South Africa

JOHANNESBURG - The new traffic demerit system will impact negatively on owners of company vehicles and their drivers, an independent consultant for the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce says. If a driver commits a traffic offence, both the driver and the vehicle's owner will receive demerit points, according to the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act (Aarto), Ian Moss says. Trade union Solidarity, civil rights group Afriforum and the JCCI are announcing steps to stop Aarto's implementation. The system is currently being used on a trial basis in some cities. For a traffic offence, the operator will receive four demerit points and the driver one, Moss says. After having accumulated 12 points, the person's licence will be suspended for three months. "It's easy to get to 12 points and this will leave an owner without a driver and a driver without a job," Moss says. Aarto offers motorists issued with fines several options. Motorists can pay within 32 days and get a 50% discount, or provide proof they were not the driver at the time of the offence, or make an affidavit to appeal the penalty, or apply to pay the fine off in instalments, or challenge the infringement in court.

PRETORIA - The South African government's R20-billion tax incentive for industrial projects has been formally launched by Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies, closing an incentive gap for large manufacturing projects that has existed since the conclusion of the Strategic Industrial Projects (SIP) scheme more than five years ago (applications for the SIP tax allowance closed on July 31, 2005). The scheme, which was finalised jointly by the Department of Trade and Industry, the National Treasury and the South African Revenue Service, in July, has already received four applications. Three of the applications relate to projects in the chemicals sector and one is for a cement-related project. Davies reports that the scheme, which falls under section 12i of the Income Tax Act, is now "open for business" and that an adjudication committee, involving officials from all three government units, will be established in "the very near future". He stresses that it is aligned to aspirations contained within the Industrial Policy Action Plan (Ipap) to support investments into productive manufacturing capacity, and will complement the other 13 incentive schemes available to South African businesses and investors. Ipap, which is in its second version, aims to facilitate the creation of more productive manufacturing assets and encourage investors to pursue labour-absorbing projects in a range of sectors, including agroindustry, automotive, clothing and textile, capital and transport equipment, chemicals and plastics, as well as forest products.

JOHANNESBURG - The Democratic Alliance's (DA's) application to remove National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Menzi Simelane is dismissed by the High Court, in Pretoria. "In the absence of any prescribed process, I am unable to hold that the process followed was irrational as the President's [Jacob Zuma's] aim was, as is apparent from his answering affidavit, to determine whether Mr Simelane was a fit and proper person for appointment as envisaged in the Constitution and the [National Prosecuting Authority] act," reads Judge Pieter van der Byl's ruling. "I am accordingly unpersuaded that it has been shown on the probabilities that Mr Simelane is not a fit and proper person for appointment." The DA filed urgent papers last year opposing Zuma's appointment of Simelane. The party says that he is not the right person for the job and the process followed to appoint him is irrational. It also argues that the appointment was made for an improper, ulterior motive, namely to appoint an NDPP who is thought to be malleable to the executive's wishes. DA chairperson James Selfe says that the party will meet its legal team to examine the judgment and internally decide on whether it will appeal the ruling. It will decide on whether to take the matter to the Constitutional Court. The judgment says that the DA's allegations against Simelane constitute a "formidable onslaught" of his fitness to hold office and of the President's decision to appoint him. Van der Byl describes his task as "extremely difficult" as there is no prescribed process that the President is required to follow to appoint the NDPP, which the judge finds strange.

CAPE TOWN - Newly appointed Communications Minister Roy Padayachie pledges to support the SABC's embattled board members as they try to resolve financial and leadership instability at the broadcaster. "It is clear from what happened that there are issues pertaining to leadership in the organisation," he says to the National Assembly during question time. "So the problem is giving support to the remaining members of the board to find a mechanism in which they want to address this instability." Padayachie, who replaced Siphiwe Nyanda in the portfolio, was speaking ahead of a meeting with the board to discuss its financial turnaround strategy for the public broadcaster. The board had been due to brief MPs on the turnaround plan but Padayachie confirms that this has been postponed to give the department a chance "to see it before it comes to Parliament". Last month the board was given a tongue-lashing by Parliament's portfolio committee on communications for failing to present a performance review for the first half of this financial year and a report on the functionality of the board. In addition, the committee sharply reminded the board members to approach their responsibilities seriously and selflessly. The board was appointed at the beginning of the year with the task of lifting the SABC out of a debt crisis of more than R800-million. But tension soon emerged with chairman Ben Ngubane and CEO Solly Mokoetle after Phil Molefe was imposed as head of news. Mokoetle was suspended by Ngubane in August, and the rift between board members and Ngubane has not been repaired. Four board members have quit in recent weeks, reportedly in frustration that the communications ministry did not respond rapidly to calls to help resolve the latest crisis at the SABC.

Africa & the world

JOHANNESBURG - The need for improving infrastructure throughout Africa to boost intra-African trade and bolster development was highlighted at the Infrastructure Investment world conference, in Sandton. Africa Project Access MD Paul Runge says that the cost of moving goods within Africa is "prohibitively high", and supply chain management and freight logistics are a particular problem area. "We are simply not getting goods to where they need to be on time," adds Runge. He highlights that there have been some successes achieved with regard to infrastructure, such as ports, roads, bridges and railways, and emphasises that the infrastructure project pipeline for Africa is larger than ever recorded previously. This is largely owing to recovering demand for natural resources and commodity price increases following the global economic crisis.

HARARE - Zimbabwe's economy will grow for the second successive year in 2010 owing to positive policies and strong commodity prices, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says, while calling for more reforms to sustain the recovery. The country's economy, battered by hyperinflation that reached 500-billion per cent in 2008, grew 5,7% in 2009 - the first time in a decade - under a powersharing government set up by bitter foes President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. An IMF team that visited between October 25 and November 3 for routine discussions with government and the private sector says Zimbabwe will have a Budget surplus this year, among other signs of improved economic conditions.

SEOUL - US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner insists that Washington will never resort to weakening the dollar to spur growth, seeking to cool tensions as G20 nations struggle to bridge chasms over currencies. World leaders gathered in Seoul for a two-day summit hoping to move beyond broad promises of economic cooperation, but days of rancorous debate appear to have undone much of the G20 unity forged in the throes of a global crisis two years ago. Adding fuel to an already heated debate over the US Federal Reserve's bond-buying spree to revive the economy, former Fed chairperson Alan Greenspan says the US is pursuing a policy of weakening the dollar. "The US will never do that," Geithner shot back a few hours later in an interview with CNBC. "We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage or to grow the economy." The Group of 20 club of rich and emerging economies hopes to use the summit to soothe tensions over foreign exchange rates that have been created by sharply divergent growth rates. US President Barack Obama urges his peers to put aside differences and follow through on previous agreements to even out imbalances between cash-rich exporting nations and debt-burdened importers. Obama, speaking after a meeting with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, says he is confident leaders will support a programme for promoting balanced growth, building on a agreement reached at a G20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2009. "I don't think this is a controversial proposition," Obama says.

BRUSSELS - Stalled trade negotiations between the European Union (EU) and African States have soured relations between the two continents, the EU's chief trade negotiator says. Regional groupings of African, Caribbean and Pacific States have resisted signing trade agreements with the EU despite years of negotiations, frustrated by EU demands to cut tariffs and by the wealth of EU commercial regulation. That has allowed China, India and Brazil to move in and secure access to bountiful African resources and markets. "It is true that this can be souring the relations between Europe and Africa," European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht says. To break the deadlock, Europe may scale back calls for free trade in banking and other services sectors, and drop demands that African, Caribbean and Pacific states quickly adopt European rules on competition and the environment. "On services we can be flexible. I think also on rules we can have a progressive approach," he says, adding that any deal will have to create greater volumes of trade to abide by global trade rules. Europe may yet clinch a first African trade deal in the coming months, De Gucht says, an agreement with the Southern African grouping of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa is possible. Another hindrance to better EU-Africa relations is Europe's insistence on African guarantees of good governance and human rights, he says. China, which makes no such demands, has made rapid in-roads in signing trade deals with African States. "The Chinese come with a check-book and they buy what they need, and we do all this in institutional frameworks and institution-building," De Gucht says. "I think it's the right way to do it but it doesn't make our life easier." Yet Europe should not back down on its governance demands, De Gucht says. "We have to continue insisting on governance in Africa, because without governance you will not have growth," he adds.