World champions Australia are among four international teams invited to play in a Twenty20 series for a winner-takes-all prize of -million although the man behind the idea accepts issues still remain. The event is the brainchild of Allen Stanford, the Texan billionaire, who is also hoping to include Sri Lanka, India and South Africa in the week-long tournament.
Zimbabweans are switching to barter, payment in kind and the use of foreign currencies, such as the rand, instead of the local dollar to survive hyperinflation and the accelerating economic meltdown. Zimbabwe’s currency is still pegged officially at Z$250 to one US dollar; recently the informal market price was about Z$130 000 to US$1, although two weeks ago it had crashed to Z$400 000 against the US dollar.
With strikes looming in the gold mining, coal mining, metal and other major industries, potentially involving hundreds of thousands of workers, 2007 is already the most strike-plagued year since the 1994 election. Jackie Kelly, of the labour consultancy Andrew Levy Employment, disclosed this week that 11-million working days had been lost to industrial action this year.
Once upon a time, chocolate lovers had it easy. Lunchbar or Bar One? Flake or Sweety Pie? Or, perhaps, an Inside Story. Splashing out meant buying a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray or Côte d’Or for your hostess at a dinner party. No longer. A sustained economic boom and growing affluence has seen an explosion of premium chocolates available in South Africa.
The ANC government’s sound economic policies have put South Africa on a good footing to address the backlogs of the past. For the past decade the government has implemented tight monetary and fiscal policies. It has been very painful but, in the long term, all South Africans will realise that it was the right thing to do.
Women are slowly beginning to make their mark in wage bargaining on the mines, territory that has long been dominated by men. Dr Elize Strydom, the chief negotiator at the Chamber of Mines, is one of the few female negotiators who is making her presence felt inside the bargaining rooms.
The SACP in Gauteng has nominated its provincial secretary, Zico Tamela, to challenge Blade Nzimande for the general secretary’s post in a move calculated to embarrass Nzimande. The SACP will elect new leaders at its national conference that takes place at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth from next Wednesday to Saturday.
Mbulelo Goniwe will probably be reinstated as a member of the African National Congress (ANC), but he will not return to Parliament if ruling party MPs have anything to do with it. Goniwe lost his job as chief whip in December last year after a disciplinary committee found him guilty of sexual harassment, abuse of power and bringing the party into disrepute.
Hillbrow. The word conjures up images of high-rise slums and streets rife with crime. But in this week’s crime statistics, the Hillbrow police station was singled out as one of the country’s better stations. How has it raised its crime detection rate by 12% and notched up a 10% increase in the number of cases it brings to court?
”Give me 10 more vehicles and 85 extra cops on the beat and I will take Nyanga off the number one murder spot in the country.” Assistant commissioner Manyano Noqayi of Nyanga police station was speaking this week after the area was, for the second consecutive year, named the neighbourhood with the highest number of murders in the country.