Thursday January 21, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Mary-Anne O'Donnell

Making Headlines:

African National Congress heavyweights Tokyo Sexwale and Gwede Mantashe were openly at odds on Wednesday over Sexwale's report on the booing of ANC members at a South African Communist Party (SACP) conference. Mantashe, the ANC's Secretary-General, said in a statement it was "unfortunate" that Sexwale - a national executive committee member of the party - had opted to "take on a fight on a non issue". This was after Sexwale denied that his report on the booing incident held "no status" within the party. Meanwhile, Sexwale said that Mantashe was "trivialising an "important" matter by criticising him. The spat over the status of the report began after a media briefing was held on Monday to report back on a weekend ANC National Executive Committee lekgotla. On the weekend, it was reported that at the legkotla, Sexwale had blamed Mantashe and the SACP General Secretary Blade Nzimande for failing to contain the tensions in the alliance.

Zimbabwe's maize output is under threat from a dry spell that could mean more food shortages in the coming months and a disastrous season for the country's farmers, a cabinet minister said on Wednesday. Agriculture Minister Joseph Made told State media that a lack of rain in the past few weeks and a severe fertiliser shortage, had left many crops in a bad state, and a top industry official said that farmers faced a disastrous season. Zimbabwe has suffered severe grain shortages since 2000, for which critics place the blame on President Robert Mugabe's drive to seize white-owned commercial farms to resettle landless blacks. Made said that many districts across the southern African country, including its major maize production belts, have experienced long dry spells and crops were moisture-stressed.

The World Bank expects the South African economy, which slumped to its first recession in 17 years during 2009, leading to an estimated 1,8% contraction in gross domestic product, to grow by 2% during 2010 and 2,7% in 2011 - however, a ‘double-dip' recession would severely undermine the pace and strength of the anticipated recovery. The forecast is well below the country's now abandoned aspiration for economic growth of more than 6% as from 2010, which was also seen as a necessary condition for curbing South Africa's extremely high unemployment rate and growing levels of inequality. The World Bank's growth forecasts for South Africa are more or less in line with the country's own Medium Term Budget Policy Statement forecasts, released in October, which anticipates growth of 1,5% in 2010/11, followed by 2,7% in 2011/12 and 3,2% in 2012/13. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan will update these forecasts on February 17, when he delivers his Budget address to Parliament.

Also making headlines:
Opposition parties are calling for the African National Congress to disinvest its stake in a company contracted to help build two new Eskom power stations.
Muslim and Christian clashes kill 460 in the Nigerian city of Jos.
And, the possibility of amending the Public Finance Bill to address the problem of civil servants being suspended with full pay will be discussed during the current Cabinet lekgotla.
That's a roundup of news making headlines today.