South Africa Michael Metelits International research organisation Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) plans to drop Malaysia from its emerging markets free index on November 30, a move which could benefit South Africa. MSCI’s move will increase the weighting of other emerging markets in the index. South Africa has the second largest weighting in the index […]

Patrick Bond Share World `It is interesting that at times like this Mr [John Maynard] Keynes is again resurrected,” remarked South African Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel at the meeting with his Commonwealth counterparts in Ottawa at the end of last month. “There is a recognition that the standard prescription for macroeconomic stability and growth […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 3.30pm. THE new United States ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday voiced US support for President Laurent Kabila, and slammed Rwanda and Uganda for their “military interference” in the country. The comments made by William Swing on national television are the first to be made by a […]

Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD I have done some stupid things in my time. But spending the night alone in a haunted office building must rank way up there as one of my dumbest and most bizarre ideas yet. Yes, you heard right. I did say haunted and alone. It was so spooky. Every […]

Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week Film release patterns are very strange. One week there’s a host of movies and film festivals opening, and the next there’s virtually zip to write about. This week sees only four new movies being released, in comparison to last week’s seven along with the feast of films featured in […]

hemp You’ve heard of lager, pilsener, draught and stout. Now there’s hemp beer. It’s called Hanf (“hemp” in German), made by Wdi Bru in Switzerland, and it’s finally available in South Africa (Cape Town and Gauteng only). At the third birthday party of Pretoria pita bar and reggae club Tings an’ Times on October 10, […]

bus Patrick Bond Last week, while global bureaucratic financial elites had trouble even pretending they possessed the tools to fix the world economy’s cracked engine, some passengers at the back of the bus debated whether to hijack the stalled vehicle or set out on foot. Urgent strategic planning for progressive resistance to globalised finance occurred […]

The value of loyalty and discipline in politics is greatly overstated. As much cruelty and idiocy have been organised in their name as in the service of probably any other attribute. The camp commandant at the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp during World War II; the communist who raised no opposition to the murderous purges in […]

spring fever Friday night Genevieve Cutts Remember the days when it was a mission to find something to do on a weekend in Johannesburg? Well, those days are over. My Fridays now begin (please note I say begin) vegged out on my couch in front of the TV as I am e-ntertained and e-nthralled by […]

Stephen Moss Jos Saramago has finally received his due from the Swedish Academy. Awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, he is the first writer in Portuguese to win the world’s most prestigious literary award. “I am very happy for myself,” he told a cheering crowd at the Frankfurt Book Fair. “But I am also […]