Wednesday, March 31, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Rosalia Matlou.

Making headlines:

The controversy around the recent singing of freedom songs was a sign that people had not "dealt with" the country's history, said President Jacob Zuma yesterday.
Speaking at the Bethlehem white informal settlement in Pretoria west, Zuma said that another sign of this denial was last week's ruling by the High Court in Johannesburg that singing "dubula ibhunu" (shoot the boer) in the song "Ayesaba Amagwala" was unconstitutional and unlawful. Anyone found singing the song could face charges of incitement to murder. The African National Congress says that the ruling was "incompetent" and "unimplementable", insisting that there is no correlation between the singing of the song and attacks on farmers.
Zuma said that the country had done well since 1994, but there was a need to make social cohesion a top priority. He called for a national discussion on common heritage to reach an understanding and tolerance of culture and history.

The African economy is likely to grow by an average of 4,3% this year, up from just 1,6% in 2009, but poverty could still rise as there may not be a similar increase in employment.
A United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) report predicts that oil-exporters in the sub-Saharan region, would grow by 5,1% in 2010, while oil-importers would expand by 4,9%. The projections are well short of the 7% needed to achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015. Uneca adds that such growth rates are not enough to create large numbers of jobs.
The issue of creating good jobs to lift millions out of poverty dominated the two-day meeting of senior government officials in the Malawi capital, Lilongwe, this week. Despite growth averaging 5% or more in much of the previous decade, millions of Africans still live below the breadline as the economic gains have failed to translate into jobs. The fallout from the global economic crisis last year has only exacerbated the situation.

A warning by Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti that commercial farmers must cooperate to avoid a situation in South Africa "worse than Zimbabwe" drew sharp reaction from the agricultural union TAU-SA and the Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus) yesterday.
Nkwinti's remarks, reportedly made during an interview with eNews on Monday, were "irresponsible", said the union's president Ben Marais, explaining that TAU-SA sees Nkwinti's comments as an "ill-camouflaged threat to farmers that their land can be occupied the Zimbabwe way if they are not prepared to give their land away."
In a separate statement, the opposition FF Plus party also labelled Nkwinti's reference to Zimbabwe as irresponsible. FF Plus land reform spokesperson Pieter Groenewald says that the Minister's remark creates the impression that he "subconsciously encourages" Zimbabwean-type land reform.

Also making headlines:

President Jacob Zuma says that people were made to believe that there were no poor whites during the apartheid era.
Former Madagascan President Marc Ravalomanana urges the European Union and France to lay sanctions on the island's leaders.
The National Prosecuting Authority defends its plans to "redeploy" senior prosecutors, saying that this is part of a plan to boost lower courts.
And, the Central African Republic delays its election to May 16.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.