Going Platinum: Lonmin and the Marikana

The precious metal platinum is what catalytic converters use to convert the toxic by-products of petrol combustion to something less poisonous.  Platinum is not easy to find in the Earth’s crust and 80% of it is found in South African nickel and copper mines.  One of the earlier companies to see the value in these mines was Tiny Rowlands’ Lonrho. Rowlands was a classic self-made 20^th century capitalist who turned Lonrho from an obscure farming and mining company into a multinational conglomerate.

Rowlands had no compunction with dealing with apartheid era South Africa for which hypocrite Prime Minister Ted Heath called Lonrho “the unacceptable face of capitalism." But while Rowland was making enemies in London, he knew how to do business in Africa. He made many friends among black African leaders including Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda and Muammar Gadhafi. When Mandela came to power, he didn’t throw out Lonrho but instead bestowed on Rowlands South Africa’s highest honour the Order of Good Hope in 1996. 

By then Rowlands was on the outer at Lonrho after he financed a film exonerating the Libyans of Lockerbie.  In 1999 Lonrho refocussed on its mining core business and renamed itself as Lonmin. The focus of that mining was the wealthy Bushveld Complex of northern South Africa around Johannesburg, home to the world’s largest collection of platinum group metals. It was a money-spinning venture as platinum prices soared. Xstrata saw the value and bought up 30% of the company. Of the 245 tonnes of platinum sold in 2010, almost half was used for vehicle emission control devices.

But by then the bottom was starting to fall out of Lonmin’s market. In March 2008 the global financial crisis was about to strike and platinum was one of the first casualties. The price started to plummet. Lonmin were never big fans of unions and suffered constant safety stoppages because of accidents, numerous labour strikes, and unplanned plant and equipment shutdowns. Yet they were also protected by an ANC-backed National Union of Mineworkers whose leader Cyril Ramaphosa ended up on the board of Lonmin.

But as the NUM flirted with management, its membership fled to more radical unions. There was also simmering resentment from locals who felt they were not getting their fair share of the mining boom. Social welfare organisation Bench Marks Foundation said low wages and social disintegration, crime, murder, rape and prostitution, unemployment and poverty amid the third richest platinum mine in the world, created an incubator rife for worker and community discontent.

On August 16, Lonmin shares plummeted 7 percent on news an illegal strike had paralysed all its South African operations. At its flagship operation in Marikana near Rustenburg, 100km north of Johannesburg,  Lonmin threatened to sack 3,000 rock drill operators if they fail to end a wildcat pay strike.  Clashes between unions claimed nine lives, including two police officers. 

Jeffrey Matunjwa of the Mineworkers and Construction Union defended the strike action. He told Al Jazeera they couldn’t stand by while bosses and senior management were getting fat cheques. "And these workers are subjected to poverty for life,” Matunjwa said. He said despite 18 years of post-apartheid democracy, most of the 28,000 mineworkers were still earning $360 a week “under those harsh conditions underground."

Matters came to a head on August 16. Members of an elite South African police unit were called into Marikana. They opened fire killing 34 strikers and wounding 78 others.  It was the largest single massacre on South African soil since Sharpeville in 1960 and a bloody reminder South African police had never departed from their apartheid-era role “as the brute enforcer of state power.” 

Police claim the strikers shot first, for which there is some evidence and many strikers were armed. But there is also evidence the return fire from police wasn’t indiscriminate. The Daily Maverick  estimated the majority of those who died were killed beyond the view of cameras at a nondescript collection of boulders some 300 metres away from the protest. They said heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood.

The only charges laid have been against 270 strikers initially charged with public violence and later murder. These charges were laid under the doctrine of ‘common purpose”, an apartheid era conceit kept by the new rulers.  Their lawyers write to Prime Minister Zuma saying it was inconceivable the strikers would have killed their own people.  Last Sunday the Director of Public Prosecutions for the North West dropped the common purpose charges.  They didn’t explain why but defended the initial decision on “a sound legal principle” and a “prosecution duty” to go for the highest charges. 

Yesterday a court released 100 of the 270 miners as most of the unions signed a peace pact with a Lonmin desperate to rid itself of the unwanted international attention. One union and non-union workers have not signed up to the deal so it remains a worrying time.  Lonmin has been losing 2,500 ounces of daily production since the strike started a month ago. With the price of platinum recovering since July to the point where only silver has gained more this year among precious metals, every day of lost production is costing them a lot of money.  The company will be looking for its state links to do whatever it takes to get their mines operational again.

Zuma strengthens South African alliance with China

South African President Jacob Zuma is looking for ways to cut his country’s trade deficit with its largest partner as he begins a three day visit to China. Last year South Africa ran a $2.7 billion trade deficit with China and Zuma’s Trade Minister explained why in a press conference on arrival in Beijing today. “In South Africa's export market to China there is a preponderance of primary products, and in our imports from China there is a preponderance of value-added goods," he said. Davies and his boss Zuma want Chinese manufacturers of power equipment, railway cars, solar water heaters and vehicles to consider setting up factories in South Africa.

The relationship between the two countries is growing in importance as China continues its push for influence across the continent of Africa. In the first six months of 2010, there was $10.8 billion trade between the two countries almost half as much again as the same period last year. Zuma will hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing and will also meet Premier Wen Jiabao and tour the World Expo site in Shanghai. Zuma will be accompanied by an enormous delegation of 300 ministers and businesspeople as the Africans aim to emulate the Chinese growth rate.

Zuma expects to sign a number of agreements and memorandums of understanding during the visit. These include a declaration on the establishment of a comprehensive strategic partnership, and MOUs on co-operation in the fields of geology and mineral resources, environment management, transport and railways. There will also be a business seminar in Beijing with over 200 South African business leaders and entrepreneurs to further enhance and strengthen economic co-operation. The visit will conclude on Thursday when Zuma views the South African Pavilion at the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.

The relationship between the two countries is one of the fastest growing in the world. The countries did not re-establish relations after the end of apartheid until 1998 but within 11 years China had overtaken the US to become SA’s largest exporter and importer of goods and services. Zuma has called the trip “crucial” with China National Nuclear Corp in talks to build a nuclear power plant in South Africa. The relationship is important to China too which imports SA iron ore, iron and steel to fuel its growing economy. Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said his government would encourage domestic companies to invest in South Africa's mining and resources sector.

According to Chinese State news agency Xinhua, Zuma and Jintao signed a Beijing Declaration in the Great Hall of the People earlier today. The declaration contained 38 bilateral cooperation agreements, including political dialogues, trade, investment, mineral exploration and agriculture to joint efforts in the UN and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. The declaration also promised to strengthen cooperation between the two nations in political and regional affairs by “establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership based on equality, mutual benefit and common development”.

Zuma’s China trip is a welcome relief as he faces mounting problems at home, with more than a million public sector workers striking. The success of the World Cup is a distant glow as a strike by more than a million public sector workers enters its second week. Strikers include teachers, healthcare workers, police, customs officials and clerks who are seeking pay raises of more than double the inflation rate. The strike is paralysing the economy and police have used rubber bullets to disperse angry protesters on the streets. Unions are pressing for a settlement but Zuma said he will not negotiate until he returns from China.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, the health of South Africa’s economy is direct tied to China whose demand for SA resources is keeping the rand high. The currency’s strength continues despite the strikes and persistently high unemployment and public-sector strikes. The public sector unions were crucial in getting Zuma the top job so it is likely he will meet their demands. This will push South Africa's already high inflation rate to well over 5 percent by year’s end, and lead to another cycle of pay demands next year. The 68-year-old president will need all the help he can get from his new Chinese alliances.

Invictus: a Morgan Freeman Mandela masterclass

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
(Invictus, William Ernest Henley, 1875).

This is the short poem that gave its name to Clint Eastwood’s most recent film. The poem was favourite of Nelson Mandela during his many years imprisoned in the horror of the shade at Robben Island. The story of the first year of his presidency after his 1994 election win and how it interwove with South Africa’s win in the 1995 rugby world cup makes for a superior couple of hours in entertainment in a typically thoughtful Clint Eastwood fashion. (photo:Wikipedia)

It makes for important viewing as South Africa is about to enter the world cup spotlight again, this time in the sport favoured by the black majority – football. Football would be hard enough to sell to an American audience, but promoting a movie in the US about Nelson Mandela, South Africa after apartheid and rugby is hard work even for a master filmmaker like Eastwood. Ideally it would have had an all South African cast but Hollywood backers demanded the star power of Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman (it is notable the movie poster has Damon facing the camera and Freeman with his back turned). Yet both these casting decisions are spot on. As Roger Ebert said, Eastwood is too old and too accomplished to have an interest in making a film only for money. Damon I always find the woodenest of actors but I also suspect that is all that is required to nail the character of Springbok captain Francois Pienaar.

For Freeman this is one of the great roles and one which he lives and breathes. Everyone knows what Nelson Mandela looks like, but Freeman allowed you to forget that for a couple of hours while he inhaled the spirit of the man. Unfortunately the American tendency to have all things end with cheesy triumph spoils the film somewhat as the Springbok’s world cup win was a somewhat illusory event on the road to rainbow nationhood. The nation remains deeply divided with the political power entrenched in ANC hands but most of the economic power still with the white minority. The mutual backslapping and cheering that seems to be compulsory to the ending of American films makes its way here though undoubtedly the 1995 victory was shared by nearly all South Africans (if perhaps not together).

What the film does brilliantly bring out is how Mandela used the Springboks as a political tool (though some aspects were fictionalised). The Boks were a despised key part of the apartheid establishment and a focus for world anger whenever they toured abroad. It was unsurprising that the ANC wanted to change the colours, symbols and nickname to the more benign “Proteas” (as used by the cricket team). What Mandela saw was the “bread and circuses” aspect of sport and how it could be used as a tool to unify the nation. That meant keeping the old symbols but divesting them of their original meaning.

The fairytale win of South Africa in that tournament is faithfully replicated. Rugby with its choreographed moves and often languid tempo lends itself well to cinematography (one of the reasons there has never been a great football movie is that the round ball code is too unpredictable). The characters of the players never much rise beyond predictable “black = terrorist” views so it is difficult to empathise with them. The sub-story of how Mandela’s black and white security staff deal with each other has more promise and more complex characters (the black leader’s injunction to a white guard to “smile” at a black meeting is one of the funnier moments).

But what the film really is about is Mandela, and the film really shines whenever there is a scene involving Morgan Freeman. It is easy to see how Matiba is venerated by black South Africans when the mirror of his soul is played with such rare accomplishment by Morgan Freeman. The real Nelson Mandela turns 92 this year. The UN have decided his birthday 18 July, will henceforth be known as Mandela Day. As secular saints go there are few finer, but Invictus is no hagiography. It is a noble tribute to a man whose unconquerable soul made him one of the world’s finest politicians of the 20th century.

50th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre

Sunday was the fiftieth anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, a day now called Human Rights Day, which was celebrated with rare political unity. According to The Sowetan a service was held at the Sharpeville cricket stadium which was attended by members of the ANC, United Democratic Movement, Democratic Alliance, African People's Convention, Independent Democrats and Inkatha Freedom Party. Each of the political parties present was given two minutes to deliver speeches. Keynote speaker Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe said the people had to take ownership of history both as various political organisations and members of society. “A common ownership of our history is the basis of nation building and must never be undermined by any interest group based on the subjectivity of race, class or ideology,” he said. (picture GALLO/GETTY)

The Sharpeville Massacre was a brutal event which shaped South African politics, both black and white for the next half a century. White police killed 69 black people and wounded 178 during a demonstration against segregation laws. While the massacre was instrumental in focussing world anger on the apartheid system, it also exacerbated political tensions within the black community between the ANC and the breakaway Pan Africanist Congress, which exist to this day.

Sharpeville was a small township built to service the white industrial cities of Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging. Here itinerant black workers would live in shanty-towns and earned a pittance in the nearby coal and steel industries. On 21 March 1960 the PAC organised a peaceful protest as part of their campaign against the pass system for black South Africans which severely limited their movements. PAC was a hardline organisation founded a year earlier as a breakaway from the ANC after the latter instituted its Freedom Charter with its commitment to a non racial South Africa.

The protests against the pass laws were the ANC’s idea and were due to start on 31 March 1960. But the PAC pre-empted them with the Sharpeville protest. On 21 March, about 6,000 people converged on the local police station offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying pass books. There were a small number of officers inside the station but they were not too worried as the atmosphere was peaceful. But as the crowd grew during the day, it got more tense. Police rushed in 130 reinforcements in Saracen armoured cars. They were supported by sabre jets who buzzed the crowd in an effort to scatter them.

When the crowd responded by throwing stones, the officer began making arrests. A fight broke out and the crowd advanced towards the police fence. What happened next is disputed. Hendrik Verwoerd, the then prime minister claimed that the protesters had shot first – though no arms were found on any of the protesters or victims. The police report later that year said inexperienced and panicky officers opened fire setting off a chain reaction. However evidence given at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 34 years later said the police action was deliberate.

What was not disputed was the death toll. 69 died including 8 women and 10 children, and over 180 were injured, including 31 women and 19 children. Many were shot in the back. In the week that followed, blacks across the country were enraged and there were demonstrations, protest marches, strikes and riots. On 30 March the government declared a state of emergency and arrested almost 20,000 people. The UN condemned the massacre and a year later the UN Security Council passed resolution 134 concerning ”the situation arising out of the large-scale killings of unarmed and peaceful demonstrators against racial discrimination and segregation in the Union of South Africa”. Of the permanent members only Britain and France abstained and foreign investors quickly pulled out of the country. Sharpeville played a crucial part in the gradual isolation of racist South Africa.

As a result of the massacre both the PAC and the ANC were banned leading to the radicalisation of both organisations and formation of their military wings. All of these events would lead to the ultimate collapse of the apartheid regime in the late 1980s. Author Millard W. Arnold said the ban and heavy-handed crackdown had "welded together three generations of black people united in their opposition to Apartheid." South Africa would have to endure 30 more years of pain before Sharpeville could be forgiven, if never forgotten. The TRC would eventually find the police actions constituted "gross human rights violations in that excessive force was unnecessarily used to stop a gathering of unarmed people” but its terms of reference meant that no one was charged for the crime. Perhaps it is best it is so. It means only the marginalised PAC (which got 0.27 percent of the electoral vote in 2009) still look back ruefully on Sharpeville and think what might have been.

Zuma election win confirmed but falls short of two-thirds majority

Final results from South Africa’s election showed that Jacob Zuma’s African National Congress (ANC) has fallen just short of the two-thirds majority it needed to change the country’s constitution. The ANC took 65.9 per cent of the vote which gave it 264 seats in South Africa's 400-seat parliament. While the overall result was a foregone conclusion, the drop of 4 percent from the last election in 2004 was one of the few crumbs of comfort for opposition parties who feared a Zuma landslide would lead to the reduction in local government powers.

Nonetheless it still represents an impressive mandate for the party that has ruled since open elections began in 1994. It blitzed its closest rival the Democratic Alliance (DA) led by Helen Zille which took just 16.7 per cent of the vote. The election also represents a remarkable comeback for the newly installed president. Just four years ago Zuma was sacked as deputy president by his boss Thabo Mbeki for being implicated in a corruption scandal. He was charged with corruption, money laundering and racketeering, but the charges were dropped on a technicality in the lead-up to the election. Zuma’s supporters claim he was the victim of a political conspiracy hatched by Mbeki.

Zuma got his revenge when he assumed leadership of the ANC in December 2007. At the party’s national conference he defeated Thabo Mbeki by a 60:40 margin leaving Mbeki a lame duck president. Zuma counted on the support of people in rural areas and townships where unemployment is nudging 50 percent and poverty is widespread. It was also South Africa's shack-dwellers, farm workers, unemployed and domestic workers who gave Zuma his emphatic election win.

And despite many problems associated with their 15 year tenure of power, most of South Africa’s poor don’t have a logical alternative to vote for. Most people see Zille’s DA as the political front of white business while the newly formed Congress of the People (an ANC breakaway faction loyal to Mbeki) which came third, is seen to stand for black business. Together their combined vote barely topped 24 percent and, according to the BBC, will face pressure to merge if they are to launch a more effective challenge to the ANC in the next election in 2014.

In the meantime, it will be Jacob Zuma's turn to hog the limelight. The 67 year old is the first Zulu president and is known for wearing traditional garb including leopard skins and a spear at ceremonial events. He celebrated victory on Thursday in typical fashion by dancing and singing his signature song, the Zulu anti-apartheid anthem "Bring Me My Machine Gun." Yet many people believe there is a political conservative hiding underneath this flamboyant façade. During the election, Zuma offered prayers to ancestors, denounced same-sex marriage as a "disgrace to God", promised a referendum on the death penalty, condemned political rivals as "witches" and "snakes", and defended polygamy as "African".

Zuma’s most difficult task will be to fulfil his post-election promise to unite the country. Nearly all of the nation’s whites and coloured people voted for the DA and South Africa’s communities still live their lives apart along colour-coded lines despite the emergence of a growing black middle class. As Matthew Tostevin writes at Reuters, Zuma will have to juggle the needs of those who want a greater share of the wealth with those who feel they are politically marginalised.

There is also suspicion over the long-standing charges against Zuma which were suddenly dropped two weeks prior to the election. In 2005 his personal financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for soliciting and paying bribes and for fraud, mostly to benefit his boss. Zuma was then charged with 16 offences for corruption, money-laundering and racketeering over a controversial $5bn 1999 arms deal with French company Thint. After a complicated court case, the charges were first deemed unlawful, then reinstated on appeal, before finally being dropped due to flaws in the legal process. State prosecutors denied they had yielded to pressure from the incoming government but said that their case had been irretrievably compromised by pressure from the old Mbeki administration.

Zuma also survived a rape charge in 2005 brought by the daughter of a friend. The case was dismissed after the judge ruled the sex was consensual. However Zuma’s testimony revealed startlingly naïve attitudes about sex and AIDS, including an admission that he had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman but he showered afterward to reduce the risk of infection. Zuma’s handlers, aware of his unorthodox opinions, shut him down during the election campaign and he refused to answer all policy questions deferring instead to the ANC's executive committee.

While the ANC has faithfully served the anti-apartheid cause for almost a century, many argue it is now time to move on to a new political era in South Africa. The party’s popularity, membership and moral authority are in decline. Five million South Africans have HIV/AIDS (the largest population in the world),violent crime is endemic; and the black underclass continues to grow. In 2006, the South African Institute of Race Relations estimated that 4.2 million South Africans were living on $1 a day or less in 2005, up from 1.9 million in 1996 (pdf). With or without the protection of the ANC executive committee, Zuma will need a lot more than populist appeal and revolutionary anthems to deal effectively with these issues.

Helen Suzman: Cricket in a Thorn Tree

Helen Suzman was buried yesterday in a private Jewish ceremony in Johannesburg. Suzman, who died on New Year’s Day aged 91, was one of South Africa’s greatest anti-apartheid campaigners and a true independent spirit. She was a courageous parliamentarian for 36 years, a third of which she was the sole independent voice. "I used to put 200 questions a session," she told CNN last year. "They were all of course designed to expose the atrocities. I made good use of my parliamentary position."

Helen Suzman was born in the mining town of Germiston, east of Johannesburg, on 7 November 1917. Her parents were both Jewish Lithuanians who had fled anti-Semitism in Europe. In 1937 she married a doctor named Moses Meyer Suzman with whom she had two daughters. She became interested in politics after the disastrous 1948 election which brought the National Party to power and entrenched the apartheid system.

She successfully ran for the South African parliament in 1953 as the United Party Member for Houghton, a prosperous and largely-Jewish suburb near Johannesburg. Suzman quickly established herself as a thorn in the side of the new regime and former President PW Botha called her a "vicious little cat". The feeling was mutual; she called him “an obnoxious bully”. In 1959 she joined eleven other liberal MPs who formed the liberal Progressive party, which supported the rights of all citizens, regardless of race and creed, and a dismantling of the apartheid system. The party was annihilated at the ballot box in 1961 and Suzman was the only one of the dozen to retain her seat.

She remained the lone parliamentarian voice of anti-discrimination throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1963 she railed against the law which gave police powers to detain suspects for 90 days without trial, which, she said, brought South Africa "further into the morass of a totalitarian state". In 1967 she visited Nelson Mandela in prison cell on Robben Island and the admiration was mutual. Suzman said she knew immediately “that this was a man of considerable courage”. In return, Nelson Mandela was equally glowing, “It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard, he wrote. “She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells."

In the 1980s, her greatest success was to see the abolition of the pass laws as part of the slow and uneven unravelling of apartheid legislation. She finally retired from parliament in 1989 and served on a variety of top public institutions. These included the Independent Electoral Commission that oversaw the country's first multiracial elections in 1994. She stood by Mandela's side when he signed the new constitution in 1996 as South Africa's first black president. But she never stopped being controversial. In 2001 she was declared an "Enemy of the State" of Zimbabwe after openly criticising the Robert Mugabe regime. It was a perverse honour she took great pride in.

Today, the director of the Helen Suzman Foundation Raenette Taljaard paid tribute to Suzman in the South African newspaper The Times. Taljaard had known Suzman for the last 15 years and said she (Suzman) had a strong sense of what she liked and disliked and had “no ambiguities or shades of grey for her between right and wrong”. Equally, said Taljaard, when Suzman’s academic research led her deeper into the injustices of labour migration in South Africa, she quickly realised that she had a role to play. She was society’s “cricket in a thorn tree who would speak truth to power with a clear moral purpose in a country that had lost its moral compass.”

Suzman continued to campaign for better conditions for blacks to the end of her life. On her 90th birthday, she expressed disillusionment with the lack of progress in addressing crime, unemployment and poverty in South Africa. "Masses of black people are very disappointed with lack of delivery of housing, water and sanitation," she told AP. But no one could be disappointed with Suzman. She delivered to the end.

Johannesburg beset by a wave of xenophobic attacks

A wave of attacks on mostly Zimbabwean immigrants has left at least 22 dead in the last three days in Johannesburg, South Africa. Another 6,000 have fled to the safety of churches, police stations and community halls. Townships have become no-go areas as mobs go on a xenophobic rampage targeting foreigners without provocation. The refugees have become scapegoats for South Africa’s growing economic problems such as unemployment, crime and a lack of housing.

The scale of the violence has caught South Africa’s politicians and security forces off-guard. On the weekend, central Johannesburg resembled a war-zone, as armed police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse angry crowds. 200 people have been arrested and police reinforcements have been sent into the worst affected parts of the city calming the situation in the last 24 hours. One day earlier, a church where about one thousand Zimbabweans were taking refuge was attacked by a large mob. Bishop Paul Veryn of the Central Methodist Church told SABC radio: “We consider that the situation is getting so serious that the police can no longer control it.”

The violence began last week in the Johannesburg townships of Alexandra and Diepsloot due to perceptions that foreigners were behind robberies in the area. Local anger sparked vigilante justice and foreigners were assaulted and driven from their homes. The violence spread to other areas over the weekend. Men with guns and iron bars chanted “kick the foreigners out” and set upon immigrants from neighbouring African countries. In the last three days hundreds of people from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and elsewhere have been injured. Thousands more have been left homeless and many raped as the attacks on foreigners spread to the whole of the Johannesburg area. Gangs of youths, up to a hundred strong, attacked the homes of refugees over the weekend.

The cause is simmering resentment against successive waves of immigration. Since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s, millions of African immigrants have poured into South Africa seeking jobs and sanctuary. But recent high inflation has eroded the value of wages and social benefits and recent sharp increases in food and fuel prices has also adding to pressure on low-income families. Unemployment in South Africa currently stands at 40 per cent. Frans Cronje, deputy director of think-tank The South African Institute for Race Relations believes a number of factors have all come together to create the problem. He says the key issues are inflation, food and fuel prices “which put the squeeze on poor communities and then we were waiting for the spark.”

The attacks have been concentrated in Johannesburg's poorest areas and Zimbabweans have borne the brunt of the violence. Up to three million Zimbabweans are estimated to be in South Africa. Most of these have fled their homeland on South Africa's northern border due to the Robert Mugabe’s repressive policies and the current political crisis. Archbishop Desmond Tutu condemned the violence and urged South Africans to remember the help neighbouring countries offered during the apartheid era. "Although they were poor,” he said, “they welcomed us South Africans as refugees, and allowed our liberation movements to have bases in their territory even if it meant those countries were going to be attacked by the SADF (South African Defence Forces).”

One Ugandan victim of the violence in Johannesburg spoke of his experiences. “Hassan” said he saw a mob breaking into the next-door residence where many Somalis live. He heard an exchange of gunfire and later saw a crowd setting a man alight before police sprayed him with a fire extinguisher to put the fire out. He said gangs were stopping vehicles on the street and pulling foreign nationals out so they can beat them. Foreign-owned businesses have now closed. It's quiet now but very tense. He said he was staying with some South African friends who were protecting him. Hassan thought the violence was orchestrated from “quite high up” as a result of the rivalry between President Thabo Mbeki and his likely successor Jacob Zuma (though both men have publicly condemned the attacks).

Zuma assumes control

Jacob Zuma has refused to speak in his first public outing since becoming African National Congress (ANC) leader on Wednesday. Reporters crowded around him as he emerged from a meeting with key deputies and followed him until they released with embarrassment he was going to the toilet. When he re-emerged from the bathroom, Zuma merely smiled and laughed at requests for comment before being whisked away by bodyguards into an awaiting car.

His first official speech is likely to be tonight at the party’s closing session. The 65 year old Zuma was elected on Tuesday night at the party’s national conference in the far northern city of Polokwane. In the party’s first leadership election contest in 58 years, Zuma won with 2,329 of the votes at the ANC's five-yearly convention to the Mbeki's 1,505. His convincing victory steers the way clear for a tilt at the South African presidency in 2009 while the aloof Mbeki takes on the mantle of a “lame duck” leader.

Analysts are divided in their interpretation of Zuma’s 60 per cent victory. Some see it as a sign of healthy democracy in the ANC while others see it as a portent of a fatal split in the organisation. Mbeki was booed and heckled during his speech to the congress on Sunday while Zuma supporters danced and loudly sang their signature anthem “Awuleth’ Umshini Wami” which means "Bring me my machine (gun)".

Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma was born in Kwa-Zulu Natal in 1942. He received no formal schooling and joined the ANC aged 17. Just one year later the apartheid regime made the ANC illegal. Zuma was arrested in 1963 while trying to leave South Africa. He was convicted of conspiracy against the government and served ten years on Robben Island. After his release, he organised the ANC in exile in Swaziland and Mozambique. After the ANC was unbanned in 1990, Zuma was instrumental negotiating a peaceful transition to a majority government and rose through the ranks to become deputy president.

But in 2005 Zuma was strongly implicated in the corruption scandal of Schabir Shaik, a banker and close friend of Zuma’s. A court found Shaik guilty of persuading a French arms company to pay an annual half million rand bribe (about $75,000 on current exchange rates) to Zuma in return for the firm’s participation in a multi-billion rand arms deal. Testimony showed Zuma was always short of money and relied on Shaik’s kickback to subsidise his extravagant lifestyle. Shaik was jailed for 15 years and Mbeki sacked Zuma shortly afterwards.

At the time, this seemed a fatal blow to Zuma’s political career with a likely trial and prison sentence to follow. But in September last year, a judge dismissed the State’s application to postpone Zuma’s trial and struck the matter off the roll. Justice Herbert Msimang said the state's effort to prosecute was "anchored on unsound foundations". But the state hasn’t given up hope and a decision must be made early next year on whether to press charges of racketeering, tax evasion, fraud and corruption against him.

Some are now worried that the populist Zuma will turn South Africa into the “new Zimbabwe”. Many fear his appointment will cause an exodus of skilled white workers and their wealth. The Johannesburg share market declined 1.5 per cent yesterday on news of Zuma’s ascension. The business community is worried that Mbeki’s market friendly policies will now be abandoned by the apparently more socialistic Zuma. Stanislava Pravdova, an analyst at Denmark's Danske Bank, had a typical business reaction. "With Zuma's victory, South African politics has lost a lot of its credibility abroad," she said.

However the door may yet open for newly installed ANC Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe to take control of his country's fortunes. Motlanthe is a natural backroom player and mostly shuns the limelight that comes so naturally to Zuma. But as a former political prisoner, Motlanthe is well respected within the party and is a good negotiator. He is also likely to play a compromising role between Zuma and Mbeki. More interestingly, it remains distinctly possible that the next presidency could fall into his lap if Zuma is unable to shake the persistent corruption allegations over the next 12 months.

World Aids Day

The plague known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is caused by Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). According to WHO and UNAID sources, by 2010 it is estimated that deaths from HIV/AIDS will rival that of the bubonic plague which killed 93 million during the mediaeval and enlightenment periods. Health activists worldwide hope that Saturday’s observance of World AIDS Day will heighten awareness and focus efforts to combat the pandemic. Experts warned against complacency in fighting the disease and called on governments worldwide to address a multi-billion dollar funding gap.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon launched the 20th World AIDS Day at a midnight ceremony at St Bartholomew's Church in New York. The UN estimates that there is an $8 billion shortfall in AIDS funding worldwide. The G8’s plan to provide universal access to Anti Retroviral Drugs (ARVs) requires an additional $27 billion on top of the $15 billion already pledged. Ban called for leadership among all governments in fully understanding the epidemic, “so that resources go where they are most needed,” he said. "And I call for leadership at all levels to scale up towards universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010."

The highlight of Saturday’s events was a concert at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park organised by Nelson Mandela. 50,000 people watched local and international acts including Peter Gabriel and Annie Lennox. South Africa is one of the worst affected countries with 5.5 million of its 48 million population infected by HIV. The 89 year old Mandela told the crowd that the rate of infection is four times the rate of treatment. "Here in South Africa we are making every effort to reach into communities because we believe the answer is in our hands,” he said. “But what really matters are small acts of kindness ... such as protecting yourself.”

China also took the day seriously. The UN has warned that up to 50 million Chinese are at risk of contracting AIDS. President Hu Jintao appeared on the front page of major state-controlled newspapers shaking the hand of a female HIV carrier. He was inspecting HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment facilities in Beijing and enquiring how policy is being administered. Hu said AIDS prevention is an issue that affects the future of the country. “This is still a challenging task for China,” he said. “It needs effort from every member of society.”

But Africa remains the continent worst affected by AIDS. While the total number of those infected by the virus has decreased from 40 million in the late 1990s to 33 million today, two-thirds of these live in Africa. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had said that the number of people in Africa receiving antiretroviral (AVR) drugs has increased by 54 per cent from 2005 to 2006. WHO’s research also shows that the increased focus on prevention programmes adapted to reach those most at risk of infection is paying dividends. This means promoting increased use of condoms, delay of sexual activity, and fewer sexual partners.

Within Africa it is the south that suffers the most. The group of countries from Namibia to Mozambique has a HIV infection rate of 15 per cent for those in the 15 to 49 age group making it the hardest hit region in the world. The task of preventing AIDS is undermined by social and cultural practices, particularly traditional attitudes to male-relations and sexuality. Denial, lingering supernatural beliefs and fear of stigma also compounded the problem. South African president Thabo Mbeki disputed the link between AIDS and HIV until 2006. Only in the last 12 months have South African government reversed its denialist policies on AIDS promising increased availability of drugs and supporting groups battling the disease.

Botswana, with a third of its population infected, realised the scale of the issue in 2001 when President Festus Mogae called the epidemic “a crisis of the first proportion. In 2002 Botswana began a large-scale program of education and free treatment. By 2005 half the people in immediate need were receiving treatment. Dr Howard Moffat of Princess Marina Hospital in the capital Gaborone is now treating thousands of patients daily. "Botswana has shown what can be done," Moffat said. "But it will need help for a considerable time to come."

Rolling out Rohlilahla: London unveils Nelson Mandela statue

Nelson Mandela will attend an unveiling of his statue opposite the British houses of parliaments on Wednesday this week. The 89-year-old Nobel laureate’s statue will stand alongside the figures of former British Prime ministers Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli. Announcing Mandela’s presence, London mayor Ken Livingstone said Friday that putting the statue in Parliament Square reflected Mandela's place as a world statesman and as "one of the key political figures of our time". "There can be no better way for this statue to be unveiled than with Nelson Mandela himself present," he said.

Nelson Mandela was born Rohlilahla Mandela in the small village of Mvezo, on the Mbashe River on 18 July 1918. The village was near the city of Umtata (now Mthatha) in the Eastern Cape province of Transkei. Rohlilalha means "to pull a branch of a tree", and also colloquially, "troublemaker". Mandela was minor royalty. His father was the principal councillor to the Acting Paramount Chief of Thembuland.

Rohlilahla was sent to an English school, aged 7 and found a teacher who could not pronounce his name. Instead he called him Nelson in honour of the hero of Trafalgar. After his father’s death 2 years later, young Mandela was sent away to become the Paramount Chief’s ward. He was to be groomed to assume high office. From the regent, Mandela said, he learned "a leader ... is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go on ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind."

However, influenced by the cases that came before the Chief s court, he became determined to become a lawyer, not a leader. Mandela went to a Wesleyan secondary school called Healdtown and then enrolled at the University College of Fort Hare where he was elected onto the Student's Representative Council. But he was soon suspended for joining in a protest boycott. He went to Johannesburg where he completed his BA by correspondence. Mandela became a legal clerk and commenced study for his law degree. While studying for this degree in Johannesburg he joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1942.

The ANC advocated a political settlement to the dispossession of the blacks. Their plight was made worse in 1948 when the National Party won power on a platform of opposition to support for Britain in World War II. Once in power they outlined their system of separateness. That election institutionalised racism in South Africa as the newly elected government began to enact its apartheid laws. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning apartness or separateness. Race laws touched every aspect of social life, including a prohibition of marriage between non-whites and whites, and the sanctioning of ``white-only'' jobs, preferment and public spaces. In 1950, they went one step further with the Population Registration Act which required all South Africans be racially classified into one of three categories: white, black (African), or coloured (of mixed decent or Asian).

In response the ANC launched its Defiance Campaign of non-violent resistance with Mandela as its volunteer-in-chief. Mandela was arrested for violating the Suppression of Communism Act. He was found guilty but got a sentence of nine months imprisonment suspended for two years. The National Party government banned him from all public appearances in 1952 and again from 1953 to 1955. In 1953, the Nationals passed the Public Safety Act and the Criminal Law Amendment Act which empowered the government to declare states of emergency and increased penalties for protesting against or supporting the repeal of a law.

In 1960, a large group of blacks in Sharpeville near Vereeniging in Transvaal began a protest and refused to carry their passes. The government declared a state of emergency. On 21 March, ANC’s rivals the Pan African Congress organised a protest march. Vereeniging was the march’s emotive choice: it was the site of the treaty which ended the Anglo-Boer War in 1902. After a hostile protest, nervous police opened fire on the crowd. Somewhere between 50 and 75 of the police opened fire. With emergency services slow to arrive, 69 people were killed and another 187 people were wounded.

Though it wasn’t their march, Sharpeville was a profound influence on the ANC and Mandela. They both lost their pacifism and formed the military wing of the ANC known as Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation” and abbreviated as MK) in 1961. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour. In 1963 Mandela was brought back to stand trial for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity.

On 12 June 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was held at the forbidding Robben Island Prison, 12kms off Cape Town with the party’s leadership. In 1982 he was moved to the low security prison at Pollsmoor on the mainland. Mandela’s ability to make friends with prisoners and jailers alike became legendary. Despite the greater comfort of Pollsmoor, the transition distressed Mandela because of the loss of camaraderie and vibrant intellectual and cultural life the party’s leaders established on the island.

As the years of his sentence grew, so did his international reputation. “Free Nelson Mandela” became a catchcry. In 1983, the British ska band The Special’s Jerry Dammer turned catchcry into a hit single “Nelson Mandela”. The lyrics “I say Free Nelson Mandela/
I'm begging you/Free Nelson Mandela” sunk into the Western public conscience as a guilty meme. In February 1985 National Party President P.W. Botha offered Mandela conditional release in return for renouncing armed struggle. Mandela responded "What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts”. New President F.W. de Klerk finally released him unconditionally on 11 February 1990 after 28 years of imprisonment.

After his release from prison, Mandela emerged as the world's most significant moral leader since Mahatma Gandhi. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk in 1993. A year later, Mandela won outright power with the ANC winning the election with 63 percent of the vote. Mandela orchestrated a successful transition to black rule with the much-feared right-wing white rebellion never coming to fruition. Mandela endeared himself to the white population by encouraging the nation to get behind the Springboks in the 1995 World Cup. It didn’t hurt his cause that South Africa won the tournament. Mandela retired to world acclaim in 1999 and has since been a prestigious ambassador for South Africa, black Africa, black and humanitarian causes.

In the year he won election in 1994, he also published his much anticipated autobiography "A Long Walk to Freedom". In one episode of the book Mandela recalled a visit to London with his fellow anti-Apartheid campaigner Oliver Tambo. "When we saw the statue of General Smuts near Westminster Abbey, Oliver and I joked that perhaps someday there would be a statue of us in its stead," he wrote. Instead he now stands unveiled next to Smuts in the pantheon of British-endorsed greats.

South Africa criticised for its AIDS policies

The South African government was criticised for its handling of the HIV crisis by speakers at the 16th international conference on Aids in Canada. The conference was held from 13 to 18 August in Toronto, Canada. Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy on Aids, told the closing session: "It is the only country in Africa, amongst all the countries I have traversed in the last five years, whose government is still obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment." The country has the single biggest HIV-positive population in the world, estimated at five million or 11% of its population. About 70,000 children in South Africa are born with HIV each year. According to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), by the start of 2006 there were an estimated 39 million AIDS sufferers worldwide. Most of these people live in developing countries. In the last 12 months alone, 4.1 million people were infected and 2.8 million died of AIDS related illnesses.

The concluding report from the conference with a call for a quickening of the pace of HIV prevention measures and care and treatment programs in resource-strapped environments. The theme echoed the sense of hope tempered with growing impatience at government inaction. Of 7 million sufferers in the lowest GDP countries in need of antiretroviral medication, barely a quarter of these people have access to the drugs. The treatment access gap is even worse for children under 15. Approximately 90% of the 800,000 children in need have access to the treatment. In total, barely 1 in 5 people of high risk of infection have access to effective prevention. The new President of the International AIDS society, Dr Pedro Cahn, called for political action. “All the knowledge, innovative research and new tools will not be effective without the political leadership that is essential to halting the disease,” he said on the final day of the conference.

Thabo Mbeki's government was openly criticised by many speakers at the conference for denying that the human immunodeficiency virus is a cause of Aids and for its resistance to offering HIV drugs to its people. Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the Soviet-educated South African health minister prefers to promote traditional cures such as garlic, beetroot and lemon while also referring to possible toxicities of AIDS medicines. Stephen Lewis told the conference "It is the only country in Africa whose government continues to propound theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state."

The South African government denies the charges and issued a statement that said "The ANC reaffirms its support for government's comprehensive plan for management, care and treatment of HIV and Aids, and for an approach that aims to combat HIV and Aids in an all-embracing and integrated manner.". Nelson Mandela has weighed in on the argument and criticised the government for not making drugs freely available across the country. Several South African provinces announced that they would ignore the government policy and start distributing a key anti-retroviral drug, nevirapine.

Many believe that Tshabalala-Msimang is merely carrying out the pseudo-scientific wishes of President Thabo Mbeki. In 2002, Mbeki, convened an international panel to consider the causes of and appropriate solutions to AIDS in the African context. The panel included representatives from the so-called AIDS dissident community. The willingness of the President to entertain, if not unequivocally endorse, dissident science created an international stir. Although the conference’s outcome, known as the Durban Declaration, supported the orthodox view of AIDS, Mbeki continued to stall the pilot of antiviral drugs.

The question is why South Africa’s leadership is so obdurate on this question? The answer probably lies in the speed and force of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. There are neither clear reasons nor simple solutions for the spread of AIDS and its complexity has made it extremely difficult to assimilate. And so, in a denial of reality, leaders proclaim that the presence of AIDS is not true. President Mbeki publicly questioned the importance of HIV in causing AIDS, controversially suggesting that the main cause was "poverty." The appearance of AIDS as an everlasting affliction precisely at the point when the end of apartheid should have brought a better life for all has also rankled with the ANC government. As one South African journalist put it “how is it possible that, at the very moment we assume our victorious place as the leaders of a democracy we struggled for decades to bring about, we are presented with a dying populace, with a plague to which we have no answers?” And so while the South African government argues that the drugs are too expensive, they ignore the high costs of not preventing the further spread of the world’s worst killer virus.