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Daily Podcast – April 20, 2015

Daily Podcast – April 20, 20015

20th April 2015

By: Sane Dhlamini
Creamer Media Senior Contributing Editor and Researcher

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April 20, 2015. 
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Sane Dhlamini.
Making headlines:

At least 300 people have been arrested for xenophobic attacks.

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The World Health Organisation admits failings over the Ebola epidemic.

And, Eskom warns that there’s a medium to high chance of power cuts today.

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Police say they have arrested more than 300 people in the last three weeks since influential Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, an ally of South African president Jacob Zuma, said foreigners should leave the country.

Zwelithini's comments resonated with many poverty-stricken South Africans who say foreigners have taken advantage of lax immigration rules to flood the country and "steal" jobs. TV stations across the country have broadcast scenes of angry mobs armed with machetes looting immigrant-owned shops.

According to census data, South Africa has an estimated 1.7-million foreigners living within its borders, though many claim the figure to be much higher. Though it is one of the continent's economic power houses, the country is nonetheless grappling with high unemployment, poor services and crime.

King Zwelithini has since said his words were taken out of context, but the xenophobic violence they sparked is the worst in the country since 2008, when at least 67 people were killed.

 

The World Health Organisation (or WHO) has admitted serious failings in its handling of the Ebola crisis. It has pledged reforms to enable it to do better next time.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and the deputy director-general and regional directors said they have learned lessons of humility. They said they have seen that old diseases in new contexts consistently spring new surprises.

WHO leadership said its response to the epidemic was slow and insufficient and not aggressive in alerting the world. 

The organisation listed eight lessons learned, including areas where their response to Ebola could have been better, such as information sharing and communication.

Meanwhile, some critics have said that its reluctance to declare the outbreak an emergency were major factors in allowing the epidemic to balloon into the worst Ebola crisis on record, with more than 25 000 cases and 10 000 deaths.

 


Without announcing definite power cuts for Monday, Eskom warned that the "load shedding prognosis for today was medium to high" and was "dependent on the performance of its power plants".

This follows eight straight days of load shedding in which Eskom switched between stage 1, 2 and 3 and started on different times of the day. Last week the power utility also unveiled plans that it would replace stage 3b with stage 4 for ease of communication.  

It was also a week of big announcements for Eskom, with Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown announcing on Thursday that she had seconded Transnet CEO Brian Molefe and appointed him as the acting Eskom CEO with immediate effect after Tshediso Matona was suspended in March.

Molefe has been in his role at Transnet since 2011 and was the Public Investment Corporation CEO from 2003 to 2010.

Brown also announced that Dentons had been selected to conduct the deep dive inquiry into Eskom's financial troubles.

 

Also making headlines:

UN peacekeepers have liberated some 21 nomadic Muslim herders, most of them women and children, enslaved by militia groups in the west of Central African Republic, though up to 100 more remain in captivity.

International mediators in the conflict in northern Mali increased pressure on Tuareg-led separatists to sign up to a UN-brokered peace deal by announcing a signing ceremony for May 15.

A video purportedly made by Islamic State and posted on social media show militants shooting and beheading about 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya.

Islamist al Shabaab militants attacked an African Union peacekeepers' convoy in southern Somalia, wounding at least three people and burning two vehicles.

And, South Africa's President Jacob Zuma cancelled a state visit to Indonesia to deal with a wave of anti-immigrant violence at home.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter [@PolityZA]

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.

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