Thursday, November 4, 2010

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

Making headlines:

Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe on Wednesday took African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema to task for referring to Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille as a "cockroach".
Speaking in the National Assembly during question time, Motlanthe said: "We must put our points across without trying to demean each other." He was responding to Independent Democrats Member of Parliament Lance Greyling, who said that he had been shocked to hear Malema refer to Zille as "a cockroach that needs to be driven from her office". He explained that this term "was a weapon in the Rwandan genocide and has absolutely no place in [South Africa's] political discourse."
Motlanthe agreed with Greyling, adding that "it remains our collective responsibility to keep championing the vision of building a united, nonracial, nonsexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa."

State-owned power utility Eskom is in the process of compiling a connection capacity document to provide private power developers with improved visibility of the immediate grid connection options in South Africa. The document will be published before the end of 2010.
Proximity to the existing grid is likely to be a key consideration for the first tranche of renewable energy feed-in tariff-related projects, which are required to be contributing some 1 025 MW to the grid by 2013. Of this, 700 MW has been set aside for wind under the first integrated resource plan, or IRP1. Such proximity to the grid is important, because any extension of the transmission system, as well as the related environmental-impact assessments (EIAs) for new transmission lines and substations, could take as long as five years to finalise.
Eskom grid planning department chief engineer Kevin Leask said on Wednesday that connection projects requiring deep or upstream reinforcements could only be connected within four to six years, owing to EIA-related constraints. Therefore the first IRP1-aligned projects would likely have to be "cherry-picked" based on ease of implementation, but geographical diversity is also expected to play a role.

Legal action may be taken against the civil society leaders who questioned the moral integrity of African National Congress (ANC) leaders, the ANC said on Wednesday.
"We have advised our leaders named in [Wednesday's] civil society press conference to seek legal recourse," said ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu. "The ANC will give all support to these leaders as they take these legal steps because it is our firm belief that the attacks on their persons is unjustified and borders on defaming their good names."
The ruling party was reacting to comments made during a media briefing by civil society groups, the Treatment Action Campaign and Section27. A war of words has erupted between the ANC, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the civil society after the party's national working committee voiced its displeasure over an anticorruption conference held last week, to which the ANC was not invited.

Also making headlines:

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf dismisses her Cabinet, in a move that will give her a "fresh slate" for the next phase of her administration.
South African National Editors Forum council member Nic Dawes says that it is possible to fix the proposed Protection of Information Bill to protect State security matters, but not criminalise disclosure of information that is in the public interest.
News that Côte d'Ivoire's President Laurent Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara will face each other in a runoff will ease tensions in the short term, but paves the way for a hotly contested vote later this month.
And, Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi says that foreign investors will only be allowed to do business with the oil exporter if they form a joint venture with a local partner.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.