On the day Robert McBride secured a nod in Parliament to lead police watchdog Ipid – and while more denials were heard by the Farlam Commission – news broke that officers in Limpopo shot dead two more protesters in a chaotic stand-off. This brings to eight the number of protesters killed this month alone. ALEX ELISEEV asks what it will take to make the police realise that its relationship with communities across South Africa is in a fiery tailspin.
The numbers are as mad as the story is startling: One satellite police station in the Relela village outside of Tzaneen, Limpopo. Twenty officers defending the outpost. Between 1,500 and 2,000 protesters “attacking” the station with stones and petrol bombs. Some 2,050 rounds of rubber bullets fired before the switch-over to live ammunition. Fifteen officers injured in the battle. Three of them left in a critical condition. Nineteen police cars damaged or destroyed. Two protesters shot and killed during the clash.
The images flooding your mind right now are probably closer to what South African soldiers endured in the Central African Republic rather than what police officers should be dealing with in a war-free, democratic country.
The question that pierces through all those figures is: how angry does a community have to be – what kind of hatred must be festering – for hundreds of people to come together and overrun, by force, their local police station? To try to obliterate the place that houses men and women who’ve taken an oath to protect you. We know too well the evil that lurks inside a mob, but this was an outright storming of a sacred castle.
Unlike with the Marikana bloodbath, there were probably few or no cameras filming the latest clash. The details still have to be investigated by the same organisation that Robert McBride – one of the country’s most controversial policemen – will soon be leading. But even on the police’s own version, what happened in Relela does not belong in post-Apartheid South Africa.
Granted, what happened there was not a routine service delivery protest over water or electricity that spiralled out of control. The circumstances were different. A local woman was killed and mutilated and the community wanted those responsible to be arrested. Police took a couple of suspects in for questioning but when they were released, their neighbours went on the rampage, burning down their homes. When the police intervened, a teenage boy was shot and killed. His death, in turn, became the magnet that drew the crowd to the Relela police station on Tuesday night.
Limpopo police claim that anyone in the same situation (the situation the officers were in) would have done the exact same thing. The crowd had broken through into the station’s courtyard and were out for revenge. Judging by the damage, there’s every reason to believe that the officers may have been genuinely terrified and thought their lives were in danger. They probably were. Those attacking the station were committing a criminal act. There’s also evidence that the police officers did their best to push back the mob, using thousands of rounds of rubber bullets.
But the issues here run much deeper, the main one being: how did it get to this? How did we reach a crisis which the police, and police minister Nathi Mthethwa, think they can talk their way out of? (Which, of course, they can’t).
Too much blood has been spilled. Too much horror witnessed. The list has been mentioned over and over again: Marikana, Tatane, Macia, Mothutlung, Durban Deep… For way too many people the police have become the enemy.
The cold, hard truth is that the level of violence we are seeing now is the consequence of earlier decisions. Decisions which ranged from bad to catastrophic. Remember the “shoot to kill!” and “maximum force” rhetoric spewing out of Bheki Cele’s mouth (which went viral). Or the decision by Jackie Selebi to reconfigure the Public Order Policing, leaving it in shambles. And, as a show of force, the re-introduction of military ranks.
But worst of all have been the decisions, one after the next, to send in civilians (political appointments) to lead the police. The latest, by President Jacob Zuma, was Riah Phiyega, who has so far had a disastrous run (some of it was not her fault, and some of it was).
The Institute for Security Studies – the think tank which the police loves to ignore – says all indicators show that police brutality is rising, public trust in the service is deteriorating and there doesn’t seem to be any real plan to reverse either of these trends.
Asked whether we can expect more bloodshed, the ISS’s Gareth Newham says: “I hope not. But we will continue to see growing anger and discontent and a breakdown of the relationship.”
He adds: “Warnings were ignored and now we’re seeing the consequences.”
The reality on the ground is complex. The balance between crushing violent crime or policing tense protests while respecting human rights is a delicate one. No one is saying it’s easy. Then there’s the politics, corruption, shadowy alliances and the unholy mess in units like Crime Intelligence (which Phiyega is now trying to clean up).
The time has come for drastic action. Possibly a complete overhaul of the Public Order Policing (POP). The unit needs an injection of officers and strong, accountable commanders. A message needs to cascade through the ranks that says that anyone who steps out of line, who loads up their shotgun with buckshot or fires without an order, will be punished. Officers need to be better trained. And all of this needs to be communicated to the public so that perceptions can begin to change. Maybe even hold a public commission of inquiry into the POP, diagnose the problem and fix it.
It’s time for Mthethwa to go beyond sending out media statements and praying with families of victims. He needs to take meaningful action. It’s time for President Jacob Zuma to step up. If he can find the time to congratulate Ladysmith Black Mambazo on a Grammy or the Bantu Church of Christ on its centenary, spur on the Matrics or defend eTolling, he can get stuck into this crisis. And by that we mean do something more than establish a task team. After all, the storming of a police station is about as close as you can come to true lawlessness.
Newham describes what happened in Relela as a “new development”. It’s much more than that. It’s a wake-up call, a short in the circuit of democracy. A signal that the relationship between police and civilians can’t be that of a state of war or a violent occupation. History teaches us how people, countries, respond to that.
When Phiyega visited the community on Wednesday, angry residents were shouting at her, demanding to know who gave the order to kill? She did her best to restore calm to the area, but she was up against a hostile crowd.
The police may be under attack, but they have to start earning back the trust. Showing the public that they are not the enemy. When what happened in Relela becomes a reality, you’ve waited too long to act. DM
Source: Daily Maverick
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Ukraine's president offers opposition leaders top govt posts
The Saturday meeting between Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich and the opposition yielded unexpected results. Top government posts were offered to protest leaders and a review of the constitution was promised, in order to give parliament more power. Yanukovich has proposed the post of prime minister to the head of the “Batkivschina” (Fatherland) opposition party, Arseny Yatsenyuk, the justice minister said after the president’s meeting with opposition leaders.
"The president offered the post of prime minister to Arseny Yatsenyuk. In the case of the latter's consent to take the post, the president of Ukraine will decide on the resignation of the government,” Minister Elena Lukash said.
Vitaly Klitchko, head of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform party, was offered the post of deputy prime minister for humanitarian affairs.
The current prime minister, Nikolay Azarov, has been in office since March 11, 2010. He is the leader of the Ukrainian Party of Regions. Azarov also served as acting prime minister in the first Yanukovich government, from November 2002 to January 2005.
The president’s offer came after Saturday talks with opposition leaders, as the government is struggling to cope with protests and violence that have gripped the entire country amid the political crisis.
Yanukovich also agreed to review the constitution and establish a working group for the transition to a parliamentary-presidential republic, First Deputy of the Presidential Administration Andrey Portnov said.
Arseny Yatsenyuk is the parliamentary leader of the country's second largest party and an ally of jailed ex-PM Yulya Tymoshenko. Vitaly Klitschko is a former professional boxer and former WBC, WBO and Ring Magazine heavyweight champion.
The possibility of returning to the constitution which was adopted as part of the Orange Revolution in 2004 was brought forth at the meeting. At that time, the constitution was changed in order to shift powers from the presidency to the parliament.
“We have determined that we can create a group and work on amendments to the constitution through adopting it in parliament , or through the mechanism of the All-Ukrainian referendum, " Portnov said in comments posted on the presidential website.
He added that opposition leaders stressed the need to change the law on referendums.
In another consensus, the two sides agreed to gradually clear the streets of central Kiev from protesters and police forces.
The Ukrainian president said that he will consider the possibility of granting amnesty to the protesters arrested during the political crisis if they vacate all seized buildings around the country and Independence Square in Kiev.
Unrest in Kiev entered its seventh day on Saturday, with protesters pelting police cordons with stones while officers retaliated with flash grenades and rubber bullets. Hundreds have been injured and dozens others detained or arrested in the violent clashes across the country.
Source: RT
"The president offered the post of prime minister to Arseny Yatsenyuk. In the case of the latter's consent to take the post, the president of Ukraine will decide on the resignation of the government,” Minister Elena Lukash said.
Vitaly Klitchko, head of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform party, was offered the post of deputy prime minister for humanitarian affairs.
The current prime minister, Nikolay Azarov, has been in office since March 11, 2010. He is the leader of the Ukrainian Party of Regions. Azarov also served as acting prime minister in the first Yanukovich government, from November 2002 to January 2005.
The president’s offer came after Saturday talks with opposition leaders, as the government is struggling to cope with protests and violence that have gripped the entire country amid the political crisis.
Yanukovich also agreed to review the constitution and establish a working group for the transition to a parliamentary-presidential republic, First Deputy of the Presidential Administration Andrey Portnov said.
Arseny Yatsenyuk is the parliamentary leader of the country's second largest party and an ally of jailed ex-PM Yulya Tymoshenko. Vitaly Klitschko is a former professional boxer and former WBC, WBO and Ring Magazine heavyweight champion.
The possibility of returning to the constitution which was adopted as part of the Orange Revolution in 2004 was brought forth at the meeting. At that time, the constitution was changed in order to shift powers from the presidency to the parliament.
“We have determined that we can create a group and work on amendments to the constitution through adopting it in parliament , or through the mechanism of the All-Ukrainian referendum, " Portnov said in comments posted on the presidential website.
He added that opposition leaders stressed the need to change the law on referendums.
In another consensus, the two sides agreed to gradually clear the streets of central Kiev from protesters and police forces.
The Ukrainian president said that he will consider the possibility of granting amnesty to the protesters arrested during the political crisis if they vacate all seized buildings around the country and Independence Square in Kiev.
Unrest in Kiev entered its seventh day on Saturday, with protesters pelting police cordons with stones while officers retaliated with flash grenades and rubber bullets. Hundreds have been injured and dozens others detained or arrested in the violent clashes across the country.
Source: RT
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
The global plutocracy
On the eve of the annual spectacle of parasitic wealth and power that is the World Economic Forum in the Alpine resort town of Davos, Switzerland, the Oxfam charity has issued a report warning of the unprecedented growth of social inequality throughout the world.
Describing a planet in the malevolent grip of a handful of plutocrats, the report states that the richest 85 people in the world control as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the world's population—3.5 billion people! It notes that the richest 1 percent today controls 46 percent of the world’s wealth. Oxfam writes: “The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion… 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.”
The report includes a chart showing that since 2008, the United States has had the largest increase in social inequality of any developed country.
The impoverishment of the working class on the one side and further enrichment of the financial elite on the other have accelerated since the Wall Street crash of that year. While the wealth of the world’s billionaires has doubled, there are today over 1 billion people living on less than a dollar per day, and nearly half the world’s population, more than 3 billion people, subsist on less than $2.50 per day.
The same day Oxfam issued its study, the International Labor Organization reported that the number of unemployed people worldwide grew by 5 million in 2013, to 202 million. The ILO predicted that the ranks of the unemployed would continue to rise in 2014.
There is no parallel in human history to the immense concentration of wealth that exists today, nor to the extremes of parasitism and decadence that constitute the “new normal.” Contemporary capitalism—what the ruling class and its political and media flunkies call the “free enterprise system”—has created a world in which every policy decision is dictated by the need to protect and increase the wealth of an infinitesimal portion of the world’s population.
This global plutocracy—by definition, a society governed by the wealthy—generates a huge and ever-increasing portion of the ruling elite’s wealth not from the production of useful products and expansion of society’s productive capacities, but from the manipulation of money, speculation and outright swindling—essentially criminal activities that are destructive of the productive forces.
A few hundred people, backed by an army of bribed politicians, academic apologists, intelligence spooks, experts of all sorts and the repressive force of the military and police, hold civilization by the throat and threaten to destroy it to satisfy their insatiable greed.
This social—or, to be more precise, anti-social—element is virulently hostile to the people, contemptuous of democratic rights, and militaristic.
In its effort to expand its personal wealth, it relentlessly attacks the living standards of the working class—the vast majority of the population. All over the world, governments controlled by the plutocrats impose ever more painful austerity, cutting wages, slashing jobs, dismantling social programs, closing schools, gutting health care. State treasuries are emptied to provide bailouts to the banks and corporations and central banks pump trillions into the financial markets to drive up stock prices, corporate profits and CEO pay. All legal restrictions on profit-making are lifted.
To deal with the opposition of the workers, governments are systematically criminalizing organized resistance by the working class. In countries across Europe, every significant strike is met with legal bans and police violence.
Petrified at the prospect of social revolution, they are putting in place the infrastructure of a global totalitarian police state, as revealed by the revelations of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Competing cliques of plutocrats, using their national states as bases of operation, invade weaker countries and occupy and plunder them without mercy, inflicting death and destruction. In the struggle against their rivals for control of territories, markets, resources and cheap labor, they turn the planet into an armed camp and threaten to plunge mankind into a third world war, this time with the prospect of nuclear annihilation.
The rich and the super-rich will be on display this week at Davos, the yearly event at which government officials and leaders of global agencies such as the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund come to pay obeisance to billionaire bankers and corporate CEOs.
The global financial elite is preparing, in the words of one commentator, “to jet to the World Economic Forum 5,000 feet up in the Swiss Alps in their helicopters, mink-clad trophy wives in tow.” The cost of attending the conference, estimated by CNN at around $40,000 per person, is about 50 percent greater than what a typical worker in the US makes in a year.
This conference has announced that the “problem” of social inequality will be a central topic of discussion.
The masses all over the world are becoming increasingly outraged over this criminal layer, which they hate and despise. It is only a matter of time before that anger is transformed into action.
The moneyed elite is haunted by the specter of social upheaval and revolution. They received a taste of it three years ago in the mass working class uprising that brought down the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt. They have seen social explosions in Europe and anticipations of coming upheavals in the United States.
That they have been able to hold onto power is above all due to the treachery of the trade union bureaucracies, aided by their apologists in the right-wing organizations that call themselves “left,” such as the International Socialist Organization in the United States, the New Anti-capitalist Party in France, the Left Party in Germany, and Syriza in Greece.
The more perceptive and far-sighted defenders of the capitalist system are warning that the present situation is unsustainable. Last week, the Financial Times ’ chief economic commentator Martin Wolf penned a comment entitled, “Failing elites threaten our future,” in which he warned of the growing threat of social revolution.
Citing the 100th anniversary of World War I, the first global catastrophe that signaled the death agony of capitalism and precipitated the Russian revolution three years later, Wolf warned that the “globalized economic and financial elite … have become ever more detached from the countries that produced them …The narrow distribution of the gains of economic growth greatly enhances this development. This, then, is ever more a plutocracy.”
Since the financial breakdown of 2008, he wrote, the “economic, financial, intellectual and political elites” have discredited themselves. “If elites continue to fail,” he concluded, “we will go on watching the rise of angry populists. The elites need to do better. If they do not, rage may overwhelm us all.”
The people of the world are confronted with the question: What is to be done with this anti-social and criminal layer that is strangling the planet? Nothing can be changed by appealing to the “better angels” of the plutocracy, as Oxfam would do. Nor by appealing to the elite’s rational faculties, as Wolf seeks to do.
As a matter of social hygiene and basic survival, the wealth of this parasitic layer must be expropriated. The working class, organized as an independent political force, must seize it and use it to meet crying social needs—jobs, health care, education, housing, nutrition, access to culture and art.
The death-grip of the plutocrats over finance and industry must be broken. The banks and corporations must be taken out of private hands and placed under public ownership and democratic control. There is only one way this can be done: by means of the revolutionary transformation of society and the establishment of socialism.
Andre Damon and Barry Grey
Source: World Socialist Web Site
Describing a planet in the malevolent grip of a handful of plutocrats, the report states that the richest 85 people in the world control as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the world's population—3.5 billion people! It notes that the richest 1 percent today controls 46 percent of the world’s wealth. Oxfam writes: “The wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion… 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population.”
The report includes a chart showing that since 2008, the United States has had the largest increase in social inequality of any developed country.
The impoverishment of the working class on the one side and further enrichment of the financial elite on the other have accelerated since the Wall Street crash of that year. While the wealth of the world’s billionaires has doubled, there are today over 1 billion people living on less than a dollar per day, and nearly half the world’s population, more than 3 billion people, subsist on less than $2.50 per day.
The same day Oxfam issued its study, the International Labor Organization reported that the number of unemployed people worldwide grew by 5 million in 2013, to 202 million. The ILO predicted that the ranks of the unemployed would continue to rise in 2014.
There is no parallel in human history to the immense concentration of wealth that exists today, nor to the extremes of parasitism and decadence that constitute the “new normal.” Contemporary capitalism—what the ruling class and its political and media flunkies call the “free enterprise system”—has created a world in which every policy decision is dictated by the need to protect and increase the wealth of an infinitesimal portion of the world’s population.
This global plutocracy—by definition, a society governed by the wealthy—generates a huge and ever-increasing portion of the ruling elite’s wealth not from the production of useful products and expansion of society’s productive capacities, but from the manipulation of money, speculation and outright swindling—essentially criminal activities that are destructive of the productive forces.
A few hundred people, backed by an army of bribed politicians, academic apologists, intelligence spooks, experts of all sorts and the repressive force of the military and police, hold civilization by the throat and threaten to destroy it to satisfy their insatiable greed.
This social—or, to be more precise, anti-social—element is virulently hostile to the people, contemptuous of democratic rights, and militaristic.
In its effort to expand its personal wealth, it relentlessly attacks the living standards of the working class—the vast majority of the population. All over the world, governments controlled by the plutocrats impose ever more painful austerity, cutting wages, slashing jobs, dismantling social programs, closing schools, gutting health care. State treasuries are emptied to provide bailouts to the banks and corporations and central banks pump trillions into the financial markets to drive up stock prices, corporate profits and CEO pay. All legal restrictions on profit-making are lifted.
To deal with the opposition of the workers, governments are systematically criminalizing organized resistance by the working class. In countries across Europe, every significant strike is met with legal bans and police violence.
Petrified at the prospect of social revolution, they are putting in place the infrastructure of a global totalitarian police state, as revealed by the revelations of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Competing cliques of plutocrats, using their national states as bases of operation, invade weaker countries and occupy and plunder them without mercy, inflicting death and destruction. In the struggle against their rivals for control of territories, markets, resources and cheap labor, they turn the planet into an armed camp and threaten to plunge mankind into a third world war, this time with the prospect of nuclear annihilation.
The rich and the super-rich will be on display this week at Davos, the yearly event at which government officials and leaders of global agencies such as the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund come to pay obeisance to billionaire bankers and corporate CEOs.
The global financial elite is preparing, in the words of one commentator, “to jet to the World Economic Forum 5,000 feet up in the Swiss Alps in their helicopters, mink-clad trophy wives in tow.” The cost of attending the conference, estimated by CNN at around $40,000 per person, is about 50 percent greater than what a typical worker in the US makes in a year.
This conference has announced that the “problem” of social inequality will be a central topic of discussion.
The masses all over the world are becoming increasingly outraged over this criminal layer, which they hate and despise. It is only a matter of time before that anger is transformed into action.
The moneyed elite is haunted by the specter of social upheaval and revolution. They received a taste of it three years ago in the mass working class uprising that brought down the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt. They have seen social explosions in Europe and anticipations of coming upheavals in the United States.
That they have been able to hold onto power is above all due to the treachery of the trade union bureaucracies, aided by their apologists in the right-wing organizations that call themselves “left,” such as the International Socialist Organization in the United States, the New Anti-capitalist Party in France, the Left Party in Germany, and Syriza in Greece.
The more perceptive and far-sighted defenders of the capitalist system are warning that the present situation is unsustainable. Last week, the Financial Times ’ chief economic commentator Martin Wolf penned a comment entitled, “Failing elites threaten our future,” in which he warned of the growing threat of social revolution.
Citing the 100th anniversary of World War I, the first global catastrophe that signaled the death agony of capitalism and precipitated the Russian revolution three years later, Wolf warned that the “globalized economic and financial elite … have become ever more detached from the countries that produced them …The narrow distribution of the gains of economic growth greatly enhances this development. This, then, is ever more a plutocracy.”
Since the financial breakdown of 2008, he wrote, the “economic, financial, intellectual and political elites” have discredited themselves. “If elites continue to fail,” he concluded, “we will go on watching the rise of angry populists. The elites need to do better. If they do not, rage may overwhelm us all.”
The people of the world are confronted with the question: What is to be done with this anti-social and criminal layer that is strangling the planet? Nothing can be changed by appealing to the “better angels” of the plutocracy, as Oxfam would do. Nor by appealing to the elite’s rational faculties, as Wolf seeks to do.
As a matter of social hygiene and basic survival, the wealth of this parasitic layer must be expropriated. The working class, organized as an independent political force, must seize it and use it to meet crying social needs—jobs, health care, education, housing, nutrition, access to culture and art.
The death-grip of the plutocrats over finance and industry must be broken. The banks and corporations must be taken out of private hands and placed under public ownership and democratic control. There is only one way this can be done: by means of the revolutionary transformation of society and the establishment of socialism.
Andre Damon and Barry Grey
Source: World Socialist Web Site
Friday, January 10, 2014
President Proclaims Civilian Secretariat Commencement
The remaining sections of the Civilian Secretariat for Police Service Act of 2011 that did not come into effect in December 2011 will now come into force on 1 April 2014.
The act seeks to give effect to section 208 of the Constitution by establishing a civilian secretariat tasked with monitoring, assessing and evaluating the performance of the South African Police Service (SAPS).
The minister of police will be responsible for the new secretariat.
Provincial police secretariats will be expected to align their planning and operations with the new national secretariat.
The civilian secretariat will be expected to:
• Exercise civilian oversight over the SAPS
• Advise the minister on developing and implementing policies
• Provide administrative support to the minister
• Communicate with stakeholders
• Form a partnership with stakeholders to improve service delivery by SAPS
• Improve relations between itself and the independent police investigative directorate
In terms of the sections that are to now come into effect, section 4(2) refers to the establishing of the secretariat as a national department while 4(3) deals with the secretary as the accounting officer of the secretariat.
Section 14 focuses on the responsibilities of the secretary in terms of finances and accountability.
The proclamation notice was published in Government Gazette 37151.
Prior to the notice, the presidency had indicated in a statement at the beginning of December that the remaining sections were to commence on 1 April.
Source: SABINET
The act seeks to give effect to section 208 of the Constitution by establishing a civilian secretariat tasked with monitoring, assessing and evaluating the performance of the South African Police Service (SAPS).
The minister of police will be responsible for the new secretariat.
Provincial police secretariats will be expected to align their planning and operations with the new national secretariat.
The civilian secretariat will be expected to:
• Exercise civilian oversight over the SAPS
• Advise the minister on developing and implementing policies
• Provide administrative support to the minister
• Communicate with stakeholders
• Form a partnership with stakeholders to improve service delivery by SAPS
• Improve relations between itself and the independent police investigative directorate
In terms of the sections that are to now come into effect, section 4(2) refers to the establishing of the secretariat as a national department while 4(3) deals with the secretary as the accounting officer of the secretariat.
Section 14 focuses on the responsibilities of the secretary in terms of finances and accountability.
The proclamation notice was published in Government Gazette 37151.
Prior to the notice, the presidency had indicated in a statement at the beginning of December that the remaining sections were to commence on 1 April.
Source: SABINET
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Japan PM Shinzo Abe to pledge $14bn to Africa
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to pledge more than $14bn (£8.5bn) in aid and trade deals during his week-long visit to Africa.
He is also hoping to secure energy resources and increase exports.
Mr Abe's first stop is Oman, before he visits three fast-growing economies - Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Mozambique.
BBC Africa Business Report's Lerato Mbele says the visit is seen as a step by Japan to compete with China, in the new scramble for African resources.
In Ethiopia, he is to announce plans for a geo-thermal plant, which reinforces the country's growing renewable energy profile.
Mozambique recently made huge gas and coal discoveries and Japan is one of many investors scouting deals there.
Although Ivory Coast is recovering after the end of a long period of conflict and political instability, it provides a gateway into French-speaking Africa, a region that's still relatively untapped by most foreign players.
Our reporter says the backdrop to this visit, is of course China, which has become the largest investor in Africa, with five times as much trade with the continent as the Japanese.
In the past week, China's foreign minister has also been visiting the continent to reinforce diplomatic and economic ties.
But one of Mr Abe's senior officials, Hiroshigo Seko, sought to downplay the rivalry in an interview with the AP news agency
"Wherever he goes, Prime Minister Abe is asked if he is there to compete against China, but that's not our intention at all, as far as the African nations are concerned, they are important regardless of China," he said.
Last year, Mr Abe hosted a three-day conference on African development, at which he pledged $32bn (£21bn) in aid, including money to tackle militant Islamists.
At the time, he said that African countries would be at the centre of global economic growth in the coming years and so Japan should increase its economic ties to the continent.
Source: BBC
He is also hoping to secure energy resources and increase exports.
Mr Abe's first stop is Oman, before he visits three fast-growing economies - Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Mozambique.
BBC Africa Business Report's Lerato Mbele says the visit is seen as a step by Japan to compete with China, in the new scramble for African resources.
In Ethiopia, he is to announce plans for a geo-thermal plant, which reinforces the country's growing renewable energy profile.
Mozambique recently made huge gas and coal discoveries and Japan is one of many investors scouting deals there.
Although Ivory Coast is recovering after the end of a long period of conflict and political instability, it provides a gateway into French-speaking Africa, a region that's still relatively untapped by most foreign players.
Our reporter says the backdrop to this visit, is of course China, which has become the largest investor in Africa, with five times as much trade with the continent as the Japanese.
In the past week, China's foreign minister has also been visiting the continent to reinforce diplomatic and economic ties.
But one of Mr Abe's senior officials, Hiroshigo Seko, sought to downplay the rivalry in an interview with the AP news agency
"Wherever he goes, Prime Minister Abe is asked if he is there to compete against China, but that's not our intention at all, as far as the African nations are concerned, they are important regardless of China," he said.
Last year, Mr Abe hosted a three-day conference on African development, at which he pledged $32bn (£21bn) in aid, including money to tackle militant Islamists.
At the time, he said that African countries would be at the centre of global economic growth in the coming years and so Japan should increase its economic ties to the continent.
Source: BBC
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
China's oil fears over South Sudan fighting
The stakes could not be higher for China, the largest investor in South Sudan's oil sector, as fierce fighting continues between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those of his former deputy. Some of the largest oil fields China operates are in areas controlled by fighters backing Riek Machar, the country's vice-president until he was sacked in July.
Oil production has already dropped by 20% since the onset of the conflict three weeks ago and more than 300 Chinese workers have been evacuated. The spectre of their Libyan experience also weighs heavily on the Chinese minds - project after project now lies deserted because of heavy fighting during the Arab Spring uprising of 2011, inflicting huge losses on China.
It is no surprise then that China is putting its full weight behind the peace talks in Addis Ababa. Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in the Ethiopian capital on Monday and made it clear that China wanted both sides to stop fighting and seek a reasonable and rational way out.
According to media reports, he was even willing to mediate personally between the warring sides. It is unclear if Mr Wang has been able to do this, but his message was important, reports the BBC's Emmanuel Igunza from Addis Ababa. It demonstrates how seriously the international community is taking the crisis - with many diplomats present at the talks, he says.
Apart from China's Africa envoy Zhong Jianhua, US special envoy Donald Booth and EU special representative Alexander Rondos are also attending.
Fraught with risk
China invested some $20bn (£12bn) in Sudan before it split into two countries in 2011, according to Chinese media reports. Another $8bn was pledged to President Kiir during his visit to China the year following secession, to be used for infrastructure projects and the oil sector.
The heavy investment seems to have borne fruit, as in the first 10 months of 2013, China imported 1.9 million tonnes of oil (nearly 14 million barrels) from South Sudan, twice as much as China imports from Nigeria each year.
Though amounting to less than 1% of China's total oil imports, it makes up roughly two-thirds of oil exported by the world's youngest nation and is expected to increase.
Two years ago, China suffered heavy losses in its Libyan projects, including infrastructure, telecommunications and oil. Many constructions were halted and sites looted or destroyed during the revolution which toppled long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The total loss was estimated by several Chinese media reports to be in the region of $20bn, although no official figures exist.
Compensation talks with the new Libya government stalled as their priority was very much on nation-building and improving the living conditions of the Libyan people.
Continue reading the main story
Economic boom
Experts point out that China has taken tremendous risks in its search for oil.
This is because the country's economic boom continues to require a great deal of oil - home production is limited and reliance on exports reached 56% in 2012.
But all the known global markets have been dominated by Western companies or have been off-limits because of sanctions, leaving China with little choice but to adopt high-risk strategies.
Nowadays, more than half of China's investment in the overseas oil sector is found in areas which are considered unstable, including Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan and Venezuela.
Chinese workers have been caught in the conflicts for control of oil by various forces in Sudan.
In 2008, five Chinese oil workers kidnapped by rebels in Sudan's South Kordofan province were killed during a rescue attempt. Four years later, another 29 Chinese construction workers were abducted in the same province and were only released 11 days later after intense negotiations.
The Sudanese rebels were quoted as saying that they did not want to harm the workers, but they aimed to send a signal to the Chinese government that they did not want them to be involved in the conflict over oil in Sudan.
But what is currently happening in South Sudan seems far more serious than kidnappings.
China must be praying for a quick end to the trouble so life on the oil fields can return to normal.
In the meantime, some experts also predict that China might be forced into re-thinking its high-risk oil strategy
Source: BBC
Oil production has already dropped by 20% since the onset of the conflict three weeks ago and more than 300 Chinese workers have been evacuated. The spectre of their Libyan experience also weighs heavily on the Chinese minds - project after project now lies deserted because of heavy fighting during the Arab Spring uprising of 2011, inflicting huge losses on China.
It is no surprise then that China is putting its full weight behind the peace talks in Addis Ababa. Foreign Minister Wang Yi was in the Ethiopian capital on Monday and made it clear that China wanted both sides to stop fighting and seek a reasonable and rational way out.
According to media reports, he was even willing to mediate personally between the warring sides. It is unclear if Mr Wang has been able to do this, but his message was important, reports the BBC's Emmanuel Igunza from Addis Ababa. It demonstrates how seriously the international community is taking the crisis - with many diplomats present at the talks, he says.
Apart from China's Africa envoy Zhong Jianhua, US special envoy Donald Booth and EU special representative Alexander Rondos are also attending.
Fraught with risk
China invested some $20bn (£12bn) in Sudan before it split into two countries in 2011, according to Chinese media reports. Another $8bn was pledged to President Kiir during his visit to China the year following secession, to be used for infrastructure projects and the oil sector.
The heavy investment seems to have borne fruit, as in the first 10 months of 2013, China imported 1.9 million tonnes of oil (nearly 14 million barrels) from South Sudan, twice as much as China imports from Nigeria each year.
Though amounting to less than 1% of China's total oil imports, it makes up roughly two-thirds of oil exported by the world's youngest nation and is expected to increase.
Two years ago, China suffered heavy losses in its Libyan projects, including infrastructure, telecommunications and oil. Many constructions were halted and sites looted or destroyed during the revolution which toppled long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The total loss was estimated by several Chinese media reports to be in the region of $20bn, although no official figures exist.
Compensation talks with the new Libya government stalled as their priority was very much on nation-building and improving the living conditions of the Libyan people.
Continue reading the main story
Economic boom
Experts point out that China has taken tremendous risks in its search for oil.
This is because the country's economic boom continues to require a great deal of oil - home production is limited and reliance on exports reached 56% in 2012.
But all the known global markets have been dominated by Western companies or have been off-limits because of sanctions, leaving China with little choice but to adopt high-risk strategies.
Nowadays, more than half of China's investment in the overseas oil sector is found in areas which are considered unstable, including Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan and Venezuela.
Chinese workers have been caught in the conflicts for control of oil by various forces in Sudan.
In 2008, five Chinese oil workers kidnapped by rebels in Sudan's South Kordofan province were killed during a rescue attempt. Four years later, another 29 Chinese construction workers were abducted in the same province and were only released 11 days later after intense negotiations.
The Sudanese rebels were quoted as saying that they did not want to harm the workers, but they aimed to send a signal to the Chinese government that they did not want them to be involved in the conflict over oil in Sudan.
But what is currently happening in South Sudan seems far more serious than kidnappings.
China must be praying for a quick end to the trouble so life on the oil fields can return to normal.
In the meantime, some experts also predict that China might be forced into re-thinking its high-risk oil strategy
Source: BBC
ANC at 102: when the revolution eats its own children
There are few people who can talk about the state of the ANC without sighing and shaking their heads. The transition from a liberation movement to a political party in government has not been kind – the organisation appears to be on a mission of self-destruction with lure of power and wealth tattering its fibre, and factionalism and patronage constantly diminishing its stature. The ANC has been able to reach the grand age of 102 because of the strength of its leadership and its popularity throughout its lifespan. But now it is difficult to hold up the ANC in 2014 against the organisation with a progression of heroic leaders which took power in 1994. Most bizarre is the way it has turned on itself. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY.
Lieutenant General Sean Tshabalala died of a broken heart. His body was found in his locked office at the police headquarters in Pretoria on Christmas Eve. Tributes at his memorial service and funeral tell the story of a once proud Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) soldier and one of the first line of VIP protectors when the ANC returned from exile, withering in a state of depression after being marginalised by the police management.
A furore erupted after Tshabalala’s funeral where former national police commissioner Bheki Cele revealed a list of 18 names of former MK combatants serving or formerly in the South African Police Service who were allegedly on a target list, presumably of the current national commissioner Riah Phiyega and her political bosses. Tshabalala’s name allegedly topped the list. His friends and former colleagues had earlier told of Tshabalala’s heartbreak at being shifted sideways from Protection and Security Services division of the police to the information technology division and later to a non-job at the police inspectorate.
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa acted swiftly to meet with some of the people on the list and dismiss the claims as rubbish. Phiyega denied knowledge of the list. However, the perception exists that experienced ANC and MK members were being steadily hounded out of the security services since President Jacob Zuma won power at the ANC’s Polokwane conference.
There has been a deluge of early retirements and resignations from the Department of State Security, the military and the SAPS in recent years, most of which involved people who served in MK or ANC intelligence structures during the liberation struggle. Some of these people went into exile in their teenage years, some were involved in dangerous intelligence missions at great personal cost, some were trained in the camps under the ANC’s most iconic leaders.
Their departure from the security services has been a curious phenomenon. Zuma, formerly head of intelligence in the ANC, has always seen security and intelligence as high priority. But after the recall of Thabo Mbeki, it would seem that paranoia set in and people perceived to be loyal to the former president were systematically weeded out, irrespective of their skills, service to their country with distinction or role in the liberation struggle.
Cele is well aware of the purge because he was instrumental in implementing it while he was national commissioner. In one case, he called a high-ranking officer who was on a mission abroad immediately back to the country and informed him he was being transferred to another job. It did not take long for the officer to resign from the police service. Cele was also the one who transferred Tshabalala out of the Protection and Security Services division.
Tshabalala, unlike most of his comrades, stuck it out in the police despite being sidelined – a decision which probably eventually cost him his life. Shortly before his death, Tshabalala had received a letter transferring him to the Northern Cape province (viewed as the Siberia of deployments), and this is possibly the reason his depression became too much to bear.
Tshabalala is just one of many of people whose lives have been destroyed by the organisation they dedicated their lives to. Others have been able to move on with their lives but their disillusionment with the ANC is profound. For many of them, the ANC was not just a political organisation but a way of life, a reason for being. To see the organisation self-destruct is worse than a family feud or divorce because they had chosen the ANC over their families and their own safety when they joined the struggle.
There are various explanations for the purge. The first is that ANC people in the security services would refuse to use state institutions to fight power battles in the party. There is always the risk that loyalty to the ANC would outweigh loyalty to the individual in power, which could lead to instructions being ignored, undermined or disclosed. The theory goes that this is why Zuma and Mthethwa saw use in Richard Mdluli – as a person who worked for the apartheid era police, he has no affiliation to the ANC and is loyal only to those who pay his salary.
The second theory is that the security ministers felt threatened by the seniority, knowledge and experience of the commanders serving under them. In terms of ANC hierarchy, many of the officials were senior to the current batch of ministers and this was a source of tension, particularly when there were differences of opinion on operational issues. But while there might have been underlying resentment, it would be strange if Zuma allowed the security services to be depleted of loyal and experienced officials on the basis of his ministers' inferiority complexes.
The third theory is more complex. A former senior member of the security services says the success of South Africa’s transition was partly due to the fact that security of the country was in the hands of the “doves”.
“This ensured that national security was based on human security. Now the focus is on state security. For the first time, security is now in the hands of the ‘hawks’, just like during the Apartheid era when the hawks saw a red (communists) under every bed. So we have come full circle with the hawks again in charge,” he said.
He said the current crop of hawks are fixated on external threats to the country, such as from foreign governments, imperialist forces and lobby groups, and they trade on conspiracy theories. “The real threats to the country are unemployment, inequality and poverty, and our failure to deliver. But anyone who puts forward that view is hounded out, marginalised or made redundant.
“They do not want to hear about our own failures; they prefer nonsensical stories about plots against the president, like what was in the Mdluli report. The plot is the failure of delivery. That is the biggest threat to national security,” the retired member said.
The theory is consistent with how the state and ANC views the personal security of the president and the state as interchangeable – as exemplified by the handling of the issue of the security upgrades at Zuma’s Nkandla estate. But the retired security official says people often overlook how the Constitution defines the governing principles around national security: “National security must reflect the resolve of South Africans, as individuals and as a nation, to live as equals, to live in peace and harmony, to be free from fear and want and to seek a better life”.
The Constitution says nothing about the President and his Cabinet receiving special protection in their homes and cars as a principle of national security but dictates that ordinary people should be “free from fear”. It would appear that the organisation which drafted this Constitution has these days lost sight of these principles.
To the ANC at 102, it would seem, people, even their most experienced and dedicated comrades, are expendable. It has become a pattern that factional battles need to be fought till one group is hounded out and the organisation belongs only to the victors. From branch to national level, battles are fought for dominance of leadership positions, and those who lose are treated as pariahs and purged from positions in the state.
At the ANC national conferences, voting for the top six positions and the national executive committee takes place according to slates, dependent only according to loyalty to those who control the faction. As a result, the organisation is controlled by the winning faction and those outside the faction are marginalised, irrespective of their seniority, credentials or what they have to offer the party or the country.
Both Mbeki and Zuma appear to believe that the best way to protect their presidencies is to surround themselves with loyalists who tell them what they want to hear and fight off dissent on their behalf. It is this very tendency which builds resentment in the ANC and leads bad decision-making.
As the ANC celebrates its 102nd anniversary, it is also in the process of compiling its lists of representatives to serve in Parliament and the provincial legislatures. The list process is also likely to be defined by factional politics, with loyalists able to get higher on the lists and stand a better chance of becoming a member of Parliament. Those who refrain from factional battles or who campaigned against Zuma’s second term at the ANC’s Mangaung conference are less likely to be elected.
But there are also a number of people who are declining nomination because they cannot in good conscience agree to serve the ANC in its current state. “It is a bloody nightmare for us,” said one high-ranking member who has declined nomination.
He said if the party was serious about its future and that of the country, they would ask the president and other ANC leaders steeped in scandal to step aside. “But in the NEC, few can stand up and impose their integrity. The rest will be found wanting themselves,” he said.
Others, however, believe that they should remain in the fold and the ANC will self correct at its next conference in 2017. But what is the likelihood of it and how much damage would have been done by then? With the organisation a shadow of its former self now, what will it look like with four years still to go under the current leadership?
Despite the many problems in the ANC, there are only few people who are able to speak up and confront the issues besetting the organisation. The leadership seems to believe that the organisation is resilient and can withstand the scandals and strife. And those who do speak out are treated as disgruntled elements that should be disregarded. ANC and South African Communist Party veteran Ronnie Kasrils wrote in The Guardian last year: “The ANC's soul needs to be restored; its traditional values and culture of service reinstated. The pact with the devil needs to be broken”.
The ANC simply ignored him.
And so, Africa’s oldest liberation movement turns 102 on Wednesday. It is a momentous occasion for the organisation with a proud history and iconic leaders to still be going strong and enjoying the support of the majority of South Africans. While the current leaders mark the occasion with celebratory rallies, doubling as campaign events, many people will be looking on from the outside, mourning for days gone by when the ANC was a home for all.
Perhaps it is normal for any political organisation to find itself unable to keep its soul once it gets touched by the spoils of uninterrupted power. It has happened many times before, and it will happen many times in the future. What is surprising, though, is how history always fails to teach the ones at the top. At 102, the ANC is drifting into the darkness, increasingly disconnected from the lives and reality of those they are sworn to protect: the masses that continue to exist in the tough reality and fearing a hopeless future. DM
Source: Daily Maverick
Lieutenant General Sean Tshabalala died of a broken heart. His body was found in his locked office at the police headquarters in Pretoria on Christmas Eve. Tributes at his memorial service and funeral tell the story of a once proud Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) soldier and one of the first line of VIP protectors when the ANC returned from exile, withering in a state of depression after being marginalised by the police management.
A furore erupted after Tshabalala’s funeral where former national police commissioner Bheki Cele revealed a list of 18 names of former MK combatants serving or formerly in the South African Police Service who were allegedly on a target list, presumably of the current national commissioner Riah Phiyega and her political bosses. Tshabalala’s name allegedly topped the list. His friends and former colleagues had earlier told of Tshabalala’s heartbreak at being shifted sideways from Protection and Security Services division of the police to the information technology division and later to a non-job at the police inspectorate.
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa acted swiftly to meet with some of the people on the list and dismiss the claims as rubbish. Phiyega denied knowledge of the list. However, the perception exists that experienced ANC and MK members were being steadily hounded out of the security services since President Jacob Zuma won power at the ANC’s Polokwane conference.
There has been a deluge of early retirements and resignations from the Department of State Security, the military and the SAPS in recent years, most of which involved people who served in MK or ANC intelligence structures during the liberation struggle. Some of these people went into exile in their teenage years, some were involved in dangerous intelligence missions at great personal cost, some were trained in the camps under the ANC’s most iconic leaders.
Their departure from the security services has been a curious phenomenon. Zuma, formerly head of intelligence in the ANC, has always seen security and intelligence as high priority. But after the recall of Thabo Mbeki, it would seem that paranoia set in and people perceived to be loyal to the former president were systematically weeded out, irrespective of their skills, service to their country with distinction or role in the liberation struggle.
Cele is well aware of the purge because he was instrumental in implementing it while he was national commissioner. In one case, he called a high-ranking officer who was on a mission abroad immediately back to the country and informed him he was being transferred to another job. It did not take long for the officer to resign from the police service. Cele was also the one who transferred Tshabalala out of the Protection and Security Services division.
Tshabalala, unlike most of his comrades, stuck it out in the police despite being sidelined – a decision which probably eventually cost him his life. Shortly before his death, Tshabalala had received a letter transferring him to the Northern Cape province (viewed as the Siberia of deployments), and this is possibly the reason his depression became too much to bear.
Tshabalala is just one of many of people whose lives have been destroyed by the organisation they dedicated their lives to. Others have been able to move on with their lives but their disillusionment with the ANC is profound. For many of them, the ANC was not just a political organisation but a way of life, a reason for being. To see the organisation self-destruct is worse than a family feud or divorce because they had chosen the ANC over their families and their own safety when they joined the struggle.
There are various explanations for the purge. The first is that ANC people in the security services would refuse to use state institutions to fight power battles in the party. There is always the risk that loyalty to the ANC would outweigh loyalty to the individual in power, which could lead to instructions being ignored, undermined or disclosed. The theory goes that this is why Zuma and Mthethwa saw use in Richard Mdluli – as a person who worked for the apartheid era police, he has no affiliation to the ANC and is loyal only to those who pay his salary.
The second theory is that the security ministers felt threatened by the seniority, knowledge and experience of the commanders serving under them. In terms of ANC hierarchy, many of the officials were senior to the current batch of ministers and this was a source of tension, particularly when there were differences of opinion on operational issues. But while there might have been underlying resentment, it would be strange if Zuma allowed the security services to be depleted of loyal and experienced officials on the basis of his ministers' inferiority complexes.
The third theory is more complex. A former senior member of the security services says the success of South Africa’s transition was partly due to the fact that security of the country was in the hands of the “doves”.
“This ensured that national security was based on human security. Now the focus is on state security. For the first time, security is now in the hands of the ‘hawks’, just like during the Apartheid era when the hawks saw a red (communists) under every bed. So we have come full circle with the hawks again in charge,” he said.
He said the current crop of hawks are fixated on external threats to the country, such as from foreign governments, imperialist forces and lobby groups, and they trade on conspiracy theories. “The real threats to the country are unemployment, inequality and poverty, and our failure to deliver. But anyone who puts forward that view is hounded out, marginalised or made redundant.
“They do not want to hear about our own failures; they prefer nonsensical stories about plots against the president, like what was in the Mdluli report. The plot is the failure of delivery. That is the biggest threat to national security,” the retired member said.
The theory is consistent with how the state and ANC views the personal security of the president and the state as interchangeable – as exemplified by the handling of the issue of the security upgrades at Zuma’s Nkandla estate. But the retired security official says people often overlook how the Constitution defines the governing principles around national security: “National security must reflect the resolve of South Africans, as individuals and as a nation, to live as equals, to live in peace and harmony, to be free from fear and want and to seek a better life”.
The Constitution says nothing about the President and his Cabinet receiving special protection in their homes and cars as a principle of national security but dictates that ordinary people should be “free from fear”. It would appear that the organisation which drafted this Constitution has these days lost sight of these principles.
To the ANC at 102, it would seem, people, even their most experienced and dedicated comrades, are expendable. It has become a pattern that factional battles need to be fought till one group is hounded out and the organisation belongs only to the victors. From branch to national level, battles are fought for dominance of leadership positions, and those who lose are treated as pariahs and purged from positions in the state.
At the ANC national conferences, voting for the top six positions and the national executive committee takes place according to slates, dependent only according to loyalty to those who control the faction. As a result, the organisation is controlled by the winning faction and those outside the faction are marginalised, irrespective of their seniority, credentials or what they have to offer the party or the country.
Both Mbeki and Zuma appear to believe that the best way to protect their presidencies is to surround themselves with loyalists who tell them what they want to hear and fight off dissent on their behalf. It is this very tendency which builds resentment in the ANC and leads bad decision-making.
As the ANC celebrates its 102nd anniversary, it is also in the process of compiling its lists of representatives to serve in Parliament and the provincial legislatures. The list process is also likely to be defined by factional politics, with loyalists able to get higher on the lists and stand a better chance of becoming a member of Parliament. Those who refrain from factional battles or who campaigned against Zuma’s second term at the ANC’s Mangaung conference are less likely to be elected.
But there are also a number of people who are declining nomination because they cannot in good conscience agree to serve the ANC in its current state. “It is a bloody nightmare for us,” said one high-ranking member who has declined nomination.
He said if the party was serious about its future and that of the country, they would ask the president and other ANC leaders steeped in scandal to step aside. “But in the NEC, few can stand up and impose their integrity. The rest will be found wanting themselves,” he said.
Others, however, believe that they should remain in the fold and the ANC will self correct at its next conference in 2017. But what is the likelihood of it and how much damage would have been done by then? With the organisation a shadow of its former self now, what will it look like with four years still to go under the current leadership?
Despite the many problems in the ANC, there are only few people who are able to speak up and confront the issues besetting the organisation. The leadership seems to believe that the organisation is resilient and can withstand the scandals and strife. And those who do speak out are treated as disgruntled elements that should be disregarded. ANC and South African Communist Party veteran Ronnie Kasrils wrote in The Guardian last year: “The ANC's soul needs to be restored; its traditional values and culture of service reinstated. The pact with the devil needs to be broken”.
The ANC simply ignored him.
And so, Africa’s oldest liberation movement turns 102 on Wednesday. It is a momentous occasion for the organisation with a proud history and iconic leaders to still be going strong and enjoying the support of the majority of South Africans. While the current leaders mark the occasion with celebratory rallies, doubling as campaign events, many people will be looking on from the outside, mourning for days gone by when the ANC was a home for all.
Perhaps it is normal for any political organisation to find itself unable to keep its soul once it gets touched by the spoils of uninterrupted power. It has happened many times before, and it will happen many times in the future. What is surprising, though, is how history always fails to teach the ones at the top. At 102, the ANC is drifting into the darkness, increasingly disconnected from the lives and reality of those they are sworn to protect: the masses that continue to exist in the tough reality and fearing a hopeless future. DM
Source: Daily Maverick
How JPMorgan shorted Madoff
Big banks may not be evil. But what's becoming increasingly clear is that the bigger they are, the more evil stuff they are involved with.
Hidden in the document detailing Tuesday's settlement between the Department of Justice and JPMorgan Chase over Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was this nugget: JPMorgan was essentially shorting Madoff.
In other words, it wasn't only that JPMorgan (JPM) ignored and failed to report to authorities the numerous red flags its employees encountered over the 20 years it served as the main banker to the largest financial fraud in history. To be sure, JPMorgan did that. But on top of that, the bank was actually betting that Madoff was a fraud, and presumably expecting to collect when others found out.
Given that fact, it's not much of a surprise that JPMorgan decided to settle for $1.7 billion rather than fight the charges.
JPMorgan is essentially being penalized for being Madoff's banker. But the big bank did a lot of business with Madoff over the years. It had the Madoff funds' main bank account. It also invested in Madoff through feeder funds. And it created derivatives that it sold to people who couldn't get into a Madoff fund but still wanted to profit from the performance of Madoff's hedge fund. The derivatives were supposed to rise and fall with Madoff's performance. But since it was all faked, the derivatives only rose. And people wanted them.
That last bit is how JPMorgan got into the messy business of shorting Madoff, which actually was the right call, but now looks pretty bad.
It is normally very hard to short a hedge fund. Most don't have shares that trade. And when they do, they are for the parent company and not the fund. But when you create a derivative based on a hedge fund, as JPMorgan did, you create the opportunity for a short. The buyer of the derivative is going "long," and the seller is going "short." And in this case, it was JPMorgan that was the seller of Madoff-linked derivatives, at one point as much as a few hundred million.
For a time, JPMorgan hedged its bet, in part by putting some of the bank's own money into Madoff-related funds. But in the fall of 2008, JPMorgan suddenly pulled nearly 80% of that money out. That left it essentially short Madoff.
But it didn't get its short right either. According to the settlement, JPMorgan bankers were worried that they were "exposed to substantial risk in the event that Madoff Securities continue to perform successfully." Madoff, even if it was a fraud, could continue to fake his returns for a while longer. That would mean losses for JPMorgan's short position.
So they eventually decided just to get out of Madoff completely. In late 2008, the bank spent nearly $75 million canceling all the equity derivatives it had left related to Madoff, except for $5 million. It held onto that position even after finally reporting in mid-October 2008 to British authorities that it feared Madoff was a fraud.
In late November 2008, just two weeks before Bernie was arrested, JPMorgan, according to the Justice Department's settlement, got an offer to rip up that last $5 million short bet against Madoff. The bank declined, with a trader replying that they thought the short bet was "as of today ... very valuable."
That was the best Madoff trade JPMorgan made; that is, until Tuesday.
Source: CNN Money
Hidden in the document detailing Tuesday's settlement between the Department of Justice and JPMorgan Chase over Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was this nugget: JPMorgan was essentially shorting Madoff.
In other words, it wasn't only that JPMorgan (JPM) ignored and failed to report to authorities the numerous red flags its employees encountered over the 20 years it served as the main banker to the largest financial fraud in history. To be sure, JPMorgan did that. But on top of that, the bank was actually betting that Madoff was a fraud, and presumably expecting to collect when others found out.
Given that fact, it's not much of a surprise that JPMorgan decided to settle for $1.7 billion rather than fight the charges.
JPMorgan is essentially being penalized for being Madoff's banker. But the big bank did a lot of business with Madoff over the years. It had the Madoff funds' main bank account. It also invested in Madoff through feeder funds. And it created derivatives that it sold to people who couldn't get into a Madoff fund but still wanted to profit from the performance of Madoff's hedge fund. The derivatives were supposed to rise and fall with Madoff's performance. But since it was all faked, the derivatives only rose. And people wanted them.
That last bit is how JPMorgan got into the messy business of shorting Madoff, which actually was the right call, but now looks pretty bad.
It is normally very hard to short a hedge fund. Most don't have shares that trade. And when they do, they are for the parent company and not the fund. But when you create a derivative based on a hedge fund, as JPMorgan did, you create the opportunity for a short. The buyer of the derivative is going "long," and the seller is going "short." And in this case, it was JPMorgan that was the seller of Madoff-linked derivatives, at one point as much as a few hundred million.
For a time, JPMorgan hedged its bet, in part by putting some of the bank's own money into Madoff-related funds. But in the fall of 2008, JPMorgan suddenly pulled nearly 80% of that money out. That left it essentially short Madoff.
But it didn't get its short right either. According to the settlement, JPMorgan bankers were worried that they were "exposed to substantial risk in the event that Madoff Securities continue to perform successfully." Madoff, even if it was a fraud, could continue to fake his returns for a while longer. That would mean losses for JPMorgan's short position.
So they eventually decided just to get out of Madoff completely. In late 2008, the bank spent nearly $75 million canceling all the equity derivatives it had left related to Madoff, except for $5 million. It held onto that position even after finally reporting in mid-October 2008 to British authorities that it feared Madoff was a fraud.
In late November 2008, just two weeks before Bernie was arrested, JPMorgan, according to the Justice Department's settlement, got an offer to rip up that last $5 million short bet against Madoff. The bank declined, with a trader replying that they thought the short bet was "as of today ... very valuable."
That was the best Madoff trade JPMorgan made; that is, until Tuesday.
Source: CNN Money
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Why the matric pass rate is not a reliable benchmark of education quality
Jacob Zuma has hailed the matric pass rate as a “significant improvement”. But is the education system “on the right track”? As we discovered, matric results are not a reliable barometer of education quality.
For the fifth year in a row, South Africa’s education authorities have announced dramatic improvements in the matric pass rate.
“[W]e are sending a strong message that basic education under the new administration has the capacity to improve the quality of education in South Africa,” Angie Motshekga, the Minister of Basic Education, said this week as she made the announcement.
“[T]his is the best matric class since 1994,” South African president Jacob Zuma enthused. “We are…pleased to note this consistently upward trend in the matric results, with the pass rate going from 62.6% in 2008, dipping to 60.6% in 2009, only to rise to 67.8% in 2010, 70.2% in 2011 and 73.9% in 2012.” (Note: It hasn’t been entirely consistent. As Zuma himself pointed out, the pass rate fell by two percent in 2009)
A ‘massive fraud’
South African children attend school on March 13, 2009 under a tree in the Eastern Cape village of Libode. Others have been far less complimentary.
In a scathing opinion piece, Jonathan Jansen, the vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State and a prominent commentator on education, wrote that the country’s education system was a “massive fraud”.
Government “wrongly, but conveniently” used the matric results as “a barometer of the state of the school system” when all other data “reveal we have been stagnating, or doing worse”, Jansen argued.
The opposition Democratic Alliance has called on Motshekga to “institute a full-scale independent audit of the 2013 results”, citing concerns over the quality of the markers, the process of moderation and the high dropout rate.
‘On the right track’
While conceding that there is “still a lot of work that needs to be done”, Motshekga remains adamant that education in South Africa is on the “right track”.
Addressing a business briefing hosted by The New Age newspaper yesterday, Motshekga said that the pass rate – which has improved from 60.9% in 2009 to 78.2% in 2013 – is “an indication that indeed the system is on the right track”.
She also claimed that “[t]here is overwhelming evidence that we are improving learner performance”.
Is the system really on the right path? And has the quality of education in South Africa improved along with the pass rate?
Minister contradicted by her own department
South African Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga with President Jacob Zuma at the European Union headquarters in Brussels. For starters, Motshekga’s claim that the increase in the pass rate “is an indication that indeed the system is on the right track” is contradicted by her own department.
The department of basic education states on its website that “[c]ontrary to popular belief, the matric pass rate on its own is not a good measure of academic achievement in the schooling system, nor was the pass rate ever designed for this”. Rather, the pass rate serves as a “measure of the opportunities open to our youths”.
It goes on to add: “Comparing pass rates in different years is in fact not like comparing apples to apples… Examinations like our matric are simply not designed to compare the performance of the schooling system across years. They are designed to test whether the individual learner qualifies for a certificate, based on the subjects the learner has chosen.”
The department suggests that “[i]f one wants to compare how well the system is doing, one should turn to testing systems like the international TIMSS and SACMEQ programmes, where South Africa has participated for some years.”
High dropout rate skews results
A further flaw in using the matric pass rate as a barometer of national performance is that thousands of school pupils drop out long before they reach their final year. The dropout rate is not taken into account in the final pass rate.
For example, when the 2013 matric class started grade one in 2002, there were 1,261,827 pupils. But by the time they came to sit for their final exams, their numbers had fallen to 562,112.
Nicholas Spaull, a researcher at Stellenbosch University who focuses on primary education, says that “students are pushed through the system until grade 10, and then schools realise that if they put these kids through, they are not going to pass grade 12”.
“Getting low pass rates in matric is problematic for schools, so they weed out these students.”
The ‘culling process’
A group of schoolchildren in central Pretoria. Photo: AFP/Alexander JoeThe matric rate is thus bumped up and gives no indication of how the 50% that fall by the wayside are doing. Jansen, in his opinion piece, called it a “culling process” that has left behind half a million people with little or no proper education.
Mary Metcalfe, former head of the Wits University School of Education and a former provincial government minister for education in South Africa’s Gauteng province, echoes these concerns. “[The pass rate] doesn’t tell us about the large number of children who didn’t make matric, who didn’t pass grade ten, who didn’t pass grade 11 and who failed at grade 12,” she said.
The dropout rate has had a significant impact. A 2011 report revealed that “60% of youths are left with no qualification at all beyond the Grade 9 level”.
Pupils are choosing easier subjects
Whether as a result of school pressure or individual choice, pupils are increasingly taking easier subjects.
In 2010, 263,034 full-time pupils wrote mathematics. This decreased to 241,509 pupils in 2013. Conversely, numbers of full-time pupils writing mathematical literacy, the easier subject, increased from 280,836 in 2010 to 324,097 in 2013.
The department of basic education acknowledges the impact this has on the final pass rate. “A key factor is the spread of learners across subjects. When this changes, the pass rate can change, even if performance in individual subjects remains the same. In particular, if learners move to easier subjects, more learners pass.”
Good performances skew the average
The matric results also conceal the underperformance of the majority of pupils who write the examination. Strong performances in a minority of schools will mask the poor performance of the majority of schools that are judged as dysfunctional.
This skews the average, and does not present a true reflection of the mean for most pupils. This point was also highlighted in Jansen’s criticism of the matric results. “[I]f you removed the top 20% of schools – mainly former white, privileged schools – from the national averages, then a very dark picture emerges of a mainly black and poor school system performing far below what the combined results show,” he wrote.
Conclusion – Matric pass rate doesn’t mean education is on the right track
The improvement in the matric pass rate is good news for those concerned, but it is not a sign that the “system is on the right track”, nor that the quality of the education system is improving. An Africa Check report looking at claims made about the 2012 matric results came to the same conclusions.
The matric results are not a good measure of academic achievement in the education system. As the department has acknowledged, they are not designed for yearly comparison or to be a reflection of academic achievement in the education system. The good performance of a minority of schools can also skew the results, as can pupils electing to take easier subjects.
The results only account for about half of those who entered school together. South Africa’s high dropout rate means that many young people will never get the chance to write their matric examinations, let alone pass them.
Source: Africa Check
For the fifth year in a row, South Africa’s education authorities have announced dramatic improvements in the matric pass rate.
“[W]e are sending a strong message that basic education under the new administration has the capacity to improve the quality of education in South Africa,” Angie Motshekga, the Minister of Basic Education, said this week as she made the announcement.
“[T]his is the best matric class since 1994,” South African president Jacob Zuma enthused. “We are…pleased to note this consistently upward trend in the matric results, with the pass rate going from 62.6% in 2008, dipping to 60.6% in 2009, only to rise to 67.8% in 2010, 70.2% in 2011 and 73.9% in 2012.” (Note: It hasn’t been entirely consistent. As Zuma himself pointed out, the pass rate fell by two percent in 2009)
A ‘massive fraud’
South African children attend school on March 13, 2009 under a tree in the Eastern Cape village of Libode. Others have been far less complimentary.
In a scathing opinion piece, Jonathan Jansen, the vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State and a prominent commentator on education, wrote that the country’s education system was a “massive fraud”.
Government “wrongly, but conveniently” used the matric results as “a barometer of the state of the school system” when all other data “reveal we have been stagnating, or doing worse”, Jansen argued.
The opposition Democratic Alliance has called on Motshekga to “institute a full-scale independent audit of the 2013 results”, citing concerns over the quality of the markers, the process of moderation and the high dropout rate.
‘On the right track’
While conceding that there is “still a lot of work that needs to be done”, Motshekga remains adamant that education in South Africa is on the “right track”.
Addressing a business briefing hosted by The New Age newspaper yesterday, Motshekga said that the pass rate – which has improved from 60.9% in 2009 to 78.2% in 2013 – is “an indication that indeed the system is on the right track”.
She also claimed that “[t]here is overwhelming evidence that we are improving learner performance”.
Is the system really on the right path? And has the quality of education in South Africa improved along with the pass rate?
Minister contradicted by her own department
South African Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga with President Jacob Zuma at the European Union headquarters in Brussels. For starters, Motshekga’s claim that the increase in the pass rate “is an indication that indeed the system is on the right track” is contradicted by her own department.
The department of basic education states on its website that “[c]ontrary to popular belief, the matric pass rate on its own is not a good measure of academic achievement in the schooling system, nor was the pass rate ever designed for this”. Rather, the pass rate serves as a “measure of the opportunities open to our youths”.
It goes on to add: “Comparing pass rates in different years is in fact not like comparing apples to apples… Examinations like our matric are simply not designed to compare the performance of the schooling system across years. They are designed to test whether the individual learner qualifies for a certificate, based on the subjects the learner has chosen.”
The department suggests that “[i]f one wants to compare how well the system is doing, one should turn to testing systems like the international TIMSS and SACMEQ programmes, where South Africa has participated for some years.”
High dropout rate skews results
A further flaw in using the matric pass rate as a barometer of national performance is that thousands of school pupils drop out long before they reach their final year. The dropout rate is not taken into account in the final pass rate.
For example, when the 2013 matric class started grade one in 2002, there were 1,261,827 pupils. But by the time they came to sit for their final exams, their numbers had fallen to 562,112.
Nicholas Spaull, a researcher at Stellenbosch University who focuses on primary education, says that “students are pushed through the system until grade 10, and then schools realise that if they put these kids through, they are not going to pass grade 12”.
“Getting low pass rates in matric is problematic for schools, so they weed out these students.”
The ‘culling process’
A group of schoolchildren in central Pretoria. Photo: AFP/Alexander JoeThe matric rate is thus bumped up and gives no indication of how the 50% that fall by the wayside are doing. Jansen, in his opinion piece, called it a “culling process” that has left behind half a million people with little or no proper education.
Mary Metcalfe, former head of the Wits University School of Education and a former provincial government minister for education in South Africa’s Gauteng province, echoes these concerns. “[The pass rate] doesn’t tell us about the large number of children who didn’t make matric, who didn’t pass grade ten, who didn’t pass grade 11 and who failed at grade 12,” she said.
The dropout rate has had a significant impact. A 2011 report revealed that “60% of youths are left with no qualification at all beyond the Grade 9 level”.
Pupils are choosing easier subjects
Whether as a result of school pressure or individual choice, pupils are increasingly taking easier subjects.
In 2010, 263,034 full-time pupils wrote mathematics. This decreased to 241,509 pupils in 2013. Conversely, numbers of full-time pupils writing mathematical literacy, the easier subject, increased from 280,836 in 2010 to 324,097 in 2013.
The department of basic education acknowledges the impact this has on the final pass rate. “A key factor is the spread of learners across subjects. When this changes, the pass rate can change, even if performance in individual subjects remains the same. In particular, if learners move to easier subjects, more learners pass.”
Good performances skew the average
The matric results also conceal the underperformance of the majority of pupils who write the examination. Strong performances in a minority of schools will mask the poor performance of the majority of schools that are judged as dysfunctional.
This skews the average, and does not present a true reflection of the mean for most pupils. This point was also highlighted in Jansen’s criticism of the matric results. “[I]f you removed the top 20% of schools – mainly former white, privileged schools – from the national averages, then a very dark picture emerges of a mainly black and poor school system performing far below what the combined results show,” he wrote.
Conclusion – Matric pass rate doesn’t mean education is on the right track
The improvement in the matric pass rate is good news for those concerned, but it is not a sign that the “system is on the right track”, nor that the quality of the education system is improving. An Africa Check report looking at claims made about the 2012 matric results came to the same conclusions.
The matric results are not a good measure of academic achievement in the education system. As the department has acknowledged, they are not designed for yearly comparison or to be a reflection of academic achievement in the education system. The good performance of a minority of schools can also skew the results, as can pupils electing to take easier subjects.
The results only account for about half of those who entered school together. South Africa’s high dropout rate means that many young people will never get the chance to write their matric examinations, let alone pass them.
Source: Africa Check
Africa Loses Billions in Potential Trade Earnings, Falls Short of Vast Promise in Cross-Border Business
Press Release No:2012/239/AFR
Washington, February 7, 2012 – With African leaders now calling for a continental free trade area by 2017 to boost trade within the continent, a new World Bank report shows how African countries are losing out on billions of dollars in potential trade earnings every year because of high trade barriers with neighboring countries, and that it is easier for Africa to trade with the rest of the world than with itself.
According to the new report―De-Fragmenting Africa: Deepening Regional Trade Integration in Goods and Services―regional fragmentation could become even more costly for the continent with new World Bank forecasts suggesting that economic slowdown in the Eurozone could shave Africa’s growth by up to 1.3 percentage points this year. As the authors write, “while uncertainty surrounds the global economy and stagnation is likely to continue in traditional markets in Europe and North America, enormous opportunities for cross-border trade within Africa in food products, basic manufactures and services remain unexploited.”
The reports says this situation deprives the continent of new sources of economic growth, new jobs, and sharply falling poverty, factors which accompanied significant trade integration in East Asia and other regions. The cross-border production networks that have spurred economic dynamism in other regions, especially East Asia, have yet to materialize in Africa.
“It is clear that Africa is not reaching its potential for regional trade, despite the fact that its benefits are enormous—they create larger markets, help countries diversify their economies, reduce costs, improve productivity and help reduce poverty.” says Obiageli "Oby" Ezekwesili, The World Bank’s Vice President for Africa, and a former Nigerian Minister of Extractive Industries. “Yet trade and non-trade barriers remain significant and fall most heavily and disproportionately on poor traders, most of whom are women. African leaders must now back aspiration with action and work together to align the policies, institutions and investments needed to unblock these barriers and to create a dynamic regional market on a scale worthy of Africa’s one billion people and its roughly $2 trillion economy."
In a special World Bank video produced for the report, women traders on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighboring countries in the Great Lakes region describe how they routinely encounter violence, threats, demands for bribes, and sexual harassment, at the hands of the large numbers of customs and other government officials at the border. As one egg and sugar trader from Goma says on the video: “I buy my eggs in Rwanda; as soon as I cross to Congo I give one egg to every official who asks me. Some days I give away more than 30 eggs!”
Barriers blunt trade in goods as well as services
The report says that until the onset of the financial crisis, most sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries grew rapidly and often at much higher rates than the world average. Economic growth in these countries was robust and driven by the boom in commodity prices, which led to very high growth in export values, especially for minerals, to new fast-growing markets such as India and China.
While exports have grown strongly over the last decade, and the region’s trade has recovered well from the global crisis, the impact on unemployment and poverty has been disappointing in many countries. Unemployment remains around 24 percent in South Africa. In Tanzania, extreme income-poverty appears to have remained broadly constant at around 35 percent of the population. This shows that export growth has typically been fueled by a small number of mineral and primary products with limited impacts on the wider economy and that formal sectors remain small in many countries.
As a result, the report suggests that Africa will have to diversify its exports from depending solely on precious metals and other commodities and encourage more people to trade goods and professional services in accounting, law, education, healthcare, among others. The region’s large number of young people also calls for significant numbers of new jobs, intensive trade, and growth.
“Imagine the benefits of allowing African doctors, nurses, teacher, engineers and lawyers to practice anywhere in the continent, but responsibility for making this happen lies with countries first and foremost,” says Marcelo Giugale, the World Bank’s Africa Director for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management. “The final prize is clear: helping Africans trade goods and services with each other. Few contributions carry more development power than that.”
Changes are needed in three areas
To escape the current straightjacket of trade fragmentation, the report says that African leaders, need to pursue changes in three key areas.
1. Improving cross-border trade, especially by small poor traders, many of whom are women, by simplifying border procedures, limiting the number of agencies at the border and increasing the professionalism of officials, supporting traders associations, improving the flow of information on market opportunities, and assisting in the spread of new technologies such as cross-border mobile banking that improve access to finance.
2. Removing a range of non-tariff barriers to trade, such as restrictive rules of origin, import and export bans, and onerous and costly import and export licensing procedures
3. Reforming regulations and immigration rules that limit the substantial potential for cross-border trade and investment in services.
In one notable example of trade barriers, report co-editors Paul Brenton and Gozde Isik of the World Bank describe how the South African supermarket chain Shoprite spends US$20,000 a week on import permits to distribute meat, milk, and plant-based goods to its stores in Zambia alone. For all countries it operates in, approximately 100 (single entry) import permits are applied for every week; this can rise up to 300 per week in peak periods. As a result of these and other requirements, there can be up to 1,600 documents accompanying each truck Shoprite sends with a load that crosses a border in the region.
As the co-editors write, “lack of coordination across government ministries and regulatory authorities also causes significant delays, particularly in authorizing trade for new products. Another South African retailer took three years to get permission to export processed beef and pork from South Africa to Zambia.”
How the World Bank supports regional integration
Trade and regional integration are core elements of the Bank’s new Africa strategy, launched in March 2011, to help countries create opportunities for their transformation and sustained growth. The Bank has doubled its investment in regional integration from US$2.1 billion in 2008 to US$4.2 billion in July 2011, and it will rise to $5.7 billion by July 2012.
Source: World Bank
Washington, February 7, 2012 – With African leaders now calling for a continental free trade area by 2017 to boost trade within the continent, a new World Bank report shows how African countries are losing out on billions of dollars in potential trade earnings every year because of high trade barriers with neighboring countries, and that it is easier for Africa to trade with the rest of the world than with itself.
According to the new report―De-Fragmenting Africa: Deepening Regional Trade Integration in Goods and Services―regional fragmentation could become even more costly for the continent with new World Bank forecasts suggesting that economic slowdown in the Eurozone could shave Africa’s growth by up to 1.3 percentage points this year. As the authors write, “while uncertainty surrounds the global economy and stagnation is likely to continue in traditional markets in Europe and North America, enormous opportunities for cross-border trade within Africa in food products, basic manufactures and services remain unexploited.”
The reports says this situation deprives the continent of new sources of economic growth, new jobs, and sharply falling poverty, factors which accompanied significant trade integration in East Asia and other regions. The cross-border production networks that have spurred economic dynamism in other regions, especially East Asia, have yet to materialize in Africa.
“It is clear that Africa is not reaching its potential for regional trade, despite the fact that its benefits are enormous—they create larger markets, help countries diversify their economies, reduce costs, improve productivity and help reduce poverty.” says Obiageli "Oby" Ezekwesili, The World Bank’s Vice President for Africa, and a former Nigerian Minister of Extractive Industries. “Yet trade and non-trade barriers remain significant and fall most heavily and disproportionately on poor traders, most of whom are women. African leaders must now back aspiration with action and work together to align the policies, institutions and investments needed to unblock these barriers and to create a dynamic regional market on a scale worthy of Africa’s one billion people and its roughly $2 trillion economy."
In a special World Bank video produced for the report, women traders on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and neighboring countries in the Great Lakes region describe how they routinely encounter violence, threats, demands for bribes, and sexual harassment, at the hands of the large numbers of customs and other government officials at the border. As one egg and sugar trader from Goma says on the video: “I buy my eggs in Rwanda; as soon as I cross to Congo I give one egg to every official who asks me. Some days I give away more than 30 eggs!”
Barriers blunt trade in goods as well as services
The report says that until the onset of the financial crisis, most sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries grew rapidly and often at much higher rates than the world average. Economic growth in these countries was robust and driven by the boom in commodity prices, which led to very high growth in export values, especially for minerals, to new fast-growing markets such as India and China.
While exports have grown strongly over the last decade, and the region’s trade has recovered well from the global crisis, the impact on unemployment and poverty has been disappointing in many countries. Unemployment remains around 24 percent in South Africa. In Tanzania, extreme income-poverty appears to have remained broadly constant at around 35 percent of the population. This shows that export growth has typically been fueled by a small number of mineral and primary products with limited impacts on the wider economy and that formal sectors remain small in many countries.
As a result, the report suggests that Africa will have to diversify its exports from depending solely on precious metals and other commodities and encourage more people to trade goods and professional services in accounting, law, education, healthcare, among others. The region’s large number of young people also calls for significant numbers of new jobs, intensive trade, and growth.
“Imagine the benefits of allowing African doctors, nurses, teacher, engineers and lawyers to practice anywhere in the continent, but responsibility for making this happen lies with countries first and foremost,” says Marcelo Giugale, the World Bank’s Africa Director for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management. “The final prize is clear: helping Africans trade goods and services with each other. Few contributions carry more development power than that.”
Changes are needed in three areas
To escape the current straightjacket of trade fragmentation, the report says that African leaders, need to pursue changes in three key areas.
1. Improving cross-border trade, especially by small poor traders, many of whom are women, by simplifying border procedures, limiting the number of agencies at the border and increasing the professionalism of officials, supporting traders associations, improving the flow of information on market opportunities, and assisting in the spread of new technologies such as cross-border mobile banking that improve access to finance.
2. Removing a range of non-tariff barriers to trade, such as restrictive rules of origin, import and export bans, and onerous and costly import and export licensing procedures
3. Reforming regulations and immigration rules that limit the substantial potential for cross-border trade and investment in services.
In one notable example of trade barriers, report co-editors Paul Brenton and Gozde Isik of the World Bank describe how the South African supermarket chain Shoprite spends US$20,000 a week on import permits to distribute meat, milk, and plant-based goods to its stores in Zambia alone. For all countries it operates in, approximately 100 (single entry) import permits are applied for every week; this can rise up to 300 per week in peak periods. As a result of these and other requirements, there can be up to 1,600 documents accompanying each truck Shoprite sends with a load that crosses a border in the region.
As the co-editors write, “lack of coordination across government ministries and regulatory authorities also causes significant delays, particularly in authorizing trade for new products. Another South African retailer took three years to get permission to export processed beef and pork from South Africa to Zambia.”
How the World Bank supports regional integration
Trade and regional integration are core elements of the Bank’s new Africa strategy, launched in March 2011, to help countries create opportunities for their transformation and sustained growth. The Bank has doubled its investment in regional integration from US$2.1 billion in 2008 to US$4.2 billion in July 2011, and it will rise to $5.7 billion by July 2012.
Source: World Bank
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
The Foreclosure Crisis
What happened to all the homes foreclosed on when the housing bubble burst? Millions of people lost their homes and most of their life savings when the value of their homes plummeted during the most recent financial collapse. Many found they could not keep up with mortgage payments, either because they lost their jobs during the recession or because they were overextended financially for some other reason. Some would say many never should have been offered the loans in the first place. The fact remains that many people went from pursuing the “American Dream” of home ownership to struggling just to keep a roof over their heads by renting in a very short span of time.
The banks lost tons of money on loans that would never be paid in full, but they did have something very tangible in place of the money – the property. The real estate still belonged to them. Home buyers were left with nothing after pouring thousands of dollars into the effort to purchase a home, only to be turned out when they simply did not have the resources to complete the transaction. The banks were promptly bailed out by the taxpayers, despite questionable lending practices that ultimately resulted in sizable settlements. Little of the proceeds of these settlements ultimately made it into the hands of the people actually wronged. Some of the states used large chunks of the settlement money to fill budget holes instead of compensating former homeowners for their losses.
Many contend that being able to just pay some money, often obtained by questionable means to begin with, without admitting any guilt on the part of the lending institutions or any of their executives was inadequate punishment for the serious nature of the wrongs perpetrated. That the companies were willing to spend that much money to avoid criminal prosecution or admission of any guilt indicates our government may have let them off too lightly. Certainly many of those most affectedly believe that is the case.
The result of all the foreclosure activity was the availability of enormous numbers of homes to be resold, often in bulk, for vastly reduced prices. Who better to step into the void created by the individuals forced into foreclosure than large institutional buyers – hedge funds and other private equity companies capable of raising large amounts of capital to invest in the family home market. This happened to a large degree. particularly in areas of the country where the housing market became the most depressed in terms of property values. The idea was often to turn these properties into rental units until such time as property values returned to levels that would allow them to be sold at a tidy profit. The result could then end up being that people who had lost their homes to foreclosure would end up renting similar property from one of these large institutional owners. They would have a place to live, but be unable to accumulate any equity in the property to be used in the future as a cushion against possible financial difficulties, or to pass on to heirs.
In effect, this trend has resulted in even further redistribution of wealth in this country upward – from the poor and particularly the middle working class people to the wealthy. Investors in private equity companies and hedge funds on this scale do not, for the most part, supplement their low wage incomes with food stamps or social security checks. People who live from paycheck to paycheck (believe me, there are many more of us than the Wall Street crowd would like us to believe) do not have spare change to put into a hedge fund waiting for the profits to start rolling in.
So the banks either get their money back from the bailout, or from the proceeds from reselling the repossessed real estate. The large investors get their money back with a profit for just collecting rent or repairing and reselling the properties. The only people who have little or nothing to show for their efforts are those who toiled to earn enough money to start trying to purchase a home, only to see it all evaporate in a sudden economic downturn. Their money ended up in the hands of the flimflam artists who sold them the rotten loans in the first place, along with those wealthy enough to buy the properties at rock bottom prices and further profit from them upon a resurgence in the real estate market.
Something is drastically wrong with a system such as ours which enables a very small percentage of the population to profit greatly at the expense of so many more others. The notion that only minimal amounts of money (in terms of the enormous wealth gained in the process) are seen by the powers that be to be adequate recompense for the misery created by these transactions is appalling. These companies and people produced far more economic damage to far more people than Bernie Madoff ever dreamed of. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison. They received bonuses. Attempts begun at effectively regulating the responsible financial institutions to ensure that a repeat performance can be avoided have been stymied at every turn by politicians, many of whom are beholden to the very interests they claim to want to regulate.
Some say we have the best government money can buy. It certainly serves the moneyed interests far better than rest of us. There are some elected officials willing to stand up to them and fight for rest of us. Unfortunately, they are currently a small minority in Congress and the legislatures of most states. Until we get effective regulation of the financial services industry to prevent future robbery of this sort, the economic inequality and impoverishment of ever more members of our society will continue. We need to back those who are willing to stand up for us and increase their numbers and influence in our government at every opportunity. Never again should this sort of disaster be allowed to be perpetrated on such a large segment of the American people with absolutely no accountability on the part of those responsible for it. Never again should the victims (in this case, the American taxpayers) be held responsible for financing this sort of economic chicanery, while those responsible stash their take in tax shelters and pay not a dime of their own money in fines or spend as much as a day in prison. This is a case where the punishment has to this point fallen far short of the seriousness of the crime.
Further Suggested Readings:
Wall Street Hedge Funds Buy Up Rental Properties
Hedge Funds As Landlords? In Search of Returns, Wall Street Buys Up Foreclosed Homes
Hedge Fund Blackstone Buying $100 Million in Foreclosed Homes Every Week
Hedge Funds Crowd First-Time Buyers Out of Housing Market
Foreclosure Bulk Sales Program Allows Banks and Hedge Funds to Buy Low After Selling High
Hedge Funds Are Fueling Foreclosure Inflation
Private Equity Has Too Much Money to Spend on Homes
Source: Rcooley123's Blog
The banks lost tons of money on loans that would never be paid in full, but they did have something very tangible in place of the money – the property. The real estate still belonged to them. Home buyers were left with nothing after pouring thousands of dollars into the effort to purchase a home, only to be turned out when they simply did not have the resources to complete the transaction. The banks were promptly bailed out by the taxpayers, despite questionable lending practices that ultimately resulted in sizable settlements. Little of the proceeds of these settlements ultimately made it into the hands of the people actually wronged. Some of the states used large chunks of the settlement money to fill budget holes instead of compensating former homeowners for their losses.
Many contend that being able to just pay some money, often obtained by questionable means to begin with, without admitting any guilt on the part of the lending institutions or any of their executives was inadequate punishment for the serious nature of the wrongs perpetrated. That the companies were willing to spend that much money to avoid criminal prosecution or admission of any guilt indicates our government may have let them off too lightly. Certainly many of those most affectedly believe that is the case.
The result of all the foreclosure activity was the availability of enormous numbers of homes to be resold, often in bulk, for vastly reduced prices. Who better to step into the void created by the individuals forced into foreclosure than large institutional buyers – hedge funds and other private equity companies capable of raising large amounts of capital to invest in the family home market. This happened to a large degree. particularly in areas of the country where the housing market became the most depressed in terms of property values. The idea was often to turn these properties into rental units until such time as property values returned to levels that would allow them to be sold at a tidy profit. The result could then end up being that people who had lost their homes to foreclosure would end up renting similar property from one of these large institutional owners. They would have a place to live, but be unable to accumulate any equity in the property to be used in the future as a cushion against possible financial difficulties, or to pass on to heirs.
In effect, this trend has resulted in even further redistribution of wealth in this country upward – from the poor and particularly the middle working class people to the wealthy. Investors in private equity companies and hedge funds on this scale do not, for the most part, supplement their low wage incomes with food stamps or social security checks. People who live from paycheck to paycheck (believe me, there are many more of us than the Wall Street crowd would like us to believe) do not have spare change to put into a hedge fund waiting for the profits to start rolling in.
So the banks either get their money back from the bailout, or from the proceeds from reselling the repossessed real estate. The large investors get their money back with a profit for just collecting rent or repairing and reselling the properties. The only people who have little or nothing to show for their efforts are those who toiled to earn enough money to start trying to purchase a home, only to see it all evaporate in a sudden economic downturn. Their money ended up in the hands of the flimflam artists who sold them the rotten loans in the first place, along with those wealthy enough to buy the properties at rock bottom prices and further profit from them upon a resurgence in the real estate market.
Something is drastically wrong with a system such as ours which enables a very small percentage of the population to profit greatly at the expense of so many more others. The notion that only minimal amounts of money (in terms of the enormous wealth gained in the process) are seen by the powers that be to be adequate recompense for the misery created by these transactions is appalling. These companies and people produced far more economic damage to far more people than Bernie Madoff ever dreamed of. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison. They received bonuses. Attempts begun at effectively regulating the responsible financial institutions to ensure that a repeat performance can be avoided have been stymied at every turn by politicians, many of whom are beholden to the very interests they claim to want to regulate.
Some say we have the best government money can buy. It certainly serves the moneyed interests far better than rest of us. There are some elected officials willing to stand up to them and fight for rest of us. Unfortunately, they are currently a small minority in Congress and the legislatures of most states. Until we get effective regulation of the financial services industry to prevent future robbery of this sort, the economic inequality and impoverishment of ever more members of our society will continue. We need to back those who are willing to stand up for us and increase their numbers and influence in our government at every opportunity. Never again should this sort of disaster be allowed to be perpetrated on such a large segment of the American people with absolutely no accountability on the part of those responsible for it. Never again should the victims (in this case, the American taxpayers) be held responsible for financing this sort of economic chicanery, while those responsible stash their take in tax shelters and pay not a dime of their own money in fines or spend as much as a day in prison. This is a case where the punishment has to this point fallen far short of the seriousness of the crime.
Further Suggested Readings:
Wall Street Hedge Funds Buy Up Rental Properties
Hedge Funds As Landlords? In Search of Returns, Wall Street Buys Up Foreclosed Homes
Hedge Fund Blackstone Buying $100 Million in Foreclosed Homes Every Week
Hedge Funds Crowd First-Time Buyers Out of Housing Market
Foreclosure Bulk Sales Program Allows Banks and Hedge Funds to Buy Low After Selling High
Hedge Funds Are Fueling Foreclosure Inflation
Private Equity Has Too Much Money to Spend on Homes
Source: Rcooley123's Blog
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)