South Africa

DURBAN - South Africa will spend billions to improve healthcare by renovating dilapidated hospitals, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says. "We will [make a] massive investment - it will be more than what the country spent during the soccer World Cup," Motsoaledi says at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli hospital, in Durban. Motsoaledi, doctors, engineers and Development Bank of Southern Africa representatives recently attended a workshop aimed at preparing for the revamp of Durban's King Edward VIII hospital. The hospital is one of five that will receive a massive, billion-rand facelift, Motsoaledi says. The other hospitals are the Nelson Mandela Academic hospital, in the Eastern Cape, the Dr George Mukhari and Chris Hani Baragwanath hospitals, in Gauteng, and the Limpopo Academic hospital. "The revitalisation is [part] of the ten-point programme, which is needed in preparation for the National Health Insurance. I am here to start that process." He says that his department has decided to involve all health stakeholders in the revitalisation programme.

CAPE TOWN - South Africa should not let itself be paralysed by the daunting scale of the socioeconomic challenges it faces, Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel says. Delivering the annual Imam Haron Memorial Lecture, in Cape Town, he says that, according to the latest statistics, 16,5-million South Africans live on less than the poverty level of R269 a month, and that the extent of inequality is among the greatest in the world. "There are some who see poverty, inequality and unemployment as too big to take on, [and believe] that the global economic forces that drive these outcomes are too powerful for a relatively small economy, such as South Africa's, to withstand," he says. "We should not accept this philosophy of paralysis and fear. It is not a philosophy of a free people." He adds that government's plan to develop a new growth path for the country has to start with the recognition that economic policy should be consciously designed to tackle poverty and inequality. This has to be the purpose of the policy, not a "residual outcome". He says that the rise of China, India and Brazil, and rapid economic growth on the African continent, have opened the door to prospects for more equitable growth. "Our work within government shows that our economy has the potential to create employment on the necessary scale," he says.

DURBAN - Editors have voiced concerns over restrictions placed on the media at the African National Congress's (ANC's) national general council (NGC), in Durban. "The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) notes that many of the sessions were conducted behind closed doors, preventing journalists from covering the meetings and mingling freely with delegates," it says. "The conference meeting rooms were separated from the media centre by a lengthy walk and strict security check points, thereby restricting the media's coverage." The forum recognises that there would be closed sessions during the NGC, but, in line with the "new transparent and open South Africa", found these "excessive". "This conduct confirms the worrying trend towards making South Africa a closed society." ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu rebuffs the criticism, saying that he was not aware of any unusual media restrictions. "At no conference of the ANC is the media allowed to attend closed sessions." He concedes that controls were stricter at the NGC, held at the Durban exhibition centre, with no "nondelegates" allowed into the facility during closed sessions, including guests and the media. "There was stricter control of access, but not only of the media." This was owing to the ANC needing to "deal with and concentrate on" its priorities without any distractions. "We wanted the NGC to concentrate on NGC business. I don't think the ANC tried to muzzle the media in any way," he says, adding that the media was briefed as key policy decisions were taken. Journalists were also barred from conducting interviews at the entry points to the NGC venue as delegates entered or left. Marshals cleared them from the entrances, leaving them to do their work on the street.

JOHANNESBURG - Unemployment and poverty have to be addressed to ensure growth in South Africa, delegates at the launch of the Decent Work Country Programme say in Johannesburg. "If you don't address the issue of unemployment and poverty you are sitting on a time bomb," Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana says at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac). A draft document on the first programme of its kind in the country was signed by representatives of government, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), organised business, organised labour and community constituencies. One of the programme's main aims is ensuring that the right to work is enforced. It is further aimed at strengthening fundamental principles and rights at work, promoting employment creation, strengthening and broadening social protection coverage, and social development. The Minister calls the programme a "major breakthrough". ILO spokesperson Joni Musabayana says that constructing the final programme has been a "long and sometimes bumpy road". Another ILO spokesperson, Vic van Vuuren, says that it is crucial that the document be implemented. Organised labour spokesperson Bheki Ntshalintshali says that they have to be "mindful and careful that, whatever we commit to do, we deliver on time". There is no guarantee the programme will deliver what signatories expect. "It is a new commitment and, unless we do something different, it would fail." He says they hope for many more programmes in the future, and that this project will act as a "think tank" in addressing them.

Africa & the world

KHARTOUM - North Sudan's dominant party threatens to reject the results of a southern independence referendum unless the south withdraws its troops from disputed areas and allows free campaigning for the vote. Southerners are just over 100 days away from a vote on whether to remain part of Sudan or declare independence. The plebiscite was promised in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended decades of north-south civil war. The southern army has dismissed the accusations of illicit troop movements and harassment as "baseless". The prospect of a contested referendum result will dismay analysts, who warn that north and south Sudan could go back to war if the vote is disrupted. A Minister from President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's northern National Congress Party has accused the south's army of straying out of areas assigned to it in the peace accord, and says that southern authorities are cracking down on supporters of Sudanese unity. "There is no freedom [of speech] in the south or for any movement to speak out for unity. Many people have been arrested and some of them were even killed," Hajj Majid Suwar, Sudan's Youth and Sports Minister, says.

WASHINGTON - Zimbabwe must show greater respect for human rights and political freedom before the US sanctions on the impoverished African nation can be removed, the US State Department says. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle have been subject to Western sanctions since his Zanu-PF party won an election in 2000 after a violent campaign. The sanctions were imposed at the start of his government's policy of seizing commercial, often white-owned, farms to resettle landless blacks. Mugabe was forced into a powersharing deal last year with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai that has stabilised the economy after a decade of decline but the US argues that human rights violations continue.

GEORGETOWN - World Bank President Robert Zoellick calls on economists to rethink the way they look at issues affecting developing nations and says that he is overhauling the way his institution approaches research. Zoellick says that development economics is often too narrowly focused and not transparent to those affected by policies that emerge from the analysis. He says that the global financial crisis and the rise of developing countries has forced a rebalancing of the world economy and raised questions about policy approaches. "Even before the crisis, there was a questioning of prevailing paradigms and a sense that development economics needed rethinking," he says in a speech at Georgetown University. "The crisis has only made that more compelling." Zoellick, who is not an economist, says that, as a policymaker, he looks to development economics even more for answers. He says that success in tackling global poverty is uneven and countries are frustrated with the lack of progress. He adds that the World Bank will apply its economic know-how to studying issues from food security to what drives growth to be more relevant to the developing countries it assists. The Bank will make its research available online free of charge so that it can be accessed not only by other economists but also by "a healthcare worker or parent in a village". "We need to democratise and demystify development economics, recognising that we do not have a monopoly on the answers," he says. "We need to throw open the doors, recognising that others can find and create their own solutions."

NEW YORK - The Security Council has lifted all remaining United Nations (UN) sanctions against Sierra Leone, eight years after it emerged from an 11-year civil war that was at the centre of the so-called "blood diamond" trade. The arms embargo and travel bans for rebels have been in place since 1997. More than 50 000 people were killed and many more mutilated during the former British colony's 1991 to 2002 civil war. Britain's UN ambassador Mark Lyall Grant welcomes the lifting of the sanctions, for which London has been pushing. "The situation in Sierra Leone continues to improve and the lifting of sanctions is another indicator of that positive trend," he says. US Ambassador Susan Rice says that the council's moves "are important milestones in Sierra Leone's long recovery." "Because of the much-improved situation in Sierra Leone, including the work of its special courts and the demobilisation of armed groups, the remaining sanctions can now be lifted," she says. The civil war helped draw international attention to "blood diamonds" - diamonds used by rebels to fund insurgencies. In July 2000, the council banned the import of all rough diamonds from Sierra Leone and ordered the government to launch a programme of certifying the origin of its diamonds. The West African country's rebels relied on gems, which they smuggled into neighbouring Liberia in exchange for arms. The crackdown on Sierra Leone's diamonds eventually led to the creation of the Kimberley Process, a UN-backed system for certifying the origin of rough diamonds. According to the Reuters AlertNet website, the Kimberley Process is credited with a sharp decline in "blood diamond" trade. Sierra Leone is hoping to develop its agriculture, mining and tourism sectors. Crude oil was discovered off the coast in September 2009, intriguing investors, who have high hopes of a new multibillion-barrel oil frontier.