South Africa has dropped off the investment radar of firms and business people. It is a dark reality that a few investment lions are not going to fix.

About seven years ago I was phoned by agents who arrange for their clients to talk to researchers in a country they are interested in investing. The money was good, and as I knew the South African economy quite well, the conference calls became quite an income for my business.

COMMENT
Moving to a city in search of work seems to pay off for many poor rural South Africans.

Data that track changes over time indicate that as many as 385 000 people were lifted from poverty between 2008 and 2014 after moving from rural to urban areas — their poverty levels were halved, together with a fall in unemployment. So government ambivalence about urbanisation should be replaced by a more positive and proactive approach.

The budget is about more than just income and expenditure. It should provide a vision for the economy, which deals with the current challenges but also offers an insight into the type of society we want to build. The key message in the 2018-19 budget is that South Africa’s public finances are in very bad shape, and we have to find more revenue. The budget proposes that we all need to tighten our belts and make sacrifices to get out of trouble and to get the economy on a sustainable growth path. It asks all citizens to pay more, and all income groups to share in the burden.

South Africa’s prospects under Cyril Ramaphosa

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The African National Congress (ANC) narrowly avoided a damaging split at the recently concluded 54th national conference. South Africa is, however, firmly in a “muddling along” scenario. The result of the elections for the 86 elected members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) led by newly elected ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa reflects an organization that went into the conference sharply divided and it will take time for these divisions to subside.

Different people relate to the election of Cyril Ramaphosa as ANC president in distinct ways, and this may relate to their political location. Obviously, those who campaigned for Ramaphosa had a mixture of reasons for supporting him, although generally being united in the desire to remove Jacob Zuma, “clean up” and restore economic stability. 

JOHANNESBURG - The ANC policy conference was a lot less policy and a lot more “politics”. It generated a lot of heat. But no light.

War photographers are either sleazy and glamorous, or noble and glamorous. At least this is what you will think if you believe the various literary or big screen adaptions of photojournalists over the years.

The first famous camp-follower’s tale was Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, set in the fictitious Ishmaelia (read Ethiopia/Abyssinia) in the 1930’s. The latest film adaption of a book on photojournalists is The Bang Bang Club, very loosely based on Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich’s book of the same name about South Africa’s bloody transition to democracy.

South Africa holds a unique place in the international water sector. It’s a developing country, yet renowned for progressive water laws and advanced water policies. It offers an exemplary case study. Yet certain lessons are more painfully learned than others and one of them concerns resilience.

Next time you buy food, you will also be paying for extraordinarily high tariffs on staples – notably wheat, sugar and chicken. Specifically, you're contributing to tariffs of between 25% and 30% on wheat and sugar, and – depending on the type and origin – up to 30% on chicken. Those tariffs effectively divert your hard-earned rands to sustain a relatively small number of commercial farmers and agricultural trading companies.