The Public Investment Commissioners (PIC) — which has a 12,5% shareholding in Standard Bank — will "in principle" vote in support of the financial group’s plan to sell a 10% stake of its South African banking operations to an empowerment consortium. PIC CEO Brian Molefe is seemingly not overly concerned that the big empowerment deals always seem to involve the same big names.
In a calculated gamble, President Thabo Mbeki has jettisoned the deep privatisation programme the markets want and set a deadline for the implementation of what is effectively a policy of prescribed assets. Te president has created a stronger role for the state and is relying less on markets to break the pattern of low growth and high joblessness.
The inauguration of the president and the Cabinet this week also signaled the start of a new set of political and economic debates in South Africa. The new Cabinet is ANC dominated and African run. The politics of the centre-left will dominate, ushering in an era of new debate. Here is a guide.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>To win the election the African National Congress ruthlessly used its greatest competitive advantage over the other political parties in this election — massive, organised membership.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=40922">Special Report: Elections 2004</a>
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/ 13 February 2004
Next week’s Budget will increase state spending on social and economic development programmes and job-creation initiatives while trying to ease the country’s personal tax burden — despite a shortfall in the revenue it is expected to receive in the coming year. This is the key prediction for Manuel’s 2004 government spending plan, due to be unveiled in Parliament on Wednesday.
Even though informal contacts between Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have produced a number of detailed options for ending the country’s political and economic crises, the two sides remain a long way off from formal talks.
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/ 17 December 2003
There is almost no chance of a global trade deal favourable — or at least palatable — to Africa being put in place by 2005, when the Doha round of international trade talks is due to end, says South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) research manager Steven Gruzd. But Africa is not without legal weapons that could be used to try and force advanced economies to open their markets.
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/ 12 December 2003
The Presidency has revealed the results of an 18-month long scenario-planning exercise to plot what South Africa will look like in 2014. A review of the African National Congress’s first decade in power revealed that "we’ve done very well in the past 10 years but if we continue doing so well, then it’ll be disaster".
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/ 14 November 2003
The government made a calculated gamble of over R30-billion this week to accelerate growth and begin to weld together South Africa’s two economies — a first of high skills and decent work and a second of informal work and extreme vulnerability.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=23523">’New Deal’ for the unemployed</a>
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/ 3 November 2003
The government is to stick to its expansionary fiscal policy despite slower than expected economic growth this year. In an interview last week, Kuben Naidoo, of the Budget Office of the National Treasury, said fiscal policy would be maintained "in a way that is sustainable in the long term".
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/ 24 October 2003
The Executive Members Ethics Act and the provisions of the Code of Ethics are not being implemented consistently by Members of Provincial Executive Councils (MECs) and the Presidency, says a new report by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa).
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/ 17 October 2003
Asked once again what the Commonwealth will be doing to get rid of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, the organisation’s Secretary General, Don McKinnon, points out with wry humour, and a touch of frustration, that after 40 years of trying, the United States has still not been able to get Cuban leader Fidel Castro out of office.
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/ 16 October 2003
No matter the significant ring of its formal terms of reference, the Hefer Commission of Inquiry into whether National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was a spy for the former apartheid government is little more than a political fix that will be discarded in a couple of months.
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/ 11 February 1994
Top secret documents reveal that FW de Klerk lied about South Africa’s nuclear programme, reports Paul Stober.
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/ 4 February 1994
The Democratic Party has put Hougton’s Tony Leon on top of its list of nominees for the national assembly.
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/ 4 February 1994
The ANC has deffered the issue of political activity in Bophuthatswana to the TEC rather than risk a masscare — or upset negotiations with the FA.