COSATU to protest if Mugabe attends SADC summit

Zimbabwe and Swaziland cannot continue to be islands of dictatorship surrounded by a sea of democracy in our region. We demand freedom and democracy for citizens of both countries. We want democracy for the citizens of our neighbouring countries today and not tomorrow.

For the freedom of workers in those countries we will fight until the last drop of blood in our bodies is dried up. We shall, with the same determination as we fought against the apartheid monster, continue to wage a struggle until all of us in the region can proclaim that we succeeded to free human kind from not only the bondages of oppression and repression but from the clutches of poverty.

As I said to the preparatory meeting for this conference, to us international solidarity is the lifeblood of trade unionism. To us there are no borders when it comes to practicing the universal slogan of the working class - an injury to one is an injury to all.

The need for this conference is underlined by deepening crises in both countries. The human rights abuses in Zimbabwe have scaled new heights. The beatings of ordinary people, the burning down of their property, the killings and torture continue as though the current negotiations means nothing to the illegal Mugabe regime.

Let us again state that we support the ongoing efforts to negotiate a political settlement to the Zimbabwe crises. We accordingly wish President Thabo Mbeki and the other facilitators of these negotiations together with all parties involved good luck and success as they try to find lasting solutions to the Zimbabwe crises. We must however hurry to say we will not give these negotiations unconditional support. To us the following issues are not negotiable.

Any settlement that does not recognise the will of the people as expressed in the 29 March elections will not be acceptable. It will represent an elite accord that can never enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of the ordinary people of Zimbabwe.

The June elections were illegitimate and therefore the outcomes must not be recognised.

The government to be formed should be an interim government whose main task should be mainly limited to preparing for a fresh round of elections that will strictly adhere to the SADC elections protocols.

Violence, intimidation and use of state of institutions in a factional and partisan fashion must come to an end.

Whilst all these negotiations proceed and whilst we wish these talks success, we know that we cannot let up the pressure on the Mugabe government.

There is no contradiction between negotiations to find a peaceful settlement and the mass struggles and pressure. There is no settlement. There are rumours to the fact that the settlement is near. We shall accordingly continue to pile pressure until a settlement is reached that is based on our demands.

In the meantime we do not recognise Mugabe as the President of Zimbabwe. We insist that he should not be invited in the SADC heads of state summit that takes place in South Africa on 15-17 August 2008. We shall accordingly protest his presence here. We call on COSATU members in Gauteng, as well as all progressive civil society formations and other freedom lovers to join us to register our disgust at his presence through a march we are organising for 16 August 2008.

In this summit we shall present the draft programme we developed in the preparations meeting for discussion and adoption. We want a total isolation of Mugabe and his cronies.

This is an edited extract of the opening address by COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, to the Zimbabwe and Swaziland Solidarity Conference, August 10 2008

World's largest waste-to-energy plant opens in SA

South African thermal processing specialists Prestige Thermal are leading the way in the global waste-to-energy conversion industry, having opened the world's largest conversion plant last month.

"There has been a lot of global competition towards this technology, but ours is the world's first commercially-viable full-scale waste-to-energy conversion plant," says Mark Potgieter, Prestige Thermal's sales and marketing director.

The company has been at the forefront of conversion technology research for over six years, says Potgieter. Their work has led to the development of specialised autoclaving technology through which waste is reduced to cellulous fibre and pyrolysis - a process whereby solid waste material is converted into clean gas.

Employing these new technologies, Prestige Thermal's R28 million plant in Wadeville, has the capacity to produce 3MW of electrical energy from three tons of municipal solid waste (MSW).

Potgieter says there are currently no agreements in place with Eskom that would see Prestige Thermal's technology contribute to the national electricity grid. However Potgieter says he is encouraged by the growing local interest in their equipment.

In the meantime, the company has received considerable attention from Europe. According to Potgieter, the company is recognised as a global industry leader particularly in the area of waste management best practice.

European countries are increasingly looking to alternative non-landfill solutions for the management of municipal waste, says Potgieter. "Where our technology is being used in the UK, we are reducing landfill sites by up to 70%."

Zambia hikes fuel prices

Zambia's Energy Regulation Board (ERB) announced in a statement released in Lusaka lats week that it has increased prices of all petroleum products.

ERB executive director, Sylvester Hibajene announced that the price of diesel had been increased by K953, petrol by K1,103 and kerosene by K641 per litre respectively.

“The upward adjustment had been necessitated by the high oil prices on the international market which has reached an all time high of US$147.27/bbl on the New York mercantile exchange last month,” said Hibajene.

“The [Zambian] Kwacha had registered depreciation against the US dollar trading at an exchange rate of K3,404 last month, in comparison to the June rate of K3,264,” he added.

Hibajene said the increases are in line with the cost plus model which takes into account the cost of importing feedstock on cargo basis, among other things.

He said the adjustment is applicable to the current cargo, which docked in Dar-es-Salaam which enabled Indeni Petroleum Refinery to resume operations after it had shut down on 9 July, 2008 due to lack of feedstock.

Despite the hiking, Times of Zambia reported of an erratic supply of diesel that has hit Ndola in the last week forcing filling stations to give priority to account orders.

The paper further quotes Energy Permanent Secretary, Peter Mumba who, on Friday said the diesel situation would normalise the following day as the commodity was adequate to satisfy the consumers.

Islamic reinsurer seeks opportunity in SA

August 12, 2008

Malaysian Islamic reinsurer MNRB Retakaful was keen to tap the market for sharia-compliant reinsurance in the Middle East, Pakistan and South Africa, chief executive Ismail Mahbob said yesterday.

MNRB aimed to do business in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates from Malaysia by year-end, he said. So far its foreign markets were Indonesia, Brunei and Sri Lanka.

Mahbob said: "Takaful [Islamic insurance] in these countries is still new, even [in] the Muslim countries. But as far as the non-Muslim countries, there are countries that already have takaful operations, places like South Africa, so we are also focusing on them."

Industry data estimate the size of the market for Islamic reinsurance at $1 billion (R7.7 billion).

Global premiums in Islamic insurance total about $2 billion to $3 billion and are expected to reach $7.4 billion by 2015, according to industry figures.

Islamic scholars frown on conventional insurance, saying the use of interest-bearing investments and the lack of certainty in the size of policy payments violate sharia principles.

Under Islamic insurance, members contribute to a pool of funds used to indemnify participants who suffer a loss. Malaysia is a leading global centre of Islamic finance.

Mozambique Telecoms Seeks Chinese Funding

Mozambique’s state-run telecommunications company, TDM, said on Friday it was negotiating a US$25 million loan from China for its expansion programme to the country’s rural areas.

TDM chief executive officer Joaquim de Carvalho told reporters in Maputo that the fixed line network currently covers only 82 districts of the country´s 128 districts, and it is expected that the remainder will be covered by 2010, just in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup contest in South Africa.

"We will this year sign an agreement with a Chinese funding institution to get a US$25 million cloan to expand our network to rural areas, we are also focusing our attention on expanding the optic-fibre network to provincial capitals, namely Tete, Pemba and Lichinga by the end of this year”, he said.

The government recently said it is ready to license new operators in the fixed phone network to end TDM’s monopoly in the field. Mozambique has 78,000 fixed line subscribers and 3,330,000 cellular phone subscribers.

(Source: Cellular News)