Victoria: Seychelles and South Africa are set to widen cooperation sectors following a bilateral meeting held today with Mrs. Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the Minister for International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa to Seychelles, and her delegation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Jean-Paul Adam, and a delegation of government representatives met with Minister Nkoana-Mashabane to discuss broadening the excellent working relationship between the two governments.
Harare: Zanu-PF is stuck with South African President Jacob Zuma as mediator to the Zimbabwe crisis after he was re-elected president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) this week. The ANC re-elected Zuma as leader of the party, teeing him up for another seven years as head of state with the country's second richest businessman Cyril Ramaphosa as his deputy. Ramaphosa is seen as broadly favourable to business and investment.
Johannesburg: The government expects to come under pressure at the ruling party’s conference in Mangaung to take tougher stances on Israel and Swaziland, and to accelerate the resolution of the chronic crisis in Zimbabwe. Lindiwe Zulu, President Jacob Zuma’s foreign policy adviser, said the main foreign policy issues to be discussed at Mangaung would be those already agreed at its national policy conference earlier this year. The Mangaung conference’s formal task would be to adopt these policy positions.
Swakopmund: The Southern African Customs Union (SACU) ministers meeting of last Friday in Swakopmund discussed the allocation of revenue share, with the ministers looking at the recommended allocation of revenue share to Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, and South Africa for 2013/14. The quarterly meeting took place at a time the regional economy, and economic performances of the five-SACU member states, are under considerable pressure from the sluggish global economy.
Johannesburg: Controversy continues to stalk the bilateral Lesotho Highlands water scheme because Lesotho's new coalition government wants to scrap "prejudicial" sections of the country's agreement with South Africa governing the construction of the proposed R9-billion Polihali dam. The 1999 agreement, unearthed by the Lesotho Times last week, clearly reflects South Africa's desire for greater control over the crucial infrastructural project, which supplies water to industrial and domestic consumers in Gauteng and beyond.
Durban: The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has a remarkable ability to hold two completely contradictory thoughts in its collective head simultaneously. Psychologists call that condition cognitive dissonance. Thus President Jacob Zuma and other regional leaders decided at a summit in Dar es Salaam on Saturday that ousted Madagascar president Marc Ravalomanana should be allowed to return to Madagascar from exile in South Africa. But they also decided that neither he nor the man who ousted him, the current self-appointed leader, Andry Rajoelina, should run for president in elections planned for next year.
Pretoria: His Excellency President Jacob Zuma travelled yesterday, 6 December 2012, to the United Republic of Tanzania to take part in the two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) Extra-Ordinary Summit, scheduled to take place todday in Dar es Salaam. Extra-Ordinary SADC Summits are called to consider urgent and pressing peace and security matters that threaten the essence of regional cooperation and integration, especially issues relating to regional peace and stability.
Cape Town: Once more, this 7th Joint Permanent Commission on Defence and Security (JPCD) has brought our country‘s top thinkers and decision-makers together on the South African shores to discuss the issues affecting the security of our countries and the region today and in the future. This forum’s unique format has encouraged dynamic and open debate and improved our understanding of pressing security challenges. Ours is a Forum that is about dealing with the defence and security issues that affect our hard won democracies.
When Deputy Justice Minister Andries Nel spoke in The Hague earlier this month, some people might have wondered why he bothered. Addressing a high-level meeting at the seat of the International Criminal Court (ICC), he assured the rest of the world that South Africa fully supported the ICC and the laws that set it up. You might wonder why South Africa should worry about the ICC. After all, that court deals with crimes against humanity and genocide; the people who commit such terrible deeds do so in other countries – so what does it have to do with us?
This report – commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark – discusses the status of implementation of the EAC Customs Union and the SADC FTA both regarding tariff reductions and NTB elimination commitments and uses trade statistics to investigate whether the implementation of these two trade agreements influence data for regional trade. The report also discusses the relationship between the EAC and SADC regional integration processes and the negotiation of EPAs. Special focus is accorded to the question of NTBs including deriving lessons for the design of an alternative policy approach to manage their negative impacts on trade.
