South Africa’s insurance industry is waiting with bated breath as claims roll in for damage caused by the freak tides that hit the KwaZulu-Natal coast recently. More than 300km of the KwaZulu-Natal coastline needs to be reconstructed after it was devastated by 8m waves that struck in the early hours of March 19
Regulation is in the news this week, as we reflect in this edition:in steel, air travel, alcohol and, yes, toilet paper. Steel producer Mittal, part of the international steel empire owned by the fabulously wealthy Lakshmi Mittal, has been found guilty by the Competition Tribunal of excessive pricing. National carrier SAA, projecting a R650-million loss for the year.
Two months had passed since the awful flight from the rooftop of their Harare citadel and the gentle, gilded rhythms of wealth and privilege, ticking over like tumblers in a Swiss vault door, had soothed the Mugabes into something resembling normalcy. Indeed, that very morning Grace had awoken hungry for the first time in weeks.
Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has moved to remove South African Post Office CEO Khutso Mampeule, dubbed “Mr Clean” for his robust campaign against procurement sleaze. Mampeule’s cancellation of contracts at the parastatal, among them a controversial R100-million deal to revamp branches, earned him powerful enemies and soured relations with his board.
The most vital of the government’s growth initiative Asgisa’s aims is job creation as it has pledged to cut joblessness in half by 2014. The Mail & Guardian sought to find out from South Africa’s leading labour market economists if Asgisa is on track to live up to its pledge.
The state has launched an extraordinary bid for a secret trial of two South African residents accused of being part of an international network of nuclear technology smugglers. The move is portrayed as vital to prevent the dissemination of information that would allow rogue states to develop nuclear weapons, but the blackout seems as much designed to protect the dirty secrets of South Africa’s nuclear past as to stop future proliferation.
With less than nine months to go before the ANC national conference, which will choose a new leadership, adversaries Jacob Zuma and President Thabo Mbeki are using very different strategies in their attempts to win support. Last weekend was a case in point.
A United States military tribunal at Guantànamo formally convicted Australian David Hicks on Friday on a charge of providing material support for terrorism. The tribunal’s judge accepted Hicks’s guilty plea as part of an agreement that limits his sentence to seven years, in addition to the five years he has already been detained at the Guantànamo prison.
ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma’s lifelong confidant and political ally, KwaZulu-Natal Finance Minister Zweli Mkhize, has defended Zuma, saying the former deputy president was capable of leading South Africa and taking the ANC into its centenary. In a no-holds barred briefing with newspaper editors in Durban, Mkhize said Zuma remained a strong and capable contender for the position of ANC president.
Grey-shoe and red-tape salary structures in the public service are set to be dropped as government battles to fill vacancies. Gone are the days of rigid career progression and set-in-stone pay scales, says Lewis Rabkin, spokesperson for Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.