South Africa

JOHANNESBURG – The South African Police Service (SAPS) partner with Business Against Crime South Africa (Bacsa) and community forums to roll out an initiative that will deploy owner-identifying technology called microdotting to mark household assets in an effort to reduce trio crimes. These crimes refer to armed robberies at homes and businesses and carjackings. The initiative will be driven through a 136 community police forums in Gauteng that will educate and inform communities of the benefits of marking their assets with these minute identity dots. The dots, each smaller than 0,8 mm, involve the use of an ultraviolet adhesive to mark any household item. Each dot carries a microscopic personal identification number visible through a scope (a small device that uses ultraviolet light and a magnifying lens to identify the item and, in turn, its legitimate owner). The dots can be applied on a ‘do-it-yourself’ basis and each kit, containing about 3 000 microdots, can be purchased at between R400 to R500, depending on the manufacturer. Gauteng Provincial Community Police Board chairperson Andy Mashaile says the campaign aims to deploy the technology to two-million houses within the next year. He says that about 2 500 community members, with specific focus on youth employment, will also be trained to assist with the roll out of the initiative. Bacsa representative Lorinda Nel says the microdot technology was chosen because it is cost efficient, simple and effective in reducing trio crimes.


PRETORIA – South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), trying to shed its image as the party of white privilege, could consider it a victory if its vote total in municipal elections is 40 percentage points behind the ruling African National Congress (ANC). The ANC, which beat the DA by more than 50 percentage points in the last municipal race – 67% to about 14% – enjoys enormous support from the black majority, who have given the liberation party easy victories since apartheid ended in 1994 and democracy took root. The DA is trying to use the May 18 race to show it can win votes outside its Cape Town base, break away from the perception it is the party of nonblacks and serve notice to the ANC that its stranglehold over politics may be slipping. "If the DA were to capture another metro it would go a long way to smash the myth that it is a one-city party, a party for minorities," says Justin Sylvester, a political researcher at the Institute for Democracy in Africa (Idasa) think-tank. "I am sceptical it will achieve the dramatic voter swings needed to challenge in 2014 (national elections)." The liberal DA has used its stewardship of Cape Town, the only major city not controlled by the ANC, to press home a message of accountability and good governance. Besides Cape Town, the DA expects to make inroads in three other cities – Port Elizabeth, Pretoria and Johannesburg.

JOHANNESBURG – Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande has reached an agreement with members of the Sector Education and Training Authorities (Seta) forum to support his proposed transformation of the Seta landscape and to distance themselves from the ongoing case between the Minister and the Services Seta. The forum confirms in a declaration that it supports the Minister’s new vision, and that it will cooperate with Nzimande on all transformation matters, including that of the proposed changes to the Seta environment. The agreement further states that taking the ‘legal route’ to resolve differences between the Minister and the Seta’s is a hindrance to progress. South Africa has 21 Setas funded by 1% of the payrolls of companies with profits of over R500 000. They provide postschool skills training. Nzimande wants Setas to have one standard constitution, reduce the size of their boards and for him to participate in the selection of board members and to include two Ministerial appointees to the boards. Nzimande has been embroiled in a spat with Services Seta CEO Dr Ivor Blumenthal after he took the Minister on over a lack of consultation on the proposed ‘model’ constitution for the Seta, as well as the appointment of African National Congress office bearer Sihle Moon, and took the matter to Labour Court. A Labour Court judge ruled earlier this month that Nzimande did not have the legal power to impose a new constitution on the Services Seta, and that the constitution he had tried to impose was in breach of the Skills Development Act.

JOHANNESBURG – The long-term viability of South Africa’s economy is being eroded by a steady flow of above-inflation wage deals that have been making the country’s overall labour market less competitive. Unions have already fired the first salvoes in mid-year wage bargaining, known locally as ‘strike season’, seeking annual increases of as much of 20% in Africa’s biggest economy, where inflation is about 4%. The ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has been in a governing alliance with unions since it took over with the end of apartheid 17 years ago, is unlikely to put the brakes on organised labour. With local elections coming, senior members of the ruling bloc want to stay on the good side of labour to mobilise votes for the poll and then to jostle for power in the ANC infighting, which is expected to follow. While union members have benefited, international investors have increasingly shunned South Africa because of high wages. Consumers have been stuck with the bill while the masses of jobless have been shut out of the workforce. “It is not sustainable. It is damaging to the economy and it’s damaging to the overall attempt to create more jobs,” says Gary van Staden, political analyst with NKC Independent Economists. The longer-term risk is that South Africa prices itself out of jobs. The average factory worker now earns R10 983 a month in wages and benefits and is typically less productive than the average Chinese worker who gets 1 783 yuan.

Africa & the world

LONDON – Libya's rebel forces need their international allies to supply them with more weapons if they are to make a breakthrough in their fight against Muammar Gaddafi, rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil says. The United Nations imposed an arms embargo earlier this year on Libya, meaning the rebels' allies will have to exploit loopholes in the sanctions regime or secretly circumvent it if they want to supply weapons. Speaking after meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron, Abdel Jalil says his forces would make more progress if they were better armed, adding that earlier shipments of weapons had helped them to advance in the western city of Misrata, where the rebels are besieged. "Colonel Gaddafi has heavy weaponry," Abdel Jalil told a news conference in London. "We need light weapons, which are not equivalent to Gaddafi's weapons but perhaps with courage, which Libyans have, there may be some kind of balance." The fighting has reached a stalemate, with the government in control of the capital and most of western Libya, while the rebels hold Benghazi and other towns in the oil-producing east. "If we have a minimum amount of armaments for our fighters . . . this will have a great impact on the revolution," says Abdel Jalil, who chairs the Libyan National Transitional Council. Britain has already offered to supply his forces with nonlethal equipment, such as night vision goggles and body armour, he adds. However, Cameron's spokesperson says that the British government has not decided whether to give them weapons.

MOGADISHU – An acrimonious power struggle among Somalia's leaders is opening the way for Islamist militants to step up their insurgency against the government, the African Union peacekeeping force says. Military offensives in the capital, Mogadishu, and in the south of the country earlier this year appeared to put al-Shabaab rebels on the back foot; but there are concerns a lack of political leadership is now letting them regroup. "The disunity among top government officials is an opportunity for the opposition forces to take root," Major Paddy Ankunda, spokesperson for the African Mission for Somalia (AMISOM) peacekeeping troops says. Two peacekeepers and four civilians were killed in the last 24 hours, officials say. The 9 000-strong peacekeeping force is effectively all that prevents the al-Qaeda-affiliated rebels from overthrowing the Western-backed government, whose mandate ends in August. Ankunda says an extra 3 000 troops will be deployed soon. They will face militants determined to avenge the death of al Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden, at a time when Somalia's politicians are distracted by political wrangling. President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed has extended his term of office, as has the parliament, whose speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden harbours presidential ambitions. Neither the executive nor legislative recognise the other's extension.

TRIPOLI – The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) has launched a number of missile strikes against targets in the Tripoli area that appear to include Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s compound, witnesses say. Officials have shown foreign journalists a hospital in the Libyan capital where some windows have been shattered, apparently owing to the blast waves from a Nato strike that toppled a nearby telecommunications tower. Journalists have also been taken to a government building, housing the high commission for children, that has been completely destroyed. The old colonial building had been damaged before in what officials say was a Nato strike on April 30. “The direction of at least one blast suggests Gaddafi’s compound has been targeted,” says one witness. No other information was immediately available, but the Tripoli blasts occur against a backdrop of a stalemate in the rebel war to unseat Gaddafi and the resulting dilemma for Western powers over whether to offer covert aid to the rebels. Gaddafi’s forces have launched a ferocious assault on Misrata and hundreds have been killed in weeks of fighting. Opposition newspaper Brnieq says that Libyan rebels are leading an uprising in the suburbs of Tripoli after being supplied with light weapons by defecting security service officers.