South Africa

CAPE TOWN - South Africa's future "is threatened by the transition from social justice to cronyism and wealth accumulation", the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (Casac) says. "South Africa is witnessing a transition from the politics of social justice, liberation and public service to that of personal wealth accumulation, concentration of political power and hegemony," chairperson Sipho Pityana says at the Our World Our Responsibility Donor Conference, in Cape Town. Pityana warns that this threatens the Constitution's progressive vision, as well as the country's democratic foundations and its prospects for future prosperity. "Instead of taking their futures by the scruff of the neck, most South Africans have become passive spectators. The notion of ‘active citizenship' has been lost," he adds, according to a copy of his speech. The conference explored the relationship between local and international philanthropists, and how civil society could channel funds from philanthropically minded people and entities to transform the country's socioeconomic landscape. Recounting the formation of South Africa's first democratic government, Pityana says that the vision had been to quickly establish a competent progressive State that would deal with the population's needs.

PRETORIA - South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has voiced concern at the impact of massive capital inflows on emerging markets as a result of a second phase of quantitative easing by the US. Gordhan says, after returning from a Group of 20 (G20) summit in South Korea, that markets should not underestimate the impact of the latest debt crisis in Ireland. Prior to the G20, South Africa was part of a growing chorus calling on countries not to engage in unilateral moves to boost their currencies' competitiveness at the expense of others, criticising the US for flooding markets with $600-billion as part of measures to boost its ailing economy. "There is a chance that it could work . . . but the flip side of that measure still raises concerns," Gordhan says, adding that a major worry about capital inflows into emerging markets is that "these massive flows will not last forever." Gordhan says that, while the G20 has not come up with specific solutions to the prevailing currency standoff, world leaders have shown a commitment to ensuring strong sustainable and balanced growth.

JOHANNESBURG - A fundamental shift in South Africa's migration policy is required to deal with the country's prevailing skills crisis, a newly published report argues, adding that even much-needed improvements to the domestic education and training environment will not be sufficient to deal with what is a deepening deficit. Produced by policy research group the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE), the study effectively calls for a reformulation of immigration policy away from the current focus on controlling movement, to one that is more strongly aligned to South Africa's economic growth objectives. In fact, the authors suggest that South Africa's economic Ministries should have a far greater influence over guiding the policy's formulation, which is currently fashioned primarily by the Departments of Home Affairs and Labour. Executive director Ann Bernstein goes as far as to argue that government's 7% growth aspiration will not be achieved without "a rapid infusion" of foreign skills and the opening of the country's doors to "very large numbers of skilled immigrants". Entitled ‘Skills, Growth and Borders: Managing migration in South Africa's national interest', the report argues that the skills shortage is worse than the Department of Labour's 2008 estimate of 502 000 people and that the current quota-list permitting system was flawed, costly, cumbersome and too narrowly framed. The quota system, which will be changed should proposed amendments to the Immigration Act be approved, relied, Bernstein says, on bureaucrats to sift through historic data to forecast the country's future skills needs, right down to the "number of astrophysicists". In so doing, emerging skills were often neglected, owing to often incomplete consultation processes.

CAPE TOWN - Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping has signed an energy deal with resource-rich South Africa in a visit aimed at obtaining minerals the Asian giant needs to fuel its blistering growth. China is South Africa's biggest bilateral trading partner and the focal point of its plan to divert more trade and investment from traditional markets in Europe and North America to the world's fastest growing economies. Xi, touted as China's next President, began a three-day visit to Africa's largest economy, which is seeking to reduce a deficit in trade with China that hit $2,7-billion last year, skewed in Beijing's favour. South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and Xi co-chaired the fourth China-South Africa bilateral commission and signed a number of agreements, including an energy deal. No monetary details were released. "The Chinese government undertook to encourage more imports from South Africa, especially value added products and will urge Chinese companies to invest in infrastructure development, automotive manufacturing, energy and information and communication technology," Motlanthe says. South Africa has also signed a deal with China's Yingli Solar to build a $435-million manufacturing plant with a local partner, a senior government official says. Yingli will partner with a local company and aimed to start building the plant within 12 months. South African exports about $5,5-billion a year in minerals to the State and has been increasingly a destination of Chinese foreign direct investment.

Africa & the world

SHANGHAI - Chinese companies eyeing African mineral resources must stop making closed-door deals and become more transparent in their investments, a senior World Bank executive says. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the World Bank's MD, says that investors in Africa need to work more with local communities to avoid conflicts and, eventually, even reduce costs. "China's investment is welcome - Africa has an investment deficit and there is room for everyone - but investment needs to have sound principles whether it is from China, Europe or the US," she says.

CONAKRY - Guinea's government has declared a state of emergency and imposed an overnight curfew after three days of violence that followed the announcement of the result of its first free election since independence. A rights group says that it counted at least ten people killed and more than 200 wounded in the unrest, which broke out after opposition leader Alpha Condé was named winner of the November 7 Presidential runoff. The state of emergency gives police extra powers to keep law and order and will remain in place until legal disputes over election results are resolved, authorities say. "In the interests of keeping peace, calm and national unity, a state of emergency has been declared, effective immediately, until the final confirmation of the results . . . by the Supreme Court," army chief Nouhou Thiam says. Condé's rival, Cellou Dalein Diallo, is challenging the result in the Supreme Court, which has eight days from the publication of the result to give a ruling. The poll was the former French colony's first free vote since independence in 1958 and is due to end almost two years of military rule since the death of strongman Lansana Conté. Foreign firms, which are investing billions of dollars to exploit Guinea's bauxite and iron-ore deposits, are hoping the poll can provide stability and legal certainty. Despite his calls for calm as he challenges the result in court, some of Diallo's mainly ethnic Peul supporters have taken to the streets, where they have repeatedly clashed with security forces and Condé's mainly Malinke backers since Monday.

WASHINGTON - Development agencies worldwide are joining forces to spend $200-million in a ten-year programme to help the agriculture sector prepare for climate change and cut greenhouse gas emissions, farm research groups say. The funding will go to research on how to feed a growing, more affluent world population in the face of expectations of worsening floods and droughts. "The food security challenge facing us as humans is large," says Gerald Nelson, a senior research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute, in Washington, speaking to reporters alongside other farming experts. By 2050, as a result of climate change, global "potential to produce food" could decline by 5% to 10%, after an average increase through 2020, says Andy Jarvis, an agriculture policy expert at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, based in Cali, Colombia. Higher temperatures and more variable rainfall will produce agricultural winners and losers, especially favouring cooler, northern hemisphere countries that do not suffer food shortages. "It shows globally there'll be greater inequity in production," says Bruce Campbell, head of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which will help direct the new research programme.