On the back of a strong run over the last three years, South Africa’s listed property sector is expected to produce a total return of 16% over the next year — made up of 10% growth in distributions and 6% growth in capital. This is according to Metropolitan Asset Managers (MetAM), a division of Metropolitan.
New-vehicle sales remain buoyant, despite a predicted slowdown, with such sales, in February, increasing by 17,2% year-on-year to 50Â 196. "Vehicle sales continue to show strong growth," Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa’s vice-president, Nigel Harris said.
Is the brouhaha around plagiarism allegations against Antjie Krog merely a storm in a tea cup? Three <i>Mail & Guardian</i> columnists share their opinions on accusations that have rocked South Africa’s literary world.
A fourth person was due to appear in court on Friday, charged in connection with the British record £53,1-million robbery, as three others remain in custody. Jetmir Bucpapa (24) is accused of conspiracy to commit robbery at a Securitas cash depot in the town of Tonbridge, in Kent, southeast England, last Wednesday.
Workers employed by two of Transnet’s business units want to become bosses. They want the units’ activities to be outsourced to them, or for the shares to be sold to worker cooperatives rather than to private companies. These two assets are at the heart of the festering dispute between the transport parastatal and four trade unions.
In the year 2006, a fully functioning province in a modern, first-world country was brought to its knees by massive breakdowns in its electricity supplies. Emergency services were rendered helpless, hospitals were unable to perform life-saving surgery, other vital medical procedures had to be abandoned. Communications across the province were disrupted for more than a week.
He spoke to us; he joked; took his shirt off. He acknowledged problems. He gave interview on interview. How nice! How unusual! President Thabo Mbeki hit the hustings over the past fortnight to boost the flagging fortunes of his party and to ward off a low turnout in the election.
Britain’s smaller opposition Liberal Democrats were to crown their new chief on Thursday after a leadership contest dogged by scandals involving alcoholism, gay chat lines and male prostitutes. Bookmakers reckoned acting leader Menzies Campbell was just ahead of economics spokesperson Chris Huhne with party president Simon Hughes trailing in the race to lead Britain’s third-biggest party.
The Pentagon is funding research into neural implants, with the ultimate hope of turning sharks into "stealth spies" capable of gliding undetected through the ocean, the British weekly <i>New Scientist</i> says. "The Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks’ natural ability to glide quietly through the water," says the report.
Nigerian officials stepped up efforts on Thursday to negotiate the release of two kidnapped Americans and a Briton after six of the hostages’ fellow oil workers were freed by militants. On Wednesday, separatist guerrillas allowed two thirds of their captives to go free after holding them for 13 days in the swamps of the Niger Delta.
RMB Holdings, which is the holding company for some of South Africa’s leading financial-services companies, including the FirstRand Group, lifted headline earnings by 16% to 121 cents or R1,44-billion for the six months ended December. This was compared with earnings of 104 cents per share in 2004.
South Africa’s Imperial Holdings on Thursday reported a 34% increase in headline earnings per share to 616,9 cents for the six months ended December 2005, up from 460 cents a year earlier. On a fully diluted basis, headline earnings per share (Heps) were 578,2 cents from a previous 431,4 cents.
Snake charmers have given the all clear for United States President George Bush to go ahead with plans to deliver a speech from a medieval fort in New Delhi during his three-day India visit, officials said on Wednesday. Police roped in the charmers over concerns that reptiles would gatecrash Bush’s scheduled address on Friday.
A British Chinook helicopter, which has seen action in the Falklands War, Afghanistan and Iraq, was taken out of action after a head-on smash-up with a pigeon, the Royal Air Force said on Wednesday. The 10-tonne chopper was forced into an emergency landing.
Kenyan police said on Wednesday they had arrested three journalists over an article alleging that President Mwai Kibaki held secret talks with a lawmaker who had successfully rallied opposition to constitutional reform last year. After recording statements, the men were locked in the capital’s Kileleshwa police post, said Danson Diru, a police’s criminal police investigations officer.
Watching the news from out of the Middle East, you might be wondering what’s going on and why — and, mostly, when’s it going to stop. The simple answer is: it isn’t. The world is now in the first stages of a multistep "end game" for global domination by the last remaining superpowers. The "energy wars" have begun in earnest and will keep on going, from here onwards.
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/ 28 February 2006
The leader of the al-Qaeda network in Saudi Arabia, Fahd bin Faraj al-Joweir, was among five militants killed in a shootout in Riyadh on Monday, the Saudi interior ministry announced. "Joweir (36) … had taken charge of the criminal cells," after other leading members were eliminated by security forces, the ministry said.
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/ 28 February 2006
South Africa’s real GDP at market prices on a quarter-on-quarter seasonally annualised and adjusted basis rose by 3,3% in the fourth quarter of 2005 from 4,2% in the third quarter, Statistics South Africa said. This brought the annual average real growth for 2005 to 4,9% compared with 4,5% in 2004.
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/ 28 February 2006
Cigarette giant British American Tobacco (BAT) announced on Tuesday a 29% slump in pre-tax profits to £2,588-billion ($4,503-billion) in 2005, but the data was skewed by big deals from the previous year. BAT, maker of Kent and Dunhill cigarettes, said in an official results statement that revenue sank 13% to £9,325-billion last year, compared with 2004.
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/ 28 February 2006
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/262374/vote-box_blue.gif" align=left>The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has made "a final appeal to all its members, to all workers and to the people as a whole" to vote for South Africa’s ruling African National Congress on Wednesday in the nationwide municipal poll.
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/ 28 February 2006
First National Bank’s (FNB) Mzansi customers can now set up debit orders and perform third-party payments on their accounts via cellphone, automated teller machines and branches. This means that FNB is the first bank to improve its service offerings to its Mzansi customers.
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/ 28 February 2006
African Rainbow Minerals and Xstrata announced on Tuesday that agreement has been reached to establish a major black-controlled coal-mining company in a black economic empowerment (BEE) transaction valued at R2,4-billion. The new company, ARM Coal, will have significant operating assets and growth projects in South Africa.
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/ 28 February 2006
Banking group FirstRand boosted diluted headline earnings per share by 19% from 62,9 cents to 74,8 cents for the six months ended December. The group declared a dividend of 32 cents per share, which was a 20% increase on the previous dividend. It said the strong results were achieved in a positive economic environment.
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/ 28 February 2006
How serious is South Africa about halting massive, ethnically targeted human destruction in Darfur in western Sudan? Is President Thabo Mbeki prepared to support the robust, international force required to protect millions of vulnerable people and the increasingly tenuous humanitarian lifeline upon which they depend?
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/ 27 February 2006
Lawyers of the two factions of Zimbabwe’s splintered opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party are locked up in a tug of war over rights to the MDC brand, in what appears a preliminary to a long and damaging legal wrangle over the party’s name, symbol and assets.
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/ 27 February 2006
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism will in due course be identifying ways of exploiting inshore fish and marine resources to alleviate poverty and create jobs in the fishing industry, says Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
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/ 27 February 2006
South African industrial services group Bidvest on Monday reported diluted headline earnings per share of 350 cents for the six months ended December 2005, from 293,4 cents a year ago. Headline earnings per share were up 21,8% to 368,8 cents. The distribution per share was 21,1% higher at 162 cents.
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/ 27 February 2006
London-listed financial services and insurance giant Old Mutual says it is confident that its subsidiary Nedbank is well on the road to recovery. "It’s still lagging its competitors in some regards, but we are confident of their [Nedbank’s] return," said the group’s financial director, Julian Roberts.
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/ 27 February 2006
Recent media reports from Zimbabwe and in South Africa suggesting that Eskom Holdings will invest about $37-million toward the expansion and upgrade of its Zimbabwe counterpart’s power station in the north western town of Hwange are "factually incorrect," Eskom said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.
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/ 27 February 2006
Russia on Monday downplayed progress on its plan to alleviate fears over Iran’s nuclear programme, saying there was still work to be done to reach agreement and warning that time was quickly running out ahead of a March 6 deadline. "This is a complex issue and the negotiations are difficult," said Sergei Kiriyenko, Russia’s chief nuclear negotiator with Iran.
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/ 27 February 2006
British former pop star Gary Glitter, charged with committing "obscene acts with children" in Vietnam, has fallen a long way since his 1970s heyday as the leader of the glam-rock gang. Glitter (61) was the dazzling king of the glam era, characterised by performers in sequinned dress and extreme make-up.
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/ 27 February 2006
Sizwe Mathabula (not his real name) lives in a high-rise building in Hillbrow. He works as a nightwatchman, guarding an inner-city office block three nights a week. He supplements this income by selling vegetables on the city’s pavements. In a typical month, he clears about R800, which he uses to support his wife and their two young children.