International specialist banking group Investec CEO Stephen Koseff believes the hard work of the past few years and the group’s focus on its core businesses has paid off. "We have achieved the majority of our stated growth and financial return objectives, and we have made significant progress towards achieving the others," he says.
The international journalists’ organisation Reporters sans Frontières has been accused of receiving money from the United States State Department and Cuban exile groups, and of pursuing a political agenda. The claims of political bias, published in a report in Washington this week, were denied by the group on Wednesday.
The release of global brewing giant SABMiller’s final 2005 results on Thursday have highlighted the continued robust growth in its South African beer business, with Beer South Africa recording a 20% rise in its earnings before interest, tax and amortisation in rand (constant currency) terms.
A hand grenade thrown at George Bush in Georgia last week was live and could have exploded, says the FBI. But Georgian officials insist the explosive device found during the pro-democracy speech Bush gave in the capital was an ”engineering grenade” which would have had to be very close to the US president to cause any damage.
Nato ordered its planners to begin urgently drawing up proposals to help out in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than a million displaced. Nato has approved a request for help from the African Union, the pan-continental organisation, which has 2 600 troops on the ground.
A strike at Volkwagen SA is to continue after the company and a metal workers union failed to reach an agreement on the livelihood of 19 employees. Members of the National Union of Metalworkers went on strike two weeks ago, demanding an end to the outsourcing of VWSA’s packing department to a labour broker.
Truman Prince, the embattled central Karoo district municipal manager, has pleaded not guilty to charges of bringing the African National Congress into disrepute, SABC radio news reported on Wednesday. Prince’s disciplinary hearing began in Cape Town on Wednesday night, chaired by attorney Peter Williams.
The new local government system introduced four years ago will have benefited more than three million households by the end of the 2004/05 financial year, says Provincial and Local Government minister, Sydney Mufamadi. He says more than R10,3-billion has been spent on basic municipal infrastructure since 2000.
South Africa’s search for direct foreign investment and trade will see representatives of the country’s leading business head to Britain and Germany on a mission to promote the country. The 21-man delegation includes Danny Jordaan and Monhla Hlahla, head of the Airports Company South Africa.
More than 5 000 supporters of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide marched in Haiti’s capital on Wednesday to demand his return from exile, less than two weeks before a UN mandate upholding security in the strife-torn nation is set to expire. Aristide is currently based here in South Africa as a guest of the government.