This week’s medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) is the grimmest and most difficult in a generation. There’s the revenue shortfall, anticipated at about R50bn. The convenient — though perfectly valid — explanation for this huge undershoot is the internal sabotage at the SA Revenue Service by Tom Moyane and his merry men and women. The less [...]
South Africans desperately seeking some good news are unlikely to find it in the speech in parliament on Wednesday afternoon from Tito Mboweni when he delivers the medium-term budget policy statement. Happier tidings might emerge from the pitch on Saturday afternoon when the Springboks meet England in the Rugby World Cup final at the International [...]
In the furies of social media, it is worth a reminder that obituary writers declaring the death of political parties often turn out to be premature. Or even dead wrong. In 1994, at the dawn of our democracy, many death notices were penned for the Democratic Party, which had a dreadful election on the back [...]
On Monday in London – at separate venues – two heads of state were in action delivering speeches to different audiences in the same city, but their rhetoric was joined by a common incredulity, even cynicism, on whether hard deeds will follow fine words. The speech that grabbed the headlines, helped by the majestic backdrop [...]
About 15 years ago, in parliament, the Democratic Alliance spokesperson on education drew attention with a very telling metaphor. The House was then discussing yet another government assault on private school education, corralling the powers of their governing bodies and related items, in the pursuit of achieving equality of outcomes across all education sectors. Willem [...]
There is a long, ever-lengthening, list of SA-originating business leaders who have achieved huge success and had high impact in boardrooms and markets across the world. Elon Musk and Roelof Botha in the hi-tech field in California (and even outer space in the case of the former); Ivan Glasenberg and Mick Davis in the world [...]
