Economy
[Source: Business Day Live byKhulekani Magubane.]
South Africa will withdraw from its commitments to the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO’s) General Agreement on Trade in Services (Gats) to consult member countries on the contentious Private Security Industry Amendment Bill, Police Minister Nathi Nhleko said on Thursday. Read more
[Source: Business Day Live – Editorial.]
Social grants have been one of the most successful of the democratic government’s policies, reducing poverty significantly and bringing life and economic activity even to some of SA’s poorest and remote communities.
Yet the government’s proposals to extend the child support grant from 18 to 21-year-olds is, in a sense, an admission of defeat. Read more
[Source: Thoughtleader, Mail & Guardian by Koos Kombuis.] I have never been to Paris, even though my forefathers hail from France. Yes, as my real so-called Christian name (André le Roux du Toit, or André Letoit for short) suggests, I am of exactly 50% French ancestry. This, in spite of the fact that the only few snippets of French I know consist of phrases like je suis, je ‘taime etc, and I’m not even sure if I spelt those phrases correctly. Read more
[Source: IRR by Andrew Kenny.]
Eskom is seldom out of the news these days and always in it for the wrong reasons. South Africa’s precarious electricity supply, for which Eskom is almost entirely responsible, presents a national crisis. The desperate shortage of electricity is crippling our economy. Because of inadequate generation capacity, our existing power stations, now creaking with age and wear, are being run into the ground and failing more and more often. Their availability – ability to produce power at any moment – is dropping dangerously. The new power stations are years behind schedule. Load shedding and blackouts threaten us every month. To explain these problems and to solve them, there is a clamour from our public commentators and ‘experts’, some of it sensible, most silly. This is an attempt to show what went wrong and how it can be remedied. Read more