Reuters World News - South Africa election, Biden’s nuclear push and Latin America climate case

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Early projections from South Africa indicate the governing African National Congress will fall short of a majority for the first time since coming to power after the end of apartheid. Fourteen Hong Kong pro-democracy activists have been found guilty in a landmark subversion trial that critics say could deal another blow to the city's rule of law. The White House is looking at ways to support the development of new US nuclear power plants in a bid to meet climate targets. Latin America's human rights court has held a final hearing in a case looking at what countries must do to combat climate change.  Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. For more on South Africa's election listen here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, early projections from South Africa's elections suggest the ruling ANC will fall short of a majority. The Biden administration turns to nuclear in a bid to help meet climate targets, while a court in Latin America weighs up a historic case over government's responsibility to combat climate change. It's Thursday, May 30th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front line. in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool. Early projections from South Africa's election

indicate the governing African National Congress will be short of a majority for the first time in 30 years. The ANC has won every national election ever since the landmark 1994 vote, which marks the end of apartheid and the assent of Nelson Mandela as president. But since those heady days, the ANC's support has declined, because of disillusionment over issues such as high unemployment and crime,

frequent power blackouts and corruption. Tanner Anders is in Johannesburg. Tanner, what do we know at the moment? We're just below 14% of the vote counted. Right now, the ANC is leading. They currently have 42.5%. Roughly around 42.5%. This is substantially lower than what the ANC has received in previous elections.

How significant is this at this stage? Reuters has had the opportunity this morning to chat to a pollster and the pollster suggesting that the ANC will likely lose a majority. This is unprecedented in South Africa's democratic history. The ANC has always won a majority and it would effectively force the ANC into a coalition government, once again unprecedented in South Africa. It's also important to bear in mind that voting isn't done all at the same time and different regions of the country come in incrementally. For example, we're seeing that with ANC has a stronghold and quite a bit of voter support, those parts of the country haven't come in yet. What sort of turnout has there been?

We haven't received exact numbers on voter turnout as of yet, but the IEC, the Independence Electoral Commission, is projecting voter turnout to be higher than the previous election, the 2019 election. In the 2019 election, voter turnout sat at 66%. Those election projections in South Africa are spooking markets. Kamal Krimmins has more. Investors are worried that if those projections prove correct, then the ANC may need to partner with one of its biggest rivals to retain power. So the choice could be between the market-friendly Democratic Alliance

or one of two populist parties, the leftist EFF or Jacob Zuma's MK party, neither of which are seen as business-friendly. So the prospect of political instability has stocks, bonds and the Rand all down. And sticking with economic news, Episode 2 of my new podcast, Econ World, is out now. I'm joined by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman for a deep dive on debt and the politics of spending. You can check it out on Reuters.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

There's a newsletter to go along with the show and you can sign up for that on Reuters.com. 14 pro-democracy activists have been found guilty in a landmark subversion trial in Hong Kong. Special correspondent James Pompat is there. The harsh convictions today once again underscore what many Western governments have already criticized about Hong Kong in the past couple of years, that the rule of law has been weaponized or broadly applied against opposition figures. So this in many ways, it categorically shows that Hong Kong no longer really tolerates opposition voices and critical voices. Israeli forces have taken control of a buffer zone along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. A military official said boots are on the ground and that Israel had gained operational control.

It means Israel effectively has authority over the Palestinian Territory's entire land border. The jury in Donald Trump's criminal trial will resume its closed-door deliberations today. Late on Wednesday, jurors asked for transcripts of testimony by two weeks. witnesses, former Trump Vixer, Michael Cohen, and former National Enquirer tabloid publisher David Pecker. They also asked the judge to repeat the detailed instructions he had given them to guide their deliberations. Nuclear power was once touted as an incredible source of abundant, clean energy. But in recent years, its image seems to have become, let's say, a bit radioactive. In fact, there are currently no nuclear plants being built in the US.

But the Biden administration wants to change that. The White House is looking at measures to support the development of new plants. Our White House correspondent is Trevor Honeycutt. So the president has pretty ambitious climate goals. He wants to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050. It's going to be a tall order. And basically, his administration has decided that they need all hands on deck in order to reach that goal and all types of energy. So not just wind and solar, which are really only available when the wind is blowing and the sun is out, but also some low carbon sources of energy that can run 24-7.

How does the White House plan to get all this going? There's a few different things that they're doing. The federal government is not directly investing in building the new plants themselves, but they're giving a lot of subsidies that are allowing companies to do that, right? So that's the government's way of putting a little bit more oomph behind an industry that has really tough economics. And what are the controversy surrounding nuclear energy? What are the politics of it? Yeah, it is controversial, and it's not, it doesn't clearly line up along traditional partisan lines either. So you have people on the left who are worried about nuclear waste and some of the environmental consequences that go with leaving radioactive waste that lasts for generations. And then you have people on the right who are more interested in fossil fuels and in kind of embracing the full range of energy sources, including coal and other

sorts of ways that we get energy into the grid. And so the politics behind this are complicated, but the Biden administration is betting that for its constituency, the climate risks are going to be the biggest concern, and that'll bring people behind supporting nuclear energy. So nuclear energy is one way the Biden administration is looking to help meet climate targets. But concern about whether governments are doing enough to try and meet their climate goals is now the focus in some courtrooms. Latin America's human rights court is considering to what extent the 20 countries under its jurisdiction must play a role in combating climate change.

Bill's final hearing has just wrapped up, with a ruling months away. Legally, we are in uncharted waters, as Jake Spring in Sao Paulo explains. So this case is the largest climate case ever being considered, and it's before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights. They're basically going to issue an advisory opinion telling countries what their obligations are to address climate change to ensure that people's human rights are not violated. So if people are being hit by extreme weather, say, marginal indigenous communities in Brazil or in Colombia, and the government has somehow not acted to stop that, that would be something that the court will weigh in on whether the country is obligated to help out

those populations. What are the challenges of litigating climate change? The challenges with litigating around climate change are that there's little precedent. I mean, we've never had something happened like climate change to the world before, and there's just been very little legal decisions made on it. And that's the first thing courts look to is what have they decided in the past. So in this case, I mean, they'll be looking to what have they decided on an environment in the past and that might help inform it. So for example, this court has already decided that people have a right to a healthy environment. So that will probably also carry over to them most likely ruling that there are strong obligations that states act on climate change also. Do these cases have any teeth? Whether or not these decisions actually help combat climate change, whether they'll be implemented is like the huge question right now. We had this decision out of Switzerland a few months ago

that said that the government had violated elderly Swiss women's rights by failing to act on climate change. And a Swiss parliamentary committee only a week or two ago rejected this. They said they're not going to follow it. So where do you go from there? I mean, these courts do not have their own police officers or anything to go out and enforce this. If countries just choose to ignore these courts, it could potentially undermine their authority because at best they're able to kind of name and shame them for not following it, but they don't actually have any teeth for forcing countries to enact them. That's it for this Thursday episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. Don't forget to check out the latest episode

of the Econ World podcast, looking. at debt. And to make sure you never miss your daily update, subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.