September 12, 2014.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Megan van Wyngaardt.
Making headlines:

President Jacob Zuma says he can review the Public Protector's findings.

The IMF says Ebola has affected economic growth in West Africa.

And, a deal between Nepad and USAID seeks to drive the Africa Power implementation.

President Jacob Zuma on Thursday told Public Protector Thuli Madonsela he could not and should not give blanket acceptance to her reports. This was in a letter written in response to her reminder that he had failed to heed her findings on Nkandla.

Zuma said he "must respectfully disagree" with Madonsela's view that her reports and recommendations can only be reviewed by a court of law, and not by ministers or the Cabinet.

Zuma said the public protector arrived at her findings without the "adversarial hearing" inherent in a court process. Thus, he said, this was a "significant factor to caution me against a blanket acceptance without applying my own mind". Therefore his role was not simply to rubberstamp her findings.

The president is facing sustained criticism for not complying with Madonsela's order that he reimburse the state for improvements such a swimming pool and chicken run built at his homestead in Nkandla as part of a R246-million project originally destined to upgrade security.

Economic growth in Liberia and Sierra Leone could decline by as much as 3.5 percentage points as the worst-ever outbreak of Ebola has crippled the key mining, agriculture and services sectors in the two West African countries, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.

Growth in Guinea, where industrial mining has been unaffected so far, could fall by about 1.5 percentage points, said IMF spokesperson Bill Murray.

He said the crisis has exposed financing gaps totaling $100-million to $130-million in each of the three countries. He noted that the IMF was working with authorities to figure out additional funding. All three countries are already getting IMF loans under programmes that predate the Ebola outbreak.

The African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (or Nepad) Agency have signed a memorandum of understanding with USAID outlining new commitments to the implementation of the Power Africa Initiative. US President Barack Obama unveiled the initiative in 2013.

The MoU comes after Obama’s August announcement that the private-sector-driven Power Africa had been scaled up and would now seek to provide energy access to 60-million households and businesses over the coming five years.

Nepad Agency energy division head Professor Mosad Elmissiry told Engineering News Online that the programme was mostly aligned with the pipeline of 15 priority energy projects identified under Nepad’s Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa. These projects included power generation schemes, such as the Inga 3 hydropower project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, several cross-border transmission corridors and oil pipelines.

Also making headlines:

Discussions are underway between the Social Development Department and the South African Reserve Bank to protect the bank accounts and confidential information of social grant beneficiaries.

The International Monetary Fund has restarted talks on reviewing an aid programme for Mali and resuming aid payments to the West African country halted by the IMF and the World Bank earlier this year.

And, Oscar Pistorius returns to court on Friday after being cleared of murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, but the South African Olympic and Paralympic sprinter has been convicted of culpable homicide for the "negligent" shooting of the model.

Also on Polity:

A new paper by the South African Institute of International Affairs gives a thematic analysis of the Chinese, Indian, Russian and Brazilian engagements in Sudan after 2005, with particular interest in the changing nature and trajectory of these relationships after the establishment of South Sudan in 2011.

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That’s a roundup of news making headlines.