Union leaders representing striking miners at three of Botswana’s diamond mines will face charges of contempt of court on Tuesday afternoon. ”Branch leaders were served with notices during the night at their homes in Jwaneng, Orapa and Letlhakane,” said Botswana Mining Workers’ Union general secretary Donald Lobotse.
Three municipal by-elections that will test the resilience of South Africa’s key opposition parties, are to be held on Wednesday. With the United Democratic Movement having recently lost control of the city of Umtata — as a result of the loss of municipal by-elections — General Bantu Holomisa’s party will be looking to poll well in a seat in Kokstad in KwaZulu-Natal, where it is standing for the first time.
The JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) was drifting in the red in noon trade on Tuesday as players paused for breath after the bourse’s strong rally on Monday. A slight recovery in the rand and a lower gold price added to the negative picture. The rand traded at a worst level of R6,7350 against the dollar earlier in the session.
Standard Bank staff vigilance helped prevent fraud of more than R286-million against the bank last year. To reward staff who have gone out of their way to prevent fraud, Standard Bank has an incentive programme called Fraud Miles. Its objective is to remunerate staff who report incidents of fraud.
Non-performing loans (NPLs) — loans that are more than 180 days overdue or considered irrecoverable — amount to 2% of the total loan book of South African commercial banks, South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni said in his inaugural address of his second five-year term on Tuesday.
The continued and broad-based weakness of the United States dollar in the international currency markets was one of the major factors that caused the rand to appreciate on a trade-weighted basis by 16% during 2003 and by 9% in the first seven months of 2004, said South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni on Tuesday.
China is mulling a -billion coal project with South African company Sasol that could give the energy-hungry mainland an additional six million tons of oil annually. In September a Sino-South Africa team will begin studying the feasibility of building two coal liquefaction production bases in northern Shaanxi province and Ningxia autonomous region.
Genghis Khan, long perceived as the world’s most notorious barbarian, was, in fact, a highly literate scholar of Taoist philosophy, according to a Chinese historian. He claims to have uncovered evidence that the leader of the Mongolian hordes could read and write.
The retail price of petrol is expected to rise by 22 cents a litre next week, the Minerals and Energy Department said on Tuesday. The department said the anticipated fuel price rises from midnight next Wednesday were the result of a sharp increase in the international prices of crude oil. This could be ascribed to the political tension in the Middle East, the question of sustainable international crude oil production, and the high demand for crude oil by China.
Finnish police said on Monday they were investigating a large-scale art fraud in which dozens of high-quality photocopies of works by artists such as Salvador Dalà were passed off as originals and sold for up to 10 000 euros each. Helsinki police said their prime suspect was the organiser of an exhibition in the Finnish capital that claimed to display original works by Dalà and such other famous artists as Chagall, Rembrandt, Picasso and Andy Warhol.