South Africa

JOHANNESBURG – National police chief Bheki Cele's office insists that recent reports of police brutality are isolated incidents. "It will be important for us to treat those as isolated incidents instead of bringing them into one issue and cloud the matter around the issue of police brutality," his spokesperson, Major General Nonkululeko Mbatha, says. "We cannot obviously deny the fact that, in some instances, our members can act beyond what is expected which is why . . . the ICD [Independent Complaints Directorate] will take the process forward. In all these examples, there are investigations underway," she adds. She was responding to several reports of police assaulting or killing unarmed civilians. The most recent was the shooting dead of Jeanette Odendaal, 45, outside the Kempton Park police station, east of Johannesburg. A car guard, who says he witnessed the shooting by a sergeant, told The Star newspaper in a report that the policeman refused to call an ambulance. Sipho Baloyi, who had helped Odendaal to park her car when she crashed into a stationary police vehicle, says that the sergeant shot her from short distance after Baloyi alerted the police to the accident in the parking lot. "A sergeant came around from the charge office and walked out of the station. He didn't say anything, but walked to her passenger window. He shot her upper arm and it looked like the bullet went through her breast and out of her chest," says Baloyi. The police officer then walked back into the police station, but returned a few seconds later. He says he pleaded with the sergeant to call emergency services. But, says Baloyi, the sergeant told him: "She's dying already, there's no point in calling the ambulance."

PRETORIA – President Jacob Zuma promises to improve municipal services after local government elections next month. "We have to ensure the appointment of qualified and experienced personnel, the transparency of tender and procurement systems and also improve the levels of financial management ad accountability," Zuma says at Freedom Day celebrations at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. He adds that a number of issues will be attended to after the elections to implement the local government turnaround strategy adopted by Cabinet. Municipalities in distress need to be provided with more effective and direct support, in line with the needs of each municipality. “The ‘one size fits all' approach does not work," he says. There’s a need to find better ways of managing the relations between councillors and municipal officials, he adds. But, despite some problems with municipalities, Zuma says he is proud of the "substantial progress" South Africa has made since 1994, in comparison with other countries that had deteriorated after liberation. "We have done exceptionally well, against all odds, in only 17 years," he adds. He spoke of the importance of Chapter 9 institutions like the Office of the Public Protector and the Human Rights Commission, which form part of available mechanisms to ensure that apartheid never recurs. He urges South Africans to not allow anyone or any grouping in society to reverse the gains of the country's hard-won democracy. This day, he says, marks the celebration of a freedom and democracy obtained through the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifices of scores of freedom fighters and ordinary South Africans.

CAPE TOWN – The Department of Human Settlements’ (DHS’s) budget for the 2011/12 financial year has increased by 38% to R22,5-billion from 2010/11 and is expected to grow to R26,6-billion in 2013/14, Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale says in his budget vote speech. The DHS’s conditional grant to provinces over the 2011 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework period is also set to grow from R14,7-billion in 2011/12 to R16,2-billion in 2013/14. However, Sexwale says the Housing Disaster Relief Grant, which is used to facilitate housing assistance in emergency situations, will be discontinued in 2011/12, while an amount of R1,2-billion has been provided to fund the Rural Household Infrastructure Grant to provide ringfenced capital finance for the eradication of rural sanitation backlogs. “The National Treasury has provided funding for a new grant, the Urban Settlements Development Grant for cities, which will allow eight metropolitan municipalities to improve efficiency, maximise development outcomes and achieve a coordinated approach to built environment management.”

CAPE TOWN – South Africa expects R115-billion in investments flowing into Africa’s biggest economy over the next three years, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies says. He has told Parliament the figure is a “realistic target” and the deals will come from the emerging-market Brics powers as well as Japan, Germany, France, the UK, the US and countries in the Middle East. “We anticipate that this work programme will translate over the next three years into an investment pipeline of projects valued at R115-billion,” he says. The past year saw investments totalling R28-billion flow into South Africa, creating about 13 000 jobs. Foreign investors have been cautious about channelling money into South Africa because of growing concerns over corruption and the country’s rigid labour market, which make producing goods more expensive, compared with other emerging economies. Davies says the stalled Doha round of talks could collapse. “Renewed efforts to conclude the Doha developmental round this year appear to have come up against major, and perhaps fatal, obstacles,” he adds.

Africa & the world

TRIPOLI – Libya's two-month civil war spills over the border into Tunisia, provoking outrage in the western neighbour, while rebels in Misrata say that only the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) could halt the bombardment of the besieged city. The struggle between forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and rebels trying to end his more than four decades of rule drew in outsiders last month, as Nato began air strikes on government troops under a United Nations mandate. But the fighting has spilled over Libya's land frontier, when Gaddafi troops battled rebels on Tunisian territory for control of the Dehiba-Wazin frontier crossing. The incursion was brief and limited, and Gaddafi's troops even apologised locally. But the response was nevertheless furious from Tunisia, where the Arab world's wave of uprisings began late last year, leading to the overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January. "Given the gravity of what has happened . . . the Tunisian authorities have informed the Libyans of their extreme indignation and demand measures to put an immediate stop to these violations," a Tunisian Foreign Ministry statement says. Illustrating the difficulty of keeping the Libyan conflict sealed within the country's land borders, artillery shells fired by Gaddafi forces also struck the Tunisian side of the crossing. Rebels seized the post a week ago as it controls the only road link which their comrades in Libya's Western Mountains have with the outside world, making them rely otherwise on rough tracks for supplies of food, fuel and medicine. After weeks of advances and retreats by rebel and government forces along the Mediterranean coast, fighting has settled into a pattern of clashes and skirmishes.

WASHIGNTON DC – Food price hikes are hitting Africa's urban populations harder now than in 2008 and pose a serious challenge to some of the continent's leaders, who face elections this year, a World Bank official says. Policymakers across the globe are fighting rising food prices, currently 36% higher than levels this time last year and near peaks from 2008, according to the World Bank's food price index. "This time, because it is a more broadly based price increase, because it brings in fuel prices as well, the impact is more urban-based," Karen Brooks, the bank's Africa agriculture sector manager, told Reuters, citing increased pressure on wheat and maize costs. "It is also coming at a time of many elections in Africa, and so this goes into a political context, which makes it very challenging for governments to manage," she adds. The 2008 spike in food prices led to violent demonstrations across much of Africa. Protestors have returned to the streets of some capitals, while tense elections are due later this year in Cameroon, Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo, besides others. Brooks says the bank is particularly worried about the situation in Uganda, where the opposition has latched onto complaints over rising prices and organised protests, some of which have turned violent. "It is not on the scale that we are seeing in North Africa, but there are very great concerns," she says. In the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, world leaders in 2009 pledged some $20-billion to spur agricultural investment in poor nations and fight hunger. Brooks says investors are excited about African agriculture but that the continent is still missing out due to lingering fears over land rights, taxation and stability as private funds flow into Latin America and Central Asia.

LAÂYOUNE – Western Sahara’s independence movement and its supporters on the United Nations (UN) Security Council have voiced disappointment that a new draft resolution on the territory is not stronger on human rights. But Western diplomats say the draft, which will renew the mandate of UN peacekeepers in the disputed north-west African territory, had beefed up rights language in previous resolutions and marked progress that they are satisfied with. Sahara’s Polisario Front independence movement has long called for the UN mission there to report on what it says are rights abuses by Morocco, which annexed the former Spanish colony in 1975. Morocco denies the charge and opposes the move. The annexation of Western Sahara, which is about the size of Britain and has phosphates, fisheries and, potentially, oil and gas, sparked an armed conflict with the Polisario Front. A UN-brokered ceasefire was reached in 1991 on the basis that a referendum would be held to decide the fate of the territory, but it never took place and talks between Morocco and the Polisario Front have failed to yield a political solution.

TRIPOLI – Western powers helping rebels overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi face increasingly difficult choices on the military, economic and diplomatic fronts. Analysts say the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation may have to intensify attacks on government forces to break the military stalemate in the North African country, while plans to help the rebels earn revenue from its oil riches are bogged down by United Nations (UN) sanctions. The UN, meanwhile, is making slow progress in easing the plight of civilians trapped in the conflict. Hundreds of people are thought to have been killed in the port city of Misrata and thousands of foreign migrant workers are stranded there. At least 31 people have been killed there by government shelling and snipers. Nine weeks after the rebellion broke out, inspired by uprisings against autocratic rulers elsewhere in the Arab world, the insurgents control the east of the country.