Just occasionally one glimpses, behind the dull eyes and zombie-like shuffle of President Jacob Zuma’s disengaged administration, the values that sustained the African National Congress in the struggle years. It’s a briefly cheering reminder that all is not yet lost. This week Kgalema Motlanthe, in an uncommonly frank Business Day interview, skewered the movement to […]
economy
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Fix the public education system to grow the economy
The essence of good strategic thinking and planning requires, for an organization, a critical capacity to anticipate events in the future that may have the capacity to derail its strategy and develop remedial measures to mitigate the threat. This is also true for a government. The crippling financial burden of university education for the poor, […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Brics in crisis and new middle classes will bear the greatest costs
By Jan Hofmeyr These are trying times for Brazil and South Africa, the southern members of the Brics grouping of emerging nations that also include China, Russia and India. After years of robust growth their economies are in the doldrums, and their governments lack latitude in the options to revive them. It is not only […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
Let’s call a spade a spade, the EFF is marching towards a socialist dictatorship
It was an ordinary February morning in 1989, for most in Berlin, but not for 21-year-old East German Chris Gueffroy. It would be his last day alive. The cold metal force from a border guard’s gun would rip through his jacket and shirt and pierce his heart — pouring deep red warm hope out onto […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
The poor economy is not all Zuma’s fault
Some lessons I have learned from reporting on economic crises: * Don’t fixate on any one cause. Economies are complex webs of interrelated phenomena. Interest-rate changes are not the whim of the central bank, ie the Reserve Bank. They depend on a range of other economic actors, including our government and other economies in the […]
Posted inEquality
The problem with ‘buying, swapping and selling’ domestic workers
I recently came across an advert about a domestic worker. The advert was a Facebook post written on a group called “Westville buy, swap and sell”. The group is used by a variety of people wanting to get rid of household appliances. I became uncomfortable when a black woman was made part of the list […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Explaining the DA’s shadow cabinet reshuffle
Last week, DA chief whip John Steenhuisen announced small changes to the DA’s shadow cabinet. Most notably senior DA MP, and Wilmot James’ unsuccessful leadership campaign manager, David Maynier, was moved from defence to finance; while newcomer, Michael Cardo, was moved to economic development. Gareth van Onselen, a fierce critic of incumbent DA leader Mmusi […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
SA needs low-wage, labour-intensive growth strategy to boost economy
Faced with an economy that has been in decline for more than a decade and given the slowing demand from our trading partners, the State of the Nation address should have pointed in an emphatic way, to a radical and fundamental policy shift in strategies that are aimed at economic regeneration and the way we […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Illicit capital flowing out of Africa often benefits foreign investors
By Antonio Macheve Jr The US-Africa Summit in Washington DC has built enormous expectations for the development of Africa, particularly in what concerns economic ties, trade relations, investments and business between the nations of the African continent and the US. Despite enormous human-rights violations, conflict, widespread disease and other ills commonly known to Africa, the […]
Posted inNews/Politics
I am not voting against the ANC
On Monday I will cast my special vote in the 2014 national and provincial elections. This is the fourth South African election I am eligible to vote in, and this is the first time I will vote for the Democratic Alliance (DA). I was set on voting for the DA long before the Economist endorsed […]
Posted inEnvironment
The intergenerational injustice of climate change
Scientists are getting more radical about climate change and its consequences for our descendants. In a recent edition of the New York Times, Dr Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University draws attention to the fact that the time is past when scientists could, with a good conscience, refuse to go further than state their considered […]
Posted inGeneral
Bhutan’s lesson for the world
Reading Sipho Kings’s important article on Bhutan, “Forget your GDP, come on get happy” yesterday sent me back to my old TIME-magazines to find an article by Bobby Ghosh (TIME, October 15, 2012) on this tiny country wedged between India and China. The reason why I remembered Ghosh’s article is that it was entitled “This […]