Getting into the headquarters of JHC, the Johannesburg Housing Company, is like breaking into Fort Knox, with access control devices on myriad doors. In fact, as we pass through the last door, I realise it actually is Fort Knox — at least according to its name plate. The man at the centre of this African fort is Taffy Adler, JHC’s chief executive. And JHC’s objective could not be more dissimilar to its office’s American namesake.
With south/south trade strategically growing in importance, India is shaping into one of South Africa’s most important trading partners. Already we have witnessed the successful entry into South Africa of Indian conglomerates such as the Tata group and Ranbaxy, while South African companies seem set to make their mark in India.
Recently Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Putin’s most implacable enemy, goes on trial in Russia for corruption, accused of stealing millions of dollars from Russia’s state airline, Aeroflot. If convicted, the former mathematics professor faces 10 years in jail. But he was not in court to face his accusers, and will not be there to hear the verdict weeks from now.
It was going to be a trip down memory lane. At least that’s what I thought as I prepared to try out the vaunted Soweto Business Express. Soon after arriving at Ikhwezi station in Mofolo, I discovered that the world had changed a bit since igado/ibomba was the transport of choice, writes Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya .
In most supermarkets in the sprawling township of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, empty shelves and butcheries with no meat in the cold rooms tell of a desperate reality. Even chickens are hard to come by. The government’s crack price monitoring teams will soon have no jobs, because “there will be nothing to monitor as all commodities have disappeared from shelves”, says Mercy Tiripo (32) of Mabvuku township, about 20km east of Harare.
You cannot change your past, but what if you could alter the way you remember it? What if you could even delete some memories entirely? Many people who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder seek psychological help to do just that. In North America, scientists are going further, looking for ways to alter memories neurochemically.
Hamas has good reason to celebrate the release of the BBC’s Gaza corrrespondent Alan Johnston, for its success demonstrates to the Palestinians and to the wider international community that it can run the show in the Gaza Strip, less than three weeks since taking it over. Jubilant spokesmen wasted no time in making the connection between the BBC man’s freedom and their own wider political ambitions.
The ANC Women League’s proposal of a special women’s ministry has run into flak from the ANC and from women’s activists who feel it could “ghettoise” women’s issues. The league insists the ANC policy conference last week had agreed to set up a special ministry for women’s affairs.
Even amid Zimbabwe’s increasing instability, life in suburban Harare has remained more or less predictable. Which is why Sunday morning shoppers at a suburban shopping mall, popular with young professionals and the well-heeled, stood stunned as they watched the store manager of a branch of one of the country’s largest retail chains being dragged out of his store by the back of his collar.
A corruption-busting deputy mayor, who was assassinated outside her home in Mpumalanga, is believed to have been killed while investigating suspected housing irregularities. The execution of Thandi Mtsweni is just the latest in a string of violent incidents linked to corruption in the Govan Mbeki municipality in Secunda in the past five years.