The point of the exercise is that slight changes in variables have such a rollercoaster effect on the result that only a gambler would allow a straight race to occur at year-end. Consider also that even if you were certain of the winner the very closeness of the contest will exacerbate internal divisions and perhaps cause enough internal damage to leave the winning faction presiding over a spent and fatally wounded organisation.
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According to Treasury’s report, about 6.5m people currently belong to occupational retirement funds. Of these members, 67% are black African, 12% are ‘coloured’, 4% are Indian, and 17% are white. Equivalent figures for RA fund members are not provided, but the demographic spread may be much the same.
A key issue here is property rights. The protection of private property has long been a sticking point in South Africa’s politics. Prior to 1994, the liberation movements envisaged a post-apartheid government seizing large parts of the economy, and wielding them for the common good. Land would ‘be shared among those who work it’, and large industry would be transferred to ‘the people as a whole’ – in a word, nationalised. ‘Property rights’ represented a capricious mechanism to retain an unjust status quo.
Recorded in its Monetary Policy Review published earlier this month, the statement amounts to a damning indictment of the management of the economy by the ruling African National Congress (ANC). The economy is "stagnant" despite "strong" global growth and easy financing options. Domestic growth has stalled because of "political and policy uncertainty" which has "depressed confidence". As a result, "investment is contracting" and potential growth is "very low".
Mngxitama is a master at following racism with even more racism, which he proved with his follow-up: “I concur with @helenzille that the aroma of the burning flesh from the furnaces of the holocaust may wet [sic] the appetite of the S.A. cannibals.”
This makes the recent publication of another book by Anne Applebaum especially timely. Entitled Red Famine: Stalin's war on Ukraine, it argues that four million people died of hunger in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 in a man-made famine unleashed by the Soviet state.
Cosatu has been an enabler of State Capture and was a driving force behind Zuma’s ascending to the presidency. It can’t now divest itself of responsibility for a formal programme adopted 10 years ago and remain in the Alliance.
Notes of Frans Cronje’s address to the Johannesburg Mining Indaba on 05 October 2017.
This clear wording in Section 1979 is also in keeping with what the provision was intended to achieve. Section 179 is the ‘McNally’ clause: so named after Tim McNally, the then attorney general of KwaZulu-Natal, who had earned the ANC’s ire by allegedly failing to prosecute enough of the ‘Third Force’ killers supposedly responsible for the upsurge in political violence in the province in the early 1990s.
The High Court in Cape Town has ruled in favour of the My Vote Counts campaign and ordered Parliament to make provision in the next 18 months for political parties to publicly disclose private funding.
The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has long known that among the large numbers of failing public schools are some success stories. The best known are suburban schools. But we were convinced that there were success stories among poor township schools too.
The memoirs record how Prince Buthelezi called the bluff of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1992 when that organisation threatened to march on Ulundi. He said he would not ban the march, but would not be responsible for whatever reception the ANC might be given.
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing South Africa’s political leaders is to develop an effective empowerment policy that can accelerate the movement of large numbers of disadvantaged people into the middle classes.
n a speech last week, Zuma identified Biko as a ‘martyr of our liberation struggle’, so implying that Biko had been the ANC’s ally in a common endeavour. In another address, Zuma went so far as to liken himself to Biko, on the basis that both had faced an unwarranted ‘hatred’.
There is a naive expectation that women should be supportive of other women, particularly when they’re in places of power such as in business and politics. Some are, but many are not. Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is not
In recently published memoirs, one of Cyril Ramaphosa's main opponents pays generous tribute to his character and negotiating skills during the talks leading up to the new South African constitution and the election in 1994.
At the same time, empowerment policy as practised is increasingly coming to serve as a tool of wealth extraction for a politically connected elite. More and more, the recent Mining Charter being a prime example, we see a pattern of policy makers using harsh regulatory mechanisms, passed in the supposed interests of transformation or redress, to extract wealth from private sector companies.
President’s bumbling country-bumpkin persona is a foil to lure his adversaries into a sense of false security
Fake news was supposedly invented by the likes of Donald Trump, the British public relations firm Bell Pottinger, and everyone in the United Kingdom campaigning for that country to quit the European Union. In fact, of course, fake news, lies, propaganda,
There is enough space in the South African media and political terrain to counter the views expressed on ANN7.
The Charter cannot be implemented — but is worth examining for its attempt to keep black South Africans perpetually dependent
Millions of South Africans are currently held back by bad schooling, poor housing, and failing health care. Yet state expenditure in these three spheres totals some R570bn in this financial year alone, far exceeding what most other developing countries spend.
A new approach to empowerment in mining
6 September 2017 - South Africa urgently needs a new approach to empowerment in mining, says the IRR in a report released today in its @Liberty policy bulletin.
Pupils at a public high school in a West Rand township visited two weeks ago were inspected by a "patroller" as they entered through the school gates. The headmistress explained that this was to ensure that they did not wear "branded clothing" instead of the school uniform, which included ties on boys. Pupils who wore such clothing tended to show off, which she did not think appropriate when 40% of all the pupils lived in shacks. These "show-offs" also tended to be more rebellious.
The government claims this will help increase prosperity, but international experience with state mining companies elsewhere shows the opposite. So too does the degree of incompetence, malfeasance, and corruption already evident at many of South Africa’s most important state-owned enterprises (SOEs), including Petro SA, Eskom, Transnet, Prasa, Denel, and SAA.
Israel Academic Boycott is a program of the UCT Palestinian Solidarity Forum (UCT-PSF) of which Nash and Ally are organisers. The UCT-PSF was founded in 2010 and has promoted an academic boycott of Israeli academia on and off since then.
The report said that the proportion of the population in poverty had increased from 53.2% in 2011 to 55.5% in 2015. "There can surely be no greater indictment of any government's performance than the number of people living in poverty rising on their watch," declared Mr Maimane.
Black policemen were particular targets of attack. "Necklace" executions of supposed collaborators, which some influential ANC leaders endorsed, claimed more than 500 lives.
Only 4 in 10 people of working age have a job
21 August 2017 - Less than half of South Africans of working age have a job. This is a finding of the 2017 South Africa Survey published by the IRR, based on Stats SA data.
From this viewpoint, the defeat of the no-confidence motion is not a mark of Mr Zuma’s continued strength but rather a confirmation that the time for Mr Zuma’s departure – in the eyes of all those trying to keep the ANC in power in 2019 – is not yet ripe.