South Africa To Assume Presidency of UN Security Council

ANC President Jacob Zuma visited the United States in late October 2008. He was reported to have reassured the business and political leadership that the situation in South Africa is stable., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

SOUTH AFRICA IN NEW YORK AS COUNTRY ASSUMES PRESIDENCY OFF UN SECURITY COUNCIL

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 12 (NNN-BUANEWS) — President Jacob Zuma has arrived in New York to preside over South Africa assuming the presidency of the United Nations Security Council for the month of January.

The UNSC presidency rotates monthly among its member states alphabetically, and the Council is organized in such a way that it is able to function continuously.

The South African department of International Relations says South Africa will use its presidency to explore concrete measures to strengthen the relationship between the UN and regional organizations, in particular the African Union (AU), in the area of conflict prevention, management and resolution on the African continent.

“We will certainly take advantage of these important occasions to advance our international relations policy objectives, including supporting the African Agenda, South-South and North-South co-operation, with a view to promoting democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights,” said President Zuma Wednesday.

President Zuma and President Tarja Halonen of Finland will co-chair the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability (GSP), which aims to formulate a new plan for achieving sustainable development and meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other development objectives.

Since its establishment, the panel has explored approaches to growth that would translate into effective socio-economic development and poverty reduction.

NNN-BUANEWS

Africa

Food Price Pressures Weigh Heavy on Southern Africa

Unrest in Lilongwe, Malawi had resulted in the reported deaths of 18 people during July 2011. The demonstrators demanded action on the failing economy which is under tremendous pressure due to the world financial crisis., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Analysis: Food price pressures weigh heavy on southern Africa

Fri, Jan 6 2012
By Ed Stoddard and Chris Mfula

JOHANNESBURG/LUSAKA (Reuters) - A tight grain supply outlook after several bumper harvests is set to fan food price pressures in southern Africa, fuelling salary demands and threatening to knock the region’s fragile economies out of kilter.

Erratic rains have delayed the planting of the crucial maize crop in Zambia, pushing inflation towards double digits, while bread basket South Africa is importing the staple despite abundant harvests because of worries it has exported too much.

With a high proportion of households in the region spending much of their limited income feeding themselves, rising food inflation is likely to further stoke union demands in wage negotiations.

It will also make it tougher for South Africa’s central bank to refrain from hiking interest rates as it grapples with sluggishness in the region’s dominant economy.

Bumper crops in recent years, including in Zambia and Malawi, have helped contain food inflation.

“In the case of southern Africa, it would appear that the success story of recent years is increasingly becoming more of a threat to the inflation picture,” said Razia Khan, head of Africa research at Standard Chartered.

“Zambia …had seen record grain harvests. While the new government will devote even more attention to boosting agriculture, it may not be sufficient to hold food prices - and inflation - down, if the rains are less favorable.”

Zambia’s big yields have been attributed to government subsidies to peasant farmers in the form of fertilizer and seeds but the crop ultimately depends on rain and the country’s agriculture minister told Reuters on Thursday things had gotten off to a bad start because of erratic weather.

Zambian inflation slowed to 7.2 percent in December from 8.1 percent in November but the trend is seen reversing.

“If the rainfall pattern continues like this and we have a bad crop then we are definitely going back to double-digit inflation,” said Chibamba Kanyama, an analyst with the think-tank Economics Association of Zambia.

WARNINGS FROM EAST AFRICA

High oil and food inflation last year in east Africa demonstrated the potential knock-on effects on developing economies of a spike in prices of staple goods.

The region suffered from drought in late 2010 and the start of 2011, sending the prices of basic commodities like wheat, maize and sugar through the roof.

In Kenya last year, where inflation peaked at 19.7 percent in November, the shilling dipped sharply against the dollar, bank lending rates and debt servicing costs hovered close to 20 percent and the stock market fell 30 percent as many foreign investors pulled out.

Zambia, meanwhile, does still have around 600,000 tonnes of maize in reserve but a poor crop this growing season will fan price pressures.

“While non-food inflation has stubbornly remained in low-double digits, with the currency weakening there is certainly upside risk to non-food inflation and if the harvest disappoints food inflation will accelerate as well,” said Leon Myburgh, Citi’s Sub-Saharan Africa Strategist.

In Zimbabwe, late rains mean the total maize area planted is 35 percent less than it was at this stage last year, according to government figures.

“We’ll pay more and we are going to import inflation from the higher cost of food,” said John Robertson, an independent economist based in Zimbabwe.

SOUTH AFRICA: EXPORTER TO IMPORTER

South Africa has been harvesting bumper maize crops but because of export commitments, producer group Grain SA estimates it may have to import a combined 700,000 tonnes of white and yellow maize in the marketing year that ends on April 30.

Domestic maize prices are currently around record highs and double what they were a year ago and Grain SA says they are now at “import-parity” levels which means they are climbing to the global prices paid to buy overseas.

The March white maize contract is currently fetching around 2,680 rand a tonne while yellow maize is just over 2,600 rand a tonne.

This is worrying as inflation is slithering upward in the region’s biggest economy — and grain prices are already a big factor driving that trend.

November consumer inflation quickened to 6.1 percent year-on-year, from 6.0 percent in October, a breach of the central bank’s mandated target range of 3 to 6 percent. Food inflation led the way at 10.7 percent.

The typical South African blue-collar, unionized worker often has several dependents to feed, so food inflation rate is a better measure of his or her situation than the general rate.

Emerging food price pressures last year were seen behind wage settlements far above inflation in sectors such as mining and will drive negotiations again in 2012 when the annual “strike season” commences mid-year.

“It will be double-digits demands for pay increases. Food is a big chunk of the monthly basket of goods that unionized workers purchase,” George Glynos, managing director of financial consultancy ETM, said.

This will have implications for the region.

“Higher inflation in South Africa typically triggers some spillover into inflation in the rest of its regional trading partners,” said Standard Chartered’s Khan.

(Additional reporting by Nelson Banya in Harare and Duncan Miriri in Nairobi; Editing by John Stonestreet)

Africa

South Africa Public Sector Strike Exposes Deeper Issues

Republic of South African public sector workers during a one-day general strike on August 10, 2010. The unions went on an indefinite work stoppage on August 18 demanding an 8 percent raise and housing allowances.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Friday, August 20, 2010
22:10 Mecca time, 19:10 GMT

SA strikes expose deeper issues

By Patrick Bond

South African military health services are filling the void created by striking nurses

The two major civil service unions on strike against the South African government have vowed to intensify pressure in coming days, in a struggle pitting a million members of the middle and lower ranks of society against a confident government leadership fresh from hosting the World Cup.

Teachers from the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) and nurses from the National Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) have continued picketing at schools, clinics and hospitals, leading to widespread shutdowns since August 18.

Skeleton teams of doctors and military personnel have been compelled to send non-emergency cases home.

In several confrontations with police on Wednesday and Thursday, striking workers were shot with rubber bullets and water cannons.

Rising Anger

Notwithstanding reasonably high popularity enjoyed by Jacob Zuma, the affable president, recent reports about vast profits in ‘Black Economic Empowerment’ deals for his son, nephew and inner-circle allies are raising anger.

A press statement from Nehawu lambasted Pretoria’s hedonistic state-managerial class: “We read on a daily basis government’s wasteful expenditure on World Cup tickets, cars, hotels, parties and advertising.”

Indeed, Pretoria subsidised the World Cup to the tune of $5bn, by most estimates, including more than $3bn on stadiums that are now widely recognised as ‘white elephants’.

Many are unable to fill the stands and too expensive for the weakly-supported local football teams. (Even the cricket and rugby teams which attract more fans are hesitant to move from their current world-class venues).

Corporations sponsoring the soccer tournament took home more than $4bn in profits, tax free without exchange controls.

Opulence and inequality

During June to July, South Africa displayed to foreign visitors and television audiences an opulence that belied its increasingly stressed economy and extreme inequality.

The recovery from a two per cent GDP decline in 2009 is faltering, with three per cent announced growth this year widely derided, as the first half of 2010 witnessed continuing job losses.

More than one million of the 13 million workers in South Africa’s formal economy have lost their jobs since 2008.

In spite of the pressure, workers have become surprisingly militant, winning above-inflation wage settlements from the transport and electricity parastatals in recent weeks, assisted by pressure they wielded before and during the World Cup.

With inflation at 4.5 per cent, the government’s latest offer of a seven per cent annual increase plus a $25 rise in the monthly housing allowance (to $90) would ordinarily be a strong settlement.

However, union demands are much higher, including an 11 per cent wage increase (backdated three months) and a $130 increase for the housing allowance, as well equality in the state medical aid subsidy.

In addition to higher taxes on business and the rich (they had fallen markedly from 1994 levels), unions point out other places that state waste and corporate subsidies could be cut.

Frivolous spending

Vast spending on infrastructure has come under strong criticism, especially given that the four major components – two new coal-fired power plants ($35bn), financed partly by the World Bank, a ($3bn) fast-train from the Johannesburg airport to the main financial district, a ($1bn) airport in Durban, and new (multi-billion dollar) dams for big mining and agricultural interests – mainly benefit elites and come at the cost of infrastructure for poor people.

But while the case for a redirection of state funds is strong, the question arises as to whether a potential ‘labour aristocracy’ will enjoy affluence at a time of ongoing job cuts and misery for the unskilled, unemployed masses.

The union reply is typically that each worker in turn supports large extended families, insofar as apartheid-era migrancy relations still tie South Africans to kinship networks stretching hundreds of kilometres.

Union leaders point out that no other social force in South Africa campaigns so actively for broader socio-economic rights that benefit the unemployed, such as a proposed National Health Insurance and Basic Income Grant ($15/person/month) that would reach the most marginalised communities.

But the unions are mainly losing these social-wage battles.

Increasing disillusion

The unions’ greatest disappointments with Zuma’s government are its amplification of neo-liberal economic policies such as exchange control liberalisation and monetarism (high interest rates), and its failure to ban labour brokers which supply hundreds of thousands of cheap, casualised ‘outsourced’ workers at far lower wages.

Also reflecting the widening social divides are the several thousand protests that police record each year.

Many have flared up spontaneously as localised ’service delivery’ riots, with results that include vandalism of municipal offices and even xenophobic outbreaks.

Unfortunately, no major urban social movement has emerged to capture and channel the frustrations into a sustained, democratic force.

While a settlement favourable to labour is expected within coming days, given how tough the unions are fighting, the pressures on the economy and society will keep growing.

Patrick Bond (bondp@ukzn.ac.za) is director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Africa

President Zuma Says South Africa Is Ready to Host the 2020 Olympics

President Jacob Zuma of the Republic of South Africa says that the country’s ability to host the World Cup 2010 makes it a contender for the 2020 Olympics.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

latimes.com/sports/la-sp-world-cup-notes-20100623,0,2724892.story

latimes.com

WORLD CUP NOTES FROM SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa has its eye on bigger Games — the 2020 Olympics
South Africa President Jacob Zuma says the nation’s staging of the World Cup demonstrates its capability of hosting a major sports event. And IOC President Jacque Rogge says he would ‘love to have a credible African candidate’ bid for the 2020 Games.

By Grahame L. Jones and Kevin Baxter
6:08 PM PDT, June 22, 2010

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa — South Africa hopes that by staging a successful World Cup it will become a viable candidate to host the Olympic Games, perhaps as soon as in 2020.

“We have got the facilities. Those who take decisions have seen how South Africa is. I’m sure we can do it,” Jacob Zuma, the country’s president, told Reuters on Tuesday. “It is now known Africa is capable of hosting any serious tournament.”

Cape Town bid for the 2004 Games that were awarded to Athens. Durban is considered a potential candidate for 2020.

And International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said in a German radio interview last week, “I’d love to have a credible African candidate for the next Games to be chosen, namely those of 2020.”

Grandmother sees red

Referee Stephane Lannoy of France has come under fire from a 70-year-old Brazilian grandmother because of the red card he dished out Saturday in Johannesburg.

Kaka’s grandma wasn’t happy about the call.

“I can’t repeat here what she said about the referee,” Brazil’s playmaker said Tuesday. “She was happy with the way I played but . . . she launched a bit of a tirade at the referee.”

The red card, picked up in a 3-1 victory over Ivory Coast, means Kaka will miss Brazil’s match on Friday against Portugal and with it the chance to play against his Real Madrid teammate Cristiano Ronaldo.

Injury woes for Portugal

Deco, Portugal’s 32-year-old Brazilian-born playmaker who will retire from the national team after the World Cup, might have played his final game of the tournament. He was scheduled to undergo an MRI scan Tuesday because “he still has pain in his right hip which is preventing him from training normally,” a team spokesman said.

Deco was replaced by Tiago in the starting lineup against North Korea on Monday and Portugal won, 7-0, with Tiago bagging two goals and assisting on another.

Portugal had another player sidelined Tuesday — midfielder Ruben Amorim is out for six days after injuring his left thigh in training.

Dutch women freed

Charges have been dropped against two Dutch women, Barbara Castelein and Mirte Nieuwpoort, who were arrested as part of FIFA’s crackdown against ambush marketing.

The two were among two dozen or three dozen women who attended the Netherlands-Denmark game wearing orange mini-dresses bearing a tiny label from a Dutch brewer, Bavaria, which had paid for their trip to South Africa. As part of the settlement, Bavaria has agreed not to engage in any ambush marketing at future World Cups through 2022, FIFA said.

Short passes

Defender Steve Cherundolo, one of 17 Europe-based players on the U.S. World Cup squad, has had his contract with Hannover 96 of the German Bundesliga extended by two years. Cherundolo, 31, has been with the club since 1999. . . . Rain has affected the playing surface at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth but England midfielder Steven Gerrard said it would not affect his team’s match against Slovenia on Wednesday. “The pitch has a few problems,” he said, “but I’ve certainly played on worse.”

Times wire services contributed to this report.

grahame.jones@latimes.com

kevin.baxter@latimes.com

Africa

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Black Man’s Killing by Police Shakes Louisiana Town

Shaun Monroe holds a program from the funeral of his father Bernard Monroe Wednesday, March 18, 2009, at his fathers house in Homer, La.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Black man’s killing by police shakes La. town

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN and MARY FOSTER,
Associated Press Writers

HOMER, La. – For 73 years before his killing by a white police officer, Bernard Monroe led a life in this northern Louisiana town as peaceful as they come — five kids with his wife of five decades, all raised in the same house, supported by the same job.

The black man’s shooting death is attracting far more attention than he ever did, raising racial tensions between the black community and Homer’s police department.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped organize a massive 2007 civil rights demonstration in Jena after six black teenagers were charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate, planned to lead a Friday afternoon rally in Homer to protest Monroe’s killing.

“The parallel here is that the local community cannot trust law enforcement and cannot trust the process to go forward without outside help,” Sharpton said.

Rendered mute after losing his larynx to cancer, Monroe was a 73-year-old retired power company lineman who was in his usual spot on a mild Friday afternoon in February when events unfolded: A chair by the gate led to his Adams Street home. A barbecue cooker smoked beside a picnic table in the yard. A dozen or so family members talked and played nearby.

All seemed calm, until two Homer police officers drove up.

In a report to state authorities, Homer police said Officer Tim Cox and another officer they have refused to identify chased Monroe’s son, Shaun, 38, from a suspected drug deal blocks away to his father’s house.

Witnesses dispute that account, saying the younger Monroe was talking to his sister-in-law in a truck in front of the house when the officers arrived.

All agree Shaun Monroe, who had an arrest record for assault and battery but no current warrants, drove up the driveway and went into the house. Two white police officers followed him. Within minutes, he ran back outside, followed by an unidentified officer who Tasered him in the front yard.

Seeing the commotion, Bernard Monroe confronted the officer. Police said that he advanced on them with a pistol and that Cox, who was still inside the house, shot at him through a screen door.

Monroe fell dead. How many shots were fired isn’t clear; the coroner has refused to release an autopsy report, citing the active investigation.

Police said Monroe was shot after he pointed a gun at them, though no one claims Monroe fired shots. Friends and family said he was holding a bottle of sports water. They accuse police of planting a gun he owned next to his body.

“Mr. Ben didn’t have a gun,” said 32-year-old neighbor Marcus Frazier, who was there that day. “I saw that other officer pick up the gun from out of a chair on the porch and put it by him.”

Frazier said Monroe was known to keep a gun for protection because of local drug activity.

Despite the chase and Tasering, Shaun Monroe was not arrested. He and other relatives would not comment afterward.

Monroe’s gun is being DNA-tested by state police. The findings of their investigation will be given to District Attorney Jonathan Stewart, who would decide whether to file charges.

The case also has led to FBI and State Police investigations and drawn attention from national civil rights leaders.

“We’ve had a good relationship, blacks and whites, but this thing has done a lot of damage,” said Michael Wade, one of three blacks on the five-member town council. “To shoot down a family man that had never done any harm, had no police record, caused no trouble. Suddenly everyone is looking around wondering why it happened and if race was the reason.”

Homer, a town of 3,800 about 45 miles northwest of Shreveport, is in piney woods just south of the Arkansas state line. Many people work in the oil or timber industries. In the old downtown, shops line streets near the antebellum Claiborne Parish courthouse on the town square.

The easygoing climate, blacks say, masked police harassment.

The black community has focused its anger on Police Chief Russell Mills, who is white. They say he’s directed a policy of harassment toward them.

The FBI and State Police said they received no complaints about Homer police before the shooting.

Mills declined interview requests, saying he retained a lawyer and feared losing his job.

Hours before Friday’s scheduled rally, music blared from Azzie Olds’ home, where the 53-year-old schoolteacher and her neighbors enjoyed a cookout. Olds, who is black, said she expected a peaceful march despite the anger many were feeling.

“You’ve got a lot of people upset about what happened, not just the black folks,” Olds said. “I hope the national attention can help the town realize that something really needs to be done about the situation.”

Elsewhere in Homer, some white residents expressed concern that Sharpton’s visit could enflame tensions.

“I just hope everybody behaves and don’t use it as an excuse to start trouble,” said Vanessa Efferson, 49, whose bookstore is one of the shops ringing the courthouse.

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