JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s Old Mutual Ltd said on Wednesday its shareholders will get R50 billion ($3.50 billion) from the spin-off of a majority of its stake in Nedbank. Old Mutual holds 52 percent of Nedbank and after the spinoff will hold around 19.9 percent, it said in a statement. (Reporting by Nqobile Dludla, […]

A life-size statue of Nelson Mandela has been unveiled at the United Nation’s (UN’s) headquarters in New York, USA. The statue of South Africa’s founding father is intended to immortalise Madiba’s values and serve as a reminder forever of everything SA’s exceptional statesman stood for. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa – who is in New […]

PRETORIA (Reuters) – South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a multi-billion-dollar stimulus programme on Friday, earmarking funds for job creation and infrastructure development as he seeks to make good on a pledge to revive the country’s ailing economy. Speaking a day after the central bank disappointed some in his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party […]

PRETORIA – South Africa’s central bank left its benchmark repo rate on hold at 6.5 percent on Thursday, in a tight call, with the bank’s governor striking a more hawkish note than at the last rate meeting in July. The rate decision by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) was closely watched after emerging market […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s highest court on Tuesday allowed the private use of marijuana, upholding a lower court’s ruling that found the criminalization of cannabis was unconstitutional. Activists who include members of the Rastafarian movement and traditional healers greeted the ruling with loud applause. They have held marches over the years to demand that […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged on Monday there would be no mass layoffs of public sector workers as the South African government considers various ways to pull the economy out of a recession that has rattled the rand and investor confidence. The economy slipped into recession in the second quarter for […]

An economic stimulus package for South Africa, adopted by Cabinet, is set to spark economic activity and boost the country’s growth, according to the country’s president. President Cyril Ramaphosa shared with South Africa’s business and labour leaders an outline of the economic stimulus package during a consultative meeting on Friday. The meeting in Pretoria was […]

Farmworkers on the Nieuwe Sion farm in the Western Cape were recently delighted when the British owners of the farm – David and Elaine Potter – handed over not only the keys, but the title deeds too, to an awesome village containing 22 homes for them. The state-of-the-art village cost R30-million to create. It includes […]

In delivering today’s Crime Statistics for the 2017/2018 financial year, Police Minister Bheki Cele called the rate of murder “scary”. Fifty-seven people are murdered in South Africa every day, a statistic – he says – that requires more stringent action by the police. Sounding despondent, he said the stats are “nothing to write home about, […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene said on Monday that there is a significant downside risk to revenue collection due to a recession and problems in tax collection by the revenue service. “There is now additional downside risk to the tax revenue projected at the beginning of the year because of the […]

Tesla shares tumbled more than 6% to $263.24 on Friday after the electric car company’s CEO, South African expat Elon Musk, smoked marijuana on a webcast. (Watch below.) He also wielded a sword, and his company announced its recently-appointed accounting chief had resigned because of “discomfort” with the attention on Tesla, and the pace of […]

CAPE TOWN – South Africa’s plans to change the constitution to allow the expropriation of land without compensation could hit property prices and trigger a banking crisis, the chief executive of Nedbank warned parliament on Friday. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced on Aug. 1 that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) planned to change the constitution […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa authorised a new investigation into a water ministry contract with German software firm SAP on Thursday, citing allegations that public money was spent unlawfully. The investigation by South Africa’s Special Investigating Unit (SIU) comes after the country’s anti-graft agency said in March it was conducting its own […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s slide into recession is a “transitional issue” from which the economy will soon recover, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in comments published on Thursday, repeating promises for a stimulus package to reignite growth. Ramaphosa has staked his reputation on reviving the economy after a decade of stagnation under his predecessor, scandal-plagued […]

SASOLBURG, South Africa (Reuters) – About 100 workers from South Africa’s mainly white Solidarity union staged a brief protest outside Sasol’s chemicals plant in Sasolburg on Wednesday over a share scheme offered exclusively to black staff. Solidarity union leaders, who say the scheme is discriminatory because it excludes white workers, handed over a memorandum criticising […]

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – Steinhoff’s former chief executive Markus Jooste told a parliamentary inquiry today that his main mistake during his tenure, as the retailer battled an accounting scandal, was agreeing to a joint venture with Austrian businessman Andreas Seifert. Rather than take any responsibility for the global furniture company’s share price collapse himself, Jooste […]

The African National Congress says the latest figures from Statistics SA represent an urgent call to action for all South Africans to rally behind a common vision of growing the economy and job creation. The figures show that the South African economy moved back into a technical recession with a negative growth rate of (-0.7%) […]

Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) on Tuesday revealed the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures fell by 0,7% in the second quarter of the year 2018… and, judging from the comments on Twitter, South Africans realised they can no longer blame former President Jacob Zuma. These latest figures have pushed the country into a recession – […]

PRETORIA (Reuters) – South Africa entered recession in the second quarter for the first time since 2009, data showed on Tuesday, in a stinging blow to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s efforts to revive the economy after a decade of stagnation. Statistics South Africa said the economy contracted by 0.7 percent quarter-on-quarter, led by declines in the […]

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping offered another $60 billion in financing for Africa on Monday and said Chinese companies will be encouraged to invest no less than $10 billion over the next three years, but he also warned against “vanity projects”. Speaking at the opening of a major summit with African leaders, Xi […]

Carte Blanche looks into why the Democratic Alliance lost Nelson Mandela Bay and if this the beginning of the end for the rest of the DA-run municipalities? Also why Henri van Breda brutally attacked his family, the baboon killings in the Western Cape vineyards, and how Lewis Pugh swam a distance of 560kms in just 50 […]

PRETORIA (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund gave its full backing to South Africa’s land reform plan on Thursday, as long as the highly contentious process is transparent and based on the constitution. The Fund’s senior resident representative in South Africa – Montfort Mlachila – told Reuters that the reform must not damage farm output […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African clothing and homeware retailer The Foschini Group (TFG) said on Thursday it was launching one of its African retail brands in Australia to test appetite outside its traditional market. The move announced by outgoing CEO Doug Murray and his successor, Anthony Thunström, aims to show whether TFG’s local brands can […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s Solidarity, a union representing high-skilled workers, said on Thursday that it has agreed a three-year wage deal with state power utility Eskom, bringing an end to weeks of negotiations that led to load shedding (otherwise known as power outages). The much larger National Union of Mineworkers earlier said it had […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) said on Tuesday an expropriation bill passed by parliament in 2016, enabling the state to make compulsory purchases of land to redress racial disparities in land ownership, has been withdrawn. The bill, which had not been signed into law, was withdrawn to allow an ongoing process […]