Imagine that once every three years your home is washed away, all your possessions are destroyed and your children miss months of school. You have no insurance and you have to start your life from scratch. Until it happens again. Welcome to life in the Zambezi River valley. The rural areas of Zambezia province are Mozambique’s poorest and most densely populated.
Gautengers rejoice, your cost of living is in the bottom quartile of 135 cities surveyed by <i>The Economist</i>. Johannesburg and Pretoria are ranked 100th in a survey of the world’s most expensive cities, having dropped 23 places since last year. This is according to the Worldwide Cost of Living survey, released by <i>The Economist</i> intelligence unit.
Major financial irregularities in Mpumalanga’s R920-million 2010 World Cup stadium project have sparked an unprecedented revolt by ANC councillors in Nelspruit. The angry councillors have rebelled against provincial party leaders and are demanding executive mayor Justice Nsibande’s head.
Saving the troubled parastatal diamond miner Alexkor through a deal with De Beers is more important than restitution for the people of the Richtersveld, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin has told community representatives. Erwin wrote to the Richtersvelders recently, apparently repudiating the terms of a memorandum of understanding with the community.
Côte d’Ivoire’s grand old man, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, had a prodigious stock of aphorisms, but one of his favourites was ”peace is not a word, it’s a way of life”. Peace is not today’s motif. Peace accords, on the other hand, are. And the worry is that they have become a way of life for one of Africa’s least responsible political classes.
BEE poster-woman Danisa Baloyi is likely to step aside or resign from her position as a director of Absa on Friday. The bank has been embarrassed by Baloyi’s links with the Fidentia scandal. While it cannot ask for her resignation, bank executives have expressed concerns.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown’s claims that his wife’s day spa business was worth R100-million have been rubbished by one of her former employees. A former senior Facets employee who had agreed to be named but later got cold feet, says the day spa was not making enough money to cover its monthly expenses and was being propped up by Brown.
Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown lashed out at critics in the March edition of noseweek, accusing Frans Mahlangu, the principal officer of the Mineworkers Provident Fund, of accepting bribes. The media has celebrated Mahlangu as a whistle-blower for raising concerns about Fidentia Asset Management.
African National Congress (ANC) alliance partner the Congress of South African Teade Unions (Cosatu) has announced a radical strategy aimed at changing the ANC’s leadership and overall policy direction. Cosatu has also warned that it may not endorse the ANC in the next election if the ruling party does not deliver results for workers.
When North West Premier Edna Molewa went walkabout in Khutsong two weeks ago she was sworn at by residents who told her to bring back Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa. She was welcomed by only a few residents, particularly those invested in the system.