Phumlani M. UMajozi responds to the Star columnist’s nonsensical attack on the DA Mayoral Candidate for Joburg.
Our own writing in the media
John Kane-Berman on the ANC govt's plans to legislate against this supposed problem.
“Taxation without representation is tyranny” is the famous cri de coeur uttered in about 1761 presaging the American War of Independence.
John Kane-Berman says Parks Tau's initiative was misconceived from the get go.
LAST year, the Institute of Race Relations commissioned a national survey of public attitudes to race and other policy issues.
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.
Few books have yet been written about the ‘people’s war’ waged by the African National Congress (ANC) from 1984 to 1994. Nick Howarth’s book, War in Peace, helps remedy that defect.
South Africa’s mining industry remains in the doldrums, having recorded an overall loss of R37-billion in 2015. The persistent malaise in mining stems partly from depressed commodity prices, juxtaposed against rising input costs. But bad mining policy also bears much of the blame.
If anyone needed more evidence that quitting the European Union (EU) was the right decision for the United Kingdom (UK), the German chancellor and her finance minister recently provided it.
Nigeria and South Africa, it is clear, must embark on devising strategies to slay their behemoths of intolerance with more urgency. Both countries need to come up with more effective policies to address these challenges. Denial and blame-shifting will only deepen the problems arising from intolerance, rather than fix them.
Thousands of cases of fraud, theft, and other crimes need to be investigated, many hundreds of people prosecuted, and plenty imprisoned. Having themselves been captured, neither the so-called "Hawks" nor the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) can be trusted to do the jo
22 February 2018 - It is worrying that the medium-term expectation is for South Africa to continue underperforming regional and emerging market growth averages by around 50%. The current growth projections will put paid to the prospect of a medium-term employment uptick.
Budget analysis 2016: SA economic outlook 2016 – finance minister undershoots, stagflation the likely outcome
Following Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech, industry veteran Ian Cruickshanks applied his mind to the outcome. He says despite Gordhan saying that South Africa is “imaginative and resilient enough” to turn the economy around and that “we need action and not just words”, the steps announced did not go nearly far enough to halt and reverse South Africa’s economic decline. In this fantastic analysis the Institute of Race Relations Chief Economist provides a sobering reality check of what to expect from the economy in 2016. – Stuart Lowman
John Kane-Berman wrote in Business Day this morning that, "All these risks aside, the idea of a state mining company might turn out to be brilliant — so brilliant that we should all rush out and buy shares in rival firms digging out whatever minerals the state decides to mine. This is because the new company is likely to be so badly run that the minerals in question will remain in the ground, contributing to global shortages, so pushing global prices up. The bull market would be back."
The venom spat at Nedbank chairman Reuel Khoza by the ANC and the government it controls is significantly more poisonous than any previously directed publicly at businessmen who criticised them.
We are in deep trouble and need to be brave.
A recent survey by Brunswick, a consultancy firm, showed that 37% of South Africans were positive about capitalism. Given the rhetoric berating "white monopoly capitalism" this seems a high proportion. On the other hand, it chimes with surveys by the Institute of Race Relations showing that most people have more important things to worry about, especially unemployment.
We are in the earliest days of a grand experiment to test the validity of the notion that the businessman’s dispassionate acumen can transform our sclerotic federal government into something with private sector efficiency.’
If South African schoolchildren were elephants, there would be an international outcry against the culling in the schooling system.