The Committee on Intergovernmental Trade and Economic Cooperation will be accompanied by a business forum in Moscow.

Foreign Minister Lindiwe Sisulu will meet with Russia’s Natural Resources and Environment Minister Dimitry Kobylkin.

ITEC was formed under a bilateral agreement signed in 1999. It was revived in 2003.

The body seeking to strengthen and deepen relations between South Africa and Russia has been reinforced with a 2006 Treaty on Friendship and Partnership and the declaration in 2013 of a strategic partnership.

The ministers will review implementation of bilateral agreements – the latest of these were signed at the BRICS summit in Sandton this year – and prioritise the outstanding memoranda of understanding.

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Prosecutor Yusuf Baba says he’s lined up 30 witnesses for the case expected to last 15 days.

Patrick Karegeya, who fled to South Africa in 2007, was found strangled with a curtain cord in his suite at the Michelangelo Tower in Sandton on New Year’s Eve in 2013.

The dissident’s confidante Apollo Karisi Gataranga is the chief suspect.

Karegeya’s nephew  David Batenga says the family’s convinced the murder was ordered by Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Prosecutor Yusuf Baba says the  inquest findings will be handed to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Any further steps will involve extradition because none of the suspects are in South Africa.

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The 182-country United Nations body knows that unless elephant poaching is stopped now, the animal will disappear from the wild in a couple of decades.

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Zimbabwe and Namibia, backed by South Africa, want to be allowed to sell their stockpile of ivory.

Botswana’s ranged against them, backed by 29 other African nations, calling for an immediate and permanent ban on the sale of ivory and the destruction of stockpiles to remove its financial value.

The convention is expected to continue the ban on trading rhino horn.

However there is a well-financed lobby arguing that  those  farming rhino are protecting the species and should be permitted to make large profits by harvesting  the horn, which grows back.

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It’s the first time the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, known as Cites, is meeting on the African continent.

The eclectic  mix of policymakers,  activists and academics meets every three years with the survival of an increasing number of species on their hands.

Academics like Ross Harvey of the South African Institute of International Affairs says its an enormous load.

“Winston Churchill would have said about CITES what he said about democracy, that it’s terrible form of governance, but it is the best available,” says Harvey

Cites for example fears that tougher rules to protect elephants , currently being killed at a rate of around 

20 000 a year for their tusks could backfire and boost the trade in ivory.

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African leaders are waiting on Judge Hans Fabricius in the Pretoria High Court to rule on the propriety of a South African government declaration giving blanket immunity to all leaders and delegates attending the summit.
The proclamation gazetted last Thursday ties the hands of prosecutors waiting to spring on Bashir and arrest him on two International Criminal Court warrants in force alleging his involvement in genocide in Darfur.
The prosecutors say political interference is preventing them fulfilling their responsibility in terms of South African domestic law.

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President Jacob Zuma has begun bilateral meetings that will keep him occupied most of the week. He’s seen President Thomas Boni Yayi of Benin.

The theme of the summit in Sandton is the Year of Women Empowerment and Development Towards Africa’s Agenda 2063.

It will guide discussions of foreign ministers later this week and of the African heads of state next Saturday and Sunday.

But yet again countries of the continent have presented their leaders with burning issues to look at.

These include: the deep divisions and instability in Libya; the civil war in South Sudan; unrest and an abortive coup triggered by Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza’s determination to seek an unconstitutional third term at the helm; and Madagascar being driven back into confusion by parliamentary efforts to impeach President Heri Rajoanarimampianina

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