Business

If the “brother leader” were to have had his way during his presidency of the AU, Africa would now be one country under the name of the Unites States of Africa with all the trappings of a modern state, including a common currency. Whether the world is ready for another country with the name of […]

Warren Buffet is rumoured to have said that it is only when the tide goes out that you discover who has been swimming naked. When I first heard of the quotation and its source, I found this to be a contradiction in terms, especially because Buffet is on record saying that while other men read […]

The strategy discipline, in all its manifestations, has grown in popularity, stature and usage, especially considering the fact that Peter Drucker was forced to change the title of his book from “Business Strategies” to Managing for Results partly because then strategy was deemed to belong to the military or perhaps political campaigns but not to […]

In the wake of the biggest financial apocalypse of our times, the media has loudly voiced concerns about corporate behaviour. Despite widespread condemnation, corporate incentives and bonuses are already returning with a vengeance now that there are strong signs of a recovery. Should they be rewarded already? And as generously as the media would have […]

Do we sometimes overrate new technology at the expense of the old? Is there a possibility that we idealise the impact of the new to a degree that we completely overlook things that still work perfectly well? Does Africa always need to go high-tech? This is the continent that has in some ways led the […]

So cellular giant MTN has finally revealed the massive scam behind its supremely irritating Ayoba campaign: this Christmas, 500 employees will be getting job cuts in their stockings. Ayoba, we are told, means “super-cool”. And by extension, everything about MTN is cool. What a hideous joke. There is nothing cool about hacking jobs for Christmas […]

Eskom’s management mess comes as no surprise, given the state of the operation, regulatory rot and the leadership crisis at other parastatals

Most of us ordinary, reasonably decent people have difficulty wrapping our minds around the legal notion of a company being a “person” in the same way we are. People are people and companies are, well, just, y’know, companies. People have feelings and morals. Companies don’t. It never was that simple and it never will be. […]

There is a difference between what is legal and what is right. Parents work hard on getting their kids to understand this and fortunately for society, they mostly succeed. Big business doesn’t get it, though. For most corporates what is legal is moral, finish en klaar. In South Africa entire industries were gleefully built around […]

By Albert van Zyl In his first important speech as finance minister, Pravin Gordhan’s main story was that the budget deficit would be 7.6% of GDP, not 3.8% as projected in the February budget. And the reason for this, he told us, was that Sars collected a lot less tax than what the Treasury thought […]

We’ve been promised housing for South Africans for a good 15 years now, but progress has been rather pathetic. The backlog remains at more than 2 million houses and government seems highly unlikely to make serious inroads into the issue soon. This became painfully evident last month when it came to light that government flagship housing […]