Twenty-one people appeared in court in southern Zimbabwe after the discovery of a flourishing marijuana plantation, reports said on Thursday. The 21 are part of a group of 29 arrested and charged under Zimbabwe’s Dangerous Drugs Act, said the state-controlled Herald newspaper.
Zimbabwe’s financial sector is facing a fresh crisis amid reports that the five biggest banks are sitting on costly Treasury bill portfolios that could wipe out their accumulated capital, it was established this week. Sources indicate that the banks are haemorrhaging from a raft of Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe policies that could precipitate bank failures.
During the process of being severely stuffed around (no weak jokes, please) in my recent day-to-day dealings, I’ve found a rather weird exponential scale at work: the hidden tenets of South African commerce.
A Johannesburg teenager who hanged herself this week filmed her own suicide, media reports said on Friday. The report said the 15-year-old girl of Emmarentia used a dog leash to hang herself from a security gate on Wednesday afternoon while her mother was at home.
Jacob Zuma’s political future rests with the way about 3 000 delegates at next year’s ANC conference will vote for the party’s leadership. The Mail & Guardian‘s Monako Dibetle, Percy Zvomuya and Niren Tolsi spoke to members of the party and its affiliates.
United States President George Bush tried desperately on Thursday to defuse the news that the three biggest telephone firms in the US provided the National Security Agency with the records of billions of calls made by Americans. ”We are not mining or trawling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” said Bush.
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=zuma_report"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/243078/zuma.jpg" align=left border=0></a>Jacob Zuma’s official diary for the year 2000, when he is alleged to have met Schabir Shaik and French arms dealer Alain Thetard to request a bribe, was discovered during the Scorpions raid on Zuma’s office at the Union Buildings in August last year.
By early next year retail banking will move into the 21st century and provide real-time electronic payments. While the Competition Commission’s report into the banking industry claims that banks have been working in real time since 1998, the reality is that this only applies to large corporate transactions of more than R5-million.
While an interest in alternative energy and green politics is often seen as the preserve of the chattering classes, working-class people in Jo’burg’s inner city are already using renewable energy in their homes. On a pavement in Joubert Park in Jo’burg, shoppers cluster around Tumelo Ramolefi’s stall exclaiming and asking questions about his products.
Wine, one of the great South African export stories of the past decade, is beginning to lose its fragrance. Most South African wines are now being exported at a loss as profit margins tumbled from the giddy heights of 2001, when the rand traded at R18 to the pound and R12 to the United States dollar.