Developing countries — the main clients of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — should have more say in the policy of those institutions. This was an opinion widely expressed on Friday at a meeting in Johannesburg of governors of African central banks and other finance officials.
After opening sharply weaker on the back of world markets, the JSE Securities Exchange South Africa (JSE) was in the black in noon trade on Friday as bargain hunters sought out resources stocks, which were looking cheap after six days of losses. Financials and industrials remained in the red, however.
The African Union on Friday condemned the deadly Madrid train bombings that left 198 people dead, and called for an intensified global fight against terrorism. ”I condemn the terrorist act that took place in Madrid in which so many innocent people lost their lives and hundreds injured,” said AU Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare.
Ghana’s Parliament last month ratified a merger between South African mining giant, AngloGold, and Ghanian enterprise Ashanti Goldfields, to create the world’s largest gold mining business. However, instead of jubilation, the event was marked by a veiled boycott by Ghana’s biggest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress.
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South Africa is still outperforming other tourism markets in the world, despite the effects of a strong rand and the shortage of in-bound flights to Cape Town. So said South African Tourism at a media briefing in Johannesburg this week. Moeketsi Mosola, South African Tourism’s chief operating officer, said on Thursday that South Africa is still a leader in the field of global tourism.
As one of South Africa’s remotest, largest, but least populated provinces, the Northern Cape could so easily have descended into chaos. In the 1994 elections the African National Congress had not secured the majority needed to govern the province, and the National Party was threatening to take over. The political future of the province was on a knife-edge.
Ask any senior African National Congress official who is going to be in the next Cabinet or who will lead the provinces, and they will tell you: ”Chief, the president is unpredictable.” Unofficially, there are murmurs that Mbeki is keeping his options open for as long as possible, to see if he can use the premier posts to solve some sticky political problems in the ANC.