Friday, February 12, 2010
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Amy Witherden.
Making headlines:
In his State of the Nation Address to a joint sitting of Parliament last night, President Jacob Zuma promised an implementation drive, but opposition parties criticised him for providing little substance to his plans. Zuma pledged to inject another R60-billion into the State's three-year infrastructure programme, and to tweak industrial policy to put more people into jobs.
Invoking former President Nelson Mandela's vision of "a better future for all South Africa" on the twentieth anniversary of his release from prison, Zuma said that government must "work faster, harder and smarter".
Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said that Zuma's address was insubstantial, and in the instances where he elaborated clear policy initiatives, these were taken from her party's policies. Congress of the People Parliamentary leader Mvume Dandala described the speech as "lacking in vision", while economists thought it was disingenuous of Zuma to claim that he had kept a promise made last May to create half-a-million jobs. Nedbank economist Nicky Weimar and other economists warned on how the State would have to fund the initiatives that Zuma announced.

The European Union (EU) yesterday announced a $13-million fund to help thousands of Zimbabwean smallholder farmers, in a bid to revive the Southern African country's agriculture sector after years of decline.
Zimbabwe has suffered persistent food shortages since 2001, when President Robert Mugabe began a drive to seize white-owned commercial farms to resettle landless blacks.
The EU's food security coordinator in Zimbabwe, Pierre-Luc Vanhaeverbeke, said that 80 000 households would benefit from the $13-million donation through training and farming inputs such as seed and fertiliser. He added that "the stabilisation and eventual resuscitation of agriculture is crucial to the overall economic development of Zimbabwe." The project forms part of the EU's initiative to see Zimbabwe moving from food aid to food security.

President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation address lacked "recognition" of the unemployment crisis, said Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) spokesperson Patrick Craven yesterday.
Cosatu has been pushing for the development of a new industrial strategy after almost one-million jobs were lost as the country went into recession at the beginning of 2009. "There is no evidence yet that we are on track to create new jobs on the scale required and bring down the world-record levels of inequality," he said.
The African National Congress's labour ally was also "particularly concerned" about Zuma's silence on the creation of "decent work", the spread of casual labour and labour broking.

Also making headlines:
Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele is to publish a draft policy on the reform of the road accident fund.
Former US President and election observer Jimmy Carter says that Sudan's Omar Hassan al-Bashir is unlikely to win the upcoming election outright.
African National Congress secretary-general Gwede Mantashe says that Pretoria's name should remain unchanged, while the greater metropolitan area should be named Tshwane.
And, the Côte d'Ivoire has suspended its voter registration process indefinitely because of rising tensions.
That's a roundup of news making headlines today.