The value of civil judgements for debt declined by 20,5% year-on-year (y/y) in June to R541,8-million, Statistics South Africa said on Thursday. This compares with a 6,6% y/y drop in May to R526,5-million and December’s phenomenally high 64,5% y/y increase to R840,8-million.
Thursday’s announcement of a major, R123,8-million black economic empowerment (BEE) deal by international private equity group Brait, which will see BEE investors taking a 26% slice of the company’s South African subsidiary, is not the group’s first involvement in the BEE arena.
The JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) was powering ahead in noon trade on Thursday, fuelled by expectations of renewed rand weakness and a higher gold price. Strength was seen across the board, with advancers outnumbering decliners on the all-share index by almost three to one. Only two shares on the Top 40 index failed to post gains.
Seven children who returned to the United States after being left to fend for themselves in Nigeria by their adoptive mother are restarting their lives in foster care. The three boys and four girls, ranging in age from eight to 16, were discovered living in squalor in an orphanage by Warren Beemer, a pastor from a San Antonio church who was in Nigeria on a tour of his church’s missions.
The radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was reported on Wednesday night to have accepted a peace deal that could end the violent two-week uprising in Najaf and see his militia leave the city’s Imam Ali Shrine. Al-Sadr’s spokesperson confirmed that the cleric had accepted a proposal from the Iraqi national conference to pull his fighters out of the holy city and turn his militia into a political movement.
Former Western Cape premier Peter Marais was let off the hook in the Cape High Court on Wednesday on a sexual harassment civil claim brought against him by former provincial social services minister Freda Adams. Adams had claimed a total of R2 421 342 from Marais for sexual harassment and defamation.
Thabiso Mahowa is one of about seven million South Africans who live in squatter camps, deprived of basic services like clean water, proper sewerage, roads, and a house he can proudly call home. Now the country’s major economic centre, Johannesburg, is bracing itself for one of its biggest challenges since the demise of apartheid — to do away with the squatter camps, known as informal settlements, within three years.
The University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science has appointed former South African Reserve Bank deputy governor Gill Marcus as the Wendy Appelbaum professor of policy, leadership and gender studies from October 1. Marcus was deputy governor of the Reserve Bank for five years until her contract expired on June 30.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, suffered a massive blow to his project to withdraw from settlements in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday night when his party refused to allow him to invite new partners into the government who might have backed his plans.
Scientists using satellites have mapped huge craters under the Antarctic ice sheet caused by an asteroid as big as the one believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65-million years ago. The evidence showed that an asteroid measuring between five and 11km across had broken up in the atmosphere and five large pieces had hit the Earth, creating multiple craters over an area measuring 2 080km by 3 840km.