BusinessLIVE - For Your Ear

So the ANC is imploding? Let it implode. It’s ironic that the chief architect of this implosion is former party president Jacob Zuma. He’ll do everything, even destroy a party built with blood and tears over 108 years, to save his skin. His recent letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa is yet another attempt at a power grab to continue the project to destroy the state. I am not sorry for...

Here’s how Mao Zedong describes a revolution: “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” Those who complain about the EFF&...

London — Taxes on frequent flyers, more wind and solar power, and better protection for nature should be key policies in Britain’s push to meet its promise to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, a citizens’ assembly advised the country’s legislators on Thursday. But its final recommendations in a report to parliament did not back nuclear power, efforts to capture and store c...

It makes a great headline when a top government official is suspended, as was the case with Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) commissioner Teboho Maruping, who along with his top team has just been placed on so-called precautionary suspension. Maruping was caught in the spotlight during an examination of the running of the largest SA business support scheme in living memory: the Temporary Employer...

While Clicks’ flighting of the TRESemmé advert was wrong, it does not justify people taking the law into their own hands. Unfortunately, this is not the first time — and it will surely not be the last — that hooligans try to hold a business to ransom, for all sorts of reasons. I received three complaints during the course of 2019 from three businesses undergoing wage negoti...

Negotiations between the UK and the EU on their future trade relations after Brexit were never going to be easy. After all, it took more than three years (and several near misses) just to agree the terms of Britain’s departure from the bloc. But talks were expected to stay within the wonkish, technical world of tariffs and product standards, since existential issues such as how to deal with...

Los Angeles — One of the world’s rarest diamonds, about the size of an egg or a large lollipop, is going up for auction next month and is expected to fetch $12m to $30m. Sotheby’s said on Thursday that the 102.39-carat diamond, a flawless white sparkler, was the second-largest oval diamond of its kind to be offered at auction. The largest, a 118.28-carat diamond, set a record $30...

During his televised marathon session with media notables on September 9, President Cyril Ramaphosa emphatically insisted that he is determined to deal with corruption. This most welcome mindset is essential to generating the political will that has long been the missing ingredient in the national longing to end grand corruption with impunity. There is, however, another element that is required to...

London — The planet is showing signs it is in peril. In recent weeks, the world has seen ferocious wildfires in the US west, torrential rains in Africa, weirdly warm temperatures on the surface of tropical oceans, and record heatwaves from California to the Siberian Arctic. This spate of wild weather is consistent with climate change, scientists say, and the world can expect even more extrem...

London — The tech-led reboot of stock markets stalled in Europe on Thursday as traders pulled back to hear just how twitchy the European Central Bank (ECB) has become about the euro’s run-up in recent months. The ECB’s upcoming meeting, along with emergency Brexit talks in London after negotiations turned chaotic again, and wilting commodity markets kept the bulls firmly on the l...

Sydney — A dispute over koalas has created political chaos in Australia’s most populous state with a split in the New South Wales (NSW) governing coalition forming over policies designed to protect the animals. The centre-right Liberal party and the rural-focused Nationals have a decades-old partnership in both state and federal politics, which sees power shared across cabinet position...

London — Oil prices dipped on Thursday after data showed US crude stockpiles rose last week and the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) downgraded its oil demand outlook, though the Brent benchmark stayed above $40 a barrel. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures dipped 61c to $37.44 a barrel at 8.08am GMT, after climbing 3.5% on Wednesday. Brent crude futures fell 53c to $40....

Accra — Ghana lured investors to its power industry to end chronic electricity shortages with deals it can no longer afford. The deals’ terms require the government to pay for electricity generated even if there’s no demand for it. The move helped Ghana end its power crisis by 2016, boosting its generation to about 4,600MW, well above national peak demand of 2,700MW. Debt owed to...

Nairobi — Exposed to both drought and flash floods, Makueni was one of the first counties in Kenya to set up its own fund to help small-scale farmers cope with worsening climate change impacts, and dedicate local resources to tackling the problem. Inhabitants of this water-scarce region southeast of Nairobi have often faced hunger during long dry periods, while heavy rains inundate its low-l...

Lesbos — Thousands of migrants slept rough on the Greek island of Lesbos on Thursday after a blaze razed their makeshift camp to the ground, sending them fleeing but with nowhere to go. Families slept on roadsides and in supermarket parking lots and fields across the island, which was at the forefront of the European migrant crisis in 2015-2016. There had been about 12,500 people in the camp...

Much of SA history over the past century can be explained by a simple observation: not all corruption is due to socialism, but all socialism brings corruption. Apartheid was not a market phenomenon but a statist intervention to thwart the market relationships that would have brought people together in co-operative endeavours. The same is true of the current form of apartheid that is called, euphem...

Paris/London/Berlin — Tucked in a side street of Paris’s bustling Boulevard du Montparnasse, a tidy bistro is struggling without executives talking business at lunch and tourists sampling the Japanese-inspired French delicacies in the evening. La Cette’s owner Xavier Bousquet is concerned tables will stay empty as the coronavirus flares up across Europe — including new high...

There is an increased risk of load-shedding over the next 24 hours after a conveyor belt feeding coal into the Medupi generation units broke overnight, Eskom warned on Thursday. This means the four generation units in service are not able to take in the requisite amount of coal to generate electricity. “While Eskom teams are working round the clock to repair the conveyor belt, which is expec...

Washington — Microsoft recently alerted one of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s main election campaign advisory firms that it had been targeted by suspected Russian state-backed hackers, according to three people briefed on the matter. The hacking attempts targeted staff at Washington-based SKDKnickerbocker, a campaign strategy and communications firm working with Biden an...

Singapore/Melbourne — Oil prices slid on Thursday after data showed US crude stockpiles unexpectedly rose last week, stoking concern about a sluggish recovery in fuel demand as coronavirus cases continue to surge in many countries. US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures fell 24 US cents, or 0.63%, to $37.81 a barrel at 4.17am GMT, after climbing 3.5% on Wednesday. Brent crude futures...

Bengaluru — Gold steadied near a one-week high on Thursday as the dollar weakened, but the gold traded in a narrow $8 range as investors held back from making large bets ahead of the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) monetary policy decision due later in the day. Spot gold was flat at $1,945.87/oz by 3.07am GMT, after hitting its highest level since September 3 at $1,950.51 on Wedn...

Singapore/New York — Asia’s stock markets snapped their longest losing streak since February on Thursday and rose after a bounce on Wall Street, though subdued trade in currency, commodity and bond markets suggested investors remain cautious about the outlook. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained half a percent, lifting away from a one-month low made...

The JSE faces slightly firmer Asian markets on Thursday morning, with all eyes on the European Central Bank (ECB) policy meeting later. US markets recovered somewhat on Wednesday from a recent tech-led sell-off, while the rand has also mostly recovered from its fall after the release of Tuesday’s GDP figures. The rand staged a decent recovery to the R16.60/$ level on Wednesday, tracking a st...

Unprecedented fires in Oregon have all but destroyed five small towns and a record number of deaths is feared, governor Kate Brown said on Wednesday. Brown said hundreds of homes had been lost. Oregon was the hardest hit state in the US west, where nearly 100 extreme fires were stoked by high winds and temperatures. The towns of Detroit in central Oregon, Blue River and Vida in coastal Lane County...

Eskom's former board chair, Zola Tsotsi, on Wednesday told the state capture commission that his dramatic resignation in 2015 was premeditated by his colleagues acting in cahoots with then-public enterprises minister Lynne Brown. Tsotsi was concluding two days of testimony in which he laid bare how the Gupta family called the shots at Eskom with the blessing of Brown. His testimony centred on even...