The Johannesburg Stock Exchange today announced it would launch an international petroleum jelly market in what is set to be the largest soft paraffin futures exchange in the world. This as growing volumes in the trade of multi-hydrocarbons followed in the wake of Jacob Zuma’s presidency in 2009. The market for petroleum jelly, the JSE […]
Jacob Zuma
Posted inNews/Politics
Close the gate quietly behind you when you leave, Mr President
Watergate set the trend. Since then we have locally had Muldergate, Travelgate, Guptagate and now Nkandlagate. There are others, quickly forgotten as new political outrages displace the old more swiftly than one can keep track. The gate suffix is now so ubiquitous through journalistic overuse as to be meaningless. Especially given what separates the first […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Media, News/Politics
Numsa: Is this the left’s moment?
The announcement that Numsa would form its own socialist party should come as no surprise. Numsa’s battles within Cosatu (most notably with its historical rival, the Jacob Zuma-aligned NUM) and the ruling alliance (particularly with the Zuma faction, ostensibly on questions of ideology) have served as a generous forewarning that this was coming. Further, in […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The strange case of the disappearing president
President Jacob Zuma is South Africa’s invisible man. The person elected to lead the nation is slowly fading away like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, until eventually, one assumes, only the grin will remain. Like many a politician before him who found the heat in the local kitchen too much to endure, Zuma has become a […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Lost for words to describe Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma
It is something that is always at the back of the minds of leaders: the question of how they will be remembered by subsequent generations. In the deferential East, the Chinese will happily bob and scrape to such obvious fibs as The Great Helmsman to describe mass murderer Mao Zedong, while North Korea hails Kim […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Protecting the dignity of politicians
One thinks of politicians as vain and thick-skinned. Arrogant and shameless. Duplicitous bullies. People to tolerate but rarely to love. Men and women with the backbones of amoebae but the survival instincts of cockroaches. It appears one is just so wrong, for it seems that they bleed emotionally like any of us. All the way […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Juju does Guy Fawkes?
Behold, the end of the world is nigh! The barbarians have breached the gates! Extremists are redrawing maps without the superpowers! Journalists’ heads are rolling — and not only at Independent Newspapers! Jihadists now speak with English accents! Oh, and Juju’s in the house. And he’s not playing nice. Civilisation as we know it is […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Mother of the nation’s bid to be farmer of the year
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. You gotta admit, what a woman. All heart. Many pitiless people still whine about her role in the Mandela United Football Club and its Sowetan reign of terror in the closing years of apartheid. Admittedly, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did rule that she should be held “politically and morally accountable for gross […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Time to have Faith in the ANC’s ‘good story’?
Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, is what the mafia don advised. It’s a Machiavellian strategy that President Jacob Zuma has embraced and is taking to absurd lengths with his new Cabinet. It is now a veritable army of ministers and deputy ministers that oversees South Africa’s government. This week’s oath taking ceremony […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Elections 2014: Everything and nothing remains the same
By this time next week, the election dust will have settled. One doesn’t have to be clairvoyant or even wait for the results, to discern the shape of the future. Everything will be the same. Nothing will be the same. The ANC will again form the government and the DA will again form the official […]
Posted inEquality, General, News/Politics
A ‘good story’ to tell – for some
I must admit, the ANC’s election moniker (you know, that it has a “good story” to tell) makes me very angry – probably much more than it should. In the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death, and the feeling that we’ll never again experience such collective unity or progress as a nation, the ANC’s election spin […]
Posted inNews/Politics
How the ANC’s gravity-defying levitation is achieved
As South Africa’s political parties approach the final straight it’s yet another one-horse race, if the bookies are to be believed. The African National Congress, says the latest polls, is set to achieve close to the two-thirds majority that it has maintained for the past 20 years. The opposition Democratic Alliance will apparently be fortunate […]