South Africa: Rekindling The South African Dream

Speech by Mamphela Ramphele

Fellow South African citizens, I am here today to invite you to join me on a journey to build the country of our dreams. I ask those of you of my generation: let us cast our minds back to the run up to 1994 and the moments immediately following the dawn of our freedom. Do you remember our patience and quiet dignity as we waited in long queues to cast our very first votes as citizens of a free South Africa? Do you remember how you choked with emotion and had goose bumps as you made your very first cross on the ballot? Do you remember the tears of joy and relief when we watched our first President, Rolihlahla Mandela, being honoured with a fly-past by the air-force that was to have its first democratically elected commander in chief? Do you remember how Madiba inspired us to action in these words of his inaugural address?

“Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.”

David Cameron in Liberia to focus on 'eradicating extreme poverty'

PM also calls for focus on education during visit to school with Liberian president ahead of role co-chairing UN poverty meeting

David Cameron has called for the next wave of international development targets to focus on extreme rather than relative poverty. The dispute about poverty targets is one of a set of differences due to be thrashed out at a UN high-level meeting on the next millennium development goals after 2015.
Cameron is co-chair of the panel that is meeting in Monrovia, Liberia.
Before the start of the panel on Friday, Cameron went to a local school with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the charismatic 74-year-old Liberian president. The children told them they needed books and computers. Cameron then asked what they wanted to be when they became adults and many replied doctors or lawyers. Cameron joked: "That is very impressive. In my country, they all want to be footballers or pop stars," before adding that was not fair.
The children had written a welcome sign for their two special guests in chalk on the blackboard in their dark and crowded classroom. Cameron told the children he would like world poverty goals to include higher quality education.

Zimbabwe 'would be shut down if it was a company'

Zimbabwe would be shut down if it were a private company, the finance minister has declared, days after joking that it only had $217 (£138) in the bank account.

Zimbabwean finance minister Tendai Biti Photo: AFP

Tendai Biti warned executives in Harare on Thursday that Zimbabwe is in a permanent economic crisis. He told a meeting of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries that it was "unacceptable that Zimbabwe continued to be trapped in a cycle of permanent depression or permanent crisis punctuated by periods of growth".Mr Biti added: "It is not sustainable. If Zimbabwe was a private company it would have closed down."

Earlier this week Mr Biti joked with the media that they had more money in their bank accounts than Zimbabwe, which only had $217 (£138) in the treasury on Tuesday although hours later the balance improved by about $30 million.

Zimbabwe is battling to emerge from a decade-long economic crisis after President Robert Mugabe destroyed the agriculture-based economy by evicting about 4,000 white commercial farmers.

Mr Biti slammed commercial banks, most of them foreign owned, for refusing to back treasury bills issued late last year. "They only offered a pathetic amount," he said.

Mr Biti and others in his Movement for Democratic Change party say fears of "indigenisation" stops much potential new investment.

Mr Mugabe's Zanu PF brought in a law that says all foreign companies must sell 51 per cent of shares to black Zimbabweans. So far most large international mining companies have complied with the law, but no locals have been able to afford to buy the majority shares.

The MDC is in an uncomfortable four-year-old inclusive government with Mr Mugabe's Zanu PF party, which ends when Zimbabweans vote in fresh elections later this year.

Opposition, rebels take key posts in new Central African Republic government

(Reuters) - Opposition parties and a rebel coalition took key ministerial posts, including finance and mining, in a new government announced on Sunday as part of a peace deal in the Central African Republic.

President Francois Bozize agreed in mid-January to the formation of a national unity government as part of the deal to end an insurgency which swept to within striking distance of Bangui, capital of the mineral-rich former French colony.
After days of tense negotiations, during which Bozize's supporters insisted he had the right to name key ministers, state radio announced on Sunday that opposition Prime Minister Nicolas Tiangaye would take the crucial finance ministry post in the new 32-member cabinet.
Tiangaye, a lawyer and leader of the opposition Republican Convention for Social Progress, was named premier on January 17 with the backing of the Seleka rebel coalition and asked to form a government tasked with leading the impoverished and strife-torn country to parliamentary elections within a year.

French national killed in Senegal's Casamance region

A French national was among four people killed in an attack in Senegal's Casamance region, south of the Gambia, the Senegalese army has said.

Four people, including a Frenchman, were killed in Senegal’s southern Casamance region when suspected separatist rebels clashed with government soldiers, a military source said on Saturday.
The shoot-out took place late on Friday after suspected members of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), which has led a low-level insurgency in the region since the 1980s, robbed a bank in the town of Kafoutine.