The Daily Dispatch, a daily newspaper based in East London, has been running articles about allegations of companies “fronting” to get government contracts. By “fronting”, what is generally meant is falsely claiming to be a majority black-owned company, having black economic empowerment ownership in your company, or having black staff occupying top management positions. This […]
Business
Posted inBusiness, Media
The politics of media development
The term “media development” might remind many people in South Africa of the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA). Well, the term has become a buzzword in international media financing. My aim here is to draw upon a talk I gave in 2007 at the Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership/Konrad-Adenuer-Stiftung conference for media executives […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
African leadershift: social capitalism
There’s an emerging realisation that the strength of distributed nodal power bases is almost unconquerable. Guerrilla movements, social media and small, focused niches of the Long Tail cause disruption that produces evolutionary economic shifts. Market-making is shifting into the hands of some unlikely new leaders in the quick online world. The butterfly effect of the […]
Posted inBusiness
Black economic disempowerment
Given the exaggerated praise that BEE received at its introduction, one would have expected that all of us — blacks — would be rich by now. Not so; we are still wallowing in the same poverty as we did before this empowerment arrived, save for a few black politicians and business people related to one […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
‘False face must hide what false heart doth know.’ (Macbeth Act 1 Sc 7)
Johannesburg — The rand was more than 3% weaker against the dollar in late trade on Wednesday after Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s budget speech in Parliament. The rand weakened to a 16-month worst level of R7,9225 a dollar — after closing at R7,6625 on Tuesday — with traders predicting the local currency could break above […]
Posted inBusiness, Sport
An hour with Jake White and Gavin Varejes
When Gavin Varejes approached Jake White with the offer that kept him in South Africa, millions of local sports supporters rejoiced. The thought of losing one of our sporting heroes to England, Wales or worse, Australia was more than we could bear. The eleventh-hour offer by Richmark Holdings Group to White and his subsequent acceptance […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Roberto Mangabeira Unger: Social theorist/politician
(I have been working on this for a while for my studies, but seeing as Minister Trevor Manuel is quoting Roberto Mangabeira Unger in the 2008/09 budget, I thought it appropriate to get this blog done, even though I still need to think about this much more.) And what we seek, then, as the final […]
Posted inBusiness
Actually it’s business as USUAL …
This blog has nothing to do with the government’s new slogan sound bite — it has to do with thieving and unscrupulous business practices in South Africa. The recent news of price-fixing and collusion by pharmaceuticals is just one more example of what seems to be “business as usual” behaviour in South Africa. I’m a […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Budget 2008: What’s your take on it?
This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: Budget 2008: What’s your take on it?
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Budget 2008/09: Can the Polokwane Strawman win the war against poverty?
The boisterous rotating arms that signalled a need for substitution, a 60:40 split in the voting for national office-bearers and the fact that leftist formations had backed the winning ticket all signalled that something has changed during the ANC Polokwane’s conference. Whatever has changed has spurred on many private-sector commentators and lobbyists to begin the […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Simple solution for power crisis
No plan to fix the power catastrophe in South Africa will work overnight. The crisis is deep and wide and will have grave impacts on economic growth, inflation, and poverty alleviation for many years to come.
Posted inBusiness
First Eskom, now Telkom — who’s next?
I have promised to reveal what one good or positive trait of mine I would willingly relinquish if given the chance to live my life again. I failed on my promise … and therein lies a parable. I have been offline again — thanks entirely to the unimaginable incompetence of Telkom, its ingrained policy of […]