South Africa

PRETORIA – A total of 2 071 487 serious crimes were committed in South Africa in 2010/11, according to the crime statistics released by the South African Police Service. This compared with 2 121 887 cases registered during 2009/10. "This means that the total number of serious crimes was reduced by 2.4% or 50 400 cases," according to the Crime Report 2010/2011 for April 2010 to March 2011. This exceeded government's target of reducing serious crime by 1 to 1.8% a year. The ratio of serious crime per 100 000 of the population decreased 3.7% from 4 302.1 to 4 143.6. If three categories of crime which increase if police are doing their job – drug-related crimes, possession of illegal firearms and driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs – were excluded from the figures, then total serious crime for the year under review was 1 839 645. "Crime detected as a result of police action should increase if the police actually do what they are supposed to be doing and should, thus, logically not be included among those crimes which are expected to decrease if the police are effective in their crime combating efforts," according to the report. This is a decline from the year before where the figure, with the three crimes excluded, was 1 909 566 serious crimes. Around a third of total crimes were contact crimes, about a quarter were other serious crimes and a quarter property-related crimes.

JOHANNESBURG – Reforming South Africa's schooling system is possible within six years with political leadership, according to a Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) report. "The country needs bold political leadership and a new social compact to improve the quality of schooling. South Africa desperately needs much better outcomes," says CDE executive director Ann Bernstein in the report. The report, ‘School Reform is Possible: Lessons for South Africa from international experience’, summarises discussions held in April with experts from Brazil, Ghana, the US and India, where significant schooling reforms were implemented. The CDE says South Africa is struggling to turn its large and complex education system around, with 12-million pupils, 350 000 teachers, and more than 30 000 schools in 70 districts and nine provinces. Four education ministers since the advent of democracy in 1994, keen to make a break with the unequal apartheid-era education system, had each introduced different education policies. The message is that education will take people out of poverty but, in spite of between 5% and 6% of the country's GDP being allocated for education, South Africa fared poorly. Drawing on the experiences of the four countries represented at the discussions, Bernstein says it is possible to reform South Africa's schooling system within six years, but it requires resolve, leadership and commitment.

CAPE TOWN – Political parties voice mixed reaction about President Jacob Zuma's appointment of Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng as South Africa's new Chief Justice. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) expressed disappointment, while the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) welcomed the move. The Freedom Front Plus expressed some reservations, but says it will accept Mogoeng's appointment. The Congress of the People congratulated Mogoeng on his new position. The IFP says that the current system for appointing a chief justice did not allow for the best candidate to be appointed. "It is not only surprising but shocking that, despite the massive public outcry, the President [Jacob Zuma] has simply ignored the objections and appointed this controversial candidate," IFP spokesperson Koos van der Merwe says. "It shows an utter disrespect for public opinion, and our democracy as a whole." Van der Merwe, who is also a member of the Judicial Service Commission, says he is considering introducing a Private Members' Bill in Parliament that could lead to changes in the way the Chief Justice is appointed. ACDP leader Kenneth Meshoe said: "We have no doubt that, given Mogoeng's lengthy experience on the bench, he will uphold the Constitution and protect the independence of the judiciary from executive interference." He said Mogoeng would face various challenges in his new role. The FF Plus said it was "regrettable" Zuma did not accept its request for more candidates to be provided.

CAPE TOWN – The Protection of Information Bill has come a step closer to becoming law as MPs adopted a final draft, despite opposition objections and threats of legal challenge. The African National Congress (ANC) prevailed in the final vote on the contentious State Secrecy Bill with a comfortable majority, as it had in clause-by-clause deliberations. After the vote, Steve Swart, from the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), reiterated that it would petition President Jacob Zuma to refer the Bill for Constitutional review. Swart says that this is because, despite endless petitioning, the final draft lacked a public interest defence to protect people who publish classified information to expose State wrongdoing. The ACDP could find support from the Democratic Alliance (DA). DA MP David Maynier says that his party will take legal advice on whether the Bill will pass Constitutional muster without such a defence. It will then decide whether to petition the President in terms of clause 79 of the Constitution.

CAPE TOWN – South Africa is failing to deliver services to the poor despite its substantial fiscus, Planning Minister Trevor Manuel says. He urges MPs to practise better oversight over government. They should not only be asking whether money was spent as budgeted, but also whether it was prioritised properly to relieve poverty. “In most instances, such information that is available tends to relate to whether money was spent as appropriated, and not to the changes effected with the resource,” Manuel said at a seminar on the role of Parliament in attaining the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals. He says that the problem with perfunctory oversight is that outcomes of government spending “remain hidden from scrutiny”. MPs should work to change this. He says that, unlike those of many developing nations, South Africa’s fiscus is large enough to fund development “way beyond” the attainment of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Changing the lives of the poor is more about the commitment legislators have made to citizens than about meeting pledges made to the UN. “In this regard, we must accept that, despite the adequate allocation of funding, we fail to deliver quality service to the poor.” The former Finance Minister says that it is vital for the auditor-general to monitor whether money was spent according to public finance rules. However, this is not a yardstick of delivery in itself.

Africa & the world

TRIPOLI – The voice of Muammar Gaddafi boomed out from his hiding place, denying he has fled Libya and cursing as rats and stray dogs those whose efforts to start governing in his place are being frustrated by his diehard followers. "We will not leave our ancestral land," Gaddafi says in what Syria's Arrai TV says was a live broadcast from somewhere in Libya. "The youths are now ready to escalate the resistance against the rats in Tripoli and to finish off the mercenaries. Our resolute Libyan people, the Libyan land is your own," says the 69-year-old who ran the country since he was 27 until two weeks ago. "Those who try to take it from you now, they are intruders, they are mercenaries, they are stray dogs." Backing up his words, a cannonade of Grad missiles flew out of Bani Walid, a desert town south of Tripoli where a hard core of loyalists – estimated by their opponents at about 150 – are under siege by the new interim government. Some of its commanders suspect Gaddafi himself might be hiding inside. Two of the defenders were killed and one of the siege force wounded in overnight skirmishing, though a military spokesperson for the National Transitional Council says the new rulers will abide by a truce until Saturday to allow negotiated surrenders at Bani Walid and Gaddafi's home town of Sirte, on the coast.

MOGADISHU – Famine has spread to six out of eight regions in southern Somalia, with 750 000 people facing imminent starvation, the United Nations (UN) says, and hundreds of people are dying each day despite a ramping up of aid relief. “The entire Bay region has now been declared a famine area,” says Mark Bowden, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Somalia. Bay is the sixth region of Somalia to slip into famine since the UN’s initial declaration of famine in the war-torn country in July that has left four-million Somalis, or 53% of the population, unable to meet their food needs. Hundreds of people are dying each day and at least half of them are children, the UN’s Grainne Moloney says, adding she expects the remaining regions of southern Somalia to slip into famine by the end of the year. “The rate of malnutrition [among children] in the Bay region is 58%. This is a record rate of acute malnutrition,” says Moloney, the chief technical adviser for the UN Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit.

CAMEROON’S BIYA TO STAND IN OCTOBER VOTE – Cameroon President Paul Biya has launched his bid to extend his 29-year rule over the central African oil-producing State, brushing aside critics who say he is not eligible to stand in an October 9 election. Officials for the ruling party handed in Biya’s declaration of candidacy at the national electoral office. He will face over 30 rivals in the poll, including John Fru Ndi, of the main opposition Social Democratic Front. “President Paul Biya is responding to the call of the people to run again as President,” Gregoire Owona, deputy secretary-general of the CPDM, said at the office of the election body, Elecam. Biya’s government enacted Constitutional reforms in 1998 aimed at removing term limits and clearing the way for him to run again, but the opposition insist he is bound by the old 1996 charter under which his current seven-year term is his last.