You could say Mbijane Ngubane lives on a golfing estate. In fact, her neighbour, Sibongile Jiyane, has a stream running past her front door. Yet both women cannot wait to move to a new settlement. Life at this golfing estate is nothing to envy. Property prices are rock-bottom and it has been too long since the grass was cut.
Under South Africa’s old regime the Afrikaans magazine market was fiercely contested territory. Rich, white, homogenous; the coloured community was ignored and it was an advertiser’s dream. Naspers built a mighty empire out of serving it, and over the years many others shared in the loot.
First the good news: the oil price spike witnessed recently is a temporary phenomenon, set to last only a few months. The bad news is that, because the greenback has strengthened over the past month, there is no inflationary shield usually offered by a weaker dollar.
President Thabo Mbeki has opted for a minimalist Cabinet reshuffle after the promotion of minister of minerals and energy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka to Deputy President, but he has sent some signals on the management of the economy.
The United Nations Security Council has adopted a resolution to create a mixed truth commission and a special court to prosecute war crimes and human-rights violations during decades of civil war in Burundi. The country’s Minister of Justice, welcomed the adoption of resolution 1606 at the United Nations headquarters in New York this week.
The war in Iraq is creating a new breed of Islamic jihadists who could go on to destabilise other countries, according to a CIA report. The CIA believes Iraq to be potentially worse than Afghanistan, which produced thousands of jihadists in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the recruits to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda had fought in Afghanistan.
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) is to probe the subsidisation of cellphones with a view to ensuring that customers benefit from number portability and shorter contracts. A discussion document released by Icasa proposes a regulatory framework to govern the use of subsidised handsets.
Regulation cost South African firms R79-billion in 2004. This is the bottom-line result of Small Business Project’s pioneering study of regulatory compliance costs to the South African private sector, from large corporations through small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to the informal sector.
The European Commission’s proposals, announced this week, to reform the sugar industry are expected to have little impact on the South African industry. Experts are predicting dire consequences for lesser developed countries, but the effect on South African producers is expected to be limited.
Shell and its partners recently found themselves facing a legal suit from local rural communities and Western environmentalists over allegations of causing pollution and global warming by flaring gas in Nigeria. The case was lodged in the Federal High Court of Nigeria in Benin City by the Gbarain and other communities.