Recently the Pension Funds Adjudicator (PFA), Vuyani Ngalwana issued rulings on a further 22 retirement annuities (RAs). Life companies have chosen to settle 15 of these rather than face the negative publicity. This brings to 54 the total number of RA rulings since March. The life companies are appealing seven of these in the High Court.
Three hours of standing in a queue for maize meal looked like it was about to pay off when the line suddenly disintegrated amid despairing groans and some furious name calling. The supermarket had just run out of Zimbabwe’s staple food. Shoppers in Bulawayo are rationed to 10kg of maize meal per person, but finding it — and, indeed, most other basic essentials — on the shelves is no easy matter.
I am one of the privileged few in South Africa who has had access to wealth and, through wealth, to education. I live in a nice Cape Town home with a char and a gardener who help me uphold my lifestyle. Domestic help is the norm and as a white woman in her 30s, I have never known our household without a maid of some sort.
Ntsundukazi Mvandaba and her family were the envy of the neighbours they left behind when they moved from the Mandela informal settlement to proper houses in Delpark, both in Delmas. They moved five years ago into an Reconstruction and Development Programme house: unplastered and small, but the first real home for this family from the Eastern Cape.
First National Bank (FNB) has obtained a 67,74% reach in under-serviced areas over the past two years in its drive to meet the Financial Sector Charter targets, which require 80% of low-income earners to be within 15km of a banking facility. The roll-out of 1Â 400 mini-ATMs across the country has been a major part of FNB’s strategy to reach isolated communities.
The National Intelligence Agency’s counsel at the Khampepe commission, George Bizos, struck the right note this week on the question of oversight of the specialised crime-fighting unit, the Scorpions. If there were problems with controls over the Scorpions, Bizos argued, these could be specifically addressed, without the police having to swallow the unit — head, body and sting.
The trial of Saddam Hussein, scheduled to open on October 19, will almost certainly have to be postponed, a senior British official said recently. He said it would be difficult for the Iraqi administration to complete preparations in time. No agreement has been reached on basic requirements, such as whether the glass round the dock should be bullet-proof.
A government programme to provide primary-school children with free lunches has been launched in Nigeria, to encourage parents to educate their children — and to ensure that pupils learn effectively. It has become clear that poverty is still resulting in the exclusion of millions of children from the West African country’s education system.
The arrest of Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, the militant self-proclaimed leader of the Ijaw tribe, has threatened to turn the underlying tensions in the oil-producing Niger delta into a maelstrom of violence. After the arrest of Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha on money-laundering charges, many feared that the move would inflame tensions between the Ijaws and the Itsekiri.
More than R1-billion in empowerment deals funded by Brett Kebble’s JCI are in the balance as auditors pore over the company’s books to determine what actual value underpins the maze of transactions undertaken while Kebble was at the helm. Key investments by JCI in black empowerment companies include Matodzi Resources, Orlyfunt Investments, Inkwenkwezi, Lembede Investments and Masupatsela.