A R1-billion crude oil tender — one of South Africa’s largest ever — went to African National Congress-linked company Imvume Management after an extraordinary series of interventions that suggest the tender was rigged. Last week we showed how the ruling party helped secure Iraqi oil allocations for its corporate pet, Imvume Management. This week we reveal how a tainted tender won Imvume the right to supply Iraqi crude to the South African state.
This week’s acquisition by SABMiller of Columbia’s Grupo Empresarial Bavaria adds another chapter to the story of a South African company that taught the world’s brewers a lesson. SABMiller took to the world stage by listing in London in March 1999. In the period since, the company’s share price has appreciated by 144% to Wednesday’s close of 968 pence (R112,47).
Union investment giant the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union’s (Sactwu) R2-billion interests are so vast and sprawling that it is no surprise to find some unlikely properties in its portfolio. One is South Africa’s most successful rugby team, the Blou Bulle. The Bulls’ skills with the rugby ball have not been matched with financial prowess and so over the years outside interests, so to speak, came to own it.
Swazi civil servants took to the streets this week in a strike organised by the national association of civil servants, who were demanding a 4% wage increase as well as housing allowances. This follows strikes by teachers and nurses which have taken place in the past few weeks. The Swaziland government maintains that its wage bill is already eating deep into its pockets.
On Friday July 14 1985, a scraggly new publication was offered for sale on random street corners in Johannesburg. Its appearance was unexpected, particularly by those who had produced it. Sober observers predicted its likely demise before the month’s end. This modest event would long have passed from memory, were it not for one inexplicable fact: the newspaper is still with us, writes Irwin Manoim, joint founder and editor of the <i>Weekly Mail</i>.
In bitter twist of irony the opposition Kenya African National Union (Kanu) — which viciously cracked down on dissent when it was in power — this week came out in support of mass action. Meanwhile, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his government declared demonstrations illegal and ordered the security forces to use the "necessary means" to end protests.
When Nigerian reporter Isioma Daniel heard that a <i>fatwa</i>, or Islamic ruling, had been issued against her, she "felt calm … then realised that there was no going back". "Was I scared? I didn’t sleep too well that night," she wrote in a February 2003 article published by <i>The Guardian</i> about her case.
Countries of the northern Sahel region are preparing to deal with more locust swarms in the next few weeks, having barely survived a plague of biblical proportions last year. The hoppers are breeding in north-east Algeria, southern Senegal and Guinea, and are moving eastwards. Some of the insects have already been sighted in Sierra Leone and they are also reportedly breeding in Ethiopia.
Airports Company of South Africa (Acsa) chief executive officer Monhla Hlahla says it is okay for her to have a shareholding in two companies that are major service providers to Acsa because her shareholding is too small for it to constitute a conflict of interest. Acsa is 75% state-owned, 20% being owned by Aeroporti di Roma (AdR), a Rome-headquartered company that has the option to buy a further 10%.
United States President George W Bush has agreed to aid India’s civilian nuclear power programme, an unexpected decision that reverses three decades of American policies designed to deter nations from developing nuclear weapons. The agreement is the first exception to the international bar on nuclear assistance to any country that does not accept monitoring of all of its nuclear facilities.