January 29, 2015.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Sane Dhlamini.
Making headlines:

The African National Congress calls for faster land reform.

Heavy flooding in southern Malawi kills at least 79 people.

And, Eskom says the chances of power cuts being implemented on Thursday are minimal.

 

The African National Congress is putting emphasis on the need to speed up land redistribution amid increasing pressure from opposition such as the Economic Freedom Fighters and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa.

The party’s secretary general Gwede Mantashe said that the ruling party was calling for a cap on land ownership in the country.

The ANC’s national executive committee meeting had resolved that there should be a ceiling on land ownership of a maximum 12 000 hectares, or two farms, for both natural and all forms of legal persons.

He said land ownership by foreign nationals will also be prohibited, but they would be able to access land through leaseholds.

Heavy floods in southern Malawi have killed at least 79 people, forcing more than 170 000 from their homes and cost about 160 000 people their livelihoods, a UN agency said on Wednesday.

A state of emergency has been declared in 15 of Malawi’s 28 districts, and 63 000 hectares of land are under water.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation said in one district 153 people were still missing, and the death toll was expected to rise.

 

The chances of power cuts being implemented on Thursday were minimal, electricity supplier Eskom said.

Power utility spokesperson Khulu Phasiwe said today's risk of load shedding was minimised. He said the system was relatively stable but warned that if some of the generators were to break down, the power supply would be under strain again.

The embattled utility ended stage one of rolling power cuts early on Wednesday because some of the generators were back in operation.

Also making headlines:

The City of Johannesburg, has been named the country’s most environment-friendly metropolitan municipality in the Department of Environmental Affairs’ fourth Greenest Municipality Competition.

Rights group Amnesty International called for targeted UN sanctions and investigations into possible war crimes in Libya to end a cycle of abductions and summary killings by rival armed factions.

A suicide bomb attack near the contested Malian town of Tabankort killed at least nine people overnight, as violence intensified in the desert north of the West African country.

And, the head of Nigeria's electoral commission said the country will hold a presidential election as scheduled on February 14, rejecting a call from one of the president's advisors to delay them.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter [@PolityZA]

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.