Campaigning ahead of the November 1 local government elections will continue to dominate headlines this week as political parties jostle for votes.
The publication of the final list of candidates for the position of chief justice on Monday will attract great interest. Members of the public had until Friday to nominate candidates.
After the publication of the names of the proposed candidates, the public will then have two weeks to raise objections.
An advisory panel will counsel the president before he determines his selection for head of the judiciary. Chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’s term ends on October 11 and the consultative process means a new chief justice will most likely be appointed in November, at the earliest.
Still on judicial matters, the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) — which is tasked with interviewing candidates for judicial positions, making recommendations for appointments to the bench, and dealing with complaints brought against the judges — will on Monday begin a week of interviews for several vacancies in the country’s top courts, including at least four Constitutional Court justices.
Also on Monday, the Constitutional Court will hand down judgment regarding the dissolution of the Tshwane municipality. The Tshwane council was dissolved by the Gauteng government in March 2020 after a turbulent few months in which council meetings had continuously collapsed as a result of councillors from the ANC and the EFF simply not attending or walking out of meetings, resulting in them not being quorate. This has led to political instability in the metro.
This week, SA’s mining, automotive, steel, and construction industries could be brought to its knees as the country’s biggest union says it will strike from October 5 for better pay.
The National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), which represents about 432,000 workers, recently announced the intended strike in a bid to secure above-inflation increases in the struggling steel and engineering sector.
The sector, which has been a victim of declining prices, in part because of an increase in cheap imports, accounts for about 1.5% of GDP and employs about 190,000 people.
Numsa initially demanded a one year, 15% pay increase across the board but in August revised it down to 8%, after declaring a dispute at the Metals and Engineering Industries Bargaining Council.
The union turned down employers’ proposal for a 4.4% increase in 2021, and inflation-related increases in 2022 and 2023.
On Thursday, the Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium is scheduled to hold a conference on infrastructure investment in SA as the government pushes to fast track infrastructure-led economic recovery.
The symposium is also a platform to explore partnerships between the public and private sectors and investment opportunities in infrastructure. The government and important role players believe that infrastructure investment is a critical driver of future growth of the economy as it improves efficiency and productivity, and this supports long-term growth and raises living standards.
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