African leaders and Japan pledged on Friday to get to work to ramp up food production, calling it ”critical” for the continent’s development amid a crisis over soaring prices. Japan also pledged to step up foreign aid and investment to Africa, at a three-day summit with 51 African nations in Yokohama, near Tokyo.
For years television was her main form of entertainment and view of the world as she lived in an underground prison. Now the kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch is to become a TV talk show host herself — a career of which she dreamed during her incarceration.
Mining magnate Brett Kebble gave about R260 000 to the former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni, according to the trustees of Kebble’s bankrupt estate, a media report said on Friday. This allegation was contained in affidavits in an application for a summary judgement that would force Yengeni to pay this amount back to the estate.
Although house prices in certain areas have seen a decline, you still need to make sure your house insurance provides for replacement costs rather than property costs. Debbie Donaldson of FNB Insurance Brokers says that, while house prices may be under pressure, building costs are increasing.
The statistics on credit extension in South Africa are illuminating and startling. In 2002 R289-billion worth of credit was extended to households. In 2006 that figure soared to R680-billion — more than double the volume of credit in a four-year period. Today the amount of credit granted has spiralled to about R1,1-trillion in total.
Misappropriation of funds and fraud have been part of public life since time immemorial. In democratic societies public spending has come under increasing scrutiny– with good reason. In South Africa the Auditor General (AG) is at the nucleus of the public spending atom.
An increasing number of would-be homeowners are finding their mortgage applications declined. Discounts on the prime lending rate are narrowing as banks start to feel the credit squeeze and fears are mounting as bad debts increase and property prices start to slide.
Xenophobic attacks in some areas of South Africa were organised and planned beforehand, but probably as a result of local tensions rather than a “third force”, says Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils. “There is no intelligence at this stage to suggest that the attacks were orchestrated by some hidden hand manipulating the events,” he said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs on Friday confirmed that three South Africans have been arrested in Zimbabwe. In a statement, the department said the men were due to appear in court and it would render assistance to the detainees as required. On Tuesday Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that three people, two of them South Africans, had been arrested in Zimbabwe.
South Africa has experienced the highest rate of food-price inflation since January 2003, the National Agricultural Marketing Council said in its quarterly food price monitor on Thursday. From April 2007 to April 2008 the increase in the Consumer Food Price, as reported by Stats SA, was 15,7%.