The third annual Mutual & Federal South African Cricket Awards, held on Thursday night at a glittering function in Johannesburg, saw Makhaya Ntini walk away with the prestigious South African Cricketer of the Year Award, as well as the Castle Test Cricketer of the Year Award, both for the second consecutive year.
World number four gold miner Gold Fields announced on Friday that it had acquired an extra 18,27-million Western Areas shares at a price of R40 per share for a purchase consideration of about R731-million. The acquisition increased Gold Fields’ total stake in Western Areas to 23,27-million shares, or 15,47% of that company’s total issued share capital.
Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni’s and his boss, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel’s concern over household debt is ”outdated”; while consumer spending that is currently driving strong economic performance is to be ”nurtured and encouraged”, not threatened with rate hikes. That is according to Investec economist Brian Kantor, who spoke to the media with colleague Carmen Marchetti.
A debate on the internal and external damage inflicted on the African National Congress by Jacob Zuma’s rape trial will top the agenda of the party’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting in a fortnight’s time. Four senior ANC leaders, three of them members of the NEC, confirmed that the NEC had decided last weekend to scrutinise the trial fallout.
Since the time of the Greek philosophers there has been a perception by some that it is possible to live a purely rational life: that emotion, faith and hope simply get in the way of rational decisions. Given such a view, how can any body align religious faith and scientific commitment?
Harry Potter’s stolen flying car has been found after mysteriously disappearing from a film set, British newspapers reported on Friday. The pale blue 1962 Ford Anglia, driven through the air by the boy wizard and sidekick Ron Weasley in the hugely successful Harry Potter films, was in storage on a film set in Cornwall, south-east England, when it was stolen last October.
Prominent church leaders are expected to meet President Robert Mugabe next week to discuss Zimbabwe’s deteriorating political and economic situation as pressure mounts at home and abroad for him to quit. This comes against a background of South Africa’s evident alarm this week at the deepening crisis in Zimbabwe.
Saturday’s Absa Cup final is as much a battle royal between two of the country’s premier clubs — Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs — as it is a turf war for power in South African football. There is a feeling that Pirates are taking serious chances considering how inexperienced stand-in coach Teboho Moloi is when compared to the astute Ernest Middendorp.
The FBI dug up farmland outside Detroit on Thursday in a search for the remains of the legendary trade union boss Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared more than 30 years ago. Hoffa, the all-powerful leader of the Teamsters truck drivers’ union, went missing on the afternoon of July 30 1975.
Britain and the United States were on Thursday night facing almost total isolation in Iraq after Italy’s new Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, made it clear that he intended to pull out the third-biggest contingent in the military coalition at the earliest possible opportunity.