Reg Rumney=20 The listing of black-controlled Real Africa Investments=20 last week made instant paper millionaires of three of=20 the directors.=20 According to the RAI pre-listing statement, executive=20 chairman Don Ncube held 1 472 230 shares indirectly in=20 RAI. At a closing price on the Johannesburg Stock=20 Exchange mid-week of around R2,50, Ncube is worth R3,7- […]

Bruce Cohen=20 A bitter battle for the knock ‘n drop newspaper market=20 in Gauteng between the Argus Company and Caxtons has=20 ended — and just begun.=20 The Appeal Court this week upheld an appeal by Caxtons- CTP against an 18-month-old Supreme Court judgment which=20 allowed Argus to publish freesheets in competition with=20 Caxtons, which was […]

Tara Turkington=20 I Want to Tell You by OJ Simpson=20 (Little, Brown, R80,99)=20 Orenthal James Simpson, ex-American football star,=20 congenial endorser of Hertz Rent-a-Car and mediocre=20 actor, ousted the United States’ afternoon TV soaps by=20 leading Los Angeles police on a televised car chase in=20 June last year. =20 Now on trial for the murders […]

Eddie Koch NELSON MANDELA’S air force helicopter was covered in camouflage paint and created a scene from a war film as it thudded over the green hills and thorn trees that surround Weenen. Although unintended, the image was appropriate because the president had come to this farming town in kwaZulu- Natal on Sunday to help […]

Jane Rosenthal=20 EXIT INTO HISTORY: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE NEW EASTERN=20 EUROPE by Eva Hoffman (Minerva, R48,99)=20 IN Exit into History, Eva Hoffman invites us to=20 accompany her on a thoughtful meander through Eastern=20 Europe. As readers of her first book, Lost in=20 Translation, will know, she was born in Poland in 1946=20 and emigrated […]

Clive Simpkins=20 True marketing expertise takes years to develop.=20 Academic theory is often very different from the reality=20 of business. =20 Astonishingly, almost as soon as a superb base of such=20 expertise is in place in a corporation, the pool of=20 talent or the individual talented marketer is retired.=20 In some regions of South Africa […]

Zimbabwe’s farmers are suffering under punishing=20 interest rates. Lewis Machipisa in Harare reports=20 Two years ago it was drought, a freak of nature, that=20 crippled Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector. Now the=20 problems besetting the industry’s recovery are entirely=20 man-made. =20 At 32 percent, the country’s interest rates are=20 punishingly high, undermining efforts to resuscitate=20 farming, the […]

Eddie Webster suggests that Wits University academics would do well to look at other African universities for some hints on how to handle change IN his insightful article on his alma mater (“Wits — Barometer of Change”, Weekly Mail & Guardian 24-30), Anton Harber concludes that Wits “has become a model of poor change management”. […]

Critical Consumer Pat Sidley ON April 1, consumers looking for a bargain in cellular telephones will receive a jolt. And later in the year, having signed up for bargains this week, they will get yet another jolt when tariffs rise. This is because the two networks (MTN and Vodacom) are cutting back on the size […]

Two recently listed, black-controlled firms=20 may not meet the stock exchange’s new requirements,=20 reports Jacques Magiolo=20 The listing of Real Africa Investments (RAI) and Real=20 Africa Holdings (RAH) is a significant boost for black=20 empowerment in South Africa, but the group’s complicated=20 organisational structure and its diverse range of target=20 markets are not expected to […]