June 6, 2014
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Anine Vermeulen.
Making headlines:

The South African National Roads Agency Limited is expected to give Lwandle evictees new land.

Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies says Africa must ramp up its scale of industrialisation.

And, Britain is expected to host a London summit on tackling Nigeria's Boko Haram.
 

Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said the South African National Roads Agency Limited (or Sanral) would avail a piece of land to accommodate residents, who were evicted from illegally occupied land, in Lwandle and Nomzamo in the Western Cape.

Sisulu has also given the panel, which was appointed to be part of the Commission of Enquiry, two months to report back with the findings that would reveal the circumstances that led to the inhumane evictions.

This comes after 800 residents were evicted from their informal settlements following a court order that they be removed, as the land they stayed on was being occupied illegally. The land in question was reportedly owned by Sanral.

Following finger-pointing between Sanral, the Western Cape Provincial Government and the City of Cape Town, Sisulu said she, together with Transport Minister Dipuo Peters, had taken responsibility for the evictions, and said her team was already hard at work trying to provide the evicted families with alternative accommodation.

Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies said the African continent could no longer be the producer and exporter of primary materials, but should ramp up its scale of industrialisation if jobs were to be created.

He said Africans couldn’t any longer hope to continue to live, proposer, create jobs and the sustainable livelihood of its people if it remained entrapped in the global division of labour as producers and exporters of primary products and raw materials, as well as importers of value added products. He was speaking at the National Localisation Indaba hosted by the Durban Automotive Cluster (DAC) on Thursday.

He emphasized that, as long as Africa stayed in that space, it would battle over the distribution of resource rents and would not be taking its productive economy forward. The entire African continent was coming rapidly to the conclusion that the next phase of development should involve industrialisation, he said.

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague will host a meeting of African and Western officials in London next week aimed at stepping up international efforts to defeat Islamist group Boko Haram, his office said on Thursday.

Although Boko Haram has been fighting for five years, carrying out bombings and attacks on civilians and the security forces, the kidnapping in April of more than 200 girls from a school in the northeast has focused world attention on them.

The June 12 London meeting will be attended by the Nigerian foreign minister and representatives from neighbouring African countries Benin, Chad, Cameroon and Niger, Hague's office said. Officials from Britain, the US, France, Canada and the European Union will also be present.

Hague said the London Ministerial on Security in Northern Nigeria would ... consider further options to combat terrorism. This showed the determination of those in the region, with the support of the international community, to defeat Boko Haram.

Also making headlines:

The International Monetary Fund says the Central African bloc is expected to grow by up to 5.5% this year.

And, Mali introduces compulsory national service for men and women aged 18 to 35, after clashes between northern Tuareg separatists and the army last month.

That’s a roundup of news-making headlines today.