South Africa

PRETORIA – Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale will appoint a national task team to investigate recurring complaints that local government has failed to provide enclosed toilets in poor communities. "Quite clearly many of these abandoned toilets-in-the-veld projects, which have been constructed as far back as year 2000, require not a piecemeal approach as they are exposed, but a comprehensive approach," the ministry says. Sexwale will announce the task team's members next week to deal with the matter in each province and all municipalities. "The poorest of the poor cannot be left in this undignified situation through a fault not of their making." The announcement comes after both national and local government struggled to say what progress had been made in enclosing open toilets in Rammulotsi, near Viljoenskroon in the Free State, since these were discovered in May. Sexwale now also has to contend with a second open toilet controversy in the province, in Tshiame, near Harrismith. Sexwale's spokesperson Mandulo Maphumulo says she knew "everything" was in place at "government level" to complete the enclosure of 1 600 toilets built in Rammulotsi in 2003. She could, however, not provide figures on progress made in the past two months. The issue severely embarrassed the African National Congress on eve of the May municipal elections, while the party was making mint out of the Democratic Alliance's failure to enclose toilets in Khayelitsha, on the Cape Flats.

JOHANNESBURG – Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is worried that South Africans are not saving enough for rainy days. Compared with people in other countries, South Africans are not putting away enough for the future but are getting used to a culture of consume now, pay later. Data indicate that South Africa's gross savings were 16% of Gross Domestic Product in 2009. This is compared with China's savings rate of 52% and Russia's rate of 22%. “We have become a consumerist society, a society that wants to acquire things at any cost, including high levels of debt. It is time that we ask ourselves very serious questions about the cultural habits that we are beginning to acquire,” Gordhan says. He was speaking in Johannesburg at the launch of the South African Saving Institute's savings month awareness campaign. There are various reasons for the country's poor savings rate, he says, such as a lack of transparent products and poor financial awareness. Gordhan says that, if South Africans could save more, the country would rely less on borrowing funds from other countries to meet its investment needs. “This would make us less reliant on volatile short-term capital inflows for funding, which can easily reverse and pose risks of instability for an emerging economy like ours. “We need to ask ourselves if we can mobilise our resources as a nation in a way that recognises the importance of savings in reaching our developmental goals.”

JOHANNESBURG – President Jacob Zuma should act against Public Works Minister Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde for failing to cooperate with a probe into two controversial building leases, the Public Protector recommends. Advocate Thuli Madonsela was releasing her report on the lease of Durban's Transnet Building. She says that Mahlangu-Nkabinde had "failed to meet the requisite stewardship as was expected of her". Her failure to cooperate with the investigation amounts to improper conduct. Madonsela says the police's attempts to lease the building from property tycoon Roux Shabangu amounts to maladministration. The failure of police chief General Bheki Cele to ensure the correct tender procedures were followed with respect to the Transnet Building amounts to maladministration, she says. The conduct of Department of Public Works officials and senior police officials is also improper and unlawful. Madonsela says the Durban lease would have been worth R1.16-billion over ten years and the market value of the building meant it should have been leased at R40/m² and not the R125/m² ultimately agreed. Referring to former director general Siviwe Dongwane's claim that he felt pressured to approve the lease, she says she could not find any evidence of this. The police and Shabangu have denied putting pressure on him, but Madonsela says that she is inclined to believe Dongwane because "towards the end of November he changed mysteriously".

PRETORIA – It is unlikely that the R20-billion debt incurred to build the first phase of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) will be recovered through an increase in the fuel levy, rather than tolling the 185 km of freeway, says Deputy Transport Minister Jeremy Cronin. “I don’t want to pre-empt the announcement by [Transport] Minister [Sibusiso] Ndebele, but I doubt etolling will be scrapped – at least for phase 1A of the GFIP. I’m afraid the phase 1A horse has bolted. The clock is ticking and we have an enormous debt to repay.” The GFIP toll fee structure, as put forward by the South African National Roads Agency Limited in February, is currently the subject of a government review following a public outcry over the costs to use the upgraded roads. Speaking at the Southern African Transport Conference held in Pretoria, Cronin said there had been strong support, especially from the business sector, to fund the multibillion-rand Gauteng toll road project through a ringfenced increase in the fuel levy, instead of through charging toll fees. The fuel levy currently flows into government’s general income stream.

JOHANNESBURG – The Department of Human Settlements will not be deterred from rooting out corruption in the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) and in the housing sector throughout the country, it says. “We again reiterate that any culprit who wants to hide behind any Minister has a surprise coming; such culprits will be pursued relentlessly in order to recover whatever losses were suffered by the taxpayer, particularly the poorest of the poor,” the department says in a statement. The department is more than aware that certain people within the NHBRC suspected of wrongdoing, having put severe question marks on their integrity, are attempting to mislead the media and the public at large about their culpability. “For the record, it must be noted that Ms Vanessa Somiah is the senior Special Investigations Unit (SIU) official, who, having been entrusted with the sensitive investigation of, among others, the CEO of the NHBRC, Mr Sipho Mashinini, ended being recruited by the selfsame person into the NHBRC top management,” it says. Nothing that Somiah or others might say will undo the fact “that she jumped from the SIU, having been entrusted with this sensitive investigation, and ended up gaining employment within the NHBRC.

Africa & the world

NEW YORK – The General Assembly admits South Sudan as the 193rd member of the United Nations (UN), sealing the new African country's independence after decades of conflict. The assembly vote, by acclamation, followed South Sudan's independence ceremony in the capital Juba on Saturday, after its people voted in a January referendum to break away from Sudan – a decision accepted by Khartoum. Applause broke out in the General Assembly as South Sudan became the first country to join the world body since Montenegro in 2006. "Welcome, South Sudan. Welcome to the community of nations," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. Assembly President Joseph Deiss said that it was a "historic and joyous moment." South Sudan's vote for independence was held under the terms of a 2005 peace deal that ended a 20-year war between North and South Sudan. Sudan became independent in 1956 but was long plagued by conflict between its mainly Muslim Arabic-speaking north and its black African south, where many are Christian or follow traditional beliefs. The Security Council, which has to rule on all UN membership applications, had recommended that the General Assembly admit South Sudan.

NEW YORK – Governments in Africa need to adopt new policies to ramp up manufacturing if the continent is to eliminate widespread poverty and create jobs to avoid conflict, a United Nations (UN) official says. Africa accounts for 1% of global manufacturing, and its labour-intensive manufacturing – seen as a vital first step in early industrialising economies – is in decline, the United Nations Economic Development in Africa Report 2011 says. “The process of deindustrialisation is actually gaining ground in Africa,” Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, adds. Governments need to reverse this trend if Africa is to provide jobs for a growing population and avoid social conflict, says Kandeh K Yumkella, director-general of the UN Industrial Development Organisation.

ROME – Italy has called for a political solution to the war in Libya that will see Muammar Gaddafi “leaving the stage”, as the rebel campaign to oust him runs into stiff resistance from government forces. With rifts already apparent within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), the US warns that some allies engaged in the campaign against Gaddafi could see their forces “exhausted” within three months. Rebel fighters are seemingly unable to make much progress in their fight to end Gaddafi’s 41-year rule and calls for a diplomatic resolution have mounted. Rebels have taken more casualties, which have stalled their advance towards Tripoli. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini’s call for a political way out came after his Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, exposed rifts within Nato by saying he has not supported the war on Libya, and France bridled at the slow pace of efforts to end the crisis.