How many people have noticed that neoliberal capitalism undermines the values of ubuntu (“I am because others are”) as a traditional African practice? And how many know that ubuntu and ecofeminism share some fundamental principles and values? I know of at least one such person, and her work in this regard is extremely significant. In […]
Business
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
Black economic empowerment is not black economic empowerment
By Michael Nassen Smith The BEE drum has been beaten many times before on both the right and the left on South Africa’s political spectrum. A recent piece on PoliticsWeb penned by John Kane-Berman gave what has become a standard liberal right critique of BEE. I think Berman is right to bemoan the influence of […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General, News/Politics
It’s a simple choice: Are we going to make South Africa great?
Last week I wrote about racism in our public discourse and I was accused of merely describing the problem and negating the role of politics in fixing our economy. Well, here is a stab at a solution: – Every South African corporation with a national footprint should employ one intern aged 20-29 for every 10 […]
Posted inBusiness, General
Why American market capitalism is broken
Yes, you’ve read correctly. You may not know who Rana Foroohar is, so let me inform you that she is a highly respected business and economic journalist working for TIME magazine, who has just published a book called Makers and Takers, published in May (Crown publishers), in which she makes this (to some startling) announcement. […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
We are rebuilding an economic apartheid instead of dismantling it
In the mid-1980s South Africa’s prime overdraft rate went to 25%, inflation rocketed to 20.9% and the apartheid government abolished the financial rand exchange rate system in 1983 as international banks refused to renew credit lines for South Africa. The world was punishing South Africa for being a pariah, a scum state, violating the fundamental […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality
Concerns raised over way repossessed homes are sold at public auctions
By Mbalenhle Budaza Lawyers for Human Rights, together with many legal non-governmental organisations, have noted with growing concern the manner in which repossessed houses are sold at public auctions. The fact that a reserve price is not mandatory for sales in execution as well as the lack of judicial oversight over these processes has led […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
BASF, Lonmin and how the Marikana battle for justice is taken to Germany
BASF is a huge corporate that gives Lonmin a lot of business. Today, April 29, in Germany they are gathered for their annual shareholder meeting. Along with the usual shareholders who attend these meetings there’ll be some less familiar faces, two of the women made widows by the Marikana massacre. Thirty-four miners brutally gunned down […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
What’s needed to lift investor confidence
South Africa faces a perilous and uncertain future because of stagnant growth, policy uncertainty and ideological gridlock, high unemployment, inequality and poverty. Social tension is very high as indicated by a high frequency of service-delivery protests across the country and an increasing level of anti-social behaviour that morphs into the current high-crime rate. The frequent […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
Global inequality is much worse than we thought
It’s familiar news by now. According to Oxfam, the richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world’s population combined. Global inequality is worse than at any time since the 19th century. For most people, this is all they know about global inequality. But Oxfam’s wealth figures don’t quite tell the whole […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, News/Politics
How to avoid an economic war
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India said “Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.” Nehru led a nation of hundreds of millions of poor Indians groaning under the postcolonial legacies that had shaped the subcontinent. Colonialism was not […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News/Politics
Alternatives to coal-fired electricity exist but there are no alternatives for water
By Penny-Jane Cooke The last quarter of 2015 saw five out of the nine provinces — KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the North West, including the breadbasket of the country, the Free State — declared as water disaster areas and by extension disaster areas for agriculture. Somehow, the linkages between how the intensive water use for coal-fired […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News/Politics
We need to break the one sacred rule of the global economy
Scholars are still trying to figure out why the society on Easter Island collapsed, ending the people famed for their construction of towering stone heads. One interesting theory holds that it had to do with the heads themselves. Somehow, the islanders decided that the giant heads represented power and success, so different groups competed to […]