Wednesday, July 8, 2009
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Darren Parker.
Making headlines:
Cracks are beginning to show in the workings of the Congress of the People, as two high-level leaders resigned yesterday.
Cope's second deputy president Lynda Odendaal handed in her resignation from the party and from Parliament yesterday, refusing to cite her reasons for doing so.
Simon Grindrod was, however, more outspoken in his criticism of Cope, saying that he quit because of poor leadership. He will be resigning from his leadership positions, but will remain an ordinary party member.
Cope's head of elections and national working committee member said that he believes a great fraud has been perpetrated against the South African electorate and he will no longer be part of leading it.
Grindrod accused the party leadership of neglecting Cope's long-term viability, and advocating policies that are largely African National Congress policies and processes under another name.

World Bank president Robert Zoellick has welcomed a Group of Eight plan to invest billions of dollars to boost food security, and said that the focus should be on immediate needs of reducing hunger, as well as raising world agricultural production.
Speaking ahead of the G8 summit this week, Zoellick said that a proposed agricultural investment fund, possibly managed by the World Bank, will be discussed and refined at the summit, but a decision may have to wait until the Group of 20 meeting in September.
Drafts of the G8 pact have indicated that leaders will agree to mobilise billions of dollars for agricultural investment over three years, with the US ready to give from $3-billion to $4-billion over a multiyear period. The US, the world's largest food aid donor, wants other partners to match that commitment to reach $15-billion.

The process of appointing judges is not entirely transparent, the second Judicial Conference of South Africa heard at a judicial conference yesterday.
Judge Lex Mpati, president of the Supreme Court of Appeal, said that although the process of interviewing candidates for judicial appointments is open to the public, the Judicial Service Commission's deliberations on whether a particular candidate is suitable or not are held behind closed doors.
Mpati acknowledged that South Africa's judiciary is independent and that this is assured by the Constitution which vests the judicial authority of the country in the courts, and which states that the courts are independent, subject only to the Constitution and the law.
However, Mpati added a personal criticism of the system of appointing judges, saying there are too few judges on the JSC.

Also making headlines:
The Development Bank of Southern Africa believes that one-half of South Africa's funding gap for infrastructure projects could be secured by development finance institutions.
US President Barack Obama urges African leadership to pursue stability in order to attract investment.
And, Zimbabwe is to discuss the possibility of joining the rand union.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.