A Muslim-owned travel agency is suing an Old Mutual employee after forensic investigators traced an e-mail accusing the agency of exploiting the Muslim hajj pilgrimage to her computer. The e-mail, which accused Cape Town-based Sure Flywell Travel of amassing a net profit of R10-million on air-ticket sales alone during last year’s hajj, has shaken the Muslim community.
Fired North West agriculture department head Emily Mogajane has won her court battle against North West Premier Edna Molewa. Ruling in the Mafikeng High Court last week, Judge Ronald Hendricks ordered that Mogajane’s dismissal from the province’s agriculture department be set aside. Molewa fired Mogajane in March.
It’s a pity that Dubya doesn’t have people in his employ who are nearly as efficient at invasions as the Dodge division of DaimlerChrysler. After 15 hours of flying, the South African contingent would have been forgiven for wondering just where on the planet we were for the international launch of the Dodge Caliber, writes Sukasha Singh.
The past 10 years of his life had savaged the dilapidated novelist. His cheeks, once chubby and flushed, were flaking onion-skin drawn tight over a mangrove swamp of burst blood vessels; and his eyes — little round beads that had blinked quizzically from the back covers of 500-million paperbacks — were useless egg-whites swimming in two oily pans.
Mild panic has gripped the world’s financial markets as the stock market rout that started in early May continued, with many stocks losing up to 10% of their value in as many days. Asset managers attempted to douse the growing panic by advising investors to stay calm, though those who heeded the same advice in 1998 had to wait nearly two years to recover from the 40% drop in stock prices.
Massmart’s recent R1-billion black economic empowerment deal, following in the footsteps of Edcon’s BEE deal, shows clearly that companies will do deals despite being exempt from the government’s licensing and buying power. Retail, unlike mining and broadcasting, is not subject to licensing or contracting that gives the government the power to compel industries to negotiate a charter.
A new report by the self-auditing arm of the World Bank has painted a grim picture of the results of a decade-long plan by the bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to give the world’s poorest nations debt relief.
President Thabo Mbeki’s second term as national president is not even half completed. Yet we find ourselves embroiled in an enervating and divisive succession debate riddled with conspiracy theories. Why this premature turbulence?
Hidden behind curtains in small booths decked along the wall of a dark internet café in the heart of Jerusalem, Jewish ultra-Orthodox teenagers explore a forbidden world. More and more ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, youngsters are becoming interested in the secular world surrounding their tightly sealed society, and the web is today a central battleground between tradition and reform.
Questions over possible conflicts of interest involving acting members of the judiciary have been raised by the disclosure this week that advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza has not declared his business involvement since assuming the position of acting judge. In 1999, Ntsebeza was appointed to the board of Barlow World and is currently a non-executive director of the company.