Day: December 3, 2022

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South Africa needs R1.5 trillion for Just Energy Transition

South Africa requires an initial funding of about R1.5 trillion to transition to a low carbon and climate resilient society for the five-year period 2023–2027, says Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) Commissioner Joanne Yawitch.

 

Addressing a hybrid Special Sitting on Understanding the contents of South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP), Yawitch said achieving the JET IP outcomes is dependent on the scale and nature of financial support that South Africa can secure from the international community to complement domestic resources.

 

“At the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) in 2021, a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) was forged with France, Germany, United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States (forming the International Partners Group [IPG]) in which the IPG undertook to mobilise US$8.5 billion (~ ZAR 128 billion) over five years to support South Africa’s Just Energy Transition.

 

“The initial IPG offer of US$8.5 billion is thus a catalytic contribution towards addressing the JET IP priorities,” she said.

 

The IPG funds will be primarily directed towards the electricity sector for the decommissioning of coal plants; the expansion and strengthening of the transmission grid and distribution infrastructure; supporting economic diversification in affected coal mining areas and the deployment of renewable energy.

 

The IPG US$8.5bilion offer comprises grants, concessional and commercial loans, and guarantee instruments, contributing to approximately 12% of South Africa’s JET IP funding needs for the period.

 

“South Africa’s dependence on fossil fuels gives rise to a range of climate, energy and transition risks, especially for affected workers, communities, businesses and exporters.

 

“However, embracing new economic opportunities in green technologies can drive industrial development and innovation, leading to a sustainable and resilient future with decent work, social inclusion and lower levels of poverty,” Yawitch said.

 

The JET IP represents the initial building blocks of managing South Africa’s Just Energy Transition and climate response, which will be a managed, phased, long-term process of economic, social, and environmental change.

 

It will involve multi-year, multi-sectoral, and multi-jurisdictional initiatives with many stakeholders, including significant capacity building to manage the scale of the Just Energy Transition.

 

“Implementation must be based on solid foundations for a sustained, focused, and visible effort across government, civil society, trade unions and the private sector that can adapt as needed over time. It will be grounded in existing South African institutions and systems and will adopt both local and global best practice,” Yawitch said.

 

The JET IP is premised on South Africa’s National Development Plan (NDP) 2030, with its focus on tackling the country’s systemic challenges of poverty, inequality, and unemployment.

 

It is in line with South Africa’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) which was lodged with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) prior to its 26th Conference of the Parties (COP 26) in Glasgow in November 2021, and South Africa’s long-term Low-Emissions Development Strategy (LEDS) submitted to the UNFCCC in 2020.

 

The NDC commits the country to reducing its emissions to within a range of 420-350 megatons carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2-eq) by 2030.

 

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

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South Africa: Pres Ramaphosa engaging stakeholders on course of action on ‘farmgate’ scandal – Presidency

Presidential spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, says President Cyril Ramaphosa is still engaging stakeholders with regards to the way forward following findings by an Independent Section 89 panel that the President may have violated his oath of office.

 

The panel was formed to look into the circumstances around a robbery at the President’s Phala Phala game farm and found that President Ramaphosa may have seriously violated sections 96(2)(a) of the Constitution and Section 34(1) of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities (PRECCA) Act – allegations the President said he “categorically denies”.

 

At a media briefing Friday night, Magwenya said the President is cognisant of the urgency of addressing the nation in this regard.

 

“The President appreciates the urgency of this matter. The President appreciates the enormity of this issue… what it means for the country, the stability of government and as a result of that, he is still processing the report.

 

“But in that exercise, he’s also engaging a number of role players and stakeholders across the governing party, different levels of the governing party, different levels of the alliance and he’s engaging a broad range of stakeholders, and this is in appreciation of the enormity of the matter,” Magwenya said.

 

He assured that President Ramaphosa would address the nation in due course.

 

“We are in an unprecedented and extraordinary moment as a constitutional democracy as a result of the report and therefore, whatever [decision] the President makes, that decision has to be informed by the best interest of the country and that decision cannot be rushed and cannot be taken in haste.

 

“An announcement is imminent because the President will need to indicate to the country the course of action he will take going forward,” the spokesperson said.

 

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

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Built to Disappear: World Cup Stadium 974

DOHA, QATAR —

Of the seven stadiums Qatar built for the World Cup, one will disappear after the tournament.

That’s what the games’ organizers have said about Stadium 974 in Doha — a port-side structure with more than 40,000 seats partially built from recycled shipping containers and steel.

Qatar says the stadium will be fully dismantled after the World Cup and could be shipped to countries that need the infrastructure. Outside experts have praised the design but say more needs to be known about what happens to the stadium after the event.

“Designing for disassembly is one of the main principles of sustainable building,” said Karim Elgendy, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank who previously worked as a climate consultant for the World Cup.

“It allows for the natural restoration of a building site or its reuse for another function,” he said, adding that several factors need to considered “before we call a building sustainable.”

Designed to be dismantled

Buildings are responsible for nearly 40% of the world’s energy-related carbon emissions. Of that, about 10% comes from “embodied” carbon or the greenhouse gas emissions related to the construction, maintenance and demolition of buildings.

Qatar has faced international criticism for its treatment of low-paid migrant workers who built more than $200 billion worth of stadiums, metro lines and other infrastructure for the World Cup. Qatar says the criticism ignores labor reforms enacted in recent years.

Stadium 974, named after Qatar’s international dialing code and the number of containers used to build the stadium, is the only venue that Qatar constructed for the World Cup that isn’t air-conditioned. During a match Friday in which Switzerland defeated Serbia, the air was noticeably more humid and hotter than in other venues.

The stadium hosts only evening matches, when temperatures are cooler.

Fenwick Iribarren Architects, which designed Stadium 974 and two other World Cup stadiums, said the idea was to avoid building a “white elephant,” a stadium that is left unused or underused after the tournament ends, as happened following previous World Cups in South Africa, Brazil and Russia.

Stadium components could be re-used

Qatar said it has developed plans for the other six stadiums after the games are over. Many will have a number of seats removed.

The multicolored shipping containers are used as building blocks for Stadium 974 and to house facilities such as restrooms in the interior of the structure. Like giant Lego blocks, the bright red, yellow and blue corrugated steel boxes appear suspended between layers of steel. The design gives the stadium an industrial feel.

Qatar has not said where the dismounted stadium will go after the tournament or even when it will be taken down. Organizers have said the stadium could be repurposed to build a venue of the same size elsewhere or multiple smaller stadiums.

Where its components go matters because of the emissions implicated by shipping them thousands of kilometers away.

Carbon Market Watch, an environmental watchdog group that investigated Qatar’s World Cup sustainability plans, said whether Stadium 974 has a lower carbon footprint than a permanent one comes down to “how many times, and how far, the stadium is transported and reassembled.”

FIFA and Qatar acknowledge that in a report estimating the stadium’s emissions. If the stadium is reused only once, they estimate its emissions would be lower than a permanent one as long as it is shipped fewer than 7,000 kilometers (about 4,350 miles) away.

If it’s repurposed more than once, it could be shipped farther and still be less polluting than a permanent venue, they said, because of how energy-intensive building multiple new stadiums is.

Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, the organizing committee for the World Cup, did not respond to a request for more information about plans after the tournament.

The report also didn’t factor in operational emissions — or those produced from running a building — once the stadium is repurposed because standards vary in different countries, FIFA and Qatar said.

“The energy required for dismantling and shipping the building components will obviously need to be estimated,” Elgendy said, “but it is unlikely to outweigh the carbon embodied in the building materials.”

For now, the stadium’s design isn’t lost on spectators. On any game night, fans entering and leaving the stadium take selfies against its modern, industrial facade. The temporary stadium is hosting seven games in total — with the final one on Monday between Brazil and South Korea.

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America

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Scandal-Hit South African President Seeks to Hang on to Power

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA —

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, embroiled in scandal and under threat of impeachment, has no intention of resigning and will fight both politically and judicially, people close to him said Saturday.

Pressure mounted this week for Ramaphosa to quit or be forced from office over the theft of more than half a million dollars in cash from his farm, which he allegedly covered up.

The African National Congress (ANC) initially said on Saturday morning it would hold a “special session of its National Executive Committee” on Sunday. It then said the meeting had been postponed to Monday morning.

The party leadership met briefly in Johannesburg on Friday before telling journalists it would look more closely at the facts of the case against the president.

Ramaphosa supporters were rallying to his cause.

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola said he had no doubt that Ramaphosa would remain in office.

“He will definitely continue,” Lamola told public broadcaster SABC.

Ramaphosa spokesman Vincent Magwenya said the president was “seriously considering” challenging in court a report submitted to parliament this week over the theft.

On Wednesday, a three-member parliamentary panel, including a former chief justice of the country’s highest court, said Ramaphosa “may have committed” acts contrary to the law and the constitution, paving the way for impeachment proceedings.

“It may be in the long-term interest … of our constitutional democracy, well beyond the Ramaphosa presidency, that such a clearly flawed report is challenged, especially when it’s being used as point of reference to remove a sitting head of state,” Magwenya told AFP.

Even the head of the South African Anglican Church warned that, if Ramaphosa resigns, the country would be in danger of falling “into anarchy.”

Buffaloes

Ramaphosa has been under fire since June, when a former spy boss filed a complaint with police alleging that the president had hidden a February 2020 burglary at his farm in northeastern South Africa from the authorities.

He allegedly arranged for the robbers to be kidnapped and bribed into silence.

Ramaphosa said the vast sum of cash stashed at the farm was payment for buffaloes bought by a Sudanese businessman.

But the incriminating report questioned why the identity of Mustafa Mohamed Ibrahim Hazim, said to have bought the cattle, could not be verified, and why the buffaloes remained on Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala estate, a two-hour drive from Pretoria.

“There are serious doubts as to whether the stolen foreign currency actually came from their sale,” the report concluded.

The scandal has cast a shadow over Ramaphosa’s bid to portray himself as graft-free after the corruption-stained era of his predecessor, Jacob Zuma.

The report concluded Ramaphosa “may have committed” serious violations and misconduct.

It will be examined by parliament on Tuesday.

That debate could open the way to a vote on impeaching Ramaphosa, which in South Africa means removal from office.

No charges yet

Ramaphosa has denied any wrongdoing.

The president has not been charged with anything at this point, and the police inquiry is ongoing.

But the scandal, complete with details of the more than half a million dollars in cash being hidden under sofa cushions, came at the worst possible moment for him.

The South African press remained confident on Saturday that Ramaphosa would remain in office. The president is popular with the public, more so than the ANC.

But the party of national hero Nelson Mandela, in power for 28 years since the end of the apartheid-era, is experiencing dwindling support.

On December 16, Ramaphosa contests elections for the ANC presidency, a position that holds the key to staying on as national president.

He took the helm of Africa’s most industrialized economy in 2018, vowing to root out corruption from state institutions.

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America

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Police in Sekhukhune conducted an ‘Arrive Alive’ road safety awareness campaign in collaboration with inter-faith based organisations

SEKHUKHUNE: The Police in Sekhukhune have engaged in an Arrive Alive road safety awareness campaign in collaboration with Inter Faith Based Organizations on Friday 02 December 2022 between Steepoort and Kutullo along the R555 road.

The multi forces comprises Members of the Spiritual Crime Prevention, Community Police Forum, Social Crime Prevention and Traditional Councils as well as Inter-faith Denominations.

The Campaign was aimed at raising awareness amongst the community about safety on the road and the cleansing of R555 road which is reported to be a high fatal accident zone.

The team was led by the Station Vispol Commander Lieutenant Colonel Matsie. “As the Police we urge all the road users to excise cautious measures at all times to avoid accidents and be safe on our roads during the Festive Seasons and beyond,” said Lieutenant Colonel Matsie.

The Pastors with their congregations also joined hands with the Police and the Community in prayers against force behind the scourge of Gender Based Violence and Femicide in commemoration of the 16 Days of Activism for no Violence Against Women and Children.

 

 

Source: South African Police Service

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Police seek assistance in identifying a murder man: Gelvandale

GQEBERHA – SAPS Gelvandale detectives are seeking the communities’ assistance in tracing the next of kin of an unidentified murdered man whose body was found this morning in Grundling Street in Shauderville.

It is alleged that at about 09:00, a bush dweller was rummaging in the bushes looking for scrap in Grundling Street next to a school when he noticed a big cream bag lying behind a tree and against the wall. He opened the bag and found a body of a male who was already in a state of decomposition. The deceased person had a belt around the neck, hands tied behind his back with another belt and his feet bound with sellotape. The bag was also tied up.

He immediately alerted the community before running away. The deceased is an adult male and he was wearing a white T-shirt and a blue denim. He is of big build.

A case of murder is under investigation.  The post mortem will determine the exact cause of death.

Anyone who can assist police in identifying the man or may know of someone who is missing or can shed any information relating to the murder, is asked to contact SAPS Gelvandale, Detective Sergeant Landiswa Sokanyile on 073 448 5539 or Crime Stop on 08600 10111 or the nearest police station. All information is confidential and callers may remain anonymous.

 

 

 

Source: South African Police Service

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Update: Missing person sought

DURBAN – Patrick Kommireddi was positively identified by his family on 30 November 2022 at Phoenix Mortuary. It is alleged that he was knocked down by a vehicle on Monday at Merewent. A case of culpable homicide was opened at Wentworth SAPS for investigation.

 

 

Source: South African Police Service