First Take SA

Victor Kgomoesoana, author of  "Africa Is Open For Business" and "Africa Bounces Back". Victor is also the Executive Director for Marketing and Communication at the University of Limpopo takes a look at current top African economic stories  

Fresh off the local government elections, most municipalities will be looking at the Finance minister for some form of support and relief as they continue to face significant drops in revenue. Meanwhile, the South African Federation of Trade Unions, the second largest federation in the country, will also watching today's budget statement closely as it has called for the introduction of a one-thous...

City Power has continued its call for power utility, Eskom to address City power outages in parts of Johannesburg. This comes after Eskom laid some of the blame for the recent stage 4 load shedding on municipalities that have not been implementing load shedding as required by the power utility. In an ongoing tussle between the city and Eskom, the City of Johannesburg earlier signed a memorandum of...

Eskom CEO Andre De Ruyter says apart from breakdowns at power stations and capital inadequacies to perform plant maintenance, load shedding has been exacerbated by municipalities that have failed to implement load shedding as required by the power utility.  De Ruyter says letters have been drafted to all the affected municipalities to correct the situation with all future load shedding scenar...

A collection of human rights organizations, advocating for social justice in South Africa, have rejected the much talked about possible termination of the income support grants for adults expected to be announced in Thursday's budget. Esley Philander, spokesperson of Advocacy group, Black Sash....

Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana is expected to deliver his maiden Mid-Term-Budget-Speech on Thursday. Gondongwana took over from the former minister, Tito Mboweni, in early August following President Cyril Ramaphosa's cabinet reshuffle. Gondongwana is expected to juggle the financial purse between support for ailing State-Owned Enterprises and possible further social relief grants for the most...

Administration of the Sisonke COVID-19 booster dose aimed at healthcare workers, which was delayed on Monday due to technical glitches, is expected to start today. Healthcare workers were the first group of people that were vaccinated in South Africa under the Sisonke Programme, which was a collaboration between the National Department of Health and other health professionals. The South African Me...

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has admitted that it is difficult at this stage to put a time frame as to when load shedding will come to an end as problems engulfing ESKOM are complex. Ramaphosa was speaking at an ANC Thank You event in Soweto, Johannesburg, where he was thanking ANC members for their work during the recent local government elections. For more on some of those complexities that pre...

The ANC says it has yet to enter into any coalition agreements with some of the political parties represented in the 66 hung municipalities countrywide. Meanwhile, ActionSA has been running a poll, asking its supporters to say which of the political parties they should enter into coalitions with. For some analysis of what these coalition talks and possible agreements could mean for the genera...

ActionSA, the party formed by former Joburg mayor, Herman Mashaba, has been running a poll, which ended at midnight, asking its supporters to say which of the political parties they should enter into coalitions with. Party national chairperson, Michael Beaumont...

The ANC says it has yet to enter into any coalition agreements with some of the political parties represented in the 66 hung municipalities countrywide. Party deputy secretary, Jessie Duarte made the assertion at the Special ANC NEC meeting in Irene, Pretoria yesterday (Sunday). The special NEC meeting comes at the back of the local government elections which saw the party failing to secure enough...

The Independent Electoral Commission released the final results of the 2021 Local Government Election at the Results Operations Center (ROC) in Pretoria. The results follow a challenging election campaign that saw political parties try to secure votes, amid a global pandemic and a shorter than usual time frame. Executive Chair of the Institute of Election Management Services in Africa, Terry Tsela...

The Democratic Alliance has recorded a decline of about five percent in votes in the Eastern Cape province despite claiming control of the coastal towns within the Kouga Municipality. The party has also fallen short of its objective of claiming control of the closely contested Nelson Mandela Bay metro, drawing 38 seats out of the 61 seats needed for majority control of the council. One of the othe...

ActionSA in KwaZulu-Natal says it is elated by its performance at the polls in KwaDukuza Local Municipality where it gained five council seats. The party, led by former Johannesburg mayor, Herman Mashaba has also made inroads in Joburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. The party has also made its presence felt in eThekwini municipality, gaining 4 seats thus minimizing the ANC's majority rule.  Provinc...

For some analysis on the latest Local Government election results, here is Dr Kagiso Pooe from the School of Governance at Wits University....

Another new kid on the block during these Local Government Elections which has shown great potential in the City of Cape Town is the Cape Coloured Congress. For an assessment and reaction to how the party has performed thus far, Cape Coloured Congress president, Fadiel Adams...

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) will announce the final results of the 2021 local government elections later this evening. The electoral process had its own challenges with at least over 80 objections lodged with the IEC by the end of business yesterday. But the electoral body says all the objections will be dealt with after the announcement of the results. For the latest election resul...

Political analyst, Susan Booysen highlights what it means to form coalitions in this day and age....

CSIR's Professor Pravesh Debba gives us an update on predictions for the 2021 Local Government Elections....

Clearer pictures are emerging around the country as results come in. Some provinces are still too early to call. However, Observer Paledi Magopa from the Centre for Civic & Democracy Education says councillors are neglecting their civic duties...

The Electoral Commission says issues around shortages of ballot papers were resolved. Voting in the 2021 Local Government Elections ended last night across the country with eight million people having cast their vote by five o'clock yesterday afternoon. To unpack available results thus far is Professor Pravesh Debba from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSRI)....

The Independent Electoral Commission says its all systems go for this weekend's special votes. Approximately 26 million South Africans are eligible to vote in the polls, with over 95 thousand candidates running to capture about 10-thousand-500 seats in the country's 257 municipalities. The IEC maintains that all measures are in place to protect the integrity of the results as the commission launch...

With days to go to the November 1st local government elections, some political parties are complaining about the destruction of their posters. They say that several displayed on lamp posts have been damaged, while others have been defaced on social media. This election campaign has seen many political parties  capitalize on their campaign messaging and branding while some have missed the mark...

Public Enterprises Minister, Pravin Gordhan, says Eskom is likely to downgrade loadshedding to Stage Three tonight - and move to Stage Two for the rest of the week. This follows the power utility's announcement of the implementation of Stage Four loadshedding, which started at midday today. Eskom says this was due to a shortage of generation capacity and units tripping at several power stations. N...

The Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster Ministers have assured South Africans that citizens will be able to access all areas of the country during the local government elections next week. The Ministers briefing the media on the safety and security situation ahead of the polls, say focus is on four provinces, including Kwa Zulu-Natal and Gauteng with regards to political violence. Aroun...