Monday, June 21, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Amy Witherden.

Making headlines:

The Independent Complaints Directorate should investigate why police obeyed African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema's orders to control a crowd at its Limpopo conference in April, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Sunday.
DA shadow minister of police Dianne Kohler Barnard says that on-line video footage posted by The Times shows Malema ordering the police to remove rival delegates from the provincial conference. She accuses the police, which removed unruly members of the league during the conference in Makhado, of breaching the South African Police Service Act.
The Act, Kohler Barnard says, stipulates that the police should not undertake political activities, display support for a particular political body, or act to further any party-political interests.

Zimbabwe has ordered creditors owed millions of dollars by its bankrupt central bank, to stop auctioning the bank's property, saying that the seizures are tantamount to asset stripping. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe failed to pay local and foreign companies about $1-billion mainly for fertiliser, seed, tractor and vehicle imports at the 2008 peak of an economic crisis that many people blame on President Robert Mugabe's policies.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti says that the unity government that Mugabe formed with rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has decided to halt the auctioning of the bank's assets by creditors. "It has become clear that some individuals and companies are acting like vultures after buying the bank's assets for a song," he said.
Zimbabwe's central bank, which the International Monetary Fund has certified as broke and is struggling to pay its own workers, is now playing a marginal role in efforts to revive the country after being at the centre of the economy for years.

The lessons of the 2010 FIFA World Cup extend far beyond sport and can be used to improve the justice system and service delivery, said Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille on Sunday.
In her weekly newsletter, Zille said that 20 cases had been brought before the special FIFA World Cup courts and four finalised. An equally "dramatic" example of rapid delivery was the less than four years that it took to build the Cape Town stadium. In contrast, a proposed housing development that was initiated simultaneously to the stadium, is unlikely to be completed until 2013. Zille said that the difference lay with the fact that for the 2010 FIFA World Cup projects, there was an "unchangeable deadline". She added that "immutable deadlines" now need to be set for addressing South Africa's social problems. "If we can learn this lesson from the FIFA World Cup, and apply it in a way that does not erode democracy, it will have been more than worth it," she said.

Also making headlines:

Sudan may ask the United Nations to run a 2011 referendum on the future of a politically sensitive border region after northern and southern leaders fail to appoint organisers.

State-owned power utility Eskom and its trade unions are expected to meet today to discuss a wage dispute that could see workers go on strike.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan says that it is too early to declare whether or not he will contest an election due by April 2011.
And, an exiled Rwandan general is shot and wounded in South Africa in what his wife calls a Rwandan-backed assassination attempt, a charge that the Kigali government dismisses as "preposterous".

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.