Football statistics are weighted in Nigeria’s favour at this weekend’s clash between the Super Eagles and Bafana Bafana. Nigeria may be in a renewal process of their own, but one cannot see how a Bafana side with a new coach, with no proven strikers and playing in front of a hostile crowd, will defeat them, writes Percy Zvomuya.
Africa’s top footballers head wearily back from a demanding club season in Europe for an intensive month of World Cup qualifiers starting this weekend. Players like Michael Essien, Samuel Eto’o, Frederic Kanoute, Nwankwo Kanu and Emmanuel Adebayor go from the cauldron of top club competition into an equally demanding round of qualifiers for the 2010 finals in South Africa.
Mining magnate Brett Kebble gave about R260 000 to the former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni, according to the trustees of Kebble’s bankrupt estate, a media report said on Friday. This allegation was contained in affidavits in an application for a summary judgement that would force Yengeni to pay this amount back to the estate.
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa has quietly postponed its final decision on Eskom’s application for a 53% tariff hike to June 18. By Thursday the regulator had not yet posted notice of the change in its decision date on its website, despite the conclusion of this week’s public hearings into the proposed tariff increases.
How do you hide a R1-billion fortune from the taxman? With bespoke help from offshore bankers desperate to get their hands on your portfolio, documents emerging from the long-running battle between the South African Revenue Service and its number one target, Dave King, suggest.
It is all a bit unseemly; rather like the bill arriving after a meal at a restaurant and no one offering to pay it. In Eskom’s case, the matter is complicated by the fact that outsiders do not have enough information to work out how the bill is made up so that costs can be apportioned fairly.
The Department of Foreign Affairs on Friday confirmed that three South Africans have been arrested in Zimbabwe. In a statement, the department said the men were due to appear in court and it would render assistance to the detainees as required. On Tuesday Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that three people, two of them South Africans, had been arrested in Zimbabwe.
South Africa has experienced the highest rate of food-price inflation since January 2003, the National Agricultural Marketing Council said in its quarterly food price monitor on Thursday. From April 2007 to April 2008 the increase in the Consumer Food Price, as reported by Stats SA, was 15,7%.
President Thabo Mbeki has brushed off criticism that he failed to show compassion by not visiting areas affected by violent attacks against foreigners around the country, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday.
Sasol on Wednesday announced the 50 black groups which will share in its R28-billion black economic empowerment (BEE) Inzalo transaction. They included energy and mining women’s groups, Sasol business suppliers, customers, franchisees and trade union investment companies, groups conducting skills and community upliftment projects, and professional associations.
India’s Reliance Communications is prepared to pay a significant premium for control of South African mobile phone group MTN, the FT Alphaville website said on Thursday. MTN and Reliance said on Monday they were in exclusive talks after India’s biggest mobile phone operator Bharti Airtel broke off talks.
An investment of R42-million was placed into a project for a medical aid for ex-miners on Thursday. The agreement aims to improve public health facilities that will be largely utilised by ex-miners in South Africa and neighbouring countries, for the benefit of medical examinations.
The disbanding of the Scorpions will protect corrupt and criminal politicians from prosecution, the deputy director of Public Prosecutions warned on Thursday. The Directorate of Special Operations, also known as the Scorpions, would lose its ability to independently investigate government officials if it was incorporated into the police, said Billy Downer, SC.
Drought in the central Karoo has reached critical proportions, Agri Wes-Cape said on Thursday. ”Large numbers of game and livestock are dying each day from the drought, and lambs perish at birth because the ewes simply do not produce milk,” the farmers’ organisation said in a statement.
The government has now back-pedalled on its initial claim that a "third force" was behind the recent wave of attacks on foreigners.
South Africa’s producer price inflation (PPI) accelerated unexpectedly to 12,4% year-on-year in April, increasing the possibility of a bigger than previously expected interest-rate hike in June. Statistics South Africa said on Thursday headline PPI — which represents domestic output — accelerated from an upwardly revised 11,9% in March.
After almost 40 institutions had denounced Eskom’s proposed 53% tariff increase, it was up to the power utility’s CEO on Thursday to convince the regulator why the massive hike was necessary. Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga was due to be the last speaker after three days of public hearings in Pretoria on the proposed tariff increase.
The Constitutional Court on Thursday dismissed an application by fraud convict Schabir Shaik to have over R33-million of his assets returned. Justice Kate O’Regan concluded that the state had established that benefits ”flowed” to Shaik and his companies as a result of African National Congress president Jacob Zuma’s support and intervention.
The recent xenophobic violence cannot be attributed to a single factor and is not necessarily the work of a so-called ”third force”, government spokesperson Themba Maseko said on Thursday. ”In some cases, there is some evidence of copy-cat activities in which criminals took advantage of the news story to conduct criminal acts,” he said.
South African stocks remained modestly weaker at noon on Thursday, with banks weighing heavily on a deteriorating inflation outlook after worse-than-expected producer price inflation data and the South African Reserve Bank governor’s comments that the bank was considering a 200-basis-point interest-rate hike.
It’s freezing cold under a grey sky. Discarded pictures from a child’s colouring book swirl in the wind. A whistle blows and hundreds of people camping at the Jeppe police station scramble to form an unruly queue in front of huge, silver cooking pots. Supper is served; today it’s soup.
About 60 people were evacuated from the African National Congress (ANC) headquarters, Luthuli House in Sauer Street in Johannesburg, following a bomb scare that was received on Thursday morning. ”The switchboard received the bomb scare at 8am this morning … everyone in the building was then immediately evacuated,” said ANC spokesperson Steyn Speed.
South Africa’s electricity crisis will remain for years and power cuts will continue well into the future, Eskom said on Thursday. ”We are going to be in this [crisis] for years,” Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga said in Johannesburg. ”The threat of load-shedding is with us for some time.” Eskom has struggled to meet demand for electricity in Africa’s biggest economy.
Percy Montgomery on Wednesday signed a one-year contract with Western Province. Montgomery, who was the leading points scorer at last year’s Rugby World Cup in France, is hardly likely to play for the Province Currie Cup side due the heavy Springbok schedule over the next four months.
He was what could justifiably be termed a soccer ”natural”, instinctively going about his business on the field, doing the right thing at the right time. But the tragic death of likeable Wits University and former Bafana Bafana striker Abram Raselemane in Bloemfontein on Tuesday at a time when he was barely into his 30s was anything but natural.
Now is the time for budding Bafana Bafana stars to stand up and be counted as South Africa take on Nigeria in a tough 2010 African Nations Cup qualifier in Abuja on Sunday. Kick-off is at 5pm South African time. There is no Benni McCarthy, and three midfield aces in Teko Modise, Delron Buckley and Lerato Chabangu are all nursing an assortment of injuries.
Two weeks of anti-foreigner violence in South Africa have highlighted the growing disconnect between a public impatient for change and a governing party that claims a divine right to rule. Although there is little prospect of the African National Congress (ANC) losing next year’s elections, genuine signs of anger have emerged during the crisis.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions on Wednesday elected S’dumo Dlamini to take over as president after the sacking of its embattled president, Willie Madisha. This was announced by Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi at a press briefing after the union’s three-day central executive committee meeting in Johannesburg.
The border between South Africa and Zimbabwe should be ”comprehensively” abolished, Methodist Bishop Paul Verryn told academics at the University of the Witwatersrand on Wednesday. ”In exactly the same way we pulled down the fences in 1994 and found that instead of restricting, it enabled,” Verryn told a colloquium on xenophobia.
South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni said on Wednesday that the task of the central bank is to maintain inflation in the 3% to 6% target band, and with CPIX (consumer inflation less mortgage costs) now at 10,4%, "drastic" measures are required. "This is way above the upper limit — you don’t have to be a genius to tell interest rates have to tighten," he said.
Business across the continent is set to become harder for South Africans, following the wave of xenophobic attacks against foreigners in the past few weeks.
This is according to businessman and president of Business Leadership South Africa Saki Macozoma.
The Competition Commission on Wednesday laid perjury charges against the managing executive of Adcock Ingram Critical Care at the Sunnyside police station in Pretoria. The commission said it had laid charges against Arthur Barnett for allegedly ”committing the common law crime of perjury”. He allegedly ”knowingly” provided false information to the commission.