South African companies affected by a clampdown on business on Zimbabwe have not made complaints to Pretoria’s mission in Harare, the Foreign Affairs Department said on Monday. ”If indeed they are faced with this critical situation, they need to get in touch with the embassy in Harare and inform them of their plight,” said spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa.
At the time of writing, I am a mere week and a half from joining my partner in marriage. Elopement is looking decidedly attractive. When we first started planning, nine months ago, we decided we wanted something small, intimate and, preferably, cheap. This is more or less what we are getting, but it is certainly not going to be the budget affair we thought it would be, writes Jocelyn Newmarch.
With the local equity market having had a spectacular run, fund managers believe that the developed offshore markets are offering better value for South African investors. But investing offshore does not mean that you have to go through the whole hassle of getting permission from the Reserve Bank to use your R2-million foreign investment allowance.
As a result of interest rate hikes in the past year, a homeowner with a bond of R500 000 is paying an extra R1 000 a month to his or her bank. Where does that extra mortgage payment go each month? Who benefits from the billions of extra rands that are paid by homeowners? The short answer is: the savers.
I will be resigning from the public service at the end of June 2007. Please advise me on what I should do with my pension. Should I open a retirement annuity, according to this week’s article? The article also spoke of the split, which is transferring half of the money into the annuity and cashing the rest, writes reader Phuti.
Specialists have compiled a survey of the medical schemes they would recommend. The results: Camaf, Fedhealth, Liberty and Profmed. They judged these according to the level of interference with the doctor-patient relationship, balanced billing, efficiency with accounting and pre-authorisation, co-payments, rate fixing, reversals and formularies.
Small businesses find themselves in a catch-22 when it comes to BEE verification. Officially, they are exempt from the heavy red tape and costs involved in scoring a business’s BEE compliance. But, increasingly, they find that they have to submit to red tape and costs just to prove that they are indeed exempt.
Contamination of the Aids drug Viracept created panic among HIV-positive Zambians on antiretroviral therapy. Roche, the Swiss manufacturers, announced that some batches of Viracept had been accidentally contaminated with mesylate, prompting a recall of the product.
A cheeky, speaking vegetable is just weeks away from bounding on to Chinese cinema screens. When <i>The Magic Gourd</i> opens at the end of this month, the Chinese-language film will mark a departure for Walt Disney and a step-change in its charm offensive in emerging markets.
I was not a South African according to the South African government. Now, did I consider myself a South African after 1994 or was I always a South African in my mind? I will never know the damage that was inflicted by a system that intended to deprive me of my national identity, and saw me as nothing more than a maid in someone’s home, writes businesswoman, Wendy Luhabe.