Yearly Archives: 2007

A nasty little reputation problem has emerged for financial services group FirstRand Bank and its subsidiary, Discovery. This comes as Discovery has been trumpeting its results while downplaying disputes with doctors and the registrar of medical schemes — and as FirstRand has been talking up its proposal to unbundle its majority shareholding in Discovery.

A mystery hangs over the sudden departure of the Director General of Water Affairs and Forestry, Jabu Sindane, from his office this week. Employees at the department were shocked when they arrived in their office on Monday, to be met with a message stating that Sindane had resigned on Friday.

A confidential market research survey has found that South Africans think the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) treats government officials with kid gloves and tends ”to cover up” government’s wrongdoings. The Mail & Guardian has a copy of a report, titled Qualitative Overview of Current Affairs Programmes, compiled by research firm Plus 94 in March 2007.

The surprise resolution of the case of Gerhard Wisser — the South African resident implicated in a secret ring of nuclear technology smugglers — has paved the way for further international trials of people involved in the so-called ”Khan network”. The trial of Wisser and his co-accused, Dieter Geiges, was expected to last up to three years.

A week into the floor-crossing period, the African National Congress’s power goes unchallenged. In the defection period that is killing off smaller opposition parties such as the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and the United Independent Front, a low-intensity war is raging in Cape Town.

What’s in the top-secret report that former spy boss Billy Masetlha finally got his hands on this week? The National Intelligence Agency will not say what is in the report. Through the state prosecutor, the agency opposed Masetlha’s request for access to the document to support his defence against a fraud charge.

Jimmy Manyi, chairperson of the Commission for Employment Equity and president of the Black Management Forum (BMF), hit headlines this week after he proposed to Parliament that white women should be struck off a list of groups recognised by the employment-equity legislation as previously disadvantaged.

Things have gone distinctly pear-shaped in South Africa’s two most prized mediation subjects — the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. Governments put in place in both these countries as a result of South African-brokered peace processes last week saw a repeat of bodies in the streets and floods of refugees.