Tuesday January 24, 2012

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Jessica Hannah

Making headlines:

There was an information black-out on the appeal hearing of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema as it started in Johannesburg yesterday. It was not known whether the proceedings would continue on Tuesday. Earlier, ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said party members had been instructed not to comment on the hearing at Luthuli House. Malema's appeal began at Luthuli House yesterday. A handful of his supporters were outside the ANC's head office.

Fighters loyal to Libya's overthrown leader Muammar Gaddafi took control of a town south-east of the capital yesterday, flying their green flags in defiance of the country's fragile new government. The fightback by Gaddafi supporters defeated in Libya's civil war, though unlikely to spread elsewhere, added to the problems besetting a government which in the past week has been reeling from one crisis to another. Gaddafi himself was captured and killed in October after weeks on the run. Accounts from the town of Bani Walid, about 200 km from Tripoli, described armed Gaddafi supporters attacking the barracks of the pro-government militia in the town and then forcing them to fall back.

South Africa aims to create five-million jobs by 2020 but has only created 624 000 in the last decade, according to a survey released yesterday. "The data, which is sourced from Statistics SA, shows that total employment has increased by an average of only 0.5% a year since 2001," the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said in a statement. SAIRR researcher Lucy Holborn said the rate of job creation would need to rise nearly 10 times to meet the government's job creation targets.

Also making headlines:

State-owned power utility Eskom reported that peak demand last week was met with sufficient capacity and that, while the power utility continued to make progress with its programme of planned maintenance, the system remained tight.

And, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa has decided to postpone public hearings, scheduled for February 3, into its multiyear price determination methodology.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.