Kaizer was one of the protesting miners.

Mr X said miners went around the koppie, collecting donations to pay the sangoma.

"I donated R20. I remember Kaizer and Xolani were going to get the inyanga while the donations were going on. They came back with two youngsters who worked with the sangoma," said Mr X.

"They told us the inyanga wanted R1000... I contributed R500. Even the religious people contributed."

In his statement to the commission, Mr X said the sangoma instructed protesting miners to wait for police before launching an attack.

"The further instructions that were communicated to us were not to look back once we launched an attack, not to carry cellphones and coin money and if possible, conduct ourselves in a manner that would provoke the police to fire first," said Mr X.

They were told they were invisible to police and should approach them in a crouch.

Mr X said on August 12 they killed two Lonmin security guards.

"We killed them at the bus stop. We burnt one in the car and we took pieces of flesh from the other one. That would make our muti strong, so that we go forward when we attack.

"The sangoma said we should bring the human parts," said Mr X.

Mr X, who may not be identified, testified via video link from an undisclosed location earlier on Thursday. He claims he was one of the group of protesting Marikana miners who underwent traditional rituals, which included two sangomas burning live sheep and swallowing their ashes on August 11, 2012.

In his sworn statement he details how the mineworkers attacked and killed Lonmin security guards Hassan Fundi and Frans Mabelani. Some of Hassan's body parts were removed and taken with Mabelani's ashes for use in muti rituals.

He details how sangomas cut parts of Fundi into smaller pieces, mixed them with blood, and burnt them to ashes.

"We were instructed by the inyangas to stand in a line and the ashes were put in our mouth using a spoon which we licked and swallowed," Mr X wrote in his affidavit.

"After this, the inyangas told us that they had accomplished their mission in protecting us from police bullets, made us fearless, strong, and invisible to the police."

Mr X narrates in the affidavit how he and other protesters attacked and killed two police officers on August 13. He said they robbed the officers of their cellphones and service firearms.

The inquiry is investigating the deaths of 44 people during strike-related violence at Lonmin's platinum mining operations at Marikana.

Thirty-four people, mostly striking mineworkers, were shot dead in a clash with police, over 70 were wounded, and another 250 arrested on August 16, 2012. Police were apparently trying to disarm and disperse them.

In the preceding week, 10 people, including the two policemen and two security guards, were killed.

The inquiry resumes on Friday.

________

N Cape govt disturbed by closure of schools

SABC News, 19 June 2014

The Northern Cape government says it is deeply disturbed by the closure of fifty schools in the Joe Morolong District in Kuruman. The schools have been closed for two weeks.

This comes after the Local Road Forum demanded the construction of a tarred road in the villages of Dithakong, Bothithong and Laxey. 

In 2012, there was a similar incident in which learners were barred from attending school for six months as the community demanded tarred roads.

Addressing a media briefing earlier on Thursday, Northern Cape premier Sylvia Lucas said a tender would be advertised this weekend for the construction of roads in the area.

Lucas says, "We don't want people to complain about the roads issue. The road issue is now out of the way. We are going to meet with the Kgosis [traditional leaders] on Saturday morning and there will discuss this issue, because we want them to open the schools by Monday. It is the last week of the school term but we want the schools to be opened by Monday and we want this remedy plan to be implemented as soon as possible and that is what we are going to communicate to the Kgosis and the community."

___________

Marikana miners planned to kill NUM members: Mr X

Nozithonbi Miya, SABC News, 19 June 2014

A Lonmin miner turned police witness dubbed Mr X has told the Marikana Commission of Inquiry in Pretoria that striking miners at the Lonmin platinum mine planned to kill members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in Marikana in August 2012.

Mr X was part of the strike but has turned into a police witness. He is testifying about a series of events that led to a conflict between the striking miners and the police. 

Mr X says he was part of a plan to threaten those who did not show solidarity with the striking mineworkers. "Sir on the 10th [there] was a discussion on how the strike was going to be implemented? The decision taken was that the night shift would be stopped. There was no mass meeting but we would have stopped it by fighting against it," says Mr X.   

Mr X began his testimony via video link from an undisclosed location before 1pm at the Marikana commission. The commission is investigating the deaths of 44 people and the cause of the violence at the North West platinum mine.

_______

Nehawu calls for head of KZN health to resign

SABC News, 19 June 2014

The National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) has called for the expulsion of the KwaZulu-Natal head of the Health Department Dr Sbongile Zungu.

The union held a press briefing in Durban earlier on Thursday. It voiced concerns with regards to what it calls the deteriorating service delivery and maladministration in the department. The union is also calling for the provincial government not to renew Dr Zungu's contract which is due to expire at the end of July.

Nehawu provincial chairperson Thobile Nkosi has threatened to bring the department to its knees should their demands not be met. "As we speak our members are being victimised and subjected to high levels of intimidation. When they raised issues of concern and the union shall not tolerate and accept her conduct particularly at this age of our democracy that we fought tirelessly for it."

_________

SA has only 4,000 public order officers to deal with strikes

eNCANews,19 June 2014

CAPE TOWN - Public order policing units need to be beefed up to deal effectively with strikes, the SA Policing Union said on Thursday.

In the next three to four years, South Africans will exercise their rights to demonstrate and police have to make sure these are not violent.

"Our police, and especially our public order policing, are supposed to be standing at somewhere like 10,000 [officers] but is currently standing at 4,000," union president Mpho Kwinika said.

"In the next three to four years, South Africans will be busy exercising their rights to demonstrate, whether violently or peacefully, and police have to make sure these are not violent," Kwinika stated.

He said police had a "huge task" to increase this number in the next decade.

"We need to have this unit up and running as soon as possible."

Kwinika was addressing top police union officials at the International Council of Police Representative Associations conference in Cape Town, which ends on Friday.

The biennial conference was being held in Africa for the first time and aimed to unite world policing.

Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko had been invited to welcome the delegates, but did not confirm his appearance.

In February, his predecessor Nathi Mthethwa told police station commanders in Durban the country's public order policing units were among the best in the world.

He said these officers employed a combination of techniques from different countries, as well as those learnt in South Africa.

-Sapa

_______

Clairwood Tongaat Hulett workers say wage deal not sweet enough

Nce Mkhize, Business Day, 19 June 2014

HUNDREDS of members of the Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu) at the Tongaat Hulett sugar refinery in Clairwood, south of Durban, are still out on strike despite a wage deal signed by their union and employers about two weeks ago.

These workers have now been barred from picketing outside the company premises after Tongaat Hulett was granted a court order. Instead workers meet daily at a nearby park and strategise how to take their struggle forward.

On May 27 thousands of sugar plants workers embarked on strike, demanding 11% pay increase, a R800 housing allowance, a reduction of the working week from 43 hours to 40 hours without losing benefits. They also demanded that thousands of contract workers be employed full-time.

However, Fawu and sugar companies — of which Tongaat Hulett is the largest — signed a wage deal that ensured that the lowest band workers would receive a wage increase of 10%, the middle band 9% and the higher band 8,7%. Both sides agreed that outstanding issues would be negotiated between then and December this year.

Most workers returned to work on Monday June 9 but their peers in Clairwood rejected the deal and refused to return to work. They also refused requests by Fawu to resume work. This prompted Tongaat to go to court seeking an order declaring the strike illegal.

On Thursday morning hundreds of these workers gathered at the park. Sanele Magwaza, one of the Fawu shop-steward said workers at this plant had rejected the deal and would not return to work unless the employers agreed to all their demands.

"We are seeking a double-digit wage increase for all workers and we are against the divorcing of the wage negotiations from other demands, such as the housing allowance, the reduction of the working deal and others.

"We will not go to work until all our demands are met. Workers say they are tired of the exploitation and want the employer to move away from the exploitive wages and working conditions. We are prepared to continue with the strike for as long as possible," said Mr Magwaza.

Fawu said negotiations with the striking workers and the employer were ongoing. Simphiwe Dhlomo, Fawu’s national organiser, said they were hopeful that a deal would be brokered and workers would return to work soon.

Michelle Jean-Louis, spokesperson for Tongaat Hulett, was not available to comment on Thursday despite several attempts to contact her.

_____

______

'SA employee confidence has fallen'

SAPA, Business Report, 19 June 2014

Johannesburg - Employee confidence fell in the first quarter of 2014 to 45.7 points from 46.5 points in the last quarter of 2013, according to the latest Solidarity-ETM Labour Market Index (LMI) released on Thursday.

The LMI measures labour affordability and business cycle movements in addition to employee confidence, Solidarity senior economics researcher Piet le Roux said in a statement.

The index overall improved slightly to 45.5 points in the first quarter of this year from 44.9 points in the forth quarter of last year.

A value of 50 points was the threshold level between rising and falling wage and job security.

Le Roux said the decline in employee confidence indicated employees experiencing a tough labour market.

“The sustained score below 50 for each of the index’s separate components, as well as the index as a whole, means that job security in South Africa is exhibiting a worsening trend,” he said.

“The index has been below 50 for a prolonged period. In the first quarter of 2013, for example, the index was just 46.1 and has been below 50 in all quarters except the second quarter of 2011.”

Sapa

_______

Too few public order police: Union

ANN7, 19 Jun 2014

Johannesburg:Public order policing units need to be beefed up to effectively deal with more strikes, the SA Policing Union said on Thursday.

"Our police, and especially our public order policing, are supposed to be standing at somewhere like 10,000 [officers] but is currently standing at 4000," union president Mpho Kwinika said.

"In the next three to four years, South Africans will be busy exercising their rights to demonstrate, whether violently or peacefully, and police have to make sure these are not violent."

Kwinika said police had a "huge task" to increase this number in the next decade.

"We need to have this unit up and running as soon as possible."

Kwinika was addressing top police union officials at the International Council of Police Representative Associations conference in Cape Town, which ends on Friday.

The biennial conference was being held in Africa for the first time and aimed to unite world policing.

Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko had been invited to welcome the delegates, but did not confirm his appearance.

In February, his predecessor Nathi Mthethwa told police station commanders in Durban the country's public order policing units were among the best in the world.

He said these officers employed a combination of techniques from different countries, as well as those learnt in South Africa.

_____

BP and Exxon pull staff from Iraq

Nayla Razzouk, Bradley Olson and Kadhim Ajrash, Business Report, 19 June 2014

London - Exxon Mobil and BP began removing employees from Iraq, Opec’s second-largest oil producer, after Islamist militants seized cities north of Baghdad and attempted to capture a refinery.

Exxon evacuated some workers from the West Qurna oil field, according to a person familiar with the company’s Iraq operations. BP removed non-essential workers, Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley said on June 17. Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional BHD moved 28 of its 166 Iraq employees to Dubai, the company said by email on Wednesday. Royal Dutch Shell isn’t evacuating staff yet and is ready to do so, Andy Brown, head of Shell Upstream International, said in an interview in Moscow.

The companies all said they’re continuing to pump oil and there are few signs Iraq’s production has been curbed after Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant fighters took northern cities including Mosul. Police near the Baiji refinery, the nation’s largest, said government forces are now in control after a battle with ISIL. Crude shipments from the south, where most production is located, may accelerate next month and Kurds are defending the Kirkuk oilfield in the north.

“The only infrastructure that is currently producing and supplying international markets is in the south and will remain untouched,” said Kyle Stelma, managing director of Dubai-based Dunia Frontier Consultants, which researches Iraq for clients.

ISIL fighters

Fighters from ISIL battled government forces for control of the Baiji refinery in northern Iraq on Wednesday, a day after clashes in Baquba, 55km north-east of the capital. A military spokesman said elite Iraqi forces were defending the Baiji refinery.

A fuel tank at the refinery caught fire after shelling by militants on Wednesday, according to the provincial police command. The refinery halted operations on June 15 after oil-product shipments were stopped to nearby areas and its storage tanks were full, according to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

Brent crude rose to a new nine-month high. The international benchmark advanced to as much as $114.80 a barrel as of 8.53am in London, the highest since September 9. It was last at a nine-month high on June 13.

Companies including Chevron, Total SA, Marathon Oil, Crescent Petroleum and Abu Dhabi National Energy, which are drilling in the Kurdish region, are continuing to operate. Marathon hasn’t evacuated employees, spokeswoman Lee Warren said. Chevron’s operations continue “as normal,” spokesman Kurt Glaubitz said. Toronto-based Oryx Petroleum announced on Wednesday successful testing and a ramp-up in drilling activity in the Kurdish region.

War risk

The success of ISIL, a Sunni Muslim al-Qaeda breakaway group, threatens to re-ignite a sectarian civil war in the country. It also risks escalating into a conflict that draws in the US and Iran in defence of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’a-led government, three years after the withdrawal of US forces. Iraq is the largest oil producer in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, after Saudi Arabia.

BP’s Dudley said the violence was “terrible” and would have “far-reaching, wide-ranging implications” for the region, although it isn’t likely to spread all the way to the country’s southern oil fields.

Iraqi forces killed a Saudi fighter during ISIL’s “failed attack” on the Baiji refinery on Wednesday, state-sponsored Iraqiya television reported. Baiji has about 40 percent of Iraq’s refining capacity, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“Iraq will have to increase the import of oil products to make up for the loss of Baiji’s production,” Robin Mills, the head of consulting at Dubai-based Manaar Energy Consulting and Project Management, said in an interview in Dubai. “Baiji mainly supplies the north, but also Baghdad.” – Bloomberg

______

Strike wanes, France pushes on with reform

Fin24, 19 Jun 2014

 

Paris - Growing numbers of French railway employees returned to work on Thursday after lawmakers voted to approve the broad outline of a railway reform that has triggered a nine-day strike.

Deputies in the National Assembly approved late on Wednesday the new structure of France's ageing railway system, which will bring state-owned railways company SNCF and track owner RFF into the same holding company while maintaining separate operations.

The reform, designed to prepare the system ahead of European Union moves to liberalise Europe's transport routes, has worried unions for railway workers who fear their generous benefits will be eroded as more competition comes to the sector.

To allay those concerns, deputies voted for amendments that maintain the "inseparable and integral character" of the new entities, and the establishment of a works council.

Support for the strike among rail workers waned on Thursday with SNCF reporting that only 10.5% of its 150 000 workers were participating.

A small core of workers voted to pursue a strike which has forced hundreds of cancellations and huge delays across France.

"The strike is extended because there are still rail workers protesting today," said Gilbert Garrel, an official at the CGT union's branch for rail workers.

Earlier the CGT's head, Thierry Lepaon, acknowledged the strike had reached a "turning point" after the vote in parliament, although he refused to declare it completely over.

A final parliamentary vote on the reform is due on June 24.

On Thursday, seven out of ten trains were expected to run, in what SNCF called "ongoing improvement" of service.

"It's time to get back to work," the head of SNCF, Guillaume Pepy, told Le Parisien daily. "We've lost €153m ... a third of our last year's results. That's huge."

The Socialist government of President Francois Hollande has said the reform - which has been in the works since 2011 - is necessary and overdue.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls, under pressure to stand firm, has insisted the government will not back down on the reform, and while he has said he will not force unions to stop the strike, he has called for it to end.

Valls called on Wednesday for a parliamentary report to study solutions to the €44bn in debt carried by SNCF, which unions want the government to absorb.

________

2.                 COSATU

Metrorail ticket hikes to go ahead

Chanel September , EWN, 19 June 2014

CAPE TOWN - Ticket price increases will go ahead despite threats of a strike by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Metrorail said on Thursday.

The trade union federation lodged its application with the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac).

Cosatu is applying to the council to embark on a one-day legal strike.

The mass action is designed to put pressure on Metrorail to improve services and delay the hike for at least another month.

Metrorail spokesperson Riana Scott says increases are crucial.

“This is a national increase that has been approved and it is below inflation. We are very conscious that the bulk of our users are economically very sensitive and therefore, our prices are leaning towards cost saving.”

(Edited by Gadeeja Abbas)

______

Commuters face double blow - Cosatu

Fin24, 20 June 2014

 

Click here to view the list of the train fare increases in the Western Cape.

 

Cape Town - The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) said on Thursday that the looming fare increase by Metrorail will leave consumers reeling.

Cosatu provincial secretary Tony Ehrenreich said the price hike will deal a double blow to commuters, who often have to spend more money using alternative transport to get to work because of train breakdowns

"The problems of the Western Cape are unique in the sense that the breakdowns are occurring more than in any other parts of the country."

He said train delays result in workers losing more of their wages due to arriving at work late.

"This is already an increase in transport expenditure. On top of this Metrorail now wants to impose a rail fare increase, when the other increases of workers’ transport cost are because of Metrorail."

Metrorail announced fare increases, which will kick-in from Tuesday July 1.

The cost of single tickets will increase by 50 cents and return tickets by R1. 

Increases for weekly tickets will be between R3 and R7, while monthly tickets will jump between R7 and R30.

Metrorail said the planned increase will support improvements to the train service.

However, Ehrenreich wants the hike to be delayed until the improvements come into effect. "This delay until the system improves will cost Metrorail about R3m, which is a small amount for Metrorail, but a huge amount for commuters," he said. 

Metrorail Western Cape manager Richard Walker responded to this in an earlier statement.

"The suggestion that Metrorail only increases its fares once all the infrastructural improvements have been effected is unrealistic and not supported."

He also admitted that the current service is not up to standard, adding that it was a result of fifty years of under-investment.

"The current system is collapsing right now; which is why government has over the past five years allocated Prasa R136bn to procure new trains and upgrade supporting infrastructure."

Walker warned that no price hike could force services to be cut.

Ehrenreich also called on Minister of Transport Dipuo Peters to help resolve, what he terms, "the train crisis" in the Western Cape, or face protest action.

On Wednesday, the trade union federation said it intends striking to pressure Metrorail not to increase its fares, but the rail operator replied that it is going ahead as planned.

Click on the image to see how much more you will be paying:



  - Fin24

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Inside Labour: Promises but no solutions

 *Terry Bell, Fin24, 20 June 2014

 

THE platinum strike has correctly been categorised as a national crisis, but it is only one aspect of a much more severe crisis that confronts the country.  

This was highlighted on Tuesday by President Jacob Zuma in his State of the Nation (Sona) address in which he stressed the economy.

The economy is indeed in dire straits. But then, so too is the global economy which - politicians have consistently assured us - is about to turn yet another corner.  

But every corner that may have been turned since 2008 merely leads to further crises. At least this year’s Sona seems to have acknowledged this.

At the same time, however, corporate profits have continued to increase while more small businesses have gone to the wall as increasing numbers of men and women around the world have found themselves without work and with no prospect of getting any.  

And, in the unemployment league, we are among the world leaders.

Badge of poverty

But, as the government continues to trumpet: there are many more South Africans who today receive government handouts in the form of social grants. This is true. But such grants are, in fact, a badge of poverty.

Take the pension, for example. Between the ages of 60 and 70 an impecunious individual qualifies for R1 350 a month. Beyond 70, this increases to R1 370, hardly an above-poverty income, even if it did not have to be shared.

But most social grants are shared, sometimes by up to ten dependants. Many of these dependants will be part of the growing ranks of unemployed youth, often raised, and still cared for, by grandmothers.  

However, the ranks of the poor do not comprise only the unemployed and grant beneficiaries. There are still legions of the working poor.

According to most labour movement estimates, a wage of between R3 000 and R4 000 a month is the bare minimum “living wage”. But, according to the same estimates, more than half the men and women in South Africa fortunate to have a job are still paid less than this. In some cases, substantially less.

Take domestic workers, for example. In most urban areas, the current monthly minimum, determined by government, is R1 877.70. Most such urban workers also live at a considerable distance from their jobs and transport costs are estimated to average R400 a month.  

Domestic workers in the rural areas usually do not have the transport costs of their colleagues in the cities, so their minimum monthly wage of R1 618.37 probably makes them marginally better off. However, food and other retail costs in such areas can also be higher.

Farm workers are another group among the lowest of the low paid. But their government-determined minimum pay rate soared last year after a series of sometimes violent protests in the Western Cape. Five years ago, monthly pay for a farm worker was R1 231.70. Today it is R2 274.82, having almost doubled in the wake of the protests.

There are other categories of low-paid workers, such as in the forestry sector and among a host of various contract services. What all have in common are the basic needs: food, clothing and shelter, of which food requires the greatest share of income.

Most lower-paid employees spend up to 50% of their income on basic foodstuffs. I have monitored the prices of a “basket” of basic groceries since 2007. By 2009, the goods in the basket cost R118.14. This week the same quantity cost R195.19, a 65% increase. So unless the wages of lower paid workers increased by more than this, they are today worse off.

But there have been price increases across the board, not least in terms of fuel, and this has a knock-on effect on all forms of transport and the costs of delivery. The official statistician also notes that food prices are currently outstripping the rate of inflation (CPI), the measure commonly used to assess pay rises.  

More highly paid employees may, therefore, also be feeling the pinch. This seems borne out by the retail sales statistics released this week. They show a substantial decline in purchases. At the same time, South Africa already has a frightening level of household debt.

Such economic and social realities make up what Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavicalls a “ticking timebomb”. And the plans and promises of the Sona do not seem likely to defuse this.  

Perhaps a “peoples’ assembly” proposed by the National Union of Metalworkers - it may incorporate a form of “economic Codesa” - will provide some solutions. But some had better be found - and soon.

 - Fin24

* Terry Bell 
is an independent political, economic and labour analyst. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on twitter @telbelsa.

____               

3.                  South Africa

INFOGRAPHIC: The 2013 General Household Survey

eNCANews,19 June 2014

 

The 2013 Household Survey. Picture: eNCA / Anastasya Eliseeva

RELATED STORIES

Statistics South Africa released the 2013 General Household Survey on Wednesday 18 June.

Read the report here.

 http://www.enca.com/household-survey-reveals-lack-black-students

-eNCA

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Marawa leaves Brazil to pay tribute to Eddie Zondi

Sthembiso Sithole, SABC News, 19 June 2014

Metro FM sport presenter Robert Marawa has cut short his Brazil soccer World Cup trip to pay tribute to radio personality Eddie Zondi. 

The 083 Sports@6 presenter Robert Marawa says Zondi was not just a colleague but also a friend. "I only got here this morning from Brazil. I was on World Cup duty and when you hear news like this, any form of duty comes to an end. The only duty you have is to support the family," says Marawa who also works for SuperSport.

Zondi passed away on Monday morning on the way to hospital after complaining of chest pains.

On Thursday, SABC and Metro FM held a special memorial service for Zondi who presented the Romantic Repertoire on Sundays between 3 and 6pm. The service attended by members of the public took place at Standard Bank Arena in Johannesburg.

Speaker after speaker paid homage to Zondi. Metro FM presenter Wilson B Nkosi described the radio icon as someone who had a big heart. 

Programme director at the memorial, Nothemba Madumo, said Zondi should be remembered for the person he was "and how he touched every one of us. Because everyone has a different experience with Eddie." 

She added, "He spread a lot of love, compassion and caring."

His daughters Khanyisile, Zetheme and Siphesihle shared memories that they had with their father. Siphesihle described his father as a caring dad who always made time for his family. 

Makhosonke as he was affectionately known leaves behind his wife Phakamile. 

The 47-year-old radio DJ will be buried at Westpark Cemetery in Johannesburg. His funeral service will be held at University of Johannesburg’s Soweto campus.

______

Zondi’s colleagues share their memories

SABC News, 19 June 2014

Colleagues of Eddie Zondi have shared their memories of the late Metro FM DJ, whose memorial service has started at Johannesburg's Standard Bank Arena on Thursday.

Radio 2000 presenter, Ernest Pillay, describes Zondi as a dedicated broadcaster and a man who possessed a jovial spirit.
“On any given Sunday…his listeners knew…he would be there to soothe the broken hearted, to rekindle love and relationships…he also gave hope to those who were in search of love…”

One of his colleagues, DJ Mlu, says Zondi had positive energy and a sense of consistency.

“He had this sense of consistency because for me I came from listening to him on radio and having the opportunity to work with him and there was always this sense of consistency. Every time you arrive at the studio, you couldn't tell whether he's having a good or a bad day because he just had this energy…he was always a great guy to arrive at work to.”

Metro FM Communication Manager, Happy Ngidi says Zondi’s death has come as a shock and left a huge impact and loss, especially to Paul Mtirara and Wilson B Nkosi who had a very special relationship with him.

Zondi’s funeral will take place at the University of Johannesburg Soweto campus at 8am on Sunday.

Edited by Paballo Lephaka.

________

Former Rustenburg mayor’s murder conviction set aside

Setumo Stone, Business Day, 19 June 2014

THE murder case of former Rustenburg African National Congress (ANC) councillor Moss Phakoe remains unresolved after the Supreme Court of Appeal on Thursday set aside the conviction of former Rustenburg mayor Matthew Wolmarans and his bodyguard Enoch Matshaba.

Mr Wolmarans, also a member of ANC provincial executive committee in North West, was in 2012 convicted of the murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Mr Matshaba was given a life sentence.

A few days before he was shot in front of his house in 2009, Mr Phakoe is understood to have handed a dossier on corruption in the Rustenburg local municipality to senior ANC officials including President Jacob Zuma.

Mr Wolmarans’ lawyer Raphepheng Mataka said on Thursday his client was now "a free man".

Alleged political assassinations have become a common feature in the faction-ridden ANC structures in the North West. The motorcade of former premier Edna Molewa was shot at in 2009 after she attended Mr Phakoe’s funeral.

In 2012 ANC regional secretary in Kenneth Kaunda, Obuti Chika, was killed. A senior provincial ANC leader is among those facing trial for the murder. A few days before his murder former provincial secretary Kabelo Mataboge survived gunshots.

Last week another former Rustenburg mayor and member of the ANC in the provincial legislature, Jeanette Dibetso-Nyathi, survived a shot through her car window while driving from Rustenburg to Mafikeng.

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Joburg metro to remove election posters

Sapa, Sowetan, 19 Jun  2014

The Johannesburg metro police will remove political parties' election posters at a fee of R1000 from next week, spokesman Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said on Wednesday.

"Political parties were given five days after the election to remove the posters in terms of the advertising by-law. They were further given seven days' grace to remove posters."

He said the Johannesburg metro police would remove the posters on Monday and charge political parties R1000 per poster removed.

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Veteran MP fears South Africans could lose respect for Parliament

eNCANews,19 June 2014

CAPE TOWN - A former veteran MP is warning South Africans could lose respect in the institution that is Parliament.

The past two days of the State of the Nation Address debate has seen mudslinging and name calling back and forth between political parties.

For more on this story watch the video in the gallery above.

-eNCA

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Social grants beneficiaries more than doubled in 10 years

Thalia Holmes, M&G, 19 June 2014

·          

·         A Stats SA survey has shown that social grants assist 30.2% of South Africans, with 45.5% of households receiving at least one grant.

 

The number of South Africans who benefit from social grants has more than doubled from 12.7% to 30.2% over the past 10 years. 

This is according to the General Household Survey published by Statistics South Africa on Wednesday, which has surveyed private households across all nine provinces in the country from January to December last year. 

At the same time, the percentage of households in South Africa that received at least one grant increased from 30% in 2003 to 45.5% in 2013. This represented an almost ongoing increase, with one slight dip of 1.7 percentage points in 2012. 

The report came less than 24 hours after President Jacob Zuma delivered the first State of the Nation Address of his second term, in which he highlighted the attention that the government had given to poverty-stricken citizens over the last two decades. 

“Over the past 20 years, we have steadily expanded support for marginalised and vulnerable households through investments in housing, extension to our social grants programmes and improved access to education and primary health care,” said Zuma. 

“Over the period ahead, poverty reduction will continue to be reinforced.”

Grant beneficiaries
The survey highlighted traditionally poorer provinces’ continued dependence on government grants: those with lower economic output per capita had the highest percentage of grant beneficiaries; and more than 40% of individuals in Eastern Cape benefited from grants last year, followed closely by Limpopo with 38.7%, KwaZulu-Natal with 37.2% and Northern Cape with 35%. 

In contrast, only 17.3% of individuals in Gauteng, the country’s wealthiest province by gross domestic product (GDP) per person, were grant recipients and 21% of individuals in the Western Cape benefited from the aid programmes.

There were also clear discrepancies along racial lines, with more than one-third (34%) of black African individuals in the country receiving grants and 24% of coloured individuals, while half of that amount (12%) in the Asian populace received grants, and only 5% of the white population.    

Even though social grant recipients increased significantly over the 10-year period, the percentage of the population enrolled in education remained at almost exactly the same level. 

According to the survey, almost three-quarters (73.5%) of South Africans aged between five and 24 were attending educational institutions, which was 0.1 percentage point lower than a decade ago. 

Peak school ages
But the report notes that the attendance of children in the “peak ages” of seven to 16 years is now “almost universal”. A shortage of funds remains the biggest reason cited for dropouts. 

“More than one quarter (25.3%) of premature school leavers in this age group mentioned ‘a lack of money’ as the reason for not studying,” says the report. “The comparable figure is as high as 45% in KwaZulu-Natal.” 

The survey was released on the same day that Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation statistics for May were published. The numbers spelled out more income pressure for the consumer, with headline CPI inflation at 6.6%. The figure was 0.5 percentage points higher than the previous month, and slightly exceeded most analysts’ expectations. Most noticeably, it represented another upper breach to the Reserve Bank’s target inflation band of 3% to 6%, which means a heightened possibility for reactive monetary policy decisions in the next few months to keep increases in check.

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Mandela family welcomes book 'Good Morning Mr Mandela'

Sapa, Times Live,  20 June 2014

Former president Nelson Mandela's daughter Zindzi Mandela and his grandson Mandla Mandela welcomed a book by the former statesman's personal assistant, according to media report.

At Zelda La Grange's book launch, Zindzi Mandela said people who had a close relationship with the apartheid icon were entitled to share their experiences and perspectives of him, the Star newspaper reported.

Mandla Mandela said the family expected that people would have experienced his grandfather in different ways and the family could not agree or disagree with the experience of others.

"We have never sought to dictate how people who related closely with my grandfather thought of him," he reportedly said.

The book also reportedly tells stories of the family's treatment of the icon's wife Graca Machel.

In the book La Grange also speaks of the ill-health of Mandela at the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011. She wrote that he was secretly admitted to 2 Military Hospital in Cape Town, before being moved to Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg.

According to the book he was moved after the Cape medical team allegedly ill-treated him. He reportedly had bed sores and inflammation in one of his knees.

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Clive Derby-Lewis parole opens renewed speculation into Hani murder and the arms deal

Marianne Thamm, Daily Maverick, 20 June 2014

While Clive Derby-Lewis, the man who procured the gun that Polish immigrant Janusz Walus used to murder Chris Hani in 1993, might be terminally ill and soon let out on parole, questions about alternative motives for Hani’s killing remain. Last week, investigative journalist and former member of the Dutch anti-Apartheid movement, Evelyn de Groenink, published a piece in The ZAMcronicle, an online magazine, reviving a long-held conviction that Hani was murdered because he had been “an obstacle to the R70 billion arms deal being negotiated with ANC leadership at the time”. By MARIANNE THAMM.

Anyone who has some modicum of understanding of the dangerous and well-established world of international arms dealing comprehends that it is a ruthless milieu which flourishes on a few key unsavoury human characteristics including greed, pathological self-interest and a shameless proclivity for violence.

It is a terrain steeped in subterfuge, subversion, deceit, hostility and disinformation, enabled by limitless access to unthinkable sums of money as well as individuals with powerful political interests.

In 2010, after an extensive investigation by The Guardian, the “arms giant” BAE (which signed contracts for the supply of Grippens and Hawks with the ANC government as part of our R70 billion arms deal) was forced to fork out around £300m in penalties after admitting “guilt over its worldwide conduct in the face of long-running corruption investigations,” according to the newspaper.

BAE had refused for 20 years to accept responsibility for any wrongdoing with regard to international bribes and kickbacks, which the dealer prefers to describe as “false accounting and making misleading statements”. BAE made a simultaneous agreement with regard to penalties, with the Serious Fraud Office in England as well as the Department of Justice in Washington.

In the light of renewed interest in the possible parole of Clive Derby-Lewis, who was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the assassination of SACP leader and MK commander Chris Hani on 10 April 1993, there have been renewed calls for revisiting alternative motives for the killing instead of the “right wing” destabilisation theory. The arms deal, some believe, was at the heart of the murder.

Dutch activist, author and journalist, Evelyn de Groenink, who has been investigating the murders of Dulcie September, Anton Lubowski and Chris Hani for over two decades, wrote this month that all three victims were in some way aware of shady arms deals and were about to expose these when they were assassinated.

September, an anti-apartheid activist who had been jailed in South Africa for five years in 1960 and who fled into exile in 1973, was an influential member of the Anti-Apartheid movement in the UK. Later, she worked for the International Defence and Aid Fund for South Africa (which financially supported political prisoners and their families in South Africa) and was appointed in 1983 as the ANC’s Chief Representative in France, Switzerland and Luxembourg.

September was gunned down outside the ANC offices in Paris in 1988, writes De Groenink, just as future arms contracts between France and the ANC were on the agenda.

“SWAPO man Anton Lubowski, ditto, in front of his Windhoek home in 1989, shortly after befriending an arms and diamonds dealer; and the ANC's beloved Chris Hani was murdered in 1993 (one year before the first democratic elections in South Africa), in the midst of massive bribe-offering by arms dealers to key people in the ANC military,” writes De Groenink.

She continues, “In the case of Chris Hani, former comrades explained to me how he was an obstacle to the …arms deal that was being negotiated with others in the ANC leadership at the time. From the police docket in the case, I found that a crucial part in the Hani murder was played by Peter Jackson, a chemicals transporter with arms trade connections, who was the employer of Hani's convicted murderer Janusz Walus, and who seemed to have been telling Walus what to do. The police had been kept from investigating Peter Jackson by a written instruction from the Security Police that read: ‘Inligting oor Peter Jackson sal nie opgevolg word nie’ (Information about Peter Jackson will not be followed up).”

De Groenink notes that the Hani murder docket reveals the extent to which the investigation was manipulated to result in the sole convictions of Walus, the shooter and Derby-Lewis, the man who sourced the weapon.

“Not only did the investigating officers ignore witnesses like the neighbour …they also refrained from interrogating Janusz Walus' employer, chemical trucker Peter Jackson. The Security Police (who were in charge of the investigation, according to Brixton Murder & Robbery Squad's chief inspector Michael Holmes), told Holmes' men not to bother exploring the man or his arms trade and secret service contacts. This, even though a list of these contacts (including an Armscor man called Colin Stier) is also neatly contained in the docket. ‘Jackson is cooperating fully and does not need to be questioned,’ the instruction to the police officers says.”

 

In 1999, after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Maggie Davey, Publishing Director of Jacana Media, became interested in a book De Groenink had published, in Dutch, about September’s murder and how this had led her to also investigate Lubowski and Hani’s killings.

In her Ruth First Lecture delivered at Wits in 2009, Davey recounted how De Groenink wrote that her Lubowski file had shown how French oil and arms interests, an Italian mafia group as well as elements in the South African military, had tried to corrupt Lubowski – Swapo’s ‘investment man’.

“Months before that, Lubowski was approached by Vito Palazzolo, and French arms trader, Alain Guenon, for the delivery of some services: Palazzolo wanted casino rights in Namibia and Guenon wanted Lubowski to support an oil transport project (a railway line from Angola to Namibia) in which he had a stake.”

De Groenink, said Davey, had recognised Alain Guenon’s name because she had come across it in her investigation into September’s death.

“At our very first meeting I knew that I wanted to publish the book, and almost immediately commissioned a cover design. After receiving the completed manuscript, I realised that I may have been a bit hasty, and instead, I should be putting my energies into finding a good lawyer.”

 

The story that De Groenink told was “startling”, said Davey, in that she had uncovered information that September had stumbled on information on “nuclear issues”, a fact Aziz Pahad, who worked for the ANC in London at the time, later confirmed to De Groenink.

“Evelyn’s (De Groenink – ed) investigation led her to the intricate network and seamy business world of ex-sanctions busters, military confreres and oil and minerals specialists. These same people now serviced a new elite, and were of course, not happy to have their old ways raked up and their new ways looked over. In particular, her investigation led her to scrutinise several of the gentlemen of La Francafrique and their fixers and enablers here in South Africa.”

“La Francafrique”, Davey explained, “is a term used to describe how businessmen who are usually involved in oil, nuclear energy, mining, arms and government, carved up anew the already whittled down resources of African states who were open for business. Achille Mbembe calls it a ‘system of reciprocal corruption tying France to its African feudatories’.”

With regard to the Chris Hani murder, De Groenink wrote last week that Jacana had been “made to fear bankruptcy by arms dealers' lawyers, some of whom threatened expensive pre-publication litigation. Military vehicles dealer Witold Walus, brother to Janusz Walus, sued for real.”

Davey added that the founder of “one of the biggest private suppliers of soldiers to the Iraq war, and a competitor of Blackwater and Haliburton” had called her “out of the blue” and “in a calm and reasonable manner, he threatened us with a legal action which would close us down, were Evelyn’s contentions ever to be published.”

Davey said on another occasion “we were told that the Scorpions were on their way to our offices, (they never pitched), and one former provincial premier laughed angrily and told me that I would make him ‘very, very rich’. ”

The court case brought by Withold Walus, Janusz’s brother, demanding full access to the manuscript and threatening to seize all material to be published by Jacana, had caught the publishers unawares, said Davey.

“Walus had been approached for comment, and this was the reply. But we won the case on the basis of having been fair in our approach to Walus, thus upholding his constitutional right to dignity and on the basis of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.”

But, said Davey, winning the court case was not enough.

“I was spending increasing amounts of time on the book, and despite winning the case with costs, the entire project soaked up more money and resources than a small publisher could afford. We decided not to go ahead with the publication.”

In her article for The ZAMchronicle, De Groenink asserts that official police investigations had identified all three murders – September, Lubowski and Hani - as “motivated by Apartheid hate and perpetrated by death squads or (in the case of Hani) right-wing extremists. This official narrative is still dominant in South Africa: puzzlingly so, considering that, in two of the three cases, high ranking ANC- and SWAPO officials have suggested that the truth should indeed be sought on the terrain of shady contracts.”

That Chris Hani was killed because he knew about the corruption and kickbacks that were taking place surrounding the arms deal is an assertion that has been circulating for years and a claim that original arms deal “whistleblower” and intelligence operative, Bheki Jacobs, who mysteriously died at the age of 46 in 2008, had posited.

The animosity between Chris Hani and Joe Modise, Commander in Chief of MK and the country’s first Minister of Defence, was well known and documented and had its roots in the late 1960s when Hani penned the devastating “Hani Memorandum” criticising MK leadership.

In their book on the arms deal, The Devil in the Detail – How the Arms Deal Changed Everything, authors Paul Holden and Hennie van Vuuren recount the response to Hani’s 1969 memorandum criticising MK leadership in exile and which almost cost him his life, were it not for the intervention of Oliver Tambo.

“The person most upset at the memorandum was Joe Modise, the Commander-in-Chief of MK, and who had come in for eviscerating attacks in the memo, alleging that he had a ‘posh and militarily irrelevant car at his disposal’, was receiving salary payments not given to other MK commands, was guilty of nepotism and ran MK as his own personal fiefdom.”

There are those who point out that Hani was murdered in 1993, long before the 1994 elections and the signing off on the arms deal in 1999, but it is well known that behind-the-scenes negotiations and machinations had already begun in the early 1990s.

In 1993, write Holden and Van Vuuren, Joe Modise travelled to the UK as a guest of Britain’s Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO), along with the future Chairman of Armscor, Tielman de Waal.

“It was a remarkable statement of intent, coming as it did nearly five months before negotiations between MK and the SADF were finalised and Modise was installed as Minister.”

There is more speculation in the extensive O’Malley archive an important collection of interviews with a wide range of key South African figures, compiled by Padraig O’Malley, respected scholar and author of one of the most comprehensive and significant biographies published in the last 15 years, Shades Of Difference – Mac Maharaj and the struggle for South Africa.

The O’Malley archive, now hosted by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, contains an entry titled “Who Killed Hani?” which sets out several scenarios and theories leading up to the assassination on April 10, 1993.

O’Malley reports on an unsuccessful attempt on Hani’s life in 1992 in Johannesburg when he was followed by a gunman as well as an event, a major “anti-ANC campaign”, organised by Patrick Dlongwana – a “security policeman” with a “lengthy and brutal career as an agent” – using former detainees. (Dlongwana had appeared on SATV in 1992 and had threatened to kill ANC and K*** leaders.)

O’Malley warns that disinformation campaigns that were instigated by various nefarious players – including the SADF Department of Military Intelligence Comops and former Sunday Times (UK) correspondent Richard Ellis – have muddied the truth about Hani’s murder and the motives.

“A matter of public record is a consistent campaign of disinformation, which, as we have tried to show, included a major character assassination of Chris Hani in the months and days before his physical assassination. Whether the character assassination and the physical assassination were connected in a conspiracy, or whether they simply coincided in time is a matter of speculation.”

In her article De Groenink says that most South Africans believe “that two right-wingers, Polish immigrant Janusz Walus and ultra-conservative former Mayor of Krugersdorp, Clive Derby-Lewis, are to blame. The two are still in jail. There is a massive popular outcry every time even a mention is made of amnesty or health parole.”

She says that there are alternative motives for the killings and she has spent years investigating matter, because “the story of freedom fighters who stumbled upon corruption and wanted to stop it is worth telling”.

Ultimately, she suggests, it is Janusz Walus alone who could tell the truth and help prevent the story from “falling into silence”.

“So why doesn't he talk? Perhaps because he knows that it wouldn't help him - after all, he was still part of the murder plot and it would be unlikely that he would be freed. Or because he has a sister, other relatives and friends in South Africa, among whom a brother who maintains excellent relations with the SA military. Or is it the debt that his family, according to Peter Jackson, still owes to Walus' former boss? Jackson had 'helped' the Polish immigrants during the Apartheid years to set up and run a glass cutting factory in the Qua Qua Bantustan,” writes De Groenink.

Whatever the truth, the bullets that slammed into Chris Hani’s head that Easter Saturday in Benoni and that left him lying in a pool of blood in his driveway, robbed South Africa of one of its beloved leaders. We will never know how he might have influenced or contributed the country we find ourselves in today or whether we would, 15 years later, still suffer the fallout – both economic and political – of the Arms Deal.

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City of Joburg on a training drive to roll out free Wifi

Sherwin Bryce-Pease, SABC News, 20 June 2014

The City of Johannesburg has embarked on collaboration with the CIDA City Campus University that will enable the training of 3000 Digital Ambassadors to assist with the role-out of 1000 free WiFi hotspots around the metropole.

Currently in the Big Apple, Mayor Parks Tau signed a memorandum of understanding with New York-based firm Africa Integras that will fund the initial phase of the training.

The Mayor is concluding a week-long visit to the United States where he also attended the New Cities Summit in Dallas, Texas.
Mayor Tau talks about how smart cities are becoming an integral part of the changing urban landscape.

Signed and sealed, this is a deal that will enable funding for digital champions that will fan out across to Johannesburg and create opportunities for communities to access web based technologies, as Mayor Tau explains.

“We’ve said we’re rolling out free WiFi hotspots but that’s not enough. It’s going beyond providing the free hotspots - it’s about creating accessibility, about people knowing how to take full advantage of what technology provides. And that’s very exciting, because this would empower people. People would look at educational opportunities, research opportunities, networking opportunities and people would actually be able to take the future into their own hands.”

Walking the streets of New York, Parks Tau explains that his is a vision of Joburg that is better integrated, one that can overcome a history of segregation; a city defined by equitable access.

“In an ideal city, comparative cities function in a way that creates greater integration, closer proximity for people to what the urban amenities provide and that’s really what makes cities tick; ii is people’s access to and closer proximity to the urban amenity. Whether it’s research agencies, universities, commercial employment opportunities, recreation and other amenities that a city provides.”

Johannesburg has since 2003 been a twin city with New York – a framework that allows for closer collaboration across sectors, from policing and security, transportation, Parks and recreation to climate change.

With over half the world population already residing in town and cities, this is where the post-2015 task will be won or lost, as Tau elaborates.

“Reality is that local government is where the rubber hits the road, that’s where you need to provide electricity, water, sanitation, where through how you design the urban system, how you provide public transport. You can be able to influence the spatial forms, social process axis that’s so important in how city life develops. So in many instances, the fact that more and more people are going into cities and more and more people are looking for opportunities in cities means that we have that responsibility to ensure that they have equitable and or at least adequate access to what the city amenity provides.”

With experts predicting that as federal governments becoming increasingly dysfunctional, cities become the most important governments in the lives of people.

“It’s a daunting one but it’s also an exciting prospect because Johannesburg is a city in transition, it’s the economic capital of Africa, it’s the platform from which we can continue to grow, not just opportunities for our own city but opportunities throughout the continent. It is a platform from which you can facilitate trade and investment in Johannesburg, in Gauteng, in South Africa and certainly in the entire region. For us, we think that it’s a great opportunity to be part of a community of global cities that work together towards the prosperity of humanity overall and that’s the role that cities are going to have to continue providing and playing,” adds Tau.

Where rubber hits the road and where the effective use of technology is likely to make the ride that much smoother.

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Women as gifts is a serious step backwards: Ministry of Women

SABC News, 20 June 2014

The Ministry of Women has backed an investigation into allegations that SABC Chief Operations Officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng received a wife as a gift from Venda chiefs.

Earlier this week, it was reported that traditional leaders in Limpopo presented Motsoeneng with a wife, a cow, and a calf as a token of appreciation after meeting with them.

He received the gifts because he was “committed to his job and understands the strategic objectives of the SABC”.

The Commission of Gender Equality has confirmed that it's investigating a complaint.

The Ministry says the use of women as gifts is a serious step backwards and an insult to the gains of 20 years of democracy and freedom.

Spokesperson, Kenosi Machepa says the issue of giving Motsoeneng a wife as a gift should not be connected with him doing his job.

“What informed the Venda chiefs that it would be okay for them to reward Mr Hlaudi Motsoeneng for the job well done with a 23 year old female? We find that this practice purpose under the guise of tradition and culture by a lobby group is solemnly regrettable.”

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4.    Alliance

Post-SONA Debate, Day 2: The overalls are over it

Rebecca Davis , Daily Maverick, 20 June 2014

The second day of the post-SONA Parliamentary debate ended on a note of high drama, when chair Thandi Modise kicked out EFF leader Julius Malema for his refusal to withdraw Wednesday’s statement that “the ANC massacred the people in Marikana”. It came at the end of a long Parliamentary session characterised again by insults and accusations hurled between parties. By REBECCA DAVIS.

If the first two days of the Fifth Parliament’s sitting can be taken to have set the tone for debate within the National Assembly, we’re in for quite a time of it. On Thursday, as on Wednesday, a good number of politicians were prioritising bashing their rivals over delivering any substantive contributions to what was supposed to be a discussion about President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address.

This was particularly evident if you compared their written speeches with what the politicians actually delivered. ANC Chief Whip Stone Sizani’s prepared speech included a lengthy account of the ANC’s land reform policy, guided by the principles of the National Development Plan, but he didn’t have time to get to any of that because he was too busy slamming the DA.

The opposition party’s reliance on the notion of an “open opportunity society” automatically benefited children raised in privilege, Sizani said. “Such a society believes an individual’s lack of success or lack of opportunities is due to their own weakness and not those of the circumstances into which they are found or the system into which they are born.”

DA Parliamentary leader Mmusi Maimane, who had a fairly torrid time of it on Wednesday, was again singled out for special criticism. Sizani said that it was an insult to the electorate to believe that “token black faces” could sway voters. He went so far as to read former DA spin-doctor Gareth van Onselen’s scathing appraisal of Maimane as a political figure who trades in “safe cliches and truisms”.

Sizani said that the DA was the first to point fingers at ANC corruption, but remained silent on malfeasance from within their own ranks. He urged listeners to investigate the story behind the troubled Outdshoorn municipality, where expelled DA councillor Peter Roberts wrote anaffidavit blowing the whistle on the DA caucus. Sizani also hinted, somewhat mysteriously, that Western Cape Premier Helen Zille was being controlled by US statesman Henry Kissinger. He seemed to base this on a comment made after Kissinger visited Zille in 2010, and subsequently remarked that the DA’s success in the Western Cape was a project of “international significance”.

“What is this internationally significant project that the DA is running on behalf of Henry Kissinger?” Sizani asked, meaningfully.

It is perhaps revealing that ANC figures have been expending so much energy in this debate in attacking the DA, rather than the EFF. The ANC’s Yunus Karrim may have scoffed at the DA’s election performance on Wednesday, but the party’s growth seems to have rattled the ruling party enough to warrant repeated take-downs.

The media came in for another slap from a senior ANC figure, with Deputy Higher Education Minister Mduduzi Manana accusing the media and opposition parties of having “co-opted each other” against the will of the majority. The final proof of the ANC’s election results has been returned to repeatedly throughout this debate, with ANC MPs choosing to heckle the DA simply with the words “11 million”: the number of South Africans who voted for the ANC.

For their part, two DA politicians – Sej Motau and Cathy Labuschagne – urged the ANC to pull out of the tripartite alliance. Motau said the notion had “outlived its usefulness”; Labuschagne charged that it was an alliance that existed on paper only, with little consensus about how to tackle the economy. Nkandla was also still prominent among the DA’s grievances. MP Ian Ollis performed a little piece of political theatre by brandishing a chequebook and offering to repay the cost of the security upgrades on Zille’s residence – R3,248 – if Zuma would do likewise with Nkandla.

Amidst the potshots, there was also mention of policy routes to be taken in the months ahead. Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini said that the government would be looking into further restrictions on alcohol sales. She said too that government was investigating the possibility of providing support for seasonal farm-workers in the off-season, indicating that a test project would be rolled out in De Doorns – epicentre of the Western Cape farm protests 18 months ago.

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi reinforced the government’s commitment to the implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI), which he described as “the third revolution in healthcare”. Motsoaledi also said that combating TB – the biggest killer in South Africa – would be a major priority during this government’s term. He indicated that the government is getting serious about tackling the issue of silicosis in former mineworkers (see the Daily Maverick’s special investigation here).

Government would be establishing what he called “one-stop service centres” to tackle the issue of silicosis, he said. There, former mineworkers would be able to receive health assessments by medics trained in occupational medicine; receive rehabilitation; and receive advice about pensions and compensation. Child and maternal mortality will also be a major focus for the Health Department, with pre-birth and post-natal services to be beefed up.

Those hoping for some insight from Deputy Minister of Communications Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams into the mandate of her newly-formed department would have been disappointed, however. Ndabeni-Abrahams, who was smacked down for her own communication after saying that the ANC “moered” the DA in Gauteng, chose to focus on vague statements about the role of public servants.

At these debates, the time allocated to politicians to speak is determined by their number of seats in the National Assembly. As a result, tiny parties get only a few minutes to make their voices heard. On Thursday, it was maiden speech time for the African Independent Congress and Agang. Leader of the former, Mandla Galo, angrily dismissed the suggestion that people had voted for the AIC because they had confused it at the ballot box with the ANC, saying that the party had won votes through its “pro-poor” policies.

Agang’s Mike Tshisonga, speaking at a time when the party seems to be lurching from one new scandal to the next, didn’t use his platform to allay any concerns. Instead, he delivered a strange, rambling address in which he said Agang had arrived in Parliament to chase away the darkness, and exhorted South Africans to clean their minds. Many would retort that Agang should focus on cleaning their shambolic internal affairs.

The PAC’s Alton Mpethi issued an appeal for the release of operatives of Apla (the Azanian People’s Liberation Army) who are still in prison for crimes committed during Apartheid. If Hani-killer Clive Derby-Lewis was to go free, Mpethi said, Apla fighters should do likewise. He singled out Kenny “Puliki” Motsamai, who has spent almost 25 years in jail for killing a white traffic officer in 1989.

But the small party which predictably won the lion’s share of attention was the EFF, who revealed themselves to be in tjatjarag mood early on. EFF MP Andile Mngxitama interrupted the Freedom Front Plus’ Pieter Mulder to ask when “this thief” would “give us back our land”. Told that it was un-parliamentary to call an MP a thief, Mngxitama withdrew the comment.

EFF MP Khanyisile Litchfield-Tshabalala delivered the most radical speech of the day. (If her name sounds familiar, that’s because Litchfield-Tshabalala was the first woman to be made a rear admiral in the SANDF, and subsequently resigned after being convicted in a military court of charges of fraud and assault.)

Litchfield-Tshabalala gave the strongest indication to date that the EFF is prepared to work with the ANC – under very specific terms. In the spirit of radical economic transformation, she said, the EFF would extend their hand to provide a two-thirds majority to change the Constitution. “That will allow you to finally put foreign white monopoly capital in its place – under political power,” Litchfield-Tshabalala proposed.

That wasn’t the most dramatic gesture of the day from the EFF, however. On Wednesday, Malema had been called up on a point of order for stating that it was the ANC government who killed the miners in Marikana. Chair Thandi Modise indicated that she would rule on the matter on Thursday. At the end of the Parliamentary session, she instructed Malema that he must withdraw the statement.

Malema refused. When the crime rate goes down, he contended, it is then said in Parliament that the government – not the police – has succeeded in bringing down the crime rate. Why should the same slippage between “government” and “police” not apply to the police’s negative actions, as in the case of Marikana? Modise reiterated that he must withdraw the statement.

Malema was not budging. “I maintain the ANC killed people in Marikana,” he said calmly. Modise said that in that case, she was left with no option but to instruct him to leave.

“No problem,” he replied. The party had clearly discussed – perhaps even counted on – this possibility in advance, because they rose as one to leave with their leader. As they exited, they yelled: “You murdered people in Marikana!”

One female EFF MP, brandishing a stick, shouted: “Thandi, you were the Premier” – a reference to the fact that Modise was serving as Premier of the North West at the time of the Massacre.

“Yes, I was the Premier,” Modise responded.

The EFF announced immediately afterwards that an urgent press conference would be held to discuss the matter, but then postponed it until Friday. After the MPs had left the Assembly, the ANC’s Mmamoloko Kubayi urged Modise to convene an investigation into the EFF for having brought Parliament into disrepute, and Modise indicated that she would consider doing so.

Malema could be back in his seat tomorrow – if he chooses to. The EFF won’t be out of hot water just yet, though, if Kubayi’s proposed investigation determines censure is necessary. Nonetheless, it’s probable that the party feels pretty satisfied about the day’s events. Just two days into the Parliament, they have succeeded in making a bold gesture of defiance, and sending a clear message that they do not intend to be bound to establishment rules. Exactly what their end-game is, however, is something that may only become clear after tomorrow’s press conference.

One figure expressing public approval of their stance was former Cope leader Mbhazima Shilowa, who tweeted that it “would have been a sad day” if Malema had withdrawn his comment. Shilowa said that if the ANC could speak of the Apartheid government’s massacres at Sharpeville and Boipatong, why was it any less correct to speak of the ANC government’s massacre at Marikana?

Amidst all this drama, the State of the Nation Address has been left to languish on the sidelines. But tomorrow it should take centre stage again, when President Jacob Zuma gets his chance to respond to the debate. As always, when Zuma takes the podium, nobody should expect anything particularly eye-opening. But will he use his platform to remind Parliament’s new upstarts who is boss? 

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ANC condemns EFF behaviour

Sapa, Times Live, 19 June 2014

The Office of the ANC Chief Whip has condemned the "atrocious behaviour" in the National Assembly by Economic Freedom Fighters MPs.

On Thursday evening, spokesman Moloto Mothapo said: "The chairperson had ruled the remarks by EFF leader Julius Malema as un-parliamentary following his claim in the House yesterday that 'the ANC government killed the people of Marikana'.

"The chairperson found that Malema's utterances were false, misleading, malicious and therefore inconsistent with the decorum of the House."

Malema refused to withdraw his remarks and led his party members on a walkout after the presiding officer ordered him to leave.

"During their walkout, the EFF MPs howled and barked several derogatory utterances and made disturbing gestures.

"Such outrageous conduct not only brought the House into disrepute, but has never been seen in the 20-year history of this democratic Parliament."

Mothapo said the Office of the ANC Chief Whip welcomed the indication that Parliament would investigate the matter with a view to bring all involved to book.

"Such abhorrent behaviour, disguised as 'militancy' or 'radicalism' makes a complete mockery of this institution and is contemptuous to the people of South Africa on whose behalf this parliament exists," he said.

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5.    International

Fifa investigating Mexico over alleged anti-gay slurs

Sapa-AP , Times Live, 19 June 2014

FIFA is investigating claims that Mexico fans chanted anti-gay slurs during its opening match against Cameroon.

FIFA says "disciplinary proceedings were opened against Mexico for improper conduct of spectators" last Friday in Natal.

The same chants were heard during the television broadcast of Mexico's second match against Brazil in Fortaleza on Tuesday.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter and Brazil state president Dilma Rousseff have pledged to use the World Cup as a platform to fight racism and discrimination.

Fare, the European fan monitoring group, has also alerted FIFA to far-right banners displayed by Croatia and Russia fans inside stadiums.

FIFA says only one disciplinary case had been opened by early Thursday.

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Mugabe succession battle fuels media crackdown

 Teldah Mawarire, M&G, 19 June 2014

·          

·         Political factional fights in the Zanu-PF have led to a media crackdown with suspicious break-ins and raids on three editors' offices.

 

A crackdown on the media, stoked by political factional fights in Zanu-PF, has gripped Zimbabwe following suspicious break-ins at the homes and raids on offices of three editors by the police’s central investigation department.

The raids and an arrest come after President Robert Mugabe lashed out at his Information Minister Jonathan Moyo for appointing editors at state-owned newspapers who have been critical of the party in the past. Moyo, Mugabe said, was a fool, a weevil and a devil incarnate for trying to destroy the party from within.

Moyo is accused by allies of the faction headed by vice-president Joice Mujuru of using the media to derail their plan for Mujuru to succeed Mugabe. Sources who sat in a politburo meeting two weeks ago said ministers linked to Mujuru had insisted at the meeting that editors Mduduzi Mathuthu and Edmund Kudzayi be dismissed. The politburo is Zanu-PF’s highest decision-making body.

On Wednesday night, the home of Chronicle editor Mduduzi Mathuthu was ransacked and household items were taken, including a television set and food. On the same night, the home of Sunday Mail editor Edmund Kudzayi was also broken into. On Thursday morning, the police raided the office of Kudzayi and he was later arrested. The charge that Kudzayi faces could not be confirmed. Both papers fall under the Zimpapers stable, which is controlled by the information ministry.

Police from the central investigations department were also seeking the editor of the Zimbabwe Independent Dumisani Muleya. The Independent is the Mail & Guardian’s sister newspaper.   

Edith Kayinga, general manager for human capital at Alpha Media Holdings, which is the holding company of the Independent, confirmed that investigators visited the paper earlier asking to interview Muleya, who was not in the office as he is on leave.

“Three detectives came to our offices asking for Muleya. They also wanted his mobile number and home address. I could not grant that request.” Kayinga said the three, who had no identification, would not disclose why they wanted Muleya, saying it was business but declined to see any other editor.

‘Pure virgin’
Moyo made the two surprise appointments of Mathuthu and Kudzayi to the Zimpapers Group of newspapers this year. Mathuthu is a former editor of Newzimbabwe.com, a United Kingdom-based online publication often cited as a project of the opposition, while Kudzayi broke a story which alleged that Mugabe’s daughter, Bona, was gang-raped by Tanzanian students. The story embarrassed the first family and was denied by first lady Grace Mugabe, who publicly insisted that her daughter, who was about to get married, was a “pure virgin”.

Mathuthu refused to comment, referring question to Zimpapers group editor-in-chief Pikirayi Deketeke, who confirmed the police had visited their offices and seized a desktop computer, iPad and a mobile phone belonging to Kudzayi. He said he was not aware if they had a search warrant.

Deketeke said he could not comment on the burglary at Mathuthu’s house, but he said he was not aware if Kudzayi had been arrested or what charges he was being sought for.

Sources in Zanu-PF told the M&G on Thursday that the arrests were political and linked to Zanu-PF’s factional fights to succeed Mugabe.

Last week the M&G reported that the Mujuru faction had been behind the attack on Moyo by Mugabe, after it put together dossiers given to Mugabe detailing how the state media had recently turned against the government by reporting that certain ministers linked to Mujuru were corrupt.

Police spokesperson Charity Charamba was not taking calls at the time of publishing.

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SA will not intervene in Lesotho’s disputes

SABC News, 19 June 2014

South Africa is not considering intervening in neighbouring Lesotho, despite a build-up of Lesotho's security forces in and around Maseru.

Lesotho Prime Minister Tom Thabane recently closed the Lesotho Parliament for nine months, after a fallout within the governing alliance. The government is still in power. 

Department of International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane says while South Africa is concerned about the growing tension in Lesotho, it is not contemplating giving the country any military assistance.

"We don't believe in military interventions - but also, we are members of voluntary countries that have now formed Africa's capacity for intervention if called upon. South Africa cannot just wake up in the morning and walk into Lesotho and say we are intervening. We don't do things that way," says Nkoana-Mashabane.

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African World Cup fans fear for their lives

eNCANews, 19 June 2014

LAGOS - African World Cup fans say they will stay home for the duration of the tournament as they are fearing for their lives.

Insurgents are targeting public viewing venues and in the latest attack 14 people were killed by a suicide bomber at a fan park in Nigeria.

The bomb -- packed into a tricycle taxi -- ripped through the public viewing venue in the town of Damaturu.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The incident comes after security forces arrested about 500 Boko Haram members in the southern Abia state.

In Kenya's coastal town of Mpeketoni, gunmen rampaged through the town shooting indiscriminately.

Many of those killed were shot while watching the World Cup.

The assaults are an echo of the 2010 soccer attacks in Uganda's capital Kampala where over 70 people were killed.

Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for that attack and the group has warned of more onslaughts, especially against tourists.

-eNCA

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Why do terrorists hate the World Cup?

Simon Allison , Daily Maverick, 20 June 2014

Earlier this week in Nigeria, 21 people died when a rickshaw-bomb exploded at a World Cup viewing centre. This isn’t the first time World Cup watchers have been targeted, in Nigeria or elsewhere. What is it about the World Cup that makes it such an attractive target? By SIMON ALLISON.

It happened just a few minutes after the start of Brazil’s World Cup group match against Mexico on Tuesday night. The small crowd at the open air viewing area in Damaturu, in northern Nigeria, had watched the stirring national anthems, had seen the Mexicans start strongly and the Brazilians respond in kind. That was all they saw.

A suicide bomber in a three-wheeled rickshaw taxi pressed his button, detonating a bomb that killed at 21 people and left at least 27 seriously injured.

“The bomb just threw me and I didn’t even know where I was,” said one survivor. The match was over.

There is something particularly poignant about tragedies like this, especially for an outside audience. Yes, northern Nigeria is a dangerous place at the best of times, and bombings and attacks are all-too regular occurrences. But to attack a World Cup watching venue seems particularly brutal. This is somewhere that people gather to relax, to have fun, to temporarily forget about their pain and the worries of everyday life; it’s an experience we can all relate to. For most of us, football is escapism, but in Damaturu the real world intruded with fatal consequences.

This is not the first time that World Cup or football-watching fans have been targeted in Nigeria. As Robyn Dixon reports: “The bomb blast follows several similar attacks in northern Nigeria in recent months. Just over two weeks ago, 14 people were killed in a bomb attack on a bar in the town of Mubi in Adamawa state, where people were watching soccer. In May, three people were killed at a soccer viewing venue in Jos, the capital of Plateau state. In April, two people died when gunmen opened fire on a soccer-viewing venue in Yobe state.”

Nor is this off-field violence restricted to Nigeria. On Sunday, in the 5-hour long attack by Al Shabaab gunmen on a Kenyan coastal town, fans watching World Cup action in their local bar were among the 48 victims.

And who can forget the twin explosions, also courtesy of Al Shabaab, that went off in Uganda’s capital Kampala during the 2010 World Cup final, targeting fans watching at a local rugby club and an Ethiopian restaurant. 74 people died. “Can you link it to the World Cup? I don't know…” said FIFA President Sepp Blatter at the time, clearly wishing to distance his showpiece event from violence on this scale. But it keeps happening, so there must be a link; if not specifically between terrorist attacks and the World Cup, then certainly between terrorist attacks and the Beautiful Game itself.

No matter where they are, big sporting events always present major security concerns. The combination of lots of people and worldwide attention is an irresistible one. Attacking sporting events tends to generate far more publicity than other, similar attacks. Take for example last year’s Boston Marathon bombing. Just two people died – making it a relatively minor incident in the grand scheme of things – yet it dominated world headlines.

Protecting sporting events themselves is a major undertaking (and also big business for the firms involved). Researcher Christopher McMichael describes the immense scale of the operation in Brazil: “In conjunction with the deployment of more than 170,000 of the country’s security forces, stadiums will be patrolled by Israeli-made drones, US-manufactured surveillance robots and officers equipped with facial recognition glasses reporting back to surveillance centres. Brazilian forces have also received training from the mercenary firm Blackwater / Academi, notorious for its violence against Iraqis during the US occupation,” he writes in the Con Mag. “This kind of display is not unique to Brazil. Mega sporting events, and particularly the World Cup and the Olympics, have become increasingly fortified and policed with each new tournament.”

Of course, it’s impossible to police the whole world (much as control-hungry FIFA might want to), but attacking World Cup-related events does well on the publicity stakes too.

But it’s not just about publicity. There’s another reason that groups like Boko Haram and Al Shabaab might consider World Cup and football-related events to be legitimate targets in the context of their twisted ideology. If you are a violent extremist group with a pronounced aversion to the western world – and both Boko Haram and Al Shabaab fall firmly into this camp – then is there a better symbol of the excess, corruption and profiteering of the Western world than the World Cup?

If you haven’t seen it already, watch this clip of comedian John Oliver explaining all that’s wrong with the international football showpiece. He ruthlessly exposes how FIFA forces countries to give it massive tax exemptions, and leaves with huge profits; how corporate sponsors are given priority over basic health and safety regulations; and how endemic corruption permeates the organisation’s inner workings. He also points out the stunning hypocrisy that many South Africans will already be familiar with: that governments of countries with massive poverty are prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on temporary infrastructure and white elephant stadiums, money that should be going towards health and education and housing and other things that will make a real difference in people’s lives.

There’s something wrong with any person or group prepared to kill innocent people at a football match. But we should also acknowledge that there’s something wrong with the World Cup itself. While we all condemn suicide bombers, unreservedly, perhaps we should be reconsidering our enthusiastic support of an event which is fast becoming a symbol of corruption and inequality.

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Cameroon coach slams 'disgusting' players over conduct

eNCANews,19 June 2014

MANAUS, Brazil - Cameroon coach Volker Finke blasted his "disgusting" players' behaviour after one was red-carded and another headbutted a teammate in their 4-0 World Cup defeat to Croatia.

The players conducted themselves badly and that is why they conceded four goals. I know it's difficult to play 10 against 11 but that's no excuse to lose control.

The loss, which condemned the Indomitable Lions to a first round exit, saw Alexandre Song sent off in the first half for punching Croatia striker Mario Mandzukic, the scorer of two goals.

Matters worsened when full-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto aimed a headbutt at teammate Benjamin Moukandjo in the dying moments following a furious row.

"It's disgusting and I don't like it," said the German coach.

"We will need to talk to certain players. The behaviour of some of them was not at all satisfying. It's unacceptable to see that kind of thing."

Cameroon, who made the World Cup quarter-finals in 1990 but have not got out of the group stages since, were also beaten 1-0 by Mexico in their opening Group A game in Brazil.

The team were involved in a dispute over bonuses before the tournament. They refused to get on the plane to Brazil until guarantees were made.

Cameroon will have nothing but pride to play for when they end their campaign against the hosts in Brasilia on Monday.

"I am really disappointed by the result. The players conducted themselves badly and that is why they conceded four goals. I know it's difficult to play 10 against 11 but that's no excuse to lose control," added Finke.

The 66-year-old coach, who only took over in 2013 having spent most of his career in his native Germany, said he will not be resigning but admitted the decision may be made for him.

"It's not a question for me. We have to wait a little and analyse what went on before we make any decisions.

"This team had failed to qualify for two successive Africa Cup of Nations tournaments but then found a way to reach the World Cup. But after this result, we have to say it's a shame.

"I don't want to launch into great explanations, we have to keep calm."

-Sapa

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6.    Comment

The inequality debate

 *Leopold Scholtz, Fin24, 19 June 2014

 

THE far-reaching discussion about equality (or lack thereof) which originated with the French economist Professor Thomas Piketty’s provocative thesis continues unabated in the international media. Even South African newspapers have published commentaries about it.

Just to refresh the memory: in his recent book, Capital in the 21st Century, Piketty posits the statement that capitalism’s natural consequence is growing inequality. 

He says the first three quarters of the 20th century were an aberration, due to the Great Depression and two world wars, but the natural order of things, according to the Gospel of Capitalism, has since then been re-established.

Piketty writes that since capital accruement due to investments and inheritance grows faster than that generated by ordinary labour, the whole system stimulates an ever-growing inequality. He proposes to redress the situation by imposing heavy taxes on the rich.

Why not abolish inequality altogether? Is it not true that the rich and mighty will always abuse their power to maintain and expand their privileges – and do so at the expense of those who are helpless and poor?

History - and understanding human nature - confirms this. Which is exactly why raw capitalism is a bad thing.

But we need to dig deeper. If you recognise the truth in the previous paragraph, what on earth could you have against socialist-type enforcement of equality? After all, this will put an end to, as Karl Marx put it, the exploitation of man by man.

Can you run like Usain Bolt?

Well, people are simply not equal. We are different. Pit me against Olympic champion Usain Bolt over 100 metres, and see how unequal we are.

On the other hand, I daresay Bolt would not be able to write an article like this. I am not better than him, or vice versa; we are different.

The same thing applies to life generally. People have different IQs, talents, characters and interests. One would be perfectly suited to (and happy to do) unskilled labour; the other suited to build buildings; yet another to litigate in court or preach to congregations.

Exactly because people in real life are unequal, that means that equality has to be enforced. This is what happened in communist countries.

And that necessarily leads to freedom and democracy being curbed or even abolished. On a most terrible level this happened in Cambodia in the 1970s, where the Khmer Rouge killed everybody wearing glasses, because this marked them as being “better” than others.

But inequality reared its head even in communist countries, most notoriously in the so-called egalitarian Soviet Union, where the few enjoyed priviliges denied to the many.

Does this mean that we have to let nature simply take its course? No, it doesn’t.

Personally, my moral and religious principles prevent me from acquiescing to a situation where the rich and mighty lord it over the poor and powerless. It is wrong.

But not everybody will share my principles. So, let us identify practical, pragmatic reasons why too much inequality is bad.

Marxism-Leninism an unmitigated disaster

First of all, the boundless inequality engendered by the raw capitalism of the 19th century was one of the reasons for the rise of Marxism-Leninism, which was an unmitigated disaster. 

It was a totalitarian ideology and system, in its practical manifestation similar to Adolf Hitler’s Nazism. It was the total antithesis of liberal multi-party democracy which is embodied in the South African constitution.

It is, therefore, also in the interest of the rich not to have too much inequality.

Nevertheless, the very same liberal democracy is built not only on the foundations of freedom, but also on an ethical equality. In a democracy, all are supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law, and every single person is endowed with inalienable human dignity.

However, as the French socialist writer Anatole France once sarcastically said: “The law, in its majestic equality, gives every man the right to dine at the Ritz or to sleep under a bridge.” The plain fact is that no one can fill his belly with abstract equality; it has to have some practical content.

And, therefore, society as a whole has to work together to curb inequality. I am not denying that the state has a role to play, but I am wary of too much state power. The institutionalised freedom of a democracy needs to strike a balance between freedom and equality.

Therefore, civil society itself has to realise that too much inequality, especially of the kind that may generate chaos and revolution, is a bad thing.

This means that the bean counters in the private sector - who, by the way, have accumulated much too much power in modern private sector - will have to look out more for the human beings in their care, instead of looking coldly at columns of figures.

Too often one sees bean counters who look only at their companies’ short-term profits, instead of taking the long-term interests (in the form of their greatest assets, their workers), into account.

What is needed, therefore, is a wide-ranging social debate about freedom, equality and prosperity. The cold-hearted bean counters and second-hand car salesmen who populate too many boardrooms need to take note.

 - Fin24

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

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