South African markets reeled on Friday, caught up in a global flight from risky assets sparked by credit worries, with stocks falling nearly 4% and bonds sliding. ”Traders must be placed on suicide watch today [Friday], as the [stock] market is expected to bleed heavily during the day,” said Efficient Research in a note.
The JSE continued its fall at midday on Friday, taking its cue from world markets, which were retreating further as international credit worries weighed heavily. At midday, the JSE all-share index had dipped 3,18%, with resources tumbling 4,01%, the gold mining index losing 3,01% and the platinum mining index falling 3,11%..
South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry this week indicated that it was considering building a state-backed, but privately operated, steel mill to compete with ArcelorMittal South Africa and Highveld Steel and Vanadium. According to the National Industrial Policy Framework, the department aims to finalise the feasibility study by March 2008.
Zimbabwe has cancelled the operating licence of one of its three cellphone firms for having a majority foreign shareholding in breach of local laws, the state telecommunications agency said on Friday.
Organised media are relieved that they have been exempted from the blanket ban on the usage of words and phrases related to the 2010 World Cup, but organised black business is fuming over what it sees as an imposition of standards not suitable to a ”Third World” country.
When 19-year-old Thabang Moeketsane from Moletsane in Soweto joined the High Performance Centre, a sporting facility at the University of Pretoria, in 2003 his dream was to be part of the South African swimming squad to take part in the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing.
John Daly fired the best round of his troubled season without even a practice look at the course but it was England’s unheralded Graeme Storm who took the first-round lead at the PGA Championship. Storm, a 29-year-old European Tour player who worked in a cream-cake factory when golf could not pay the bills, proved he was no cream-puff on Thursday.
One of the country’s top legal eagles has been roped in to help break the impasse between SA Rugby and the players destined for the export market — but a ruling is not expected for a fortnight. Piet Heymans, the chief executive of the South African Rugby Players’ Association, said on Thursday that a decision will not be reached before then.
The advent of democracy and the re-admission of South Africa into the international football family introduced a fascinating dimension in the local football arena. For those who had been in the business of local football for decades, there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
At least one Somali died Friday as heavy fighting broke out in the capital Mogadishu between insurgents and the Ethiopian-backed government forces, police and witnesses said. An Agence France-Presse reporter in Mogadishu described the clashes as among the most intense since April.