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August 22 to August 28, 2012
VatiLeaks: How papal secretary nabbed the butler
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Why the Holy Land is the ‘Fifth Gospel’
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R6,00 (incl VAT RSA)
Reg No. 1920/002058/06
No 4789
Regina Mundi: The Cathedral of the Nation
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Does SA have the will for a better future? BY CLAIRE MATHIESON
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BLUEPRINT for South Africa’s future has been presented to President Jacob Zuma—now the question is whether the government will have the political will to implement it and change the face of South African society. The National Planning Commission (NPC) has completed its long term vision and strategic plan for South Africa and has handed over the National Development Plan (NDP) to President Zuma. The plan has been hailed by the country’s bishops and Catholic political commentators as being an impressive undertaking that is essentially good and very positive. NPC chairman Minister Trevor Manuel presented the final version of the NDP during a joint sitting of parliament’s two houses following a long-term investigation into how the country might reduce poverty by 2030. The plan will now be considered by Cabinet and potentially signed into law. Mike Pothier, research coordinator of the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office (CPLO), an office of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said that while the NDP is a very promising plan to rid the country of poverty, it is not the first. Previous plans, including the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP) and the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) strategy, failed because there was the lack of political will to see the plans succeed, Mr Pothier told The Southern Cross.. “Some aspects of these strategies worked, but in a limited capacity. Most were abandoned eventually,” Mr Pothier said. “If something isn’t working, then a new plan is needed. This makes sense, but sometimes it is very clear what the underlying reasons for failure are [that] the political energy is just not there.”
T
he new plan aims to reduce unemployment by 11% within the next 18 years. “This is a massive task,” said Mr Pothier. He said the best suggestion as to how to achieve this goal is the government’s proposed youth wage subsidy, but that idea is “dead in the water as the unions did not like it. They thought it would affect their workers. Government completely rolled over on this because, at the moment, President Zuma needs the support of the unions as the ANC National Conference, to be held in Mangaung in December, approaches.” Mr Pothier said this is an example of a lack of political will to make an impact on poverty. “The ANC is assured of the next election. If anyone was to put such a plan in place and weather the political storms, it is the ANC,” said Mr Pothier, adding that many of the decisions needed to make the NDP a success will be unpopular for some. “They’ve already been unpopular in some areas. The Credit Act and macro-economic policies in place were unpopular but have been positive in the long run, but there has not been enough of this across the board.” Mr Pothier said the Church welcomes the NPD’s call to move away from cadre deployment. “We need a civil service staffed by professional, qualified people, regardless of their political affiliation. Cadre deployment was originally introduced to ensure that state departments were not dominated by apartheid-era bureaucrats and directors who might have been tempted to derail the whole project of democratic transformation.” After 18 years there surely is no danger of that happening, he said. Instead, the danger now is that the work of such departments
The cardinal, archbishops, bishops and apostolic administrators of Southern Africa as well as a special guest bishop who as a priest served in South Africa are pictured in this group photo. Front (from left): Joe Sandri of Witbank, Emmanuel Lafont (visiting from French Guyana), Pius Dlungwane of Mariannhill, Jabulani Nxumalo of Bloemfontein, Stephen Brislin of Cape Town, Sithembele Sipuka of Mthatha, Valentine Seane of Gaborone, Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg. Middle: Stanislaw Dziuba of Umzimkulu, Edward Risi of Keimoes-Upington, Xolelo Thaddeus Kumalo of Eshowe, Mgr Brian Deenihan (apostolic administrator of Port Elizabeth), José Ponce de León of Ingwavuma, Dabula Mpako of Queenstown, Jan de Groef of Bethlehem, Zithulele Mvemve of Klerksdorp, Mgr Jeremiah Masela (apostolic administrator of Polokwane), Adam Musialek of De Aar, William Slattery of Pretoria, Abel Gabuza of Kimberley. Back: George Daniel (retired of Pretoria), Frank De Gouveia of Oudtshoorn, Peter Holiday of Kroonstad, Barry Wood (auxiliary bishop of Durban), Wilfrid Napier of Durban, Michael Wüstenberg of Aliwal North, Graham Rose of Dundee, João Rodrigues of Tzaneen, Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg. Not pictured are Bishops Louis Ndlovu of Manzini, Swaziland and Frank Nabuasah of Francistown, Botswana. The longest-serving bishops are Cardinal Napier (since 1981, first in Kokstad), Bishop Ndlovu (since 1985), Bishop Mvemve (since 1986, first as auxiliary of Johannesburg), Bishop Dowling (since 1991), Archbishop Slattery (since 1994, first in Kokstad), Bishop Nabuasah (since 1998), and Archbishop Tlhagale (since 1999, first in Bloemfontein).
will be undermined by the presence of too many senior staff who occupy posts not on merit, but on account of their membership of the governing party. Similarly, Mr Pothier said there is too much of a focus on Mangaung. The NDP will be competing for attention as politicians are focusing their energy with potential ANC succession issues. Mr Pothier said that South Africans tolerate a 25% unemployment rate as acceptable because we are used to it. “But in Europe, when the likes of Spain approaches such figures, it is considered a national catastrophe. People riot, governments fall. There is no sense of urgency in South Africa, and it is a national crisis.” Mr Pothier welcomed the idea of the multi-year wage agreements for government employees in order to maximise stability and minimise strikes and disruption. “This is especially important in education. We cannot afford the almost annual disruption to education that occurs when teachers and the government can't agree on salary increases.” Mr Pothier said the NDP on the whole is “very positive and should be the way forward for South Africa”, but added that “we are worried about the political will and whether there is the concentration for the plan to happen.”
Nun: Syria rebels worse than Assad BY SARAH MACDONALD
T
HE superior of a Syrian Carmelite convent has said that the armed insurrection in her country is “producing a totalitarianism that is worse” than that of Bashar Assad’s regime. Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross, superior of the community at the monastery of St James the Mutilated in Qara, also appealed to the international community to stop supporting violent militias linked to alQaeda and other extremist groups guilty of atrocities against innocent Syrian civilians. “We know now that those people are not fighting for freedom, they are fighting for their values, and those values are not even those of moderate Islam, they are fundamentalist,” the Lebanese-born nun said. “What has really scandalised us and leaves us in distress is that the Western world seems to be encouraging this rise of sectarian violence just to topple the [Assad] regime,” she said. Mother Agnes Mariam said the insurgents were targeting religious minorities and executing moderate Sunnis such as journalists, researchers, doctors and engineers to
A Free Syrian Army fighter fires an AK-47 rifle in Aleppo, Syria. (Photo: Goran Tomasevic, Reuters/CNS) pressure their families and communities into supporting an Islamist state. She claimed they were “destroying the delicate religious and ethnic balance” in Syria. “You don’t know when it will be your turn to be considered a collaborator,” she explained of the arbitrary abductions, beheadings and killings being carried out as part of a campaign of terror by the insurgents against those they claim are working for the Assad regime. “It is a life of fear and insecurity.”—CNS