As the retail boom continues in South Africa, fears are mounting that the concentration of power in the hands of large retailers and shopping centre landlords is growing unchecked in tandem with excessive mall development, which is wreaking havoc among independent retailers in the country’s CBDs and high streets.
It amuses me that we commentators, analysts and consultants pore over the Broad-Based BEE Codes like technicians studying the manual of a motor vehicle to see how best to make it go. Then along comes a saga like the Holcim empowerment deal to remind us how profoundly political BEE is. Whatever codes and charters say, BEE is not a mere technical matter
Poor countries risk receiving â,¬50-billion less than they have been promised from the European Union by 2010 unless the quality of development aid improves, anti-poverty campaigners have warned. The EU’s development aid ministers met in Brussels this week to assess what progress had been made in realising commitments to increase aid.
For all the talk about a lack of skills in South Africa’s advertising industry, its man of the moment, Groovin Nchabeleng, may just have the answers. Nchabeleng, this year’s AdReview advertising person of the year, also comes in handy when another South African ill, the lack of entrepreneurship, is discussed.
Burundi’s limping peace process could be slowed down further by promises that have allegedly not been kept and growing divisions between the South African mediation team, specialists involved in the negotiations and the main rebel group, Palipehutu-FNL.
Spent tea leaves were etched into the raw blisters on his face when they found him. Villagers believe the urn of scalding tea the Burmese soldiers tipped over Mu Kay’s head killed him. But the betel-nut farmer (57) more likely bled to death, shot point-blank in both thighs.
A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications. investigate and to help the Estonians beef up their electronic defences.
Transcendental meditation does not appear in any government guidelines for handling tertiary mergers, but it seems to work for University of Johannesburg vice-chancellor Ihron Rensburg.A year after taking the reins at one of South Africa’s largest universities, Rensburg appears unfazed by the complexities of an especially volatile merger.
There are occasional lulls in the fighting, but the taxi factions in the Western Cape seem unable to reach a permanent ceasefire. In the past two weeks there has been a spate of violent deaths and injuries as a result of attacks as the ongoing battle between the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association and the Congress of Democratic Taxi Associations escalates once again, this time over the coveted Bellville-Kraaifontein route.
Recently something truly amazing happened. Paris Hilton, the United States’s first name in famous-for-being-famous, got her come-uppance: the heiress was sentenced to 45 days in jail for driving without a licence and thus violating the terms of her probation in a drivingÂ-under-the-influence incident. In