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Daily podcast – March 10, 2014

10th March 2014

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March 10, 2014
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Motshabi Hoaeane.
Making headlines:

South Africa and Rwanda expel diplomats in a tit-for-tat row over Rwandan exiles.

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Eskom is expected to procure ‘at risk’ short-term IPP power while a longer-term deal is debated.

And, Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change suspends an official who asked the party’s leader to quit.
 

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South Africa has expelled three Rwandan diplomats it linked to a raid on an exiled Rwandan general's Johannesburg home. Rwanda retaliated by ordering out six South African envoys, officials said on Friday.

This comes after armed men broke into the Johannesburg home of former Rwandan army chief General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, on late Monday,  an exiled critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

A diplomatic source, who requested not to be named, said that South African security services had tracked the attackers, adding that it was very clear that they were intelligence personnel attached to the Rwandan embassy.

Exiled Rwandan opposition members have accused Kagame and his government of being responsible for Karegeya's death and for attacks on Nyamwasa and other overseas-based critics.

The row has strained ties between the two African states involved in efforts to bring peace to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where South Africa has troops in a UN brigade that fought last year against rebels whom UN experts said received support from Rwanda, however, Kigali denied backing the Congolese rebels.
 

Eskom confirmed on Friday that it had decided to extend “at risk” short-term electricity purchases from independent power producers (or IPPs) and municipal generators to the end of May, despite not having received regulatory approval to do so. However, it was still in discussions with government about securing the necessary financial resources to continue with the contracts after May.

The contracts were initially terminated in December, owing the utility’s perilous cash-flow position – a move which raised much concern in light of the country’s “tight” electricity balance.

Addressing an urgently convened briefing to provide an update on the state of the system – which on March 6 could only be stabilised through the extensive use of economy- and morale-sapping load shedding – outgoing CEO Brian Dames indicated that the extension decision had been taken in the interests of mitigating the use of its “extremely expensive” open-cycle gas-turbines.

The diesel-fuelled power plants cost Eskom more than R10-billion to operate last year and were run at costs that were between 16 and 18 times more expensive than its coal plants.


 

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (or MDC) on Friday suspended a senior official who had asked party leader Morgan Tsvangirai to quit, a move which has divided a party recovering from election defeat last year.

MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti said the suspension of deputy treasurer Elton Mangoma was irregular and said members had been intimidated during a meeting he said was not properly constituted.

Biti, who was finance minister in a coalition government with President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party until last July, said Mangoma had not been given a proper opportunity to defend himself and the national council members had not conducted a vote as required under party rules.

Mangoma angered Tsvangirai's supporters when he sent the party leader an open letter in January asking him to resign, arguing that he had failed to push through reforms while in the four-year power-sharing government with Mugabe.

 

Also making headlines:
 

Three protesters were killed and dozens wounded as Muslim Brotherhood supporters and police clashed across Egypt.

International airlines have cancelled flights to and from Sierra Leone after a UN aviation regulator discovered that the only functioning fire engine at its main airport had broken down.

And, Oscar Pistorius’ ex-girlfriend Samantha Taylor says he fired his pistol out of a car's open sun-roof after an argument with a police officer.
 

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.

 

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