Q: What sparked the conflict between the taxi drivers and the foreigners in Pretoria?

A: Locals claim the taxi drivers were  confronting foreign drug dealers selling nyoapi – a particuarly dangerous form of crack cocaine-  to local youths.The drug dealers – many of them believed to be Nigerian – struck back. One taxi driver was shot dead.The streets are quiet in the capital today but there is a heavy police presence 

Q: How much damage was done and how has the South African  government explained it?

A: Seventeen arrests were made after  several foreign owned shops were torched and there was widespread looting.   A  task team has been set up to find the root cause of the violence.Police say they will control the criminal element that was the cause of the taxi drivers’ anger.

Q: It seems President Cyril Ramaphosa and his host at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development are singing off the same song sheet on the question of agriculture. Could this really provide  the economic boost so badly required South Africa and the rest of the continent?

A: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says they will double Africa’s rice output by 2030 to 50 million tonnes a year. This will be using technology and innovation – the key to agriculture. He urges farmers to move from growing crops to eat to cultivating crops to sell. When agriculture grows more profitable the youth will find it an attractive career path. He’s convinced young people can transform agriculture.

This is music to the ears of Cyril Ramaphosa who is faced a faltering economy and massive  youth unemployment. 

His finance minister Tito Mbooweni in a strategy paper released yesterday says agriculture and tourism are two pillars on which South Africa can  hang economic recovery.

The paper has raised the ire of the trade union arm of the ruling triple alliance.

COSATU is angry Mboweni did  to consult them before issuing the strategy which they want him to withdraw.

The minister’s strategy  does not mention expropriation of farmland without compensation which is a cornerstone of policy for the ruling ANC but which is credited with destroying the agricultural sector in Zimbabwe under ousted President Robert Mugabe.

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The Nairobi Declaration adopted at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development or TICAD, has leaders agreement to promote investment in infrastructure that leads to job creation in the region.

ends intro

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says his country’s public and private sectors will offer cooperation for the development that is led by Africa itself.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta sitting alongside him at the post TICAD press conference says Japan does not press its own views on the continent and continues to be a force for African development.

Abe’s  pledged that Japan will mobilize a total of $30 billion in private- and public-sector funds to invest in Africa over three years to boost infrastructure-building on the resource-rich continent.

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