A post template

No image available
/ 15 February 2005

Advocate steps into BEE arena

Dali Mpofu’s emergence as a central figure in the Deutsche Bank empowerment deal marks his transition from an advocate, of legal and social matters, to an economic player in the empowerment arena. He is also currently driving the formulation of the empowerment charter for Information and Communications Technology. He spoke to the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> last week.

No image available
/ 15 February 2005

Fourth-quarter GDP rose by 4%

South Africa’s real gross domestic product (GDP) at market prices on a quarter-on-quarter seasonally annualised and adjusted basis rose by 4% in the fourth quarter 2004 from a revised eight-year high of 5,7% in the third quarter 2004, Statistics South Africa said on Tuesday.

No image available
/ 15 February 2005

Napster takes on Apple’s iPod

Digital media company Napster last week unveiled a portable subscription service that it claimed would ”change the music industry forever” and allow it to compete more effectively in its increasingly bitter battle with Apple’s market-leading iTunes. Napster To Go will give the company a significant point of difference from Apple, allowing subscribers to rent songs from its catalogue of 1,3-million tracks.

No image available
/ 15 February 2005

Vodacom is not yet in the black

A report that Vodacom South Africa workers had submitted a proposal to buy the 5% stake that black economic empowerment company Hosken Consolidated Investments sold at the end of 2002 raises a number of issues. The workers’ desire may seem a bit optimistic. What the story, whatever its truth, raises once again is the lack of an empowerment holding in the largest cellular operator in South Africa.

No image available
/ 15 February 2005

Abstraction from power confers power

”I speak to you not as an academic, but as a judge who holds public office as a member of the third arm of the government — which during the United States constitutional drafting process Thomas Jefferson famously described as ‘the least dangerous branch of government’,” writes Judge Edwin Cameron. Academics and judges exercise power through distance from power and through the honest critique of the exercise of authority.

No image available
/ 14 February 2005

Ngcuka denies ‘contrived’ claim

Former national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka denied on Monday having promised politician and convicted fraudster Tony Yengeni a maximum R5 000 fine in exchange for a guilty plea. ”This is a distorted version of the truth,” Ngcuka, now a businessman, said through spokesperson Sipho Ngwema.