October 3, 2012
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Natalie Greve.
Making headlines:

Leading academic Professor Jonathan Jansen calls on society to demand that government declare a crisis in South Africa’s education system.

Gunmen kill at least 26 students at a Nigerian college.

And, the National Union of Mineworkers and the Congress of South African Trade Unions demand the reopening of wage agreements.

Professor Jonathan Jansen said that Government could no longer deny there was a crisis in education when it only worked for a small percentage of middle-class children.

Jansen called on every sector of society, especially the faith based community, to demand that government declare a crisis in education.

Jansen said privileged schools remained stable, with no interruptions to teaching and learning, while the same could not be said for poorer schools. "The schools of the poor are routinely disrupted or trashed by adults, by unions, activists, and gangsters without any effective intervention that delivers stable schools with predictable timetables," he said.

Jansen took aim at President Jacob Zuma, his cabinet and officials, suggesting the education problems would never be reversed until citizens demanded accountability from a seemingly uncaring government.

A college spokesperson said on Tuesday that gunmen shot dead at least 26 students in an attack overnight on their college residence in northeast Nigeria.

The head of the information department at the college said that the attack took place at the Federal Polytechnic Mubi in remote Adamawa state late on Monday night.

Adamawa state-like much of the north-has been targeted by Islamist insurgents. Police were also investigating whether the killings might have been motivated by a political feud inside the college. The death toll confirmed by police stand at twenty-five.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (or Cosatu), the National Union of Mineworkers (or NUM) and government have called for the reopening and an early review of wage agreements in the mining industry. This is an effort to fast-track the normalisation of industrial relations in the troubled sector.

NUM general secretary Frans Baleni expressed concern that the Marikana mine killings in August, as well as the ongoing violence in the Rustenburg area generally, have shifted the blame from the platinum bosses, whom he said “systematically undermined collective bargaining and promoted division among workers”.

NUM and Cosatu blamed Impala Platinum, with the settlement it reached earlier this year, and the precedent set in resolving the Lonmin dispute, for the illegal strikes that were spreading across the mining sector.

Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said the NUM had already engaged with the Chamber of Mines in September, demanding that the next negotiations on wages be brought forward from the scheduled June 2013.

Also making headlines:

Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus says the current levels of foreign flows into South Africa's bond market are unsustainable.

Libya is still to work out how it will cooperate with the US in the Benghazi probe

And, the ongoing transport strike affects fuel supplies.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.