South Africa

JOHANNESBURG – The Constitutional Court rules that it was unconstitutional for President Jacob Zuma to extend now-outgoing Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo's term of office. The judgment was unanimous. The court declared Section 8a of the Judges Remuneration and Conditions of Employment Act – in terms of which Zuma extended Ngcobo's term – unconstitutional. The court found that the section allowed the President to "usurp" the power of Parliament and held that Parliament alone had the power to extend a Constitutional Court judge's term of office. Zuma and the Justice Minister were ordered to pay costs. It was announced that Ngcobo has decided to withdraw his acceptance of Zuma's extension, which leaves the post of chief justice open from August 15 should a replacement not be found by then. The application against the way Zuma offered Ngcobo an extended term was brought by the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, Freedom under Law, the Justice Alliance of South Africa and the Centre for Applied Legal Studies.

QUEENSTOWN – ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema says the controversial family trust fund associated with him is being used to fund charitable causes, City Press online reports. Speaking in Queenstown, in the Eastern Cape, Malema says that he wouldn't take bribes "knowing that my enemies are out to destroy me". He says many business people have deposited money into the Ratanang Family Trust's account because he had approached them to fund charitable causes. He wouldn't put the names of his son and grandmother on the trust fund if it was meant to carry out illegal activities. "How many leaders and public figures have got trusts and community trusts? In South Africa there is not what we call secret trusts, there is nothing like that," he adds, objecting to the description of a "secret trust" in the report. "This trust they are talking about is a trust that continues to help the poorest of the poor. It is that trust that donated wheelchairs here." He says there is no proof that an unnamed businessman deposited R200 000 into his account. "We don't have a problem with that. You must give us a receipt (of payment), because if you deposited into the account it means there is a paper trail. "That trust has built churches, that trust has built houses for the poor, that trust has taken so many kids to school, and that trust will continue to do that. I don't care who says what. If they want to lock me up for what I believe in, let them do that," Malema says.

JOHANNESBURG – Accountability and responsibility to act on citizen’s needs is a vital characteristic in a functioning democracy, says political analyst Professor Steven Friedman at a public lecture on the future of democracy in South Africa. Friedman argues that South Africa is a relatively young democracy and that the country is naturally going through challenges that are testing the nature and strength of its democratic institutions. He highlights the debate around media freedom and the recent Public Protector report, which identifies maladministration on the part of National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele and Minister of Public Works Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde, as being examples of these democratic challenges. Despite the controversy surrounding media freedom, Freidman argues that the media is still largely unchecked, unregulated and retains its free status. The way in which the relevant authorities handle the Public Protector’s report, however, remains to be seen and is crucial to the credibility of the country’s democratic institutions that provide checks and balances on governing power structures. Freidman went on to argue that although accountability had improved after the Thabo Mbeki era, this accountability was misplaced as the country’s politicians were accountable to members within the ruling party and not necessarily accountable and responsive to people at the grassroots level. This, he argues, is one of the reasons for political infighting within the ruling African National Congress, as well as for an increase in service delivery protests in the country. Accountability and responsibility, therefore, need to be further developed to include the whole of society and not just the ruling elite, he states.

CAPE TOWN – Lawmakers drafting the Protection of Information Bill have turned to the potentially fraught issue of prescribing a review process for all State secrets classified in past decades. The African National Congress (ANC) proposes that organs of State be ordered to consider all their secret files and where they decide that classification is no longer necessary, hand them to the State Security Ministry to release. “The person who classified must be responsible for declassifying,” says Luwellyn Landers, the ANC MP leading the party’s arguments on the ad hoc committee drafting the Bill. In the case of now-defunct apartheid era Ministries, the decision will fall on the National Intelligence Agency and the Secret Service. The process will be overseen by an independent review panel – a body agreed to by the ANC when it made a raft of concessions on the highly contentious Bill. Landers says that the panel will conduct random sampling to see whether departments are behaving correctly. Questions arose about the action which should be provided for in law if a department defies the panel’s advice that the information has to be released.

CAPE TOWN – Plans are being outlined to bring more business meetings, events and conferences to South Africa, Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk says. “We aim to increase the number of foreign tourist arrivals to South Africa from 7-million in 2009 to 15-million by 2020,” he said at a conference in Cape Town. “We hope to increase tourism’s total contribution to the economy from R189-billion in 2009 to R499-billion by 2020, the number of domestic tourists from 14.6-million in 2009 to 18-million by 2020, and to create 225 000 new jobs by 2020.” He said that a strategy had been developed to improve business tourism and involved the assistance of various sectors. “This subsector is ideally placed to address some of the seasonality challenges that are difficult to meet through leisure tourism alone.” Van Schalkwyk said that foreigners saw the country’s natural beauty and impressive infrastructure during the Fifa World Cup last year. “What remains is for us to continually enhance and leverage this global positioning. As a country, we have already secured more than 200 events for the next five years. These events will attract some 300 000 delegates to our major business tourism cities and will contribute significantly to foreign direct spend into our economy.”

Africa & the world

MOGADISHU – Rebels in Somalia – where famine has been declared and 3.7 million people are going hungry – burn food and medicine, and kill charity workers, as part of a long-running campaign of extortion against aid groups, states a United Nations (UN) report. The evidence in the UN Monitoring group report on Somalia and Eritrea exposes a policy of intimidation against aid groups going back as far as 2008. Both the UN and the US have blamed the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab group for worsening the food crisis in the country, where famine has been declared in two regions largely controlled by the militants. "The single greatest obstacle to humanitarian assistance in Somalia during the course of the mandate has consistently been the denial of access by armed opposition groups, principally by elements of al-Shabaab," the report says. The report says some UN agencies working in Somalia suspect local organisations they funded and funnelled supplies through were paying money to al-Shabaab, which the group called "taxes". The report details incidents of al-Shabaab officers demanding bribes from UN and aid agency officials to allow them to work in rebel areas and, in some cases, burning food stocks and medicine when cash was not paid out. This month, al-Shabaab surprised aid groups in the region when they pledged to reverse a ban on food aid that they imposed in 2010, but they later said embargoes against the UN food agency, World Food Programme, and some major aid agencies will remain.

LILONGWE – Unlike the Internet-based popular protests that have swept North Africa and the Middle East, the biggest threat to embattled Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika may be from Christian churches. With two-thirds of the impoverished Southern African nation’s 13-million people living in villages and only now having basic mobile phones, let alone Internet-enabled ones, the power of technology to mobilise mass opposition is limited. However, in the former British colony where more than 80% of the population is Christian, the words of the church carry enormous weight – and the death of 18 antigovernment protesters in clashes with police has spurred the institution into action. In a statement, the head of the Catholic Church, Bishop Joseph Zuza, laments the loss of life and calls on Mutharika to “listen attentively and honestly to the cry of Malawians”. Protest organisers have given Mutharika until August 16 to sit down to discuss their grievances, in particular the chronic lack of foreign exchange and fuel that make official projections of 6.6% economic growth this year look fanciful.

NAIROBI – Aid agencies cannot reach more than two-million Somalis facing starvation in the famine-struck country where Islamist militants control much of the worst-hit areas, the United Nation’s food agency says. World Food Programme (WFP) officials say they are considering food drops from aircraft into some areas controlled by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab, which imposed a ban on food aid in 2010. “There are 2.2-million people yet to be reached. It is the most dangerous environment we are working in the world. But people are dying. It’s not about politics – it’s about saving lives now,” Josette Sheeran, the WFP’s executive director, says in north-eastern Kenya. The drought gripping the region straddling Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia is the worst in 20 years and is affecting up to 11-million people.