Business

It’s unnerving how often one is faced with declarations about the desirability of fewer people on Earth, in response to criticisms of environmentalist politicking. Fewer of us, so the reasoning goes, would improve quality of life and be good for the environment. Forgive me for not joining this little death cult. Forty years ago almost […]

Has Eskom fired Ehud Matya? That is the claim made in a comment on my blog. The Eskom story, with all its myriad twists and turns and all its implications for economic policy and political accountability, has become thoroughly tiresome, but it just won’t die.

If there are two things even more annoying than our power crisis itself, one is the feel-good positive-thinking rubbish people have been writing, and the other are the insults and nonsense we’re being fed by government.

This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online: How would it help resolve the power crisis if ministers were fired?

South Africa has been plunged in darkness. Everyone except the idiots who caused the crisis says it will seriously damage the economy. Yet nobody has been fired. Not even a few token dismissals of powerless and innocent underlings.

It hurts to say this, but I agree with the health minister. Like her, I believe that something needs to be done to address private hospitals’ proposed tariff increases. But the problem, which the minister has yet to admit, is that she appears to have no express statutory power to act. Like the problem of […]