South Africa

CAIRO - African countries need to boost regional trade and investment to keep pace with growth in other emerging economies that have large consumer bases, such as India and China, says South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies, in Cairo for a high-level bilateral State visit. Egypt and South Africa are trying to seal a Cape to Cairo free trade agreement that could help reduce dependence on flagging European economies. "The fact of the matter is that we don't, as single countries, begin to touch the sizes of the domestic market of China and India, but as a grouping from Cape to Cairo, we do start to hit that league," Davies says. Africa boasts some 30 regional trade arrangements, but the continent receives less than 4% of global foreign direct investment, in part because small markets often cannot attract big money and because onerous bureaucratic requirements tend to discourage foreign business. Widespread corruption is another hindrance. South Africa, faced with a strengthening rand that has hit its main export and manufacturing sectors, is eager to diversify trade with emerging markets, particularly as "seismic changes in the world economy" make it more pressing, Davies says. The agreement is being pushed by the 19-country Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, which includes Egypt, and by the 15-country Southern African Development Community, and the East African common market.

CAPE TOWN - Congress of the People (Cope) deputy president Mbhazima Shilowa has been removed from his positions as the party's chief whip and accounting officer, Cope says. "We're not removing him as an MP," Cope spokesperson and MP Phillip Dexter says at a media briefing held in party president Mosiuoa Lekota's Parliamentary office. Reading from a prepared statement, he says that the decision was reached at a regular fortnightly meeting of Cope's national office bearers. "The chief whip having filed with Parliament a declaration - purported to be confirmed by an auditor, that was in fact not - that the requisite financial systems were in place to manage the money given the party by Parliament, the meeting decided to remove Mr Shilowa as chief whip of the party in Parliament, and as the accounting officer." Dexter has also announced the removal of Cope's administrative head. "[The meeting decided that] the administrative whip and liaison at Parliament, Ms Lolo Mashiane, having refused to cooperate with the forensic audit being conducted by KPMG, also be removed from her positions," he says. A copy of a declaration, submitted by Cope to Parliament, was distributed to journalists. The document, dated January 29 this year, declares that the party "has in place effective, efficient and transparent financial management and internal control". It is signed, alongside the printed name "M Shilowa". In a space marked "Auditor" the name
"Anton Louw" has been printed. Louw is an accountant with the firm Visser Louw. In a letter addressed to the party, dated October 14 this year, copies of which were also handed to journalists, Louw distances himself from the declaration document.

CAPE TOWN - A long-awaited Parliamentary meeting on the latest crisis at the SABC came to nought when chairperson Ben Ngubane told Members of Parliament (MPs) that the embattled board had failed to produce a performance review of its first six months in charge. "There are many documents before us that need to go for board approval. So I'm saying there are many balls in the air. I'm very sorry that we could not provide a document approved by the board for today," Ngubane told Parliament's portfolio committee on communication. The meeting has been postponed and the committee has issued a withering statement in which it says that the board has failed to do its job. "The committee believes that there is not much room for optimism about the affairs of the corporation," it says. "In essence the committee is of the view that the board has failed to provide coherent leadership and to provide proper corporate governance over the SABC." MPs from parties across the spectrum say there was no option following Ngubane's admission but to postpone the meeting, two months after an initial crisis meeting was delayed after media successfully challenged an African National Congress (ANC) decision to hold it in camera. "It is clear we have reached the end of the line for today. It will be very difficult for us to continue with a process where the document hasn't yet been finalised. What are we going to say to them?" ANC MP Johnny de Lange says. "How do you assess the value of reports that are not finalised?" Committee chairperson Ismail Vadi agrees, but signalled his dismay with the board's failure to prepare and says that it is hampering the committee's oversight work. "I just want to register my own dissatisfaction with what has transpired," he says.

CAPE TOWN - The link between the national census in October next year and service delivery is fundamentally important for development, Minister in the Presidency responsible for planning Trevor Manuel says at a media briefing at Parliament. Education and health facilities are examples. It will be good to know how many pupils there are, what courses they were doing, what the prospective grades are, and to know this early enough to intervene, he says. "In areas like education, we're still leaving too much to chance to make interventions early in the lives of people." At the start of every year, there are more pupils than places in schools, because families moved from some provinces to Gauteng and the Western Cape. "Now, if you don't know that people are moving, if you don't know when they are moving, if you have no system that actually advises you where people are, you can never have schools in the rights places." Parts of the Eastern Cape have wonderfully constructed face brick schools, but not enough pupils to keep them going. Other parts of the province have mud schools that should not qualify as institutions of education. "So if you don't know these things, you can't actually get the facilities in the places where people are." Healthcare is probably even more complex, Manuel says. For example, it is necessary to know exactly where and which type of clinic should be situated for those needing them. In the overburdened public health system used by about 82% of South Africans, "we don't know enough about what the money buys". "Are we training our medical professionals adequately to be able to deliver services, does the epidemiological profile get used in the process of training?" These are fundamental important issues, he says.

Africa & the world

JUBA - More than 20 Southern Sudanese political parties have agreed to hold a fresh census, new elections and rewrite the Constitution if the south secedes as expected in less than three months. The five-day conference in the southern capital, Juba, also agrees that a broad-based, postsecession interim government will be headed by South Sudan President Salva Kiir until new elections. "The transitional government shall be charged . . . with the duty to conduct (a) population census and general elections for a constituent assembly which shall promulgate the permanent constitution," according to the conference's final communiqué. The conference, attended by political parties, civil society and religious groups, specified that a constitutional review commission will decide the length of the interim period before new elections if southerners vote for secession in a January 9 referendum. If unity is the result of the vote, the communiqué says, the south will ensure that the region maintains representation in the national government. The conference includes southern opposition politicians in an effort to preserve the unity of the semiautonomous region.

NEW YORK - A dramatic fall in life expectancy in southern Africa, caused by HIV/Aids in the 1990s, appears to have bottomed out, with new treatments bringing a slight rise in recent years, a United Nations (UN) report says. But the region remains the only one in the world where life expectancy is currently less than it was in the early 1990s - and, in the case of women, much less, the report says. Women form the majority of HIV-positive adults in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in North Africa and the Middle East, says the report, "The World's Women 2010". The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes Aids. In the period 1990 to 1995, life expectancy at birth in Southern Africa - South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho - was 64 for women and 59 for men. That fell to 51 for women and 49 for men in 2000 to 2005, but rose slightly between 2005 and 2010 to 52 for women and 51 for men. In Eastern, Central and Western Africa, where some countries are also hard-hit by Aids, life expectancy increased slowly but steadily over the same period and now stands at 57 for women and 54 for men. The report by the UN department of economic and social affairs attributes the modest uptick in Southern Africa to the development and improved availability of medical treatments for HIV. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region worst affected by HIV, accounting for some two thirds of all people living with the virus worldwide. But a UN report last month said that new infections fell by more than one-quarter in 22 countries between 2001 and 2009. In South Africa, at least 5,7-million people out of a population of 50-million are infected with HIV and an estimated 1 000 people die each day owing to Aids-related complications.

MOGADISHU - The US supports proposals to raise more African Union (AU) troops for Somalia and the United Nations (UN) Security Council will likely debate the matter within 30 days, a senior US diplomat says. Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson says that Uganda and other countries have been pressing to increase the 7 200-strong AU/UN Mission in Somalia (Amisom), which is struggling to stabilise this country in the face of an insurgency by the al-Qaeda-allied al-Shabaab militia. "In principle, we support the increase in the number of troops on the ground, but do not take a position on what that number should be," Carson, Washington's top diplomat for Africa, told an audience at a Washington think tank. "This issue is likely to be discussed and debated in the UN Security Council in the next 30 days," he says. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni says this month that the UN Security Council is considering more funding for an expanded AU peacekeeping mission, and that Uganda is ready to provide all of the 20 000 soldiers thought necessary to quell the raging insurgency in the Horn of Africa country. Uganda provides the bulk of the forces already on the ground, with a lesser number coming from Burundi, and Museveni has been urging greater effort to stabilise the country after al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for twin bomb blasts in Uganda in July that killed nearly 80 people. The presence of foreign Amisom troops gives Somali militants a reason to pose as nationalist champions, and wins them easy recruits and financial support at home and from Somalis abroad, analysts say.