The state of the nation address on February 12 was the clearest indication yet of the economic and political abyss into which the current ANC is leading South Africa.
Our own writing in the media
The ANC of 2007 under Thabo Mbeki was one of denialism. Denial of problems from HIV/Aids, to crime, corruption and xenophobia. Without many people acknowledging the change, the ANC has started to accept the problems it faces as a governing party.
South Africa is ground-zero for the global Boycott Disinvestment and Sanctions movement.
Instead of thumb-suck targets and flawed assumptions, we need a land policy that helps established small-scale black farmers to expand.
Cannabis, along with tik, the local version of crystal methamphetamine, is one of the two drugs produced in large quantities in SA, and also the most widely used illicit drug in the country.
The South African National Aids Council says the high rate of infections among young women between the ages of 14 and 25 remains a key concern. It says there are at least 2,000 new infections among girls between 15 and 24 per week. That’s 104,000 young women a year!
31 January 2018 - Capitec and the South African Reserve Bank responded strongly and swiftly to Viceroy’s report - but whatever the veracity of certain details or one's opinion on Capitec’s business model, there is much about Viceroy’s modus operandi that triggers alarm bells of an attempt to provoke market panic, even if not an attempt to short and distort.
John Kane-Berman says that the likely capitulation of the ANC to Cosatu over labour law amendments this week confirms that the battle of ideas to liberalise the country's economy will continue for some time. It will, however, be won in the end.
ACCORDING to Business Day, longstanding proposals to require doctors and other providers of health services to obtain "certificates of need" from the government before they are allowed to practise have once again been put on hold. That is no reason, however, why we should not explore extending this concept.
In a recent interview with the Sunday Times, Bobby Godsell of Business Leadership SA said it was time for South Africans in business, civil society, the churches, and government to be "courageous and forthright and candid in our views about how to secure our future".
Arguably, however, it has undermined that system in that the sentences imposed are heavier than the crime itself warrants. One of the men, Theo Martins Jackson, was given a sentence of 19 years' imprisonment, of which five were suspended, so that his effective sentence is 14 years. The other, Willem Oosthuizen, was given 16 years of which five were suspended, leaving an effective sentence of 11 years.
Sun glints off the tin roofs of a nearby shack settlement, home of the boy lying in the dust at our feet. Between us and his parents’ shack is a vast sunflower field owned by Pieter Karsten, a leading farmer and businessman in the town of Coligny.
A few months ago Ms Zille quoted Nelson Mandela as having said that South Africa's understanding of the rule of law was part of our colonial heritage. Marian Tupy of the Cato Institute in Washington recalled that a one-time Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said that the judiciary and legal system were among the great institutions derived from British-Indian administration.
Sipho Seepe wrote in Business Day this morning that, "Lekota dug his grave as soon as he sought to distance himself from former president Thabo Mbeki — the mastermind behind COPE. But Lekota should have known better. He is part of a bunch for whom democracy is acceptable as long as it delivers a preferred candidate. When this fails, there are always plans B and C."
LARGELY unnoticed, the Department of Trade and Industry is quietly processing legislation that will, in effect, expropriate copyrights on the death of their owner.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has found a new way to weaken patent rights via the Copyright Amendment Bill of 2015 (the Copyright Bill) and its proposed new “intellectual property tribunal” (the IP tribunal).
5 December 2017 - The reluctance to come out is a rational response to the community's exposure to frightening levels of violence and abuse.
The day before finance minister Pravin Gordhan delivered a budget speech that was supposed to show how South Africa’s economy is being turned around, the National Assembly quietly adopted the Expropriation Bill of 2015, which is sure to damage investment and further constrain economic growth.
From Jacob Zuma to Cyril Ramaphosa (and scores in between) South Africa’s politicians (and a fair number of journalists and social justice activists) have engaged in a week of nauseating adulation of deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Various threats of violence against whites were also reported. Velaphi Khumalo, an employee of the Gauteng provincial administration, tweeted that whites should be ‘hacked and killed like Jews’ and their children ‘used as garden fertiliser’. Other comments by black South Africans called for whites to be ‘poisoned and killed’, urged ‘the total destruction of white people’, and advocated a civil war in which ‘all white people would be killed’.