The hike in the repo rate is bound at least to slow down economic growth and the rate of new job creation, said the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Thursday. Cosatu said the increase raises the real possibility of retrenchments at a time when unemployment is still ”far too high”.
The battle for the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) at its December conference in Polokwane should convince foreign investors that the country’s democracy is solid, ANC president Jacob Zuma told the Durban Chamber of Commerce’s 152nd anniversary dinner on Thursday.
Leonard Chuene will have the last laugh on Sunday over his number-one enemy, the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc), when he is re-elected as president of Athletics South Africa. No one is standing against him. In the run-up to the elections, Chuene has been under pressure to resign.
A "racist column" has cost well-known <i>Sunday Times</i> columnist David Bullard his job, media reports said on Friday. "He wrote a racist column on Sunday. I had a conversation with him on Tuesday, I told him that what he wrote was unacceptable," <i>Sunday Times</i> editor Mondli Makhanya was quoted as saying.
President Thabo Mbeki will attend a Southern African Development Community (SADC) emergency summit this weekend in Zambia on the post-election crisis in Zimbabwe. However, Mbeki’s cherished policy of "quiet diplomacy" on Zimbabwe has been rejected by his own party.
After Patti Solis Doyle and Geraldine Ferraro, Mark Penn is the third senior adviser to Hillary Clinton to step down or be demoted. Each time one of the praetorian guard falls, more questions are asked about the judgement of the commander-in-chief. It was Penn’s big idea to play on Clinton’s managerial competence and her experience under fire.
Zimbabwe’s political future remained wide open this week, as Zanu-PF girded its loins for a second round of voting and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change warned that it would not participate in a run-off. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said that Zanu-PF had accepted that because no party had won an outright majority a run-off was inevitable.
Senior Olympic officials denied bowing to Chinese government pressure this week after an influential International Olympic Committee (IOC) body watered down calls for Beijing to find a negotiated solution to the conflict in Tibet. Beijing is determined to press ahead despite the disastrous reception the torch has received so far.
Two years ago, the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organisation expected biofuels to help eradicate hunger and poverty for up to two billion people. Last week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon raised doubt over that policy amid signs that the world is facing its worst food crisis in a generation.
Rapule Tabane says that, if confirmed as the new African National Congress Youth League president, Julius Malema is likely to continue predecessor Fikile Mbalula’s tradition of pompous, reckless and fiery bombast. The 27-year-old from Limpopo will be even more ”militant” than Mbalula.