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| Britain Reviews Plans for 'Green Investment Bank' Finance chief Alistair Darling proposed a "Green Investment Bank" as part of government's pre-budget proposals. The bank would be dedicated to funding low-carbon, eco-friendly projects and businesses. www1.voanews.com |
South Africa v England: first Test, day five report England (356 & 228-9) draw with South Africa (418 & 301-7d)Graham Onions keeps out final over as England escape. telegraph.co.uk |
Why 2010 could be an own goal for the Rainbow Nation | Jonathan Steele The ANC is failing poor black South Africans, and next year's World Cup will only intensify scrutiny of Zuma's regimeWith the World Cup nearing, 2010 will be South Africa's year. The self-proclaimed Rainbow Nation will receive a rainbow crowd of visitors, the largest and most diverse group of tourists in its history. The spotlight on the country's progress since apartheid will be more intense than ever.The World Cup host, President Jacob Zuma, will bring Britain his message of success with a state visit here in March. Eight months in office, he has surprised his critics. He is more accessible to ordinary South Africans than his aloof predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. He is more willing to listen to colleagues than Nelson Mandela who, according to former ministers, could be brutal in cabinet, shutting speakers up by saying he had already taken his decision.Zuma accepts advice, including on matters where his past behaviour suggests he has different instincts. His recent speech calling for increased HIV/Aids awareness and a new funding for anti-retroviral drugs was a sharp correction to Mbeki's denialist line. But can Zuma make a difference on South Africa's social and economic problems?Mandela and Mbeki presided over the longest economic boom in the country's history. Zuma was unlucky to come to power just after the onset of the global economic crisis. Growth in 2010 is projected to fall by 2.6% at a time when western economies are already reviving.Zuma was also unlucky to arrive in Pretoria's Union Buildings, the seat of government, at "payback time". While the end of apartheid removed a vicious system of political inequality, the post-apartheid years have produced a widening of income disparities, leaving South Africa more unequal than its neighbours, Zambia and Zimbabwe. At 25% of the labour force, unemployment is massive. As the riots in several townships demonstrated a few months ago, black South Africans are increasingly angry.They have good cause. Private poverty and public lack of resources are visible everywhere. Visiting a school in a township not far from Johannesburg, we found that dozens of pupils have to walk over two hours from the shacks where they live each day. Class sizes average 50, and the cramped school has no assembly hall or gym. At least the pupils get a meal, and food parcels to tide them over the Christmas holiday, but even this vital help is not financed by the government. It comes from private donors.The good news is that jobless people's rage is no longer directed at immigrants. The xenophobic attacks on workers from Zimbabwe and other African countries in May 2008 have not been repeated. Instead of scapegoating the innocent, poor people are aiming their criticism at officials of the ruling party, the African National Congress, and demanding delivery of long-promised improvements. The bad news is that the government and the media seem unwilling to engage in serious debate, let alone action, on how to supply people with what they need.South Africa's press and blog sites are dominated by rightwing thinking. They regularly headline claims that the government is "lurching to the left" and that the Communist party and trade union allies are getting the upper hand. But Cosatu (the Congress of South African Trade Unions) and two other union federations supported the recent medium-term budget statement of the finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, even though he followed the ANC government's neoliberal trickle-down line of relying on foreign investment and exports to produce growth. He announced some grants for small businesses to retain workers rather than lay them off, but no large-scale public works or any serious redistribution of wealth through the tax system. South Africa's simplistic economic debate does not even recognise Keynesianism as a legitimate alternative to the failed ANC strategy of the last decade and a half.Bad too is the anti-intellectual tone of much of the ANC's discourse. When Kader Asmal – one of the movement's stalwarts and a former education minister – criticised plans to rename South Africa's police a "force" rather than a "service", Fikile Mbalula, the deputy police minister, exploded, saying Asmal's "vitriolic, coarse and vulgar antics smack of duplicity, deceit and double standards". Mbalula is a close friend of the loud-mouthed Julius Malema, the head of the ANC's youth league whom Zuma recently endorsed as a future leader of South Africa. Mbalula supports new instructions given to the police to kill suspects thought to be carrying arms ("Yes, shoot the bastards", he wrote in a recent column).Ironically, just as during apartheid South Africa's courts occasionally thwarted the state, they have become a key motor for reform today. The country's path-breaking constitution enshrines numerous social rights, including the "right to have access to adequate housing"; and in their search for better service delivery people are turning to judges rather than politicians. They recently won a major victory when the constitutional court struck down the KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act, which had allowed municipalities not only to evict squatters from public land but to force private landlords to kick their squatters out too.Shackdwellers (who consist of as many as 10% of South Africa's population) are increasingly organising themselves, independently of the ANC, the Communist party and the trade unions. They also see little hope in the Congress of the People, which broke from the ANC a year ago. It got 7% in last April's elections, but thanks to internal squabbles and resignations has crashed to 2%.With their new government-licensed permission to turn easily to violence, the police seem to have condoned, and perhaps instigated, an appalling machete attack in Durban against Abahlali baseMjondolo, the biggest of the new shackdwellers' movements. The attack left two people dead and the shackdwellers' leader in hiding, but Zuma's government refuses to establish an inquiry. South Africa has made huge strides since its first democratic government in 1994. But slippage is accelerating and Zuma needs to reverse it soon.South AfricaJacob ZumaWorld Cup 2010Thabo MbekiNelson MandelaZambiaZimbabwePovertyHIV infectionAids and HIVJonathan Steeleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Obama must show what he's learned from his first year mistakes | Michael Tomasky He spent a year trying to do things co-operatively, and the system has been unco-operative. Now he must take direct charge and not let Congress call the shotsA few days from now, on 20 January, Barack Obama will start his second year on the job. When he shaves that morning, he might well look at that fellow in the mirror and ask: all right, then, what have you learned? Let's try five important lessons.First, that the Republican party is and will remain in a state of permanent political warfare against him. When the memoirs come out many years from now, we will read about how shocked Obama was at the GOP's igneous resistance to anything he wanted to do. It's surprised me too. It's not that he or I expected the Republicans just to be nice people or patsies. It's that a handful of them in the Senate and the House of Representatives represent states or districts that Obama won, which in past contexts would have meant these legislators – three or four in the Senate, 15 or so in the House – would be willing to play ball. That isn't how the GOP works any more.Second, that his own party's legislators aren't anxious to do him any huge favours. You have a parliamentary system in Britain in which a party acts like … a party. Unified. Our GOP acts that way, because of its comparative ideological homogeneity. The Democrats do not, and will not. Of many extreme cases, the most egregious is probably a usually none too influential congressman from Michigan named Bart Stupak. He opposes abortion rights and is holding his vote for healthcare reform hostage to demands that will result in the pro-abortion rights party passing a huge law that will in fact impose new restrictions on funding for abortions. But the Democrats need his vote, and so he can dictate such terms.Third, that the liberal base will not have his back through thick and thin. There is some justification for anger on the left. When Obama speaks publicly about the importance of a public insurance option in the health bill, as he did last fall, while aides are privately telling legislators and lobbyists that the public option is negotiable, as some were last fall, that properly invites resentment. And yet it's also true that liberal activists are far too impatient – and in some cases willing and almost eager to indulge their own cynicism about the Democratic party and the US system.Fourth, that voters in the middle have remained doubtful of liberalism and distrustful that the government can do anything good in their lives. Obama's sweeping victory over John McCain was not, as I've written many times, an endorsement from voters for a strong swing back to the left. It was a rejection of conservatism, but not an embrace of liberalism. Those voters are more sceptical today than they were a year ago, and this is a serious problem.Fifth, that the American political media no longer do much of a job of living up to the lofty projects of telling the hard truths, holding public servants accountable, being the people's eyes and ears. The political media, for the most part, egg on and referee food fights, and arbitrate a capricious conventional wisdom. As declining revenues put more and more pressure on media for eyeballs and ratings and hits, this will increase. Media history over the long arc is far from glorious, but there was a period, from the 1950s through the 1980s, when civic responsibility was more central to American political journalism. That has diminished and will continue to do so.That's a fairly long shave, and one that risks more than a few nicks and cuts. But these are the five not so easy pieces that Obama has to try to arrange into a coherent governing strategy.In his first year, Obama didn't manage any of these especially adroitly. After healthcare passes, assuming it does, he and his White House need to show they've learned from the mistakes. He's still not in bad shape – 50% approval, about to sign historic legislation. But things are still so bad in the country – the economy and the dysfunctional political culture – that the sense is he is just holding his nose above the water line.Year two has to end with him being seen as having taken more direct charge over events. The economy has to be front and centre, and he can't let Congress call as many shots as he did with healthcare. He took the reins of this job at a terrible time, when things were as bad in the US as they've been in decades. He spent a year trying to do things co-operatively. The system has proven mostly unco-operative. Now it's up to him. It is he voters will judge, as the man in that mirror surely knows all too well.Barack ObamaUS politicsUS CongressMichael Tomaskyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Federer marches into third round Top seed Roger Federer eases into the third round of the Australian Open with an easy win over Victor Hanescu. news.bbc.co.uk |