South Africa’s middle class is not easily moved to anger, perhaps because anger requires passion, and passion requires a mind and heart, operating roughly in tandem. It is almost constantly irritable, of course; but pure, white-hot rage seems to be quite beyond the scope of the great Afro-Tuscan and Cape-Venetian wastelands that signify our economic dawn and cultural dusk.
Hysteria and paranoia — two symptoms of a growing political pathology in South Africa that distort the truth, complicate the quest for solutions to problems and inflame the climate of fear, suspicion and acrimony as the ruling party approaches its watershed national conference. Hysteria comes mainly in the form of overheated rhetoric and extravagant ideological mudslinging.
To fence, or not to fence: this debate has been under way for a decade, concerning Kenya’s oldest national park, located just 20 minutes from the centre of the capital, Nairobi. With urban development edging closer to the park, however, a decision one way or the other has become a matter of urgency.
The ANC discussion document titled <i>Economic Transformation for a National Democratic Society</i> captures important shifts initiated by the government in recent years. It rejects market fundamentalism, supports a developmental state, endorses the major public sector-led infrastructure investment programme and affirms the need for state-led industrial policy, writes Jeremy Cronin.
Concerns about Google’s dominance in online advertising have prompted the United States Federal Trade Commission to investigate its $3,1-billion takeover of internet marketing company DoubleClick. The purchase of DoubleClick, announced last month, is intended to give Google enhanced software and stronger relationships with agencies.
Consumer inflation has breached the Reserve Bank’s upper limit for the first time in 44 months, upping pressure for an interest rate hike next week, and sending the JSE plummeting. CPIX, which is the main consumer inflation indicator, reached 6,3% year-on-year in April, according to figures released recently, while headline CPI reached 7% year on year.
‘The time may have arrived for South Africa to offer all children free primary education in law. This would place us in step with modern democracies worldwide.” Yes, Naledi Pandor really said this, in her budget speech in Parliament recently. Where did such a groundbreaking announcement come from?
In his June 2001 declaration of interests to Parliament, Tony Leon noted under consultancies or retainerships: “Richmart (Pty) Ltd — investment holding company”. The value of benefits to be received, he wrote, was “nominal at this stage — to be negotiated”.
Police chief Jackie Selebi’s questionable friendships extend to Gavin Varejes, a player in the Tigon affair, one of corporate South Africa’s biggest scandals. Circumstances suggest that their friendship contributed to the vigour with which Varejes’s enemies in Tigon were investigated and charged.
Critics of the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Bill have drawn comparisons between it and the corralling and deportation of Jews in Nazi Germany. The Bill’s defenders in government, however, consider it a “revolutionary” way of preventing slumlords from renting out shacks and controlling the proliferation of informal settlements.