Massmart’s recent R1-billion black economic empowerment deal, following in the footsteps of Edcon’s BEE deal, shows clearly that companies will do deals despite being exempt from the government’s licensing and buying power. Retail, unlike mining and broadcasting, is not subject to licensing or contracting that gives the government the power to compel industries to negotiate a charter.
President Thabo Mbeki’s second term as national president is not even half completed. Yet we find ourselves embroiled in an enervating and divisive succession debate riddled with conspiracy theories. Why this premature turbulence?
A British national accused of starting a blaze on Table Mountain in January in which a woman died, appeared briefly in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Friday. Anthony Cooper, out on bail of R3Â 000, faces charges of arson and culpable homicide. He is alleged to have flicked a burning cigarette into the brush.
The United States Senate on Friday confirmed air force General Michael Hayden as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, which has been in turmoil over intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 attacks and the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Hundreds of Somalis packed mattresses and food into minivans and trucks, preparing to flee their capital a day after it suffered some of the fiercest battles in 14 days. Doctors reached by telephone in the city’s hospitals and clinics raised the death toll from Thursday’s fighting to 60, with more than 150 wounded.
The Pretoria High Court on Friday turned down an application by 15 refugees to set aside a refusal by the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority not to register them as security guards. Their registration was earlier refused on the grounds that they were neither South African citizens nor permanent residents.
There is no reason why the recent volatility in the stock exchange, the gold price, the value of the rand and the bond market should negatively affect South Africa, said President Thabo Mbeki. Since early May, the rand has lost 8% or 9% of its value and the JSE has lost a similar amount, he said in his weekly newsletter on the African National Congress website.
Police on Friday confirmed a probe into a theft from a police safe in Benoni but would not say whether this involved the theft of heist money from the Johannesburg International airport robbery in March. Superintendent Eugene Opperman said a burglary took place on Wednesday at the serious and violent-crimes unit.
South Africa’s rugby bosses on Friday formally adopted a transformation charter designed to significantly increase the number of black people involved in the sport. South African Rugby Union (Saru) president Oregan Hoskins told a media briefing in Cape Town that Saru’s president’s council had given its blessing to the ”scientifically based” seven page document.
Peter van Heerden’s wild performances that include branding lend new meaning to the term historical angst. Alex Sudheim attends his current retrospective.