Banks blame small volumes and fraud for rising charges – and expect customers to grin and bear the costs David Le Page The apparent neglect of the cheque management system by South African banks is a major reason why consumers pay higher and higher bank charges at a time when automation is reducing costs in […]

fraud A plastics company has approached the Banking Adjudicator over a dispute it has with its bank after the payment of a fraudulent cheque David Le Page A Free State company is battling to recover R116 000 paid out from its account by Standard Bank to First National Bank (FNB), after the latter honoured a […]

David Le Page Besides cheque fraud, the other major reason offered by South African banks for high bank charges is an overly small market, or as they put it, “inadequate volumes to justify the infrastructure involved”. The banking industry explains its quandary as follows. As more banks have appeared in the country, the major retail […]

‘illegal’ Thuli Nhlapo Ignoring the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s (Cosatu) campaign to create and sustain jobs in the textile industry, the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC) promotional clothing is imported and believed to have entered the country illegally. Shereno Printers, which won a contract to print 100E000 T-shirts for IEC staffers to wear in […]

In super-heavyweight weightlifting the walls have ears – and torsos and legs Neal Collins There are 10 men lined up on stage in front of me, ready for the men’s super-heavyweight weightlifting. From Russia, Latvia, Armenia, Korea, Ukraine (two), Germany, Poland and even Qatar and Iran. Like massive peas in a prodigious pod, this multinational […]

Gavin Evans The task of increasing a country’s medal quotient starts at the top. International precedent suggests you can even pull it off without a thriving grassroots base or deep tradition of participation. Take Britain, for example. Four years ago in Atlanta it experienced a disaster of similar proportions to South Africa’s Sydney effort. But […]

David Le Page AFRICAN FRONTIERS To slow the melting of the polar ice-caps, build some ceilings in Soweto. This is one of the implications of a study on environmentally friendly low-cost housing recently commissioned by the national Department of Housing. But it’s not the most important – making home environments more comfortable is a far […]

As a teenager, Naomi Klein was a dedicated mall rat, fixated on designer labels. A decade later she is the author of a life- changing book on anti-corporatism. Katharine Viner meets the woman who is reinventing politics for a new generation >From the age of six, growing up in Canada, Naomi Klein was obsessed with […]

morality Cedric Mayson Spirit Level Being good is not just an individual matter. Morality is also a communal problem demanding a communal answer because our dos and don’ts are determined by the society we live in. Just as many South Africans still live in racial enclaves that direct their politics and behaviour, so is our […]