South Africa

JOHANNESBURG - The Gauteng government's newly released growth and employment strategy will seek to lower the cost and ease of doing business in a province still regarded as South Africa's economic powerhouse, contributing 35% of national gross domestic product. Special emphasis will be given to network infrastructure investments, such as energy, transport, water and sanitation, as well as information and communication technologies. The provincial authorities believe that such strategic economic investments can assist in reducing transaction costs and improve access to services and markets. Further, these investments can offer a counter-cyclical employment and growth engine during periods of economic downturn. Economic Development MEC Firoz Cachalia told businesspeople and academics at the Gordon Institute of Business Science that the Gauteng Employment Growth and Development Strategy would guide the work of the provincial government until 2014, adding that the provincial ‘growth path' is also a contribution to the emerging national growth path. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has indicated that South Africa will need to grow at 7% a year for a sustained period of 20 years to deal with South Africa's debilitating unemployment rate, which has moved above 25% again since the 2009 recession. Economic heartlands, such as Gauteng, will probably need to grow well beyond that rate to lift the national average.

NEW YORK - Nelson Mandela never wanted to become South Africa's President and would have preferred a younger person to become the country's first black ruler, according to a new book. Mandela says in the book, Conversations with Myself, that he only accepted after senior leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) put pressure on him. "My installation as the first democratically elected President of the Republic of South Africa was imposed on me much against my own advice," Mandela says. The book, compiled by the Nelson Mandela Foundation from personal letters, interviews and an unpublished sequel to his autobiography, contains a foreword by US President Barrack Obama. Mandela, 92, says that he would have preferred to serve the new South African State without holding any position in the ANC or government. After being called on the carpet by one of the ANC's leaders, he changed his mind, but made clear that he would serve only one five-year term. Mandela's release on February 11, 1990, after 27 years in apartheid-era jails, set in motion the country's transformation to democracy, which culminated in the historic democratic elections of 1994 and his inauguration as the country's first black leader. Reconciliation between blacks and whites was the cornerstone of Mandela's Presidency, which ended in May 1999. But an important theme in the book is his concern about the effects of his imprisonment on his family.

JOAHNNESBURG - South African central bank governor Gill Marcus says that the continent's largest economy is in a fragile recovery and that the strong rand is hurting the country. The rand has firmed by over 28% since the beginning of last year, weighing on exports from the mining and manufacturing sectors that are key contributors to the economy. The manufacturing and retail numbers "are not as good as they should be. We are in a fragile recovery," she says. Data shows growth in the manufacturing sector output and retail sales slowed unexpectedly on a year-on-year basis in August, raising the possibility of another interest rate cut. The central bank has reduced the repo rate by 600 basis points to 6,0% since December 2008, taking lending rates to their lowest level in three decades. Marcus says that the rand has helped ease inflation and contributed to the bank's decision to lower interest rates by 100 basis points this year, but it could be difficult to influence its value on the market to help the manufacturing sector. "The size of the South African market is huge. When you are looking at what you can do you have got to recognise the size of the market," Marcus adds. More than $4-billion on average is traded on the rand on a daily basis and the bulk of that is abroad, according to Reuters data. She reiterates that there was no "quick fix" to dealing with the flood of capital inflows into emerging markets, which have led to currency appreciations. She says that South Africa needs capital inflows to fund its current account deficit.

CENTURION - The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has announced that the public sector strike is over, even though no deal had been signed with the government. At a press conference, National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union president Michael Makwayiba says that seven of the eight Cosatu unions have accepted the government's offer of a 7,5% wage increase and an R800 monthly housing allowance. "Today I think is the final closure of the strike. We do think that at the end of the day we will reach the 50%," he says. Shortly before the conference, Independent Labour Caucus (ILC) spokesperson Chris Klopper says that one of the ILC unions had accepted the offer, bringing the total to about 45% of workers accepting it. He says that by next Tuesday he believed that more union leaders representing another 36% of workers would have received a mandate to either accept or reject the offer. He declines to speculate on the mandate that union leaders will return with, but says: "There will be no increases if there is no signature." Makwayiba says that he does not believe the government will now withdraw its offer and believed a deal will be reached. "We must appreciate the strike this year was a long protracted strike. We had to be sure that we reach every union," says Makwayiba. The unions suspended their four-week strike early in September for 21 days to allow union members time to consider the government's offer.

Africa & the world

NEW YORK - Nature is not just about fluffy animals or brightly coloured frogs - it is central to the health of businesses that need to incorporate environmental impacts into their risk management, a senior United Nations (UN) official says. Such an approach should be obvious, says Richard Burrett, cochair of the UN Environment Programme's Finance Initiative, yet nature remains essentially invisible to many people and companies, particularly in urban centres. "All financial and economic capital is derived from natural capital," Burrett says ahead of a major UN conference in Japan that aims to set new targets to combat the accelerating loss of plant and animal species. "We act as if we have an endless abundance of natural capital to underpin our global economic activity; yet it's clear that we're degrading it at a phenomenally fast rate," says Burrett, a former global head of project finance at ABN Amro and now a partner at investment advisory firm Earth Capital Partners. The impacts on nature need to be measured and managed right through the supply chain, he adds. But accounting systems need to be refocused to fully calculate environmental degradation caused by economic development. Failure to do so means that companies are not measuring the balance sheet and profit and loss accurately, he says. "I think the companies that really understand their ecological footprint and can manage it in all aspects of their business will be better positioned," he says, adding that this is not only about reputational risk but also about future regulatory risk.

CANCUN - Hopes for United Nations (UN) climate talks in Mexico next month have faded, overshadowed by splits between the US and China and by fears that the 194-nation process is too unwieldy to work out a pact to slow global warming. Experts say that the Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit from November 29 to December 10 in Cancun, Mexico, could agree steps to set up climate funds to help poor nations or ways to share green technology. Most nations gave up hopes of a quick all-encompassing treaty to curb greenhouse gases after world leaders at a 2009 summit in Copenhagen failed to work out a binding deal to avert projected heat waves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels. Even a patchwork of smaller deals, for example to curb deforestation, is now not certain. Countries are "bolting down their positions because they don't see any movement on the other side," says Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Programme, who says that many are blaming the economic slowdown for a lack of action. "We are in a very, very troubling situation," he adds. But he predicts that more extreme weather, such as the floods in Pakistan or the drought in Russia that pushed up grain prices, will eventually bring global cooperation. Some experts say the talks could shift from the United Nations to other groups, such as the G20, which includes all big emitters - China, the US, the European Union, Russia and India. "This is one of the things that could happen as there has been frustration for some time now over the bureaucratic nature of the UN process," says Mark Lewis, head of carbon analysis at Deutsche Bank.

KHARTOUM - United Nations (UN) peacekeepers could create limited buffer zones in hotspots along the border between north and south Sudan before a referendum on independence is held in the south of the country, Security Council diplomats say. Their remarks come in response to a request by South Sudan's President Salva Kiir during a UN Security Council trip to Sudan for peacekeepers to be deployed along north-south border. "Nobody thinks it's realistic to put in UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) peacekeepers, even if we had masses more troops, along the north-south border in a country that large," one council diplomat, who did not want to be identified, says. "But I think one thing we can and should consider ... is looking at augmenting UNMIS in certain hotspots along the border where a buffer presence could be established." UNMIS is the 10 000-strong UN peacekeeping force that monitors compliance with a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of north-south civil war in Sudan. That agreement called for a vote on southern independence and a separate vote on whether Abyei, a disputed oil-rich zone, should be part of the north or south. The two referendums are scheduled for January 9, 2011, but preparations are severely behind schedule.