Thank you for your application to join the newly formed intellectual <i>esprit de corps</i>, The Native Club. As expected there has been an overwhelming response to the formation of this provocative new cerebral delegation. In announcing The Native Club, our honourable President, Thabo Mbeki, said it should be an association of the very cream of African intellectuals.
The negotiator gave up just before noon, and returned to the shade of the command centre behind the potted strelitzia in the main terminal. It was simply no good. “He won’t respect the talking stick,” he said, his face in his hands. “I’ve told him it’s a sharing experience, and that his comments are only embraced by his holding the talking stick as a physical representation of his identity.
The announcement by First National Bank that it will be paying out R154-million to Saambou customers for incorrect interest calculations by Saambou on their home loans may have homeowners wondering if their bank has overcharged on interest payments. According to Ed Grondel, CEO of FNB Home Loans, the way Saambou calculated the interest on its home loans was out of line with the rest of the banking industry.
The battle for the soul of empowerment group Foundation of African Business and Consumer Services (Fabcos) moves to the Johannesburg High Court on Friday. The court battle is the latest chapter in a month-long battle over allegations of breaches in corporate governance. It follows a disputed resolution, which endorsed Fabcos’s investment arm Fabvest’s sale of 15,5-million shares
The cellphone and financial service sectors are in for a shake-up following the entry of Virgin into both markets. Virgin launched its mobile offering on Thursday and next week will see the unveiling of its credit cards. Virgin Mobile CEO Sajeed Sacranie says help is on the way for consumers who are fed up with South Africa’s existing mobile operators.
With mud spattered over a dress that looks like a selection from the cheap Chinese imports so readily available in Zimbabwe today, Griffin Chawatama bends over a home-made metal bowl, sifting through the crushed rock for gold flakes. Chawatama is one of hundreds of illegal gold panners engaged in a cat-and-mouse battle with the police since descending in Shurugwi last May.
Embarrassingly for President Thabo Mbeki, his Sudanese counterpart, Omar al Bashir, chose the occasion of the South African leader’s visit to Khartoum to issue his most fiery rejection yet of the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur. He might have been reacting to reports that Mbeki had come to the Sudanese capital to add to the arm-twisting.
Spanish television cameras frequently capture images of undocumented African immigrants flocking to the Canary Islands. Crowded into wooden fishing boats or disembarking with the help of Red Cross workers, the young men look impassively into the cameras, as if refusing to yield the secret of the other world they come from.
When he was 11, Ben Bernanke, the spelling champ from South Carolina, was within a whisker of appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. Back in 1965, this was a big deal. But Bernanke couldn’t remember how many ”i”s there were in edelweiss and missed the televised national final by one mark. For Bernanke, it proved a minor setback on the road from boy prodigy to chairperson of the Federal Reserve.
When Venezuelan trade union officials attacked the ”dictator”, Hugo Chavez, his popularity leapt.