Pretoria - President Jacob Zuma has declared to world leaders that Africa is open for business.

Addressing the G20 business leaders in Toronto yesterday on the eve of the G8 and G20 Summits, Zuma said Africa can no longer be viewed only as a destination for development aid.

He said together with the developed world, there must be ways to promote stronger and more effective international partnerships for growth and development.

Zuma said African leaders do not want to create the impression that they have come cap-in-hand to ask for favours.

"We reiterate that Africa is open for business. It is open for trade and investment."

Zuma said Africa's recent economic success is "proving Afro-pessimists wrong."

Sub-Saharan Africa's growth rate is only surpassed by China and India. Zuma attributed this to good policies and regulations, business rescue programmes, job retention schemes and huge infrastructure programmes.

"There is every expectation that Africa's current pace of growth will remain at a high level, at around six percent per year," he said, also calling for fair trade.

"Our movement forward will be greatly enhanced by the speeding up of economic reforms to enable more inclusive and faster growth," he said.

He emphasised that changes in both the voting structure and leadership of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank will be crucial in ensuring a more stable and equitable financial infrastructure.

"The developing world has an equal right to run these institutions," said Zuma.

Reform of global financial systems will be a priority issue for many G20 members. China, India, and Brazil who will join South Africa in arguing that their economic strength needs to be better reflected in the architecture of major institutions.

Leadership of the World Bank and the IMF has been dominated by Europeans and Americans, which many analysts see as a strong Western influence and an imbalanced voting structure.

With the World Cup in full swing, the president said the country will never be the same again.

He says through the successful hosting of the event, Afro-pessimists are once again proven wrong.

"More than the infrastructure that our future generations will inherit, we remain hopeful that the various skills that our people acquired since we started working on this FIFA World Cup project, will prove useful going forward."

Above the economic benefits, Zuma said there will also be a legacy of education for the African continent- through the 1Goal Education for All Campaign.

By BuaNews

"When you write a cheque that bounces, you have to cover it somehow"

G8 aid promises due in 2010 have been missed by as much as $20 billion dollars – twice the gap admitted by world leaders, international agency Oxfam has warned on the eve of the G8 Summit in Canada.

Oxfam urged leaders of the G8 to deliver on their promises to poor people and invest in their future.

Five years ago, leaders gathered at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland responded to growing public pressure to fight poverty and pledged to increase overseas aid by $50 billion by 2010, with $25 billion of this going to Africa. But five years on, they have come up $20 billion short.

“When you write a cheque that bounces, you have to cover it somehow,” said Mark Fried, Oxfam’s spokesperson at the G8 Summit. “We urge the G8 to announce an emergency plan to provide the missing $20 billion by 2012.”

Oxfam also decried the G8’s attempt in their own accountability report to minimize their breach of faith by using 2009 dollars instead of 2004 dollars for the calculation and deducting for lower growth, thus showing only a $10 billion shortfall.

“Behind each dollar they fail to provide lies a child without schooling, a patient without medicine, a woman dying in childbirth for lack of care,” said Fried. “Empty promises don’t make nutritious meals, buy school books or life-saving medicines.”

The additional aid that has been delivered - an increase of $28 billion according to the OECD- has saved lives and has resulted in some breathtaking successes across the developing world.

“It seems to be fashionable to question whether aid really does improve the lives of poor people, but this could not be farther from the truth,” said Bill Nighy, actor and Oxfam Global ambassador. "Every hour around the world 40 women and girls die in pregnancy and childbirth, not because they are feckless, lazy or stupid, but because the nearest hospital is often 100 miles away or they cannot afford to pay for treatment. The G8 has a responsibility to live up to its promises and help these mothers-to-be and the one in seven children in Sub Saharan Africa who die before their fifth birthday."

Oxfam called on the G8 to look beyond their own economic struggles and set out how they will fulfil the promises to poor countries made in 2005. An emergency plan to deliver the full $50 billion by 2012, and a timetable of increases to reach 0.7% of national income by 2015 is now due. And Oxfam insisted aid pledges be new money, not money shuffled within shrinking aid budgets, forcing the poor to choose between food on the table and health care. Oxfam also called on the G8 to ensure last year’s commitment to provide $22 billion in aid for agriculture comes as new money. The agency warned that currently at most $6 billion of this pledge is additional.

“Rich countries bailed out their banks but no one is bailing out the poorest people,” said Fried. “The $20 billion owed to poor men and women is just 0.07% of the gross national income of G8 countries, yet it is enough to put every child in school or stop millions of children dying of malaria.”

Refugees and asylum-seekers risk being sent home regardless of need for protection

Amnesty International has strongly criticised human rights violations in Libya. In a new report, the organisation said that human rights are suffering in Libya as it continues to stall on reform despite the country's efforts to play a greater international role.

The report titled 'Libya of Tomorrow': What Hope for Human Rights? documents floggings used as punishment for adultery, indefinite detentions and abuses of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers as well as the legacy of unresolved cases of enforced disappearances of dissidents.

At the same time, the security forces remain immune from the consequences of their actions.

"If Libya is to have any international credibility, the authorities must ensure that no-one is above the law and that everyone, including the most vulnerable and marginalized, is protected by the law. The repression of dissent must end," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director at Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa programme.

Violations continue to be committed by the security forces, particularly the Internal Security Agency (ISA), who appear to have unchecked powers to arrest, detain and interrogate individuals suspected of dissent or of terrorism-related activities. Individuals can be held incommunicado for long periods, tortured and denied access to lawyers.

Hundreds continue to languish in Libyan jails after serving their sentences or having been cleared by the courts despite hundreds of releases in recent years, including of those detained unlawfully.

Mahmud Hamed Matar has been imprisoned since 1990. He was first held without trial for 12 years; and then convicted in a grossly unfair trial to life imprisonment. Statements reportedly obtained under torture or other duress were used as evidence.

His brother Jaballah Hamed Matar, a Libyan dissident, forcibly disappeared in Cairo in 1990. The Libyan authorities have not taken steps to investigate his disappearance.

During its visit to Jdeida Prison in May 2009, Amnesty International found six women convicted of zina (defined in Libyan law as sexual relations between a man and a woman outside a lawful marriage). Four of them were sentenced to between three and four years' imprisonment and two were sentenced to 100 lashes. Thirty-two more women were awaiting trial on charges of zina.

Mouna [not her real name] was arrested in December 2008, shortly after giving birth. The hospital administration at the Tripoli Medical Centre allegedly informed the police that she had given birth to a child outside marriage. She was arrested at the hospital, tried shortly and sentenced to 100 lashes.

The Libyan authorities also use the "war on terror" to justify the arbitrary detention of hundreds of individuals viewed as critics or a security threat, following the September 11th 2001 attacks in the US.

The US has returned a number of Libyan nationals from its Guantánamo bay detention centre or secret detention, including Ibn Al Sheikh Al Libi who is reported to have committed suicide in 2009 while being held in Abu Salim Prison. No details of the investigation into his death have been made public.

Libyan nationals suspected of terrorism-related activities returned to the country remain at risk of being detained incommunicado, tortured and tried in grossly unfair proceedings.

Amnesty International has observed a modest increase in the flexibility of the Libyan authorities towards criticism. Since late June 2008, protests by families of victims of the Abu Salim Prison killings of 1996, in which up to 1,200 detainees are believed to have been extra-judicially executed, have been allowed to take place.

But activists continue to face harassment including arrest; and the authorities have yet to respond to their demands for truth and justice.

Libya has released about 15 prisoners of conscience in the past two years; but failed to compensate them for violations suffered or to reform draconian legislation curtailing the rights to freedom of expression and association.

Migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers, many from across Africa, attempting to seek sanctuary in Italy, and the EU, instead face arrest, indefinite detention, and abuse in Libya, the report finds.

The country is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, so refugees and asylum-seekers risk being sent home regardless of their need for protection. In early June, the Libyan authorities told the UNHCR to leave the country, a move likely to have a severe impact on refugees and asylum seekers.

The death penalty continues to be used widely in Libya, with foreign nationals particularly affected it seems and can be imposed for a wide range of offences, including activities that amount to the peaceful exercise of rights to freedom of expression and association.

There were 506 individuals on death row in May 2009, around 50 per cent of them foreign nationals, the Director General of the Judicial Police told Amnesty International.

"Libya's international partners cannot ignore Libya's dire human rights record at the expense of their national interests," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.

"As a member of the international community, the Libyan authorities have a responsibility to respect their human rights obligations, and tackle their human rights record instead of concealing it. The contradiction of Libya being a member of the UN Human Rights Council, while refusing for the body's independent human rights experts to visit the country is striking."

“Bafana Bafana are out of the World Cup but they won the hearts and minds of all South Africans and the whole world tonight,” said 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa (OC) CEO Danny Jordaan after South Africa’s final group stage match against France in Mangaung/Bloemfontein tonight.

South Africa won the match but it was not enough for the host nation to progress past the group stage of the tournament.

“Yes they did not make it past the group stage but they did what the country asked of them – they played with pride, passion, skill and commitment, they gave their best. They did the national team jersey and every single South African proud and we want to thank them for what they’ve done for this country,” he added.

Jordaan also thanked South Africans for the tremendous support they have shown for the South African team.
“The passion and enthusiasm we have seen across the length and breadth of South Africa in recent weeks has made this tournament truly come alive for locals and visitors alike,” he said.

Jordaan does not believe that South Africa’s exit will affect the overall success of the tournament.
“It may be over for Bafana Bafana but it is not over for South Africa. This is still South Africa’s World Cup. We are not going home, the World Cup is happening in our home,” he said.

“South Africans have already proven their support for Team South Africa. Without millions of them we would not have delivered ten world-class stadiums, opened new airports, highways and train stations in record time or welcomed hundreds of thousands of new visitors to our country. We would not have already hosted more than half of the World Cup matches successfully,” he explained.

“I remain confident that South Africans will continue to be fantastic hosts for the next two and a half weeks and make the most of this incredible time in our country’s history, which has already seen us achieve so much,” said Jordaan.

Jordaan said that support for the tournament to date has met all expectations with a total of 1 570 447 people attending the first 32 matches (an average of 49,076). More than a million people have watched the matches at the ten FIFA Fan Fests in South Africa and hundreds of thousands more have watched the games in public viewing areas around the country, with World Cup matches also shattering television audience records in the country.

Durban has proved to be the most popular FIFA Fan Fest with 238,546 visitors from the start of the tournament until 20 June.