NUM: Platinum workers dissatisfied with wage agreement
By SAPA – Platinum workers are dissatisfied with the wage agreement that ended the five-month strike within the sector, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) said on Wednesday. “What is the effect of the platinum settlement? What we have observed is that in the sector, the three mines [Impala Platinum, Anglo American Platinum, and Lonmin], […]
Mbeki sees ‘big step’ in efforts to end Sudan wars
By Sapa-AFP – Efforts to end Sudan’s wars and other crises have made a major advance, the African Union’s chief mediator Thabo Mbeki said after talks in Khartoum on Wednesday, official media reported. After meeting President Omar al-Bashir, Mbeki said an agreement signed last week between the AU and the Sudanese Revolutionary Front is “a […]
Op-Ed: Building unity to end civic powerlessness
By: RAYMOND SUTTNE – Beneath the headline-grabbing clamour about Nkandla, “spy tapes”, the role of the Public Protector and many other issues that jostle for our attention, there is a deeper malaise – the threat to constitutional democracy and the nation-building process. Watching these developments, many people have a sense of powerlessness in the face […]
Mechanisation ‘equals profit, thus jobs’
By Ntsakisi Maswanganyi – SA SHOULD embrace technology and mechanisation instead of dreading it, given mechanisation’s long-term benefits of job creation and higher productivity, Productivity SA CEO Bongani Coka says. Competitive countries such as Singapore had “very high” automation as well as “single-digit unemployment”, Mr Coka said. His comments come as strike-hit companies in mining […]
EDITORIAL: E-toll compromise needed
TRANSPORT Minister Dipuo Peters’ angry rejection of the Gauteng government’s e-toll review panel during a radio interview, in which she was at pains to point out that she is not obliged to implement its findings, illustrates the tightness of the corner the governing party has painted itself into. Not only has an overwhelming majority of […]
Preference for small business not productive
By Leon Louw – SA’s small-business policy is like a mother feeding a baby with one hand and throttling it with the other. Small business is big business, if new Small Business Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu is taken seriously. But will her department be another costly farce? What small business needs is not rocket science. […]
African Union meets to discuss continent-wide Ebola strategy
By AGENCY STAFF – African Union (AU) chiefs held an emergency meeting on Monday to hammer out a continent-wide strategy to deal with the Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 2,000 people in West Africa. “Fighting Ebola must be done in a manner that doesn’t fuel isolation or lead to the stigmatisation of victims, […]
Zuma visits Lesotho in bid to rescue peace deal
By Nicholas Kotch – PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma will spend Tuesday in Lesotho battling to prevent the political peace deal he brokered last week from unravelling. Prime Minister Tom Thabane and his rivals in the quarrelsome kingdom are threatening to tear up the compromise they reached in Pretoria on September 1 with Mr Zuma and the […]
Nine Things We Should Know About the African Court of Justice and Human Rights
By Sophie Van Leeuwen – There are three rather negative and six fairly positive aspects about the future African Court of Justice and Human Rights.The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, established in 1998, and the Court of Justice of the African Union, established in 2003, are to be merged into a single court […]
Massmart fights mall exclusivity clauses
By Zeenat Moorad – MASSMART is filing a complaint with the Competition Commission as its plans to introduce its fresh food business, Foodco, at Game stores in malls is being stymied by Shoprite and Pick n Pay. The row over lease exclusivity clauses is being driven by the spending slowdown as supermarket giants fight for market […]
