Global South African Weekly News Wrap 27 April 2012

27 April 2012 News Wrap-up 1

Global South African Weekly News Wrap Up 27 April 2012

Contents The meaning of hard-won liberties ............................................................................ 2 A dream betrayed ........................................................................................................ 4

Deals to drive development ......................................................................................... 6 Fraud in Africa is most common in SA, Nigeria ....................................................... 8 Quandary for youth league after leader’s ousting .................................................. 11 Things will get messy as alliances in ANC change .................................................. 13 E-tolling a done deal, says Ndebele .......................................................................... 14

Print media guidelines 'fair' ...................................................................................... 17

Double blow for Malema ........................................................................................... 18 Pityana says 'No' to review........................................................................................ 19

Zille tweet haunts votes ............................................................................................. 20 Lack of client skills hobbles bank ............................................................................. 21 State plans to force BEE partner on rail tender ..................................................... 22

‘Big setback for nuclear build plans’ if Necsa sheds 250 ....................................... 24 Gigaba ‘swamped’ by pay rise demands ................................................................. 25 PIC shifts emphasis to ‘developmental’ portfolio ................................................... 26

Hawks bill ‘still no guarantee of independence’ ..................................................... 27 Accountants agree to help FET colleges with management ................................... 28

Not enough candidates for judgeships — JSC ........................................................ 30 How Juju fell foul of the ANC .................................................................................. 31 Malema out in cold..................................................................................................... 33

Analysis: South Africa's Zuma on track for second term ...................................... 34

Shivambu scoffs at apology ....................................................................................... 38 Cops up in arms ......................................................................................................... 39 Gordhan upbeat on local economy ........................................................................... 42 Top committee 'did not back' Juju........................................................................... 42

New small business agency to get R900m ................................................................ 43 MPs must show loyalty to the constitution, not to the ANC .................................. 44


26 April 2012

Cape Times

President Jacob Zuma

The meaning of hard-won liberties

Czechoslovakian author Milan Kundera wrote: ―The struggle of man against power is

the struggle of memory against forgetting.‖

It is for this reason that all nations celebrate Freedom Day or Independence Day. For

South Africans, it is a day that brings everybody together to celebrate what we

achieved together on April 27, 1994.

Tomorrow we celebrate South Africa, whose people surprised the world by moving

away from hatred, racism and centuries of colonial oppression and apartheid, and

began building a new society.

We celebrate the day on which the black people of this country, when they cast their

votes for the first time in 1994, affirmed their dignity and full South African-ness.

They were declared as respected full citizens of a free, democratic, non-racial, non-

sexist South Africa.

It was a victory for all democrats, black and white, who never stopped believing that a

free, non-racial and democratic SA was achievable.

It was a day on which the heavy burden of guilt was lifted from those who had

benefited from colonial oppression and apartheid. Many said they could now carry

their SA passports with pride around the world.

It was also a day of freedom for those who believed in and practised racism.

They no longer had to live in fear of the black compatriots rising up against them. All

they had to do was to begin a process of un-learning what they had been taught – that

some citizens of this country are sub-human and did not deserve to be treated as full

human beings with feelings and the capacity to lead and make a contribution in

building this beautiful country.

On April 27 we gained freedom from the society that was described by Nobel Peace

laureate and former ANC president-general Chief Albert Luthuli as follows in

December 1961 on receiving the prize:

―It (SA) is a museum piece in our time, a hangover from the dark past of mankind, a

relic of an age which everywhere else is dead or dying. Here the cult of race

superiority and of white supremacy is worshipped like a god. Few white people

escape corruption and many of their children learn to believe that white men are

unquestionably superior, efficient, clever, industrious and capable; that black men are,

equally unquestionably, inferior, slothful, stupid, evil and clumsy.


―On the basis of the mythology that ‗the lowest among them is higher than the highest

among us‘, it is claimed that white men build everything that is worthwhile in the

country – its cities, its industries, its mines and its agriculture – and that they alone are

thus fit and entitled as of right to own and control these things, while black men are

only temporary sojourners in these cities, fit only for menial labour and unfit to share

political power.‖

On Freedom Day we celebrate our collective freedom from that society described by

Chief Luthuli.

On Freedom Day we acknowledge the distinguished heroes of the wars against

dispossession and colonialism.

We recognise the heroes and heroines of the struggle for liberation led by the ANC,

and in which other members of the liberation movement participated, such as the PAC

and the Azanian People‘s Organisation.

On Freedom Day we also celebrate South Africans who have distinguished

themselves in various fields in the service of the nation, through the National Orders.

Freedom Day is also a celebration by Africa, the diaspora and the world. Many

freedom lovers around the world believed that the freedom and human rights they

enjoyed in their own countries were indivisible and should be enjoyed by all

humanity.

The past 18 years have seen huge progress towards building a truly non-racial, non-

sexist, democratic and free South Africa. Together we have built from the ashes of

apartheid a country that is dedicated to patriotism, nation-building and reconciliation.

We have built stable democratic institutions based on our country‘s progressive

constitution. We have a Bill of Rights that enshrines and entrenches a human rights

culture, ensuring that we totally undo the evil of the past and promote a new society.

The creation of a stable democratic system has opened conditions for us to tackle our

socio-economic development challenges. This work is ongoing, having begun in

earnest in 1994, led by all presidents of a free and democratic South Africa.

The fourth democratic administration has made it its primary focus to invest in the

achievement of prosperity. In this regard, we are leading the struggle to eradicate

unemployment, inequality and poverty through promoting inclusive economic growth.

In 2009 we launched the New Growth Path (NGP) to promote inclusive economic

growth and job creation and to fight unemployment, poverty and inequality. The NGP

promotes job growth in six main areas: infrastructure development, agriculture,

mining and beneficiation, manufacturing, the green economy and tourism.

The primary focus this year is on infrastructure development, in order to boost

economic competitiveness, job creation and to improve the living conditions of all,

especially the poor. The focus is on economic infrastructure such as building roads,


public transport, mining infrastructure, ports and railways as well as social

infrastructure such as the expansion of access to water, electricity, sanitation and

roads in previously neglected areas.

The future looks bright, and will indeed be so if we all work together to make these

socio-economic goals a success.

This year‘s Freedom Day theme is ―Working together to build unity and prosperity‖.

It takes into account our strong focus on boosting inclusive growth and prosperity.

It also underscores the focus on heritage and the celebration of unity through

celebrating the heroes of our Struggle for freedom, to whom we owe so much.

Freedom, in the words of Fa Keita, in Sembene Ousmane‘s God‘s Bits of Wood,

simply means ―to act so that no man dares to strike you because he knows you speak

the truth, to act so that you can no longer be arrested because you are asking for the

right to live, to act so that all of this will end, both here and elsewhere… so that you

will never again be forced to bow down before anyone, but also so that no one shall

be forced to bow down before you‖.

It is the intangible aspects of our freedom, such as the regaining of our humanity,

citizenship and sense of belonging and dignity, which makes Freedom Day priceless.

Happy Freedom Day to all tomorrow. 27 April 2012 Financial Mail Page 6 Barney Mthombothi

A dream betrayed A day we savour with every remembrance. The beauty, unfortunately, has not endured. Who can forget those snaking queues to the polling booths, the infirm in wheelbarrows and Nelson Mandela in his trademark shirt and four years out of prison, casting the vote that would propel him to power. Who says miracles don’t happen? It was the watershed of all watersheds, the fulfilment of long-held dreams and aspirations. Giddy is the word that springs to mind; exuberant, drunk with excitement at our achievement. The country was no longer the impervious monster that had always thwarted our ambitions but the dream that we’d always cherished. Tomorrow is another country, said Allister Sparks. How apt that was. We were living a dream; our dream.


But casting around at what’s happening today, it seems that since then life has been downhill, an anti climax. Or some awful nightmare has happened to us. All around there is disappointment at how things have turned out. In less than two decades the dream has been betrayed. Disillusionment runs deep. From the poor to the rich, from rural to urban, right across all colours, we all feel let down. There’s a revolt of sorts. Maybe our expectations were too high and a bit unrealistic. A honeymoon, even in marriage, doesn’t last forever. And couples, to keep the marriage vibrant and intact, have to work at it all the time. On reaching the summit, on fulfilling our dream, we rested on our laurels and revelled in the adulation. We forgot that the summit was not the end of the journey, but the beginning of a new and enduring, even tortuous, struggle — to feed, clothe and unite the people, who for decades had lived on a diet of divisions. Could it be that we had expended so much energy trying to defeat apartheid that, when it finally disappeared, our finest hour, we became befuddled and confused, like a dog that has suddenly lost the scent of its quarry? It’s hard to let go. Former inmates tend to spend an inordinate amount of time reminiscing about prisons. We’re former inmates of an apartheid prison. It’s blighted us all, victims and perpetrators alike. Too often one hears some warning about the return of the spectre of apartheid. What such speakers seem unaware of is they have too easily slotted back into or are still caught up in the apartheid milieu. They’re acting as the victims they were. Despite the passage of time, we’ve yet to cross our own Rubicon. We still see things through the apartheid prism. Not some but all of us. It’s part of our psyche. It’s obviously often easy and self-serving to point to a speck in someone else’s eye . We need to go back to the spirit of April 27 1994; to reclaim that gleaming, priceless ornament we inherited on that wonderful day: freedom in all its sparkle. Often it’s not only about enjoying freedom’s virtues, the benefits we derive from it; but also to obey its commands. Freedom is not prescriptive. It is shared. It doesn’t impinge on others’ right to enjoy their freedom. In fact some have even laid down their lives so that others could enjoy their freedom without hindrance. If we followed the commands of freedom, we wouldn’t dare, for instance, to come up with contraptions such as the secrecy bill and media tribunals, measures designed solely to deny citizens the right to exercise their freedom. Government would instead make information readily available to the population and shine a searchlight into all dark corners, so that voters would be able to hold it to account and make informed decisions about their lives. What we have instead is power, which is being exercised without any countervailing force. We’ve handed power to a few who are in turn abusing it to negate our freedom .


26 April 2012 Business Report Page 21 Wiseman Khuzwayo

Deals to drive development Economic development agreements were signed by Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel and various partners on Tuesday. The nine agreements aimed to further the goals of decent jobs and locally driven economic growth. The minister also presented his budget speech on the day. The Department of Economic Development said the agreements were a constructive start to collaborations between stakeholders in achieving the outcomes of the New Growth Path. In his speech, Patel said the China Development Bank and the state-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) had signed an agreement to access $100 million (R783m) at a favourable 10-year term for small business lending. Patel said the money would boost the IDC’s capacity to support the Small Enterprise Finance Agency (Sefa), which he launched on Monday. The agency would have access to R2 billion over the next three years, with financial input from the government and the IDC. ‚The availability and cost of funding to small business is vital, but not sufficient. More needs to be done to strengthen technical skills and promote market access,‛ Patel said. He also signed a co-operation agreement with the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants to train 100 accountants who would support small businesses and they would set up a business hub to provide technical assistance to small, medium and micro enterprises. Government will provide R6m for this initiative. Over the past 12 months, the IDC’s approval of funding grew from R8.7bn to R13.5bn, he said, and the corporation had improved its application turnaround time from an average of 82 days to 50 days. Giving feedback on the Competition Commission, he said the body had dealt with 472 cases over the past year and found evidence of widespread collusion in the construction industry. He said the Competition Act mandated the competition authorities to consider public interest criteria when evaluating proposed mergers and acquisition, including the impact on employment and the impact on linked industries.


He said: ‚Competition is vital, but our legislative framework does not subscribe to a trickle down approach that assumes competition alone will ensure developmental impact.‛ The commission identified about 200 projects where bids were effectively rigged, including bids for the 2010 World Cup stadiums. A total of 21 construction firms had come forward to admit involvement, including the country’s top five companies in this sector. Patel said the Competition Tribunal granted consent orders worth R345 million in the past year and heard 63 cases. In 11 cases it imposed conditions. Two thirds of cases related to competition conditions and four cases involved employment requirements. Patel said R250m of the fine imposed on Pioneer Foods for participating in a bread and flour cartel was set aside for an IDC managed agro-processing fund which would assist in job creation and in the promotion of new entrants to the industry.


26 April 2012 Business Report Page 25 Wiseman Khuzwayo

Fraud in Africa is most common in SA, Nigeria South Africa and Nigeria had the highest number of reported cases of fraud in Africa in 2011, according to a survey by KPMG released yesterday. According to the inaugural African Fraud Barometer, a new tool from the global network of professional services firms providing audit, tax and advisory services, the number of reported cases of fraud on the continent rose from 355 in the first half of 2011 to 520 cases in the second half. This was an increase of 46.4 percent. However, the value of fraud cases decreased from $7.17 billion (R56bn) to $3.7bn. In South Africa and Nigeria fewer cases were reported in the second half of the year than in the first, while Zimbabwe had the biggest increase in the value of fraud committed in the second half of 2011, amounting to $1.2bn. The African country with the most reported fraud cases was South Africa at 35 percent of all cases in the second half of 2011, though this was down from 37 percent in the first half. Nigeria had the second most cases, at 22 percent in the second half of 2011, against 25 percent during the first half. The biggest targets of fraud are governments. They were the victims of 43 percent of the reported cases in the first six months of 2011, although this decreased to 37 percent in the last six months of the year. Employees were the most frequent perpetrators of fraud at 29 percent of cases in the second half of the year, up from 27 percent in the first half. However, in terms of value, management was the biggest culprit in the second half, committing fraud worth $1.2bn. In the first six months of 2011, the highest value of fraud was committed by professional advisers, at $3.3bn. The African Fraud Barometer is a first effort to measure fraud across the African continent and expose the risk of fraud for companies in their day-to-day operations.


The data is compiled from all available news articles on Africa and reports on fraud from designated databases. The survey is complied and published every six months. Petrus Marais, KPMG’s global leader for forensics, said: ‚We felt there was a need to create a tool like the Africa Fraud Barometer since the world has begun to look at Africa as a new investment destination. ‚At the same time, we are still dealing with an often negative perception of Africa. We therefore see ourselves as risk analysts and would like to provide information that allows potential investors to assess and conceptualise risk on the African continent. ‚To outsiders, I say that Africa is a great place to invest if you have the ability to assess the risk involved.‛ Mantashe ‘nod’ to press control plan The African National Congress (ANC) has all but endorsed the print media industry’s own proposals to tighten control over the press and raise accountability. This is a significant departure from the ANC’s earlier insistence on the establishment of a media appeals tribunal overseen by Parliament, regarded by many in the media as a mechanism to muzzle SA’s free press. The ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007 resolved that the party should investigate setting up a tribunal to improve the regulation and transformation of the media industry. ANC secretary-general GwedeMantashe said at the launch yesterday of the Press Freedom Commission’s recommendations on independent co-regulation of the press that he was "very comfortable" with its findings. The commission was established by Print Media SA and the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) in July last year in response to ANC criticism that existing self-regulation of newspapers was inadequate. The Press Freedom Commission yesterday recommended a new system of co-regulation carried out by a new Press Council to be made up of a majority of members of the public and a minority of representatives of the print media industry. It recommended sweeping changes to the current complaints system, including removal of the waiver clause, more holistic reporting of children’s issues, sanctions for absenteeism from hearings and effective regulation of digital publications. Removal of the waiver means that complainants to the Press Council could also seek legal redress, which had been prohibited by the clause. The recommendations struck a chord with the ANC. "The principles embodied here are very acceptable and give us what we think is legitimate regulation of the print media," Mr Mantashe said. "By and


large we are very happy with the principles that we have heard here today, but we’ll have to take the report to body of the organisation (the ANC) and come up officially and endorse it. "From what we have read and what was presented here we are very comfortable. "It has actually moved a long way to what our expectations are in giving space to intervention to ensure that rights are protected." Mr Mantashe said the process of establishing the commission had shaken the print media industry out of its "comfort zone" and its findings had given legitimacy to regulation. Democratic Alliance chairman Wilmot James welcomed the report yesterday, saying that it would strengthen democracy and support good journalism. Press Freedom Commission chair man Justice Pius Langa said that the report was the culmination of research, international study and written and oral submissions. The commission had found that there were "overwhelming negative perceptions" about aspects of current press regulation. "We believe we have addressed all the issues in a way that ensures press freedom while at the same time protecting privacy, dignity and reputation of people who are subject to press coverage," Justice Langa said. The commission also made recommendations on the transformation of the media industry, highlighting the need for an industry charter on transformation. Print Media SA and Sanef welcomed the report and pledged to abide by its contents. Sanef chairman MondliMakhanya said at the launch yesterday: "We wanted self-regulation, but this process was independent of ourselves and the product shows that. This is quite a radical departure from how the press system operates in SA." Mr Makhanya said the media occasionally had shortcomings and therefore needed strong mechanisms for accountability. The industry would accept the report and editors would have to find ways to rise to the challenges it presented. "These are not things that we should fear, but are things that we should live by," he said.


26 April 2012 Business Day Page 3 Natasha Marrian

Quandary for youth league after leader’s ousting The fall of Julius Malema raises new problems for the African National Congress (ANC), the most pressing of which is who will take charge of the errant youth league. The dispute between Mr Malema and the ANC, which he describes as his home, culminated in his expulsion from the party on Tuesday. The league now appears to be in limbo, with most provincial leaders pledging their continued support for the former leader, as they cling to the hope that a meeting with the leadership of the ANC would resolve the impasse with the mother body. Speaking in Limpopo on Saturday, Mr Malema called on his followers to "support" and "respect" youth league secretary-generalSindisoMagaqa. This appeared to indicate that Mr Magaqa was Mr Malema’s preferred successor. Another indication of Mr Magaqa’s close ties with Mr Malema is his withdrawal of his appeal against an initial three-year suspended sentence — probably pre-empting an expected harsher sentence that could have prevented him from continuing with Mr Malema’s agenda. The ANC’s national disciplinary committee of appeals (NDCA) revealed in its findings, released by chairman Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday, that Mr Magaqa had withdrawn the appeal of his initial three-year suspended sentence. The committee did not accept the withdrawal — which could have bolstered the ANC’s argument for a harsher sanction. His sentence was commuted to a one-year suspension with immediate effect. The appeals body said it had no proof that Mr Magaqa had apologised for insulting Public Enterprise Minister MalusiGigaba — a condition attached to his earlier sentence. This in effect removed Mr Magaqa from contention for the league’s leadership, for the next year at least. Former youth league deputy president AndileLungisa expressed surprise at the imposition of a heavier penalty on Mr Magaqa, saying the youth leader had apologised as stipulated by the national disciplinary committee. The league’s deputy president, Ronald Lamola, has emerged as a possible contender, having taken charge when now-suspended spokesman Floyd Shivambu criticised Mr Ramaphosa in an opinion piece published in a national newspaper earlier this month.


Mr Lamola also moved to quell reports of division within the league’s national executive committee (NEC). This was after an outspoken member challenged the public announcement that the NEC opted to defy the ANC on the suspension of Mr Malema. Treasurer-general Pule Mabe is also said to hold ambitions to lead the league and NEC member AbnerMosaase was reportedly another contender. The league’s official stance — that Mr Malema remained its president until 2014 — continued to dominate its reaction to the news of his expulsion. Provinces indicated they would look to a national general council, to be held before the end of next month, for direction from the rank and file. A senior youth league member said the NEC would continue to run the organisation until it received direction from the national general council. Northern Cape chairman ShadrackTlhaole said that the council would give the league direction and hoped a meeting with the ANC would iron out differences, but the provinces’ support for Mr Malema remained unshaken. Most provincial bodies held similar views. "This is all about Mangaung (the ANC’s December elective conference). The leadership of the ANC and the league must meet to find an amicable solution," said Limpopo spokesman CheSelane. But Ebrahim Fakir, head of governance at the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, said a meeting with the ANC would prove futile for the league. "The ANC is not going to repudiate a finding of its own structure (the NDCA)," he said. Even if the NEC reviewed the findings, it was unlikely to overturn the sanction completely. Mr Fakir lent credence to the league’s assertion that the disciplinary action was politically motivated. "I think Julius could have been as ill-mannered and rude as he always was, provided he was backing the current lot," he said. Mr Malema was the public face for the push to replace President Jacob Zuma at Mangaung. But the director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Steven Friedman, said Mr Malema’s expulsion was irrelevant to the succession race. Those opposing Mr Zuma were not suspended or expelled, but remained in the ANC. The co-editor of the Southern Africa Report, Karima Brown, said there was "no easy path" for anyone wanting to lead the ANC. Mr Malema’s expulsion strengthened Mr Zuma’s bid, but the terrain remained contested.


26 April 2012 Business Day Page 11 Tim Cohen

Things will get messy as alliances in ANC change What does the expulsion of former African National Congress (ANC) Youth League leader Julius Malema signify? I think it signifies two things. First, it signifies the end of the "alliance of the d isaffected", the loose alliance of the groups, factions and individuals who had an interest in the demise of Thabo Mbeki and his followers. This group consisted of trade unionists, ultranationalists, leftists and those who generally had black marks against their names. Mbeki’s left-of-centre politics, his "third-way" economics and his cloistered style developed a raft of enmity, derided as "the 1996 class project". But, politically speaking, the defining characteristic of this group was not what they were for but who they were against. Malema was actually the forerunner of this group, pressuring the ANC to oust Mbeki even as his term of office only had a few months to run. Malema even announced Mbeki’s imminent departure before it had happened, so that when it did, he had cemented his place as the group’s premier architect. He positioned himself as the self-appointed destiny of the alliance of the disaffected. Now the question is whether Malema’s destiny will become theirs. The man who promised he would die for the leader of the alliance of the disaffected, President Jacob Zuma , is now out in the political wilderness. Can the group survive without its main drawcard, the man manning its clarion? I think the group is weakened but not overthrown, at least not yet. Many of the other factions that are part of the alliance have achieved some if not all of their aims. The Congress of South African Trade Unions is closer to power than it was under the Mbeki administration. The leftists have some heft within the government. Zuma is still able to wield power through appointments from the centre. He can also initiate and shape legislation, particularly legislation that restricts information flow and increases centralisation of power over the security services. Yet the second significance of the end of the Malema era is perhaps more profound. What Malema has done inadvertently demonstrates the conflict of ideas that lies at the centre of the alliance. Malema’sZanu( PF)-type philosophy of ultra nationalism overlaps, but is fundamentally incompatible with, the ideas of the left. For the left, capitalism works its own destruction, and speeding up the process, a la the Soviet system, is actually dangerous, most of all to the left. Malema’s ideas also overlap but are fundamentally opposed to the ideas of the trade union movement. It’s one of the strange dualities of trade


unionism that unions rely on the existence of capitalists because, if they did not, with whom would they negotiate wages and working conditions ? Malema’s ideas also overlap with but fundamentally conflict with the ideas of the rentier capitalists within the ANC. Some black economic empowerment mine owners would no doubt love to be nationalised. If they were, they could exit their underwater options early with the helpful assistance of taxpayers. But, in general, the business plan of rentier capitalists is that they should free-ride on existing enterprises, not that these enterprises should be taken over by the state. Most important, Malema’s ideas are contrary to the economic centrists and modernists within the ANC. It often seems as if this group does not exist, but I think it’s stronger than it sometimes seems. The centrists in the ANC have more power than they think because they own modernity and common sense, and politics often unwillingly relents to the sensible. What we are going to see over the next few months is a reconfiguration of the alliances within the party, and this is going to be a messy, ugly process. The alliance of the disaffected has a classic existential problem: it needs to decide what it is. This is perhaps why the party cleaves to its old Marxist-Leninist rhetoric even though it acts like a Scandinavian socialist. The warm embrace of the old days, when everything was so much simpler, is powerfully nostalgic. But those days are gone. It seems impossible to imagine, but if the ANC cannot mould a modern alliance, if the factions within the alliance are too far apart, if the disaffected cannot decide who they are, it will fade too. 26 April 2012 The Times Page 1 Thabo Mokone and SiphoMasombuka

E-tolling a done deal, says Ndebele Presenting his R39-billion departmental budget for the next financial year in the National Assembly, Transport Minister S'bu Ndebele claimed that the Gauteng freeway improvement project had won the support of the majority of its users. But opposition parties - the DA, COPE and the African Christian Democratic Party - slammed the looming system, some branding it the ''most expensive in the world". Ndebele said a "huge majority" of the estimated 800000 regular users of Gauteng's freeways had given e-tolling the thumbs-up by buying e-tags. "We are encouraged that 501245 e-tags have so far been sold and distributed to regular users of this road network. It's a clear indication that people are cooperating with us," he said.


A court battle waged by various lobby groups to interdict the implementation of the Gauteng tolling regime is scheduled to resume today after a judge ruled that the matter was urgent. The tolling system is due to take effect at midnight on Monday. Opposition MPs are not impressed by Ndebele's assertions. The DA's Ian Ollis is leading the charge. "What we have been forced into with the e-tolls is the world's most expensive toll collection system,'' said Ollis. ''It will cost over R1-billion a year just to collect the tolls. That money will not go to upgrading highways but to the company that won the tender." Ollis argued that it would cost only R4-million a year to administer a "small fuel levy" increase instead of the "expensive tolls". The ACDP's Steve Swart weighed in, saying his party was opposed to the tolling of suburban roads because of rising fuel prices. He said the government should have thought about the high cost of collecting the tolls before it entered into the R20-billion agreement. "This tolling project will impose an indirect cost on the economy via the associated strikes and will impose a direct cost by increasing transport costs," he said. Ndebele hit back by insisting that there was "no way" the government would abandon e-tolling. "Who is going to say which road toll should be stopped? Which project do you want stopped because you've got R20-billion to pay .the road is there, you can't roll it away like a carpet. "It's your problem." He argued that the tolls had to be enforced to enable the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) to repay its loan of R20-billion, used to finance the improvement of highways around Pretoria and Johannesburg in the last two years. He said failure to service the debt could cause it to skyrocket to R32-billion because of higher interest rates in the near future, and could compromise the credit rating of the government. Trade union federation Cosatu, which said it would organise the "mother of all marches" against the e-tolls on Monday, yesterday postponed the march for two weeks until after a meeting with ANC leaders. Cosatu's national spokesman, Patrick Craven, said the strike would now be in the second week of May. "This is to give time to assess the outcome of the meeting between Cosatu and the ANC leadership on April 26, the legal steps being taken by the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance against the roads agency, and any future legal action that Cosatu or others might take," he said.


"The strike embraces the campaigns against e-tolling, labour brokers and labour law amendments that could cripple trade union rights." In the Pretoria High Court, opponents of the tolling system yesterday scored the first - and crucial - victory in the legal battle to derail the implementation of the controversial scheme. The legal team representing the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance and others convinced Judge Bill Prinsloo that he should treat the case against tolling as urgent. Had the judge ruled that the matter was not urgent, the case would have been thrown out of court. Prinsloo ruled that the applicants had made a valid case for urgency and that "the public interest and the ongoing interest from many quarters" caused it to be an urgent matter. The alliance, supported by the SA Vehicle Renting and Leasing Association, the Quadpara Association and the SA National Consumers' Union, said its bid to stop the scheme was based on the contention that Sanral had failed to give proper notice of its intention to toll. The applicants argued that the decision to toll was unreasonable, and that adequate enforcement of the system was "practically impossible". Dismissing the argument of the respondents - which included Sanral, Ndebele, Gauteng MEC for roads and transport Ismail Vadi and the Treasury - that the alliance's application was four years late, the judge said it was apparent that the fate of the e-tolling system was uncertain until Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan's February budget speech, therefore it "would have been premature" for the applicants to lodge their application before then". A submission by Ndebele and Vadi's lawyer, Vincent Maleka, that motorists would be refunded should the court rule in the alliance's favour would "be difficult for logistical reasons". Sanral CEO Nazir Alli refused to comment on the new development, but alliance chairman Wayne Duvenage said the ruling was a swing in favour of those opposing e-tolling. He said he was "quite optimistic" about the final outcome. - Additional reporting by Pertunia Ratsatsi


26 April 2012 The Times Page 2 AmukelaniChauke

Print media guidelines 'fair' The ANC has for years called for a media appeals tribunal to regulate the print media amid complaints that the Press Ombudsman was "toothless and biased". Mantashe was speaking at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, at the release of the Press Freedom Commission's findings. Chaired by retired chief justice Pius Langa, the commission recommended that the print media move from self-regulation to independent co-regulation, involving public and media representation without state intervention. Mantashe said the ruling party would debate the commission's recommendations at its policy conference in June. "What is important about this report is that it has taken everybody out of their comfort zone, from the extremes of the [proposed] statutory regulatory framework and the total self-regulatory framework, to the centre, which gives legitimacy to the body, and gives a fair balance to regulation." Mantashe said the newly proposed model was "legitimate" and could contribute to best practice in journalism. At its Polokwane national conference in 2007, the ANC announced plans to establish a media watchdog to regulate the print media. This prompted the SA Press Council to establish a commission in July last year to look at ways of strengthening the current self-regulatory mechanism, or suggest a more effective method of regulation. The Press Freedom Commission's recommendations included: Increasing the number of public members of the governing structures of the Press Council; Introducing a hierarchy of penalties, including monetary fines, and suspension or expulsion from the jurisdiction of the Press Ombudsman; Scrapping the waiver that barred those not satisfied with the ombudsman's ruling from approaching the courts for recourse; Empowering the ombudsman to force newspapers to place apologies or retractions of a specific size on a specific page; and Initiating talks with the digital media to ensure that they, too, are regulated. The National Editors' Forum welcomed the findings.


"We are pleased that the [commission] has clearly rejected any involvement of political parties or state officials in the regulation of the press," it said. 26 April 2012 The Times Page 4 Amukelani Chaukeand Thando Mgaga

Double blow for Malema The suspension of league secretary general Sindiso Magaqa, regarded as Malema's right-hand man, now means his voice has effectively been stilled. Late on Tuesday night, the ANC's national disciplinary committee of appeals, chaired by Cyril Ramaphosa, upheld an earlier decision to expel Malema after he was found guilty of bringing the party into disrepute, and also announced that Magaqa's membership would be suspended for 12 months. This, together with the three-year suspension of spokesman Floyd Shivambu, could silence Malema's voice within the league's top structures. While Malema has gone to ground, the Limpopo and the Eastern Cape provinces came out in support of him yesterday in a bid to rescue their fallen leader. Others, however, have welcomed his expulsion. The chairman of the disbanded KZN ANC Youth League, Mthandeni Dlungwane said that his members welcomed the decision to expel Malema "with warm hands". Dlungwane said the ANC had shown once again that it was serious about curbing ill-discipline within the organisation. "The ANC has never failed on matters of discipline. That is why it is celebrating 100 years of its existence this year. "Julius used to call people factory faults. "His expulsion from the party shows he is the true factory fault. He failed to abide by the rules of this factory and now he is out," Dlungwane said. But Vukani Ndlovu, the convener of the youth league provincial task team, and a Malema supporter, said the appeals committee decision about the controversial leader was not "a shocker". What had shocked him was Magaqa's suspension. "Magaqa apologised; what more was needed from him?" asked Ndlovu.


A few weeks ago, Magaqa released a one-sentence apology to Enterprise Minister Malusi Gigaba, at the instruction of the appeals committee, after his derogatory comments about the league's call for nationalisation of mines last year. Ndlovu also called on the ANC's national executive committee to grant the league a meeting to discuss the frictions that led to Malema's expulsion. CheSelane, spokesman of the league in Limpopo, said they would defy Ramaphosa's ruling. "We have taken a decision to support our president until 2014. We will not appoint [anyone else]. We will seek his advice." Additional reporting by Sapa 26 April 2012 The Times Page 4 David Macgregor

Pityana says 'No' to review Struggle stalwart Sipho Pityana, who heads the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, said suggestions that the judiciary was dominated by forces that were against change were without substance. Pityana said judicial transformation had come a long way since 1994, when there were only three black and nine female judges . By 2011, there were 136 black and 61 female high court judges of a total of 225. Similar progress had been made in the magistrate's courts. According to Pityana and several other speakers the government's attempts to rein in the judiciary followed several judgments unfavourable to the ruling party. He said recent rumblings by top ANC leaders - including President Jacob Zuma - that the courts restrict themselves to matters other than executive policy and legislation, displayed a clear lack of appreciation of the Constitutional Court's role un determining and ruling on the constitutionality of the executive's conduct, including policy, and the laws passed by parliament. "The health and vibrancy of our democracy depends on robust public engagement and contestation between these organs of state," Pityana said.


He warned that cooperation and interdependence took away "the healthy tension that is the lifeblood of our democracy". 26 April 2012 The Times Page 5 NashiraDavids

Zille tweet haunts votes More than 4000 residents of the small Western Cape town were registered to vote in an election marred by accusations of dirty politics and racial tensions. Dozens of ANC supporters wore bright-yellow T-shirts bearing the slogan "Plaaswerker Refugee" and on the back "Committed to a Western Cape Free of Racism". The street outside the polling station was divided - the DA a sea of blue on the one side and the ANC draped in yellow on the other. Just a month ago Grabouw made national headlines when coloured and African neighbours turned on each other. Initially, the community planned to join forces to demand change at Umyezo Wama Apile School, which was overcrowded and understaffed. The school, which caters for predominantly Xhosa-speaking children, was filled with pupils, many of whom are from the Eastern Cape. On Human Rights Day, Zille commented that children flocking to Western Cape schools were education "refugees" escaping a collapsed education system in the Eastern Cape. This comment caused an ugly eruption, with Western Cape ANC leader Marius Fransman slamming her for racial stereotyping and claiming that her "petticoat of bias is hanging out". While Zille apologised for the comment, it is something that the ANC in Grabouw claimed lost the DA many supporters. "It was an eye-opener. After Zille made that refugee comment, more than 100 coloureds moved from the DA and signed up with the ANC. She really did damage to her own party," said Catherine Neft. The by-election in Grabouw came about because Neft defected from the DA to the ANC. Grabouw and towns such as Riviersonderend form part of the Theewaterskloof Municipality, where the DA leads by a slim majority. Top brass in the ANC, including Deputy Minister of Human Settlements Zou Kota-Fredericks and ANC leader in the provincial legislature Lynne Brown came to garner support for the party.


The two stepped in to quell tensions between ANC and DA supporters at the voting station yesterday. Trouble started shortly after ANC supporters set DA T-shirts alight. Kota-Fredericks said the situation at the polling station was not tense, but exciting. "The battle is too close," said Fredericks. Brown said peace has been restored to the town. But she admitted that racial tensions exist. "I think it is the responsibility of every political party to defuse racial tensions. I think our premier has not done any good with the refugee statement and the half-hearted apology," said Brown. "We are a young democracy, there will always be racial tensions." Theuns Botha, DA provincial leader, accused the ANC of practising underhand politics that ''caused so much trouble in the community in the run-up to this by-election''. Grabouw resident George Sebyo said coloureds and Africans lived side by side peacefully. He said both races faced the same problems - unemployment, inadequate housing and poverty. 26 April 2012 The Times Page 15 CaiphusKgosana

Lack of client skills hobbles bank Acting CEO TP Nchocho told parliament's finance portfolio committee that often there was not enough support from municipal officials. "We would send planners, engineers and financial experts to assist, but the reality is that very often there are no officials to build capacity around .when our intervention is withdrawn the municipality deteriorates back," he said. He called on the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, and on the provinces, to partner the bank in helping smaller municipalities attract and retain the skilled officials needed to manage large infrastructure development projects. According to information provided by the bank yesterday, there are 158 under-resourced municipalities that cater for 34% of the population. The bank has invested R40-billion, mainly in energy, roads and drainage and water projects.


Nchocho said the bank was planning to invest R20-billion as a partner of the private sector and the government in the development of public health facilities, R40-billion in water, sanitation and energy projects, and between R30-billion and R50-billion to assist in the R300-billion transport infrastructure development projects spearheaded by Transnet. The bank's board chairman, JabuMoleketi, said the bank was required to invest in high-risk areas shunned by commercial banks. DA finance spokesman Tim Harris called on Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan to provide details of the bank's planned recapitalisation. Moleketi said a replacement was being sought for CEO Paul Ngobeni . The Sunday Times reported last month that top spy Mo Shaik had been earmarked for the post of head of the bank's international division. 25 April 2012 Business Day Page 1 Linda Ensor

State plans to force BEE partner on rail tender The manufacturer that wins the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) contract to build R123bn of new rolling stock over the next 20 years will be forced to accept a black economic empowerment partner chosen by the agency. Prasa believes this "new and innovative" approach to black economic empowerment (BEE) will address some of the pitfalls experienced in the past, when inappropriate BEE partners with no long-term commitment were chosen for projects, often only because of their political connections. Two 10-year contracts to produce 360 rail coaches a year are envisaged and a minimum target of 65% local content will be set for manufacturing. The programme is expected to create 65000 direct and indirect jobs. The request for proposal documents for the R123bn manufacture of 7224 metro coaches over the next 20 years went on sale yesterday. Instead of the winning bidder of the contract bringing its own BEE partner, as has been the practice in the past, Prasa itself will appoint the partner. Prasa CEO Lucky Montana conceded in an interview yesterday such an approach to BEE participation carried the risk of clashes and incompatibility between the selected BEE partner and the original


equipment manufacturer, but said these could be mitigated by agreements and guarantees. He said he believed it was better for Prasa to choose the BEE partner than to have the winning manufacturer bring its own partners, often chosen on the basis of being politically well connected rather than having a long-term and committed engagement to the project — as had happened so many times in the past. "What we are trying to avoid is a situation where the original equipment manufacturer brings their own BEE partner who is not an appropriate partner," Mr Montana said. "We have seen from the history of BEE that you get partners who are not even involved in the project. As soon as the contract is signed, they cash in and go away. "We want a long-term partner who will take part in the revitalisation of the local industry over the next 10 years. We want a BEE partner who will add value and take a long-term view. "Secondly, we are trying to avoid a situation where you have BEE guys who are well connected and are appointed for this reason, and they bring their own international original-equipment manufacturer." In the past, a manufacturer was selected "on the basis that they have been brought in by the well-connected BEE partners rather than because they have the best technology to achieve our economic objectives". A special-purpose vehicle would be created. The BEE stake in the vehicle would be ring-fenced and housed in the National Empowerment Fund, Mr Montana said ahead of his briefing yesterday to Parliament’s transport committee. Within 12 months of appointing the manufacturer, the appropriate BEE partner would be selected through "an open, competitive process". The winning bidder would lead the special-purpose vehicle, with the BEE partner getting a stake of 26%-40% in the project. Mr Montana told MPs that the programme to renew rolling stock would contribute to the government’s industrial policy action plan by strengthening local manufacturing and production, skills development and job creation. Setting high local content targets would assist in creating local industries that could sustain local production, he said.


25 April 2012 Business Day Page 1 Sarah Wild

‘Big setback for nuclear build plans’ if Necsa sheds 250 The South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) is retrenching 250 employees, accelerating the loss of skills as SA plans a huge nuclear build programme, says a union statement. The government intends generating an additional 9600MW of electricity from nuclear power stations that could cost more than R300bn. One of the main concerns about the project is the availability of scarce skills. The corporation has 2179 employees, according to its 2011 annual report. The retrenchments will account for 11% of its staff. Yesterday, Necsa refused to confirm the skills levels of employees being retrenched. The National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) said 250 employees would be retrenched, resulting in annual savings of R75m. "If allowed to proceed, this will make redundant a number of young professionals who are likely to play a key role in the roll-out of the … (nuclear) build programmes," Nehawu said yesterday. "This comes at a time when government is preparing to spend more than R300bn to build … nuclear power reactors." Necsa spokeswoman Chantal Janneker said "austerity measures" had been introduced to deal with financial constraints facing the agency, "owing to a combination of a reducing government grant trend over successive budget cycles, and more challenging market conditions for its commercial subsidiaries". About 24% of Necsa’s income is from government grants, with 67% coming from sales and other income. Income for last year was R1,67bn. Salaries account for 26% of expenditure, or R432m. "The overall salary bill has to be reduced by R100m if the corporation is to remain financially viable," Ms Janneker said. Nehawu said it "rubbished" the reasons given by the corporation for its financial crisis. Nehawu also took a swipe at Necsa’s executive pay. "In 2010, the CEO earned R2,66m, including a R619000 bonus, while the lowest paid Necsa employee received R58000 a year."


25 April 2012 Business Day Page 1 Linda Ensor

Gigaba ‘swamped’ by pay rise demands Public Enterprises Minister MalusiGigaba has been inundated with requests from state-owned companies for salary hikes for their top executives, but is sticking to a pay freeze imposed in 2009. Their frustration is expected to last for at least another year, as the Department of Public Enterprises finalises its remuneration model for state-owned companies, a process started last year. Deputy director-general for legal governance MatsietsiMokholo said after a briefing to Parliament’s public enterprises committee yesterday that Mr Gigaba was applying the moratorium on increases "rigidly", and had not agreed to any exceptions to date. Executives were, however, receiving adjustments to take account of inflation. She told the committee Mr Gigaba was receiving applications for increases almost every day and demands were also made at every annual general meeting. Ms Mokholo conceded the pay freeze had made it more difficult to recruit top-quality executives into the state enterprises sector, but potential recruits were advised about the environment they might be entering. She added that there might be a need to make retrospective pay adjustments once the process had been completed. Ms Mokholo said she expected a Cabinet-approved remuneration model to be finalised by the end of the financial year, but it would then need to be tested and guidelines formulated. MPs from across the political spectrum were dismissive of Ms Mokholo’s presentation, as it did not update them on recommendations of a review committee established early in 2010 to investigate the issue. The committee had submitted its report to the Cabinet, but it was sent back to the department for further work. Democratic Alliance MP Natasha Michael said the absence of an enforced model meant executives could be earning "outrageous" packages, while African National Congress MP Rose Sonto believed the work "should have been done a long time ago". Ms Mokholo said state-owned companies tended to "totally disregard" the Cabinet’s pay guidelines by creating alternatives such as phantom shares.


25 April 2012 Business Day Page 2 Carol Paton

PIC shifts emphasis to ‘developmental’ portfolio He Public Investment Corporation (PIC), which manages R1-trillion in government social funds, has unwound substantial black empowerment investments in favour of building a "developmental" portfolio, which includes infrastructure and job-creating investments, Parliament’s finance portfolio committee heard yesterday. The shift in emphasis is in response to a change in strategy by the PIC’s biggest client — the R900bn Government Employees Pension Fund — which decided in 2010 that 5% of assets under management must be made in "developmental investments". These are housed in the Isibaya Fund. Isibaya Fund general manager Roy Rajdhar and top PIC executives briefed the finance committee on the PIC’s strategic plan yesterday. Mr Rajdhar said since the shift in emphasis "much of the black economic empowerment portfolio had been unwound and funds deployed into developmental areas". In particular, the unwinding of the PIC’s role in funding empowerment deals in Telkom and MTN two years ago had freed up about 4% of its assets under management. PIC CEO Elias Masilela said after the meeting that "the problem with these deals was that they were not broad enough". "What we are looking at now are projects that are broader and have a wide socioeconomic impact, instead of focusing on shareholder transactions. We are not ruling out shareholder transactions but they are no longer the priority." The PIC’s funding of the purchase of a 15% stake in Telkom by a consortium aligned to the African National Congress (ANC) had been particularly controversial, given the evidence of political favouritism that emerged and the role that ANC politicians had played in securing the deal for the successful consortium. The Government Employees Pension Fund’s new developmental investment policy is a comfortable fit with evolving state economic policies, which seek to encourage pension funds to invest in infrastructure projects. In the case of the pension fund, R17bn has been committed so far, of an overall target of R70bn. The policy says such investments must be in economic infrastructure; social infrastructure; economic growth — including investments in small


and medium enterprises and black empowered enterprises; and environmental sustainability, such as renewable energy. In addition to the Isibaya Fund, which will focus on domestic investment, the PIC has set aside a further 5% of assets under management for investment in Africa. The Africa strategy is in its early stages and the intention was to "enter with caution and in conjunction with partners" Mr Masilela said. Initially, the PIC would collaborate with the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Industrial Development Corporation and other established institutional investors. However, the PIC would potentially take on a major role as a private-equity investor in African infrastructure, Isibaya Fund manager KoketsoMabe said. "With only $10bn in private equity invested in Africa last year, if the PIC invests $4bn over time, we will contribute 40% of the total," Mr Mabe said. Mr Rajdhar said this provided big possibilities for the PIC to become an anchor investor in African projects, seen as increasingly attractive by private-equity investors. 25 April 2012 Business Day Page 3 Wyndham Hartley

Hawks bill ‘still no guarantee of independence’ There was a resounding "no" yesterday for the South African Police Service Amendment Bill because it still does not provide the anticorruption unit, the Hawks, with sufficient insulation from political interference. The bill is an attempt by the police to comply with a Constitutional Court judgment that the Hawks, created after the Scorpions were disbanded, were not sufficiently independent and thus were vulnerable to political interference. Businessman Hugh Glenister challenged the scrapping of the Scorpions all the way to the country’s highest court. The notion of an independent corruption-busting unit has particular resonance following the admission last week by acting national police commissioner NhlanhlaMkhwanazi that there had been instructions to the police on what criminal investigations they could and could not pursue. The implication was that there was political pressure to refrain from investigating the politically connected head of crime intelligence, Richard Mdluli, who recently had fraud and corruption charges against him dropped and was reinstated to his job.


Parliamentary researchers revealed that of the 20 written submissions to the committee, only one expressed that the bill, as drafted, complied with the Constitutional Court ruling. Other submissions said the bill was lacking and did not comply with the Glenisterjudgment. In a submission to Parliament’s police committee, University of Cape Town constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos said the state had an obligation to set up an effective, independent mechanism to fight corruption. He said the bill provided the Hawks with neither operational nor structural independence. At issue are provisions allowing political intervention in the appointment of the head of the Hawks and which make the national commissioner the accounting officer for the unit. Prof de Vos said there were no safeguards to prevent the appointment of someone inappropriate to head the unit, and the role provided for the police minister to make the appointment was inappropriate because he or his colleagues could be the subject of an investigation. He also suggested it be made a criminal offence for any political interference in the operations of the Hawks. Paul Hoffman of the Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa suggested that an amendment to chapter nine of the constitution should be made, creating a truly independent anticorruption commission with similar protections from political interference as those enjoyed by the public protector, the human rights commission and the auditor-general. The Institute for Security Studies said locating the Hawks within the police service raised concerns over independence. Mr Glenister, addressing the committee, made an impassioned plea for fairness and justice. He told MPs: "You don’t represent the politicians who squander taxpayers’ money on a R1000 tot of whisky; you don’t represent the crony capitalists who massage each other with snake oil paid for by the hard-working citizens of this beautiful country." 25 April 2012 Business Day Page 4 BekezelaPhakathi

Accountants agree to help FET colleges with management Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande said yesterday his department had agreed with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) that the institute would come to the assistance of further education and training (FET) colleges.


Under the agreement, Saica will provide accountants for two years to help set up accounting and financial management systems in all FET colleges. In his budget vote speech in Parliament yesterday, Mr Nzimande said FET colleges were weak in financial and human resource management. The government has been on a drive to boost the allure of FET colleges in an attempt to ease the pressure on universities. This month, President Jacob Zuma announced that R2,5bn would be allocated to refurbishing and constructing FET college campuses over the next three years. Mr Nzimande told reporters before delivering his speech that the agreement with Saica was a short-term intervention that could become long-term. He said the department would ensure that every college had a qualified chief financial officer, and ensure that colleges had qualified human resource practitioners. He said the department was developing FET colleges to become "institutions of choice for higher education and training". In his speech, Mr Nzimande said over the past two years enrolment at FET colleges had increased "dramatically". "In 2011, we had projected a head-count enrolment of 359000 in all programmes, but the actual head-count enrolment reached 437060, exceeding our projections by 24%. This year, we are expecting a further increase to 550000 enrolments," Mr Nzimande said. The increase could be ascribed to several factors, including the bursary scheme amounting to 100% of fees for those who qualify, and the career advice campaign launched with the South African Qualifications Authority and the SABC. Mr Nzimande said over the three-year medium-term expenditure framework period starting in 2012-13, R15bn had been set aside to ensure increasing enrolment at FET colleges. He said the department would also focus on teacher training, because the "basis of any good education system is the quality of its teachers". "We have ring-fenced R450m for the 2012-13 to 2013-14 funding cycle to expand university infrastructure capacity for teacher education and this will continue in the next funding cycle," Mr Nzimande said. There had been a significant growth in "full-time equivalent" enrolments in initial teacher education programmes, from 35937 in 2009 to 41292 in 2010, a 15% increase, he said. Almost R500m had been allocated to universities for teaching-development grants to assist in improving graduate outputs, and R194m for foundation programmes to improve the success rates of students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds.


Democratic Alliance education spokeswoman AnnelieLotriet said in order to improve the quality of teaching, it was vital to improve teacher training. "One of the ways this can be achieved is by focusing on the reopening of teacher training colleges. The department has long promised this," she said. 25 April 2012 Business Day Page 4 FrannyRabkin

Not enough candidates for judgeships — JSC The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) said yesterday it was able to recommend only three judges for appointment to the North and South Gauteng High Courts, despite six vacancies. Announcing those recommended for appointment yesterday, JSC spokesmen DumisaNtsebeza SC and CP Fourie said the commission "remains concerned" that there were not enough "competent and appropriately qualified" candidates making themselves available for judicial appointment. As an example they pointed out that the JSC had been able to short-list only five candidates for six vacancies on the Gauteng courts. But some lawyers approached by Business Day yesterday said the JSC’s choices for the Supreme Court of Appeal, also announced yesterday, were an example of "exactly why" good candidates were not coming forward. Of five candidates interviewed for the appeal court, two Eastern Cape judges, XolaPetse and Ronnie Pillay, got the nod. Most lawyers agreed Judge Petse was a good choice. But many were disappointed that the JSC overlooked Eastern Cape Judge Clive Plasket — an expert in administrative law with 58 reported judgments — in favour of Judge Pillay. Even before the interviews, Judge Pillay had not received a good review from the Johannesburg Bar, which said that in 15 years on the bench he had "relatively few" reported judgments. Judge Pillay said in his interview that he had marked a number of his judgments "reportable", but whether a judgment was ultimately reported was out of his control. The three who got the nod for Gauteng were the former public protector Selby Baqwa, Johannesburg advocate BashierVally SC, and Elizabeth Kubushi, an attorney. But the "dearth" of appointable candidates for the Gauteng courts was an issue raised during some of the interviews last week.


Commissioner Izak Smuts SC had pointedly asked the candidates for the Gauteng judge president post whether it was because some "excellent candidates" had not been appointed in the past. In March, the JSC also had to re-advertise a single post on the Constitutional Court because there were not enough candidates, despite extending the nominations for two weeks — precipitating the unprecedented confidential meeting between the national advocates body, the General Council of the Bar, and the commission last week. And yesterday Mr Fourie and Mr Ntsebeza said the position of deputy judge president of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court would also be re-advertised — as neither of the two candidates interviewed last week, Judge FikileMokgohloa and Judge Isaac Madondo, got the "requisite majority" for appointment. As expected after the interviews, Judge President of the Labour Courts Dunstan Mlambo was appointed judge president of the Gauteng high courts. While no one spoken to doubted that Judge Mlambo was "more than eminently up to the job" of leading SA’s busiest courts, some were disappointed that South Gauteng Deputy Judge President Phineas Mojapelo was not appointed. Both had a lot of support in the legal fraternity. But during Judge Mojapelo’s interview, he was grilled by Justice Minister Jeff Radebe about a newspaper article he had written last year, arguing for more public participation in the process of appointing the chief justice. One senior lawyer said Judge Mojapelo "seems to have lost out because he tackled a subject that the minister is touchy about". He also said most people who questioned Judge Mojapelo’s article had misunderstood it. 25 April 2012 The New Age Siyabonga Mkhwanazi

How Juju fell foul of the ANC From the time Julius Malema took over the ANC Youth League in April 2008 he has been at the centre of South Africa’s political life. But in most of the cases Malema has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The youth league leader was catapulted to the throne of the organisation following a fierce and bitter battle with Saki Mofokeng that was marred by violence and chaos in Mangaung four years ago. Malema inherited an organisation that had been at the forefront in the battle to save Jacob Zuma’s political career.


Once in charge he set the tone for his term of office. This included youth development, the nationalisation of mines and later the expropriation of white-owned land without compensation. It was the nationalisation of mines that created controversy in the corridors of power, leading to senior cabinet members dousing the flames by reassuring the captains of industry and foreign investors this was not government policy. Even President Jacob Zuma had to fend off repeated questions from opposition members in Parliament on whether this was the government’s policy. Zuma insisted this was neither government nor ANC policy. Malema forced the nationalisation debate on the ANC policy agenda when the National General Council in September 2010 agreed to commission a study. The study found the policy was too expensive and would bankrupt the state if it were to be implemented. South African Communist Party leader Blade Nzimande has argued that calls for nationalisation are not genuine as they are an attempt to bail out failed mining companies. With the nationalisation debate fizzling out the ANC policy conference in June looks set to approve the findings of the research that the project is too expensive. The ANC’s national elective conference in December will have the final say on the matter. After advocating the issue for a few years Malema appears to have all but lost the battle for the nationalisation of mines. Malema has, on the other hand, drawn criticism for calling for the expropriation of white-owned land without compensation. The government has attempted to address this issue by introducing a bill, but the proposed law was withdrawn in Parliament four years ago. It is these debates that won Malema supporters inside and outside of the ruling party but he also made political enemies. It has been Malema’s flamboyant political style that has incensed some within the ANC who believe he showed little respect to his political seniors. The fact that he was hauled before the ANC’s disciplinary committee on more than one occasion in a short space of time was indicative that he did not want to adhere to party discipline. Wits University political analyst Daryl Glaser said Malema rose to significance amid widespread feelings of disappointment with the pace of change in the country, particularly among poor young black people. He articulated the grievances of a considerable constituency, first against former president Thabo Mbeki and later against Zuma, said Glaser. Malema had portrayed both Mbeki and Zuma as beholden to white capitalists and authoritarians who suppressed dissent in the ANC.


‚However, while Malema has channelled widespread and well-founded grievances, his effect on South Africa’s democracy has been malign,‛ said Glaser. ‚First, he has conducted himself through demagogic, even violent, language that is inimical to peaceful democratic deliberation. ‚Second, he unnecessarily uses forms of language that polarise South Africa along racial lines, undermining nation building,‛ he said. Glaser said Malema was a ‚power-addicted bully‛ who was given to purging opponents or buying them off with patronage. ‚He embodies the widespread hypocrisy of a section of the black nationalist elite that deploys populist and pro-poor slogans while enjoying the high life, often on the basis of funds acquired by dubious means,‛ he said. With this type of behaviour Malema was failing to provide a good example to a society that needs moral leadership in its struggle against crime and corruption, said Glaser. With Malema’s career appearing to be coming to an end, should the ANC’s national disciplinary committee of appeals uphold his expulsion, those who supported him in the ANC and the youth league would have to find another leader who would advocate their agenda, said Glaser. 25 April 2012 The New Age Staff

Malema out in cold The expulsion of Julius Malema from the African National Congress last night brought the political career of the embattled youth leader to a shuddering halt. Following marathon discussions that went on until late into the night, Cyril Ramaphosa, the chairperson of the ANC’s National Disciplinary Committee of Appeal, announced the termination of the party’s relationship with its wayward youth leader. The NDCA also confirmed the three-year suspension of ANCYL spokesperson Floyd Shivambo and a one-year suspension of its secretary-general Sindiso Magaqa. Following information from highly placed sources in the ANC, The New Age yesterday alerted the nation to the NDCA’s decision. The prolonged discussions in the NDCA before the announcement that cast Malema into the political wilderness is also a clear indication that


the party was determined to close all possible loopholes that may afford Malema an opportunity to successfully challenge its decisions in court. Malema has previously said that he will challenge the final decison by the NDCA. Commenting on the delay in making public its decision, Ramaphosa said: ‚The NDCA finding has been sent to the legal representatives of the appellants and the NDCA is currently briefing the ANC’s secretary general, Comrade Gwede Mantashe.‛ Since last year, the trio have been involved in a running battle with the leadership of its mother body and have been sanctioned for various acts of ill discipline. Besides his appeal against the expulsion, Malema was also suspended from party and youth league activities after labelling President Jacob Zuma ‚a dictator‛. His appeal against the suspension was also dismissed by the NDCA. Malema’s woes are further compounded by investigations into his personal affairs by the Hawks and the taxman. Together with Shivambu, he is also being sued by DA leader Helen Zille for defamation. It is widely speculated that the expulsion of Malema paves the way for a bunfight to succeed him at the helm of the ANCYL. In recent weeks, the cracks in the league have widened at provincial and national level with pro and anti Malema factions engaging in a no-holds-barred power struggle. Front runners to succeed Malema are the league’s deputy president Ronald Lamola and treasurer-general Pule Mabe. Analysts believe that Malema’s expulsion will also afford the ANC the opportunity to bring its wayward youth formation into line and to ensure that its preparations for its elective conference in Mangaung later this year proceed with minimal disruption. 24 April 2012 Reuters Peroshni Govender

Analysis: South Africa's Zuma on track for second term (Reuters) - South Africa's President Jacob Zuma is the favorite to win a second term to lead the ruling ANC in a race dominated by factional politics instead of policy reforms for Africa's most powerful economy. More than a dozen insiders in the ruling African National Congress told Reuters that Zuma had the race in hand even though there are strong factions in the party who want him out and could make things difficult.


"It's Zuma's race to lose," said one senior ANC member. The winner of December's party vote is almost certain to be its nominee in the 2014 presidential election. Since the ANC enjoys virtual one-party rule, its nominee is almost assured of winning the five year term as president. The race will be fought at the local level with little attention paid to warnings from all three of the major global credit ratings agencies who have said the economy is on the wrong track under Zuma, posing long-term risks to stability. The battle to lead the 100-year-old ANC according to party insiders is a two-horse race between Zuma and Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. Zuma has a commanding lead in delegates and unless Motlanthe make huge strides by the electoral conference in December, Zuma should secure victory. Motlanthe, or any other candidate, is not going to openly declare their challenge to Zuma due to a party culture where raising one's hand too early is tantamount to political suicide. The race will be fought behind closed doors, leaving out a public that has grown increasingly angry at the ANC for not doing enough to fix a broken education system, failing hospitals, rampant poverty and chronic unemployment. "Motlanthe has strong support but it's all about timing and we want to make sure that his chances are good before nominations open," said a source close to the deputy president. A RAW NERVE The ANC, a former liberation movement that became the ruling party when the white-minority apartheid regime ended 18 years ago, is a broad-tent political grouping with members ranging from hard core communists to business moguls. Its consensus-building approach has stifled radical ideas from the left that include nationalizing mines and seizing white-owned farmland. But it has also allowed a rot to set in. Its allies, its members and voters have criticized it for turning a blind eye to corruption eating away at social welfare spending. Zuma, Motlanthe and many senior leaders have faced suspicions of corruption, with many in the party using leaks of graft on rivals as a way to settle political scores. "The perception that corruption is increasing on his watch, and that Zuma can be bought, weigh him down," one senior official said.


Comments from Nedbank chairman Reuel Khoza, one of the country's most respected businessmen, touched a nerve when he warned democracy is under threat from politicians incapable of running the country. "Our political leadership's moral quotient is degenerating and we are fast losing the checks and balances that are necessary to prevent a recurrence of the past," Khoza wrote in the annual report of South Africa's fourth largest bank. "South Africa is widely recognized for its liberal and enlightened constitution, yet we observe a strange breed of leaders who are determined to undermine the rule of law and override the constitution," Khoza said. The ANC's top brass denounced Khoza this month, with some members calling him counter-revolutionary. But economists say if the ANC government keeps up its current policies, South Africa risks slipping to new depths of unemployment, debt and corruption that could swell the ranks of the destitute and undermine long-term prospects. A 'ZUNAMI' Even if Zuma is replaced, it's unlikely Motlanthe will inject much needed reforms to make the economy more competitive. Motlanthe, who served as the caretaker president for eight months, when former President Thabo Mbeki was ousted in September 2008 before his term ended, avoided confrontation during his stay in power. The period was one of the most fractious in the post-apartheid era and Motlanthe was a unifying force in the party. Although his unionist's political upbringing was shaped by leftist theories, he is seen at home as a moderate and is well regarded in international circles. But the party race to succeed Zuma will be about handing out favors on the local level, and not addressing deficiencies in his government, analysts said. "The ANC should really consider leadership and policy side by side. Not all leader candidates are equally capable to steer and lead complex policy issues in complex public institutions," Professor Susan Booysens from University of Witwatersrand said. "The ANC is at a point now where it is essential to move into this nuanced position in order to get governance right." Originally part of the "Zunami", a term used to describe Zuma's unstoppable rise to power, Motlanthe now appears to be fronting a campaign of dejected Zuma supporters and Mbeki loyalists.


"The mission to replace Mbeki was so great that we did not strategies beyond his demise and the consequences are now all too glaring," said a trade union leader who previously backed Zuma's rise to power. "Policy is a mess and the party is dogged by infighting which served Zuma in his election bid but now threatens to ruin the ANC". MUDDLING ALONG Since becoming president in 2009, Zuma a former ANC intelligence chief, has been seen as an ineffectual leader muddling through his term. One success was raising the country's diplomatic profile by having South Africa included into the BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India and China - group of leading emerging economies. His major pieces of legislation include measures to protect state secrets, which critics said will give the government greater power in hiding reports pointing to corruption. Job creation is one of Zuma's top policy priorities, but since he took office, the country has lost about a million jobs, with the manufacturing sector the hardest hit. Many of these posts will not come back because labor has priced itself out of the market, with the ANC bowing to its union allies to protect labor friendly laws that drive up personnel costs. The average factory worker in South Africa earns about six times as much as a factory worker in China and is less efficient. Industries in sectors which were once internationally competitive, such as footwear, have faded. Zuma's government has sent to parliament four major labor reforms aimed at pleasing labor by forcing employers to take on temporary workers as full time staff. But a report commissioned by the presidency said the measures would drive up joblessness by adding more costs and regulations on employers. LOOKING FOR SUPPORT With eight months to go until the ANC elects its leaders in Manguang in the Free State province, the party's birthplace, Zuma has to work at keeping his supporters. Trade union federation COSATU, in a governing alliance with the ANC and a powerful vote-gathering machine with two million members, has not fully thrown its weight behind Zuma. "We don't have a consensus position yet and the big unions are still divided. We won't have a decision until September when the unions hold their own elections," a union official said. COSATU Secretary General Zwelinzima Vavi, with teachers union SADTU, and the metal workers NUMSA, support a leadership change while union


President Sidumo Dlamini, metal workers union NUM and NEHAWU, the health and education workers body endorse Zuma's second term. Zuma has sidelined one of his biggest foes, ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, a populist expelled from the party for violating ANC rules. Malema has won strong backing from the country's poor for his calls to nationalize mines and seize white-owned farmland. Malame has lined up behind Motlanthe and still could be a factor even though he is prohibited from appearing at ANC events. "Expelling Malema from the ANC is a lame attempt to neutralize him. He is just going to be even louder outside the party. It's a small victory for Zuma but a man like Malema does not shut up. Zuma has unleashed a demon," said an ANC official who did not want to be named. As factions up the ante in the leadership race, Razia Khan the head of Africa research at Standard Chartered, said the emphasis on politics was a distraction from the immense structural challenges South Africa faces to lift growth. "From a development perspective it is crucial to have long term policies to see the real impact," she said in an interview from London. "It is crucially important to have a leader with enough of a long term perspective to be able to drive meaningful structural change." 25 April 2012 The Times Page 4 Poppy Louw

Shivambu scoffs at apology The ANC Youth League spokesman, who was recently suspended by the ANC, was yesterday advised by his lawyers to apologise to the City Press journalist. Du Plessis brought charges of hate speech against Shivambu in the Johannesburg Equity Court in May 2010 and was suing him for R100000. Yesterday, magistrate Oriel Vele expressed his frustration at Shivambu's lawyers' request for another postponement. The case has already been postponed for more than four months. "No reason has been given as to why the respondent's legal team has not met their client. The client should show an interest in his own case," said Vele. The agreement was reached within the court's 30-minute break.


"I am glad he has admitted and apologised. I am also relieved because this case has been dragging on for too long," said Du Plessis. The settlement includes a written apology and an agreement to pay all Du Plessis' legal costs. "I want to apologise unconditionally for referring to Du Plessis as "stupid" and "white b***h" . Not only was it unprofessional of me to respond in such a way, I also accept that she experienced it as an affront to her dignity as a fellow human being and as a woman," Shivambu said in the agreement. He later said on Twitter that he signed the settlement only because he did not deem it worthwhile to continue with "court cases that have no bearing or influence in the struggle for economic freedom". Earlier this year, Shivambu was found guilty and suspended by the ANC's national disciplinary committee for sowing division and bringing the party into disrepute. 25 April 2012 The Times Page 1 Chandré Prince and Graeme Hosken

Cops up in arms In recent weeks, members of elite police units and senior officers have been stripped of their service pistols, resulting in disarray at some of the country's top crime-prevention units. Not only has the latest move increased the risk of policemen being killed on duty, it will also endanger the lives of ordinary South Africans because it will result in a fifth of the country's policemen being removed from operations. Even worse is the "collapse" of investigations into some of the worst drug and organised-crime syndicates, high-profile crimes, armed robberies, cash-in-transit heists and hijacking syndicates. A policing researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, Johan Burger, said the removal of a fifth of officers from the system would have grave effects on safety. Police visibility on the streets would be greatly diminished and there would be a reduction in the ability of the police to respond to crimes and investigate cases. This could lead to an increase in crime Among the first specialised units to fall victim to the wholesale withdrawal of firearms - on instructions from the office of acting


national police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi - is the elite organised-crime unit, the Hawks. Despite a Labour Court order preventing the police from removing officers' firearms, 90 highly skilled policemen from the Eloff Street, Johannesburg, branch of the Hawks have been stripped of all their weapons, including 9mm pistols and R5 rifles, since Thursday. The 90 officers, who are investigating some of the most violent and atrocious crimes, and building evidence against sophisticated criminals, have since refused to continue their investigations. Hawks officers say they have, since Monday, been sitting at their desks and "will not put our lives in danger by going out unarmed". A Hawks officer said some of his colleagues had refused to hand over their weapons, resulting in warnings that they would be charged departmentally. In Pretoria, 34 of the 139 flying squad members had to surrender their weapons. The removal of flying squad members' weapons will lead to these highly trained officers being transferred to manning charge offices, forcing police station staff to respond to complaints normally dealt with by flying squad members. Describing the haphazard confiscation of weapons as a "ticking time bomb", the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union yesterday wrote to the Safety and Security Sectoral Bargaining Council asking for its urgent intervention to avoid a "catastrophe". The union's Gauteng secretary, Matsemela Matsemela, said: "We think something is very wrong. There is a gross error on the interpretation of the instruction to assess firearm competency." Matsemela said the union had asked for an urgent meeting with Gauteng Hawks boss Shadrack Sibiya on Monday to demand an explanation of how he expects police officers to perform their duties optimally. The secretary-general of the SA Policing Union, Oscar Skommere, said that though the union's members respected and abided by the Firearms Control Act, police management did not. He said that the union supported the legitimate withdrawal of weapons. "[But] we have serious concerns around the lack of commitment to obeying the law and ensuring that the police have the necessary skills for them to do their jobs. "The withdrawal of weapons without creating proper firearms training and reassessment programmes is creating a massive crisis. Police management simply has no strategy. They don't see the urgency in this. They cannot tell members or the public how they will deal with this deadly crisis, yet they want our members to put their lives on the line without proper equipment and training," he said.


Both Popcru and the SA Police Union believe the problem is broader than just policemen being declared unfit to carry firearms. They say there is a huge backlog in the issuing of firearms competency certificates. The Times has learned that firearms instructors across the country have been ordered to stop training if they do not have a permit. They too have been stripped of their weapons. A Gauteng instructor, who said he had been threatened by senior officers, said police management had embarked on a suicide mission. "They want us to train members but we can't have guns because we have not been issued with permits. This is despite us having completed trainers' courses over two years ago. "Then they order all provincial firearm training facilities to hand in all guns and ammunition and [tell] police on training courses to supply their own ammunition," he said. POLICE FIVE-DAY FIREARM COMPETENCY COURSE: Day 1: Theoretical test: Knowledge of the Firearms Control Act and building of a portfolio of evidence, proof that you can handle your firearm and that you have knowledge and understanding of firearms. Day 2: Practical shooting test: Firearms-handling assessment. Includes taking a gun apart, explaining the gun's working parts and loading the SAPS's various weapons. Day 3: Handing in of work books on the legal principles of the Firearms Control Act. The book contains assessments of the use of a firearm in the military and law enforcement environment. Day 4: Practical shooting test: Firing at ranges of between 5m and 25m with all three SAPS weapons (9mm pistol, R5 semi-automatic assault rifle, shotgun). Thirty rounds are fired with the 9mm pistol and R5, five and 10 rounds are fired with the shotgun. Day 5: Practical test: stress test. Includes shooting from behind barricades and through windows, use of protective cover, magazine changes, identification of targets and tactical shooting positions. For officers involved in high-risk situations (Special Task Force, NIU, Flying Squad), 100% mark is required to pass. Medium risk (police station staff) require 80%. Low risk (office-bound staff) require 70%. To qualify for an immediate remedial test a member must obtain 30%. If he gets less than 30%, he is sent to the weapons clinic for further training and assessment. - Graeme Hosken 25 April 2012


The Times Page 4 I-Net Bridge

Gordhan upbeat on local economy The "Great Recession" continues to haunt sentiment and market performance, Gordhan said, calling for structural reforms to improve growth rates. There were some elements of uncertainty, especially in the EU, Gordhan said, and "austerity alone will not supply jobs". Gordhan was disappointed that an emerging-market candidate had not won the race to be World Bank president to replace Robert Zoellick - it went the way of the US again in the form of Jim Yong Kim, despite his not being the favourite. "There is a democratic deficit in some international institutions," said Gordhan. He said he hoped that an emerging-market candidate would appear at some point but emphasised that Kim would receive his full support and that of the Brics group of which South Africa is now a part. Answering a question on South Africa's high unemployment rate of 24%, Gordhan said the country was embarking on a 10-year programme of infrastructure projects valued at about R1-trillion, but more cohesion between the people, business and the government was needed. He spoke of the importance of "leading with investment ourselves" and said there was a "huge focus" on broadening the manufacturing sector. "We want to attract foreign direct investment and new technology." 25 April 2012 The Times Page 4 Thando Mgaga

Top committee 'did not back' Juju NEC member Rachel Soobiah said yesterday that last week's statement by her colleague on the committee, Mdu Manana, that the special NEC meeting had taken a decision to throw its weight behind Malema until 2014, was a lie.


Soobiah, who is also aMsunduzi municipality councillor, said the decision that the NEC would support Malema until 2014 was taken at a previous meeting. "In our special NEC meeting we did not take such a decision. We said that we would respect the decision of the ANC's national disciplinary committee of appeals. "We never said that we would support Malema - we were misquoted," said Soobiah, who added that she was speaking in her own capacity. She said that though she might be disciplined for her remarks, she was not worried. Attempts last night to get comment from the league's spokesman, Floyd Shivambu, and from secretary-general Sindiso Magaqa, were unsuccessful.

24 April 2012

Business Day

Page 2

Linda Ensor

New small business agency to get R900m The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) plans to provide more than R900m in capital over the next three years to a new wholly owned agency for small business funding launched yesterday by Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel.

The injection of substantial financial resources into small business development will

address one of the major obstacles that has constrained the government in creating a

vibrant small enterprise sector.

Small business is renowned the world over as being the largest creator of jobs in an

economy.

Government grant funding will add to the funds available, giving the new Small

Enterprise Funding Agency (Sefa) the muscle to make a greater penetration of the

small business financing market than its predecessors. Mr Patel is expected to provide

further details of this funding in his budget vote speech in the National Assembly

today.

Sefa unites previous institutions involved in this area, Khula Enterprise and the South

African Micro Finance Apex Fund, which mainly acted via intermediaries and

struggled to make an effect due to their lack of adequate capital resources. It will also

include the IDC‘s small business direct lending book. The consolidation was heralded

in the New Growth Path and backed by President Jacob Zuma in his state of the

nation address last year.

Sefa will have a distinct corporate identity. It will operate through commercial banks

and retail financing institutions as well as provide direct loans. Sefa chairwoman

SizekaRensburg, a member of the IDC board and previously a Khula board member,

said there was a "big gap" in the market that Sefa would try to fill. Ms Rensburg said


the loan guarantee scheme with commercial banks would be enhanced and the

capacity of micro financing institutions strengthened.

IDC CEO Geoffrey Qhena said at the launch that the big advantage of incorporating

the new agency as an IDC subsidiary was not only the greater access it would have to

the corporation‘s balance sheet but it would also be able to take advantage of the

opportunities for small business development identified by the IDC when it made

strategic investments in mega-projects. "What this will mean is that small business

will be elevated from merely providing services to getting into the mainstream of the

economy," he said.

The size of the loans offered would be raised from R1m to R5m as the agency

developed capacity.

The IDC would provide Sefa with more capital in the form shareholders‘ loans as it

proved itself.

Mr Patel said at the launch that the government wanted Sefa to be effective with a

lower cost-to-lending ratio than in the past. The aim was to reduce the administrative

cost of the loans "significantly". The consolidation would save at least R20m a year

by eliminating the duplication of services, overheads and salaries.

24 April 2012

Business Day

Page 11

Paul Hoffman

MPs must show loyalty to the constitution, not to the ANC In March last year, the Constitutional Court found that the Hawks were not sufficiently independent, operationally and structurally, to constitute the type of anti corruption entity that the human rights culture of the constitution requires and that SA is bound by international treaties to maintain. The court’s order is suspended until September to give Parliament the opportunity to take steps to remedy the shortcomings of the Hawks, or the Directorate of Priority Crime Investigation, as the unit of the South African Police Service (SAPS) is formally named.

This week, Parliament hears public submissions from a wide variety of civil society

players who have already responded in writing to the SAPS Amendment Bill 2012,

which the executive branch of government has proposed as its response to the

judgment in the case, which was brought by Hugh Glenister. This is the ruling that

has precipitated the need for Parliament to create an operation and structure that is

able to function without political interference in the all-important fight against

corruption.

As MPs ponder the bill, which envisages no more than a tweaking of the operations

and structures of the existing Hawks, they will have to decide on the adequacy of the

bill both in the light of the judgment and in the context of their constitutional


responsibility to hold the executive to account as envisaged in section 55 (2) of the

constitution.

Their oath of office to uphold the constitution will weigh heavily on them, especially

those who are mindful that expulsion from the party that nominated them to

Parliament summarily ends their parliamentary membership under section 47 (3)(c) of

the constitution.

The bill is the creature of the majority party, albeit those members of the party

deployed elsewhere than Parliament. The debate on the bill will be a huge test of the

loyalty of party members to the constitution rather than to the dictates of the party

bosses in Luthuli House.

The frank admissions in Parliament last week, made by acting national police

commissioner NhlanhlaMkhwanazi, that "high-ups" tell the SAPS who to investigate

and who not to investigate, are cogent evidence of the lack of independence of the

SAPS and of its vulnerability to political interference, the very mischief that the court

identified as in need of being addressed. Nor is this admission an isolated matter. The

dysfunctional features of management of the SAPS are legion.

Jackie Selebi, a politician who was made national commissioner of police, is serving a

15-year jail sentence for corruption. His successor, BhekiCele, also a politician, is

suspended pending the decision of a board of inquiry into his fitness for office. He

allowed leases at more than triple the going rate for police headquarters in Pretoria

and Durban. It is difficult to conclude that this could have been done innocently and

that such a person should be reinstated: either Cele was an incompetent accounting

officer who unduly relied on underlings, or he was involved in the corrupt

procurement of leases.

Unlike Selebi and Cele, the current acting incumbent is a professional police officer.

He has done the country a huge favour not only for being so frank about political

interference in policing duties but also for the exquisite timing of his revelation.

In its judgment, the court identified five characteristics or criteria for best practice for

a state entity maintained for the purpose of combating corruption, which is a nasty,

corrosive force in any society but particularly in a society in transition to a

democratic, open, accountable and responsive future of the kind envisaged by the

founders of the new SA. The criteria are: specialisation, training, independence,

resources and security of tenure of staff. A unit that can be said to have all of these

characteristics in abundance is well equipped to conquer corruption; but if it lacks any

of these, it will struggle to perform effectively. A useful acronym, STIRS, sums up

these criteria in an apposite and easily remembered word.

There is very little STIRS in the bill now before Parliament. The Hawks do not

specialise in anti corruption work; they will be obliged to deal with all priority crimes,

which at times may lead to corruption being neglected. A good example of this

occurred in September 2010, when AnwaDramat, the head of the Hawks since their

formation, announced that the investigations into corruption in the arms deals had

been closed for want of capacity to sift through the mountains of evidence available to

the Hawks. Indeed, by then, only one member of staff was working on a case that has


the potential to recoup R70bn for SA from the crooked arms dealers who scammed us

into weird offset deals and the acquisition of unnecessary armaments to fight

imaginary foes.

There is no provision for appropriate training for the Hawks. Their predecessors, the

Scorpions, were sent to Scotland Yard, the FBI and a secret military "kill school" to

prepare them for the fight against corruption. This is an important omission from the

bill.

As regards the operational and structural independence, a criterion necessary to

insulate the Hawks from political interference in their operations, it is envisaged that

the Hawks will remain in the SAPS, and the history of the SAPS is not one of a

fiercely independent anti corruption unit, as the examples cited above illustrate.

The proper resourcing of any anti corruption entity is an essential condition for its

success.

Political control of the amount that is voted to the budget can and does have the effect

of starving the entity of the resources to perform properly, as the closing down of the

arms deals investigation demonstrates.

It is in the field of security of tenure of anticorruption personnel that the bill is most

lacking. The minister of police (of all people) is given the power to suspend the head

of the Hawks without pay. It is an open question whether this was inserted in the bill

with a certain security wall, some cushy nonjobs for family, a nice vehicle to drive

and other illicit (but stoutly denied) perks in mind. The screaming headlines — "You

lied, Mr Minister" — concerning Police Minister NathiMthethwa demonstrate, very

timeously, the folly of putting any career politician in charge of the country‘s

anticorruption entity.

We can anticipate lively debate on the bill during the oral part of the public

participation process. An alternative solution has been suggested: the creation of an

"anticorruption commission" as a new chapter nine institution, fully clothed with all

of the STIRS criteria and answerable to Parliament itself. This has already been given

the nick-name the Eagles. As any ornithologist knows, Eagles see better, fly higher,

go after bigger prey and are less susceptible to poisoning than Hawks.

It is to be hoped that Parliament will hold the executive to account in respect of the

woefully inadequate content of the bill, that members will vote with conscience and

not toe their party line, and that there will be a creative outcome that SA truly

deserves: a new specialised anticorruption entity that is staffed with properly trained

personnel who enjoy security of tenure, guaranteed resourcing and the independence

to empower them to conquer the culture of impunity that rampant corruption has bred

in our society. Public accountability, enhanced transparency and adequate

mechanisms to counter impunity have been identified by Public Protector

ThuliMadonsela as the way forward from the precipice on which SA teeters.

Global South African Weekly News Wrap 27 April 2012

Documents

african national congress

juju fell foul

general pule mabe

national disciplinary committee

print media sa

practical shooting test

general sindiso magaqa

national general council