Pravin Gordhan

Malema and the black swan moment

"Finance minister Pravin Gordhan, stands like Horatio on the bridge trying to hold back the ratings agencies" A FRIEND of mine in London sent me an amazing betting statistic. If you had wagered a paltry £5 on a trifecta of Leicester City winning the Premier League in May, Britain voting for Brexit in June and [...]

The Big Read: Shaun and the scary clowns

He might not be much of a lawyer, his independence and integrity are questionable and his lack of personal responsibility is glaring. But you have to hand it to Shaun Abrahams, the national director of public prosecutions: he has a great sense of humour and - given the comedy of errors he presides over - [...]

By |2016-11-03T07:39:40+00:00November 2nd, 2016|African National Congress (ANC), Pravin Gordhan|0 Comments

Enough with the October surprises already

“An October surprise” is American political-speak for news deliberately created or timed to influence the outcome of its November presidential election. US Election Day, just ten days away, sees the two most unpopular candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, ever recorded in polling history, face off against each other. Neither has really needed the addition [...]

By |2016-11-01T22:26:36+00:00October 30th, 2016|African National Congress (ANC), Pravin Gordhan|0 Comments

As constitutional darkness descends, Zuma is starting to feel the heat

'You have to go a long way back to find a cabinet which is so openly at war with itself' The brilliantly funny 1993 movie Groundhog Day concerns an unpleasant weatherman, played by Bill Murray, who is covering the annual ritual of the groundhog emerging from its hole to predict the arrival of spring. But [...]

By |2016-10-19T21:52:02+00:00October 19th, 2016|African National Congress (ANC), Pravin Gordhan|0 Comments

SA’s animal farm offers double hiding holes for jackals and wounded buffalo

The most famous use of animal allegory in political satire was by George Orwell in his 20th-century classic Animal Farm. Its place in the canon of the most influential books of our time is cemented because of its brilliant, indirect, but coruscating account of a magnificent and just revolutionary cause morphing into a nightmare of [...]

By |2016-10-13T23:01:55+00:00October 13th, 2016|African National Congress (ANC), Pravin Gordhan|0 Comments

Snapshots of greed, gestures of change, and genuine hope

Political gestures can be low-cost or ultra-expensive, harmless or dangerous, provide evidence of sunset on the old order or can morph into a false dawn. Political assassinations are at the extreme end of such symbolism. One hundred and two years ago, the murder in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, famously [...]

The Big Read: Looking for someone to blame

It's difficult to capture in a headline the essence of what is going on, and going wrong in South Africa right now. If you were to borrow the title from the world of books, perhaps Beryl Bainbridge's slim 1996 classic of the night the Titanic sank Every Man for Himself, would be a handy summary. [...]

Can Gordhan’s Black Knight survive the repeated attacks?

There is merriment on social media, writes Tony Leon, but Zuma is in a deadly serious battle for the economy as he shrugs off election losses and takes SOEs under his control. Memes - those social media images that go viral on the internet - were in overdrive this week to herald the improbable trifecta [...]

Myeni rules with racial bean counter’s version of Stalin’s

VOLTAIRE’S Dr Pangloss believed that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". With Tshwane now in flames, ANC ministers at war with each other and a winter of discontent everywhere, it’s hard to be a Panglossian optimist. Fear not, aside from tuning into the SABC, you can always read the [...]

The real reason Barclays is bailing out of SA

South Africa's weakening currency means that foreign investors lose money YESTERDAY was Super Tuesday in the primaries of the US presidential election. But for South Africa and our continent, it might be dubbed “Gloomy Tuesday”. And yesterday Barclays Bank, which has been knocking around our neighbourhood on and off for the past 100 years, made [...]

By |2016-03-03T10:39:32+00:00March 2nd, 2016|Finance, Pravin Gordhan, South African Politics|0 Comments
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