By the end of the year, the market can expect a leaner, sleeker and –hopefully — considerably blacker Barloworld. The group — under attack from its largest shareholder — announced extensive unbundling, a new empowerment partner, a new interim chairperson, and its first black executive director at its annual general meeting.

Authorities in South Africa and Botswana deported more than 140 000 Zimbabweans in 2006, a Herald newspaper report in Zimbabwe on Friday quoted police records as saying. A total of 109 532 Zimbabweans were deported from South Africa in 2006, according to the records. That represents 300 people a day.

Senior legal advisers this week said the Green Point ratepayers’ association bid to stop construction of the controversial R3,7-billion 68 000-seater Green Point stadium is based on strong arguments and could succeed, in part because the city has failed to submit several independent reports to the public for evaluation.

One million underprivileged school children in the Eastern Cape, who should be benefiting from the School Nutrition Programme, are now at the mercy of the provincial department of education, which has temp­orarily suspended the programme amid allegations of R100-million in irregular tender awards.

South Africa is protesting to the governments of the United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates — among others — which have refused entry to South African citizens with valid visas. It has also stepped in to put a hold on the listing of two South Africans, Farhad and Junaid Dockrat, on a United Nations Security Council watchlist that would effectively freeze assets they have abroad and block any foreign travel by them.