The recently announced review of regulations hampering small business must include input from business, the Centre for Development Enterprise (CDE) said on Monday. The organisation said a new CDE report confirms that the government’s support for entrepreneurship in South Africa has been largely misdirected
The De Beers diamond group of South Africa, the world’s largest supplier of rough diamonds, has agreed to plead guilty to price-fixing charges and is now set to return to the United States market after an absence of 60 years, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
Trade ministers from African, Caribbean and Pacific countries worked on Saturday to hammer out a joint position on global trade to protect their mainly agriculture-based economies in hardball negotiations with the world’s most powerful nations. The one-day meet took place in the northern resort town of Grand Bay in Mauritius.
Seventeen-year-old Francine Walkenshaw tried to go back to school last year, but gave up when better-dressed pupils jeered at her: ”Why do you live like a squatter? What did you do wrong?” Francine, her father Casper and her two brothers live in Lochvaal Emfuleni, on the outskirts of Vanderbijlpark on the Sasolburg road. It is one of at least three white squatter camps that have sprouted in the Vaal Triangle.
It’s 5.15pm on a weekday, and I’m in a minibus taxi travelling along Louis Botha Avenue through Orange Grove, Johannesburg, when a group of policemen pulls us over. I ask the woman sitting alongside me what’s going on. ”They are looking for illegals,” she whispers conspiratorially. With our police force seemingly preoccupied with illegal immigrants, we may be more at risk from the home team.
It is time the African National Congress clarifies the real nature of its relationship with Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF, the Democratic Alliance’s acting leader, Douglas Gibson, said in a statement on Sunday. Weekend newspaper reports said ANC officials had met with Zanu-PF officials in Johannesburg to forge closer political ties.
The South African Communist Party in Gauteng has elected a new leadership at its eighth congress, which ended on Sunday. The congress started on Friday in Johnnesburg. SACP spokesperson Kaizer Mohau said Vishwa Satgar maintains his position as provincial secretary. Bob Mabaso was re-elected chairperson.
There is enormous potential for shark eco-tourism in the Eastern Cape, according to British shark researcher Matt Dicken. A marine biologist based at Bayworld at present, Dicken was speaking at an international marine seminar and expo at the University of Port Elizabeth last week.
Former employees of three independent Zimbabwean newspapers shut down by the Media and Information Commission (MIC) are struggling to make ends meet. ”We have established that a substantial number of them [staff of now-defunct newspapers] are living in near destitution,” said the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists’ president, Matthew Takaona.
By Monday morning there was still no news of Leigh Matthews who was kidnapped on Friday, the day before her 21st birthday, police said. ”We heard nothing over the night,” said police Superintendent Chris Wilken. Matthews’ parents, Rob and Sharon, have appealed to her kidnappers to release her safely.
Dramatic Jo’burg kidnapping case