A scrum to get through passport control and luggage collection, no parking available for anyone who has come to meet you and little chance of making it to the domestic terminal in time for a connecting flight. That’s the typical Johannesburg International airport experience. Fortunately, OR Tambo International airport will be much better.
Communist Alert! Johannesburg’s Top Star drive-in has closed after 48 years and will literally vanish without a trace over the next three years. Remember, without eternal vigilance, it can happen here. Joe Bob Briggs, the cult drive-in movie critic of Grapevine, Texas, concluded his reviews with a paragraph like that whenever a drive-in died to make room for a “six-screen indoor-bullstuff puke-plex”.
Laptop sales have overtaken desktop sales in the United Kingdom, according to retailer PC World. This may not have happened in South Africa yet, but booming laptop sales are great for this country, which produces 77% of the world’s platinum.
Platinum and some of its five sister metals are key ingredients in laptops.
Measured by the South African Advertising Research Foundation’s readership figures, <i>Getaway</i> magazine is the biggest title in the outdoor travel niche with a 480 000 All Media Product Services reading. But, measured by circulation, <i>Weg</i> — Naspers’s Afrikaans imitator — has just under 100 000 sales, beating <i>Getaway</i> by more than 15 000.
South Africa has allocated nearly $50-million to win the site bid for the world’s largest telescope, the Square Kilometre Array. The country is vying against Australia, Argentina and China to host this prestigious European Commission-funded science project.
After the shocking details Pension Funds Adjudicator Vuyani Ngalwana brought to light on the hefty sales commissions and administration fees pocketed by assurers, you would have thought South Africans had learnt to avoid middlemen and invest directly in the stock market by now. Yet there are only about 200 000 South Africans who buy shares.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to a selection of African countries next week highlights the growing importance of resource-rich Africa to the world’s most voracious consumer of any commodity that can fuel industrialisation. His June 17 to 24 visit will take in Egypt, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.
In February, the Bush administration introduced tax incentives encouraging Americans to replace their house windows with ones that comply with conductance and solar heat gain standards. United States local authorities that are plagued by power shortages have gone further, legislating energy-efficient building regulations.
Online used-car dealer <i>Japan-partner.com</i> offers to ship vehicles from Nagoyao to Durban for $70 per cubic metre. "This means that car shipping cost of a Nissan Primera is 10,48 x 70 = $734," is the example in its FAQ. A Nissan Primera in stock costs $1 700, bringing the total cost to R15 251 at the current exchange rate.
Remember Pepsi-Cola’s attempt to re-enter South Africa 10 years ago? From booking its endorsement star Whitney Houston in a stadium where Coca-Cola owned marketing exclusivity to fielding rookie New Age Beverages against the formidable South African Breweries’ Amalgamated Beverage Industries, it was Pepsi’s bloodiest chapter in the history of the cola wars.