Wednesday, March 17, 2010
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Megan Wait.
Making headlines:
South Africa is spending over R15-million a year to support polygamist President Jacob Zuma's wives and children, almost double the budget from a year ago.
In a written answer to a Parliamentary question, Minister in the Presidency for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Collins Chabane said that the State has a R15,5-million budget for Zuma's family this year. The "spousal office" pays for personal support staff, such as secretaries and researchers, as well as domestic and international air travel and accommodation. Cellular phones for spouses and their secretaries, laptops and printers and a special daily allowance for "incidental" expenses are also covered.
"The State provides all reasonable administrative, logistical and other support to the spouses to enable them to meet their responsibilities in a manner that permits them actively to pursue their own careers and interests if they so desire," he said. Mrs Thobeka Zuma is engaged in community work related to health, Mrs Sizakele Zuma deals with agriculture and food security, while Mrs Nompumelelo Zuma works with orphans and vulnerable children.

Red tape and a lack of well-structured projects, rather than external funding limited by the global downturn, are the main hurdles to boosting capacity in Africa's power sector, financiers said yesterday. The continent is battling acute power shortages, which have also hampered economic growth, as governments fail to attract the necessary investment to add capacity to power grids, despite abundant energy sources.
Speaking at an African power conference, senior manager for infrastructure at the International Finance Corporation David Donaldson said that the problem is not finance. He explained that many African countries have yet to put the right regulatory frameworks in place to attract private investment. The creditworthiness of the utilities and a sound power regulator are all important factors for investors looking at a ten to 15 year timeline, he said.
Africa MD at rating agency Standard & Poor's Konrad Reuss said that developers should look at smaller projects rather than push for giant intiatives such as the Inga hydro project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has yet to materialise. The Grand Inga dam project could be a long-term solution to Africa's power problems, but investors have held back owing to political risk and its $80-billion price tag.

South Africa's plan to nationalise farmland and limit the amount of land owned by farmers will seriously harm investment in agriculture, said the country's biggest farmers' grouping, Agri SA yesterday.
The Rural Development and Land Reform Department recently published a strategic plan for the next three years, in which it proposes two options to speed up land transfers to landless blacks. Under the first option, which may require a constitutional change, all productive land will become a national asset with farmers paying taxes to lease land from the State. A second option, would be for limits to be imposed on landowners, curbing the amount of land that they can own.
But the plan, which still has to go before Parliament, has angered farmers and opposition political parties, who say that it could dent both foreign and local investment and food security. Deputy president of Agri SA Theo de Jager says that South Africa has already seen a downturn in investment in farming in recent years, partly owing to poor implementation of the current land restitution. "The damage from this latest plan would just be too much," he said.

Also making headlines:
Business Unity South Africa says that it is "pleased" with the economic policies adopted by President Jacob Zuma's administration.
Central African Republic Francois Bozize dismisses a call by political rivals to postpone elections set for April 25.
The South African Presidency denies claims that a blanket ban has been laid on marches to the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
And, Nigeria says that bombing by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta will not stop the government's amnesty programme.
That's a roundup of news making headlines today.