notes the new bill promulgated in Zimbabwe that will bar ‘those opposed to the Zimbabwean state’ from travelling abroad. That has interesting ramifications for South African government policy on illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe claiming asylum locally from persecution at home.
The Zimbabwean bill is in effect a Soviet Union-esque violation of the right to freedom of [...]

Zimpundit last week wrote up some details on the proposed Zimbabwean constitutional amendments that will It’s worth a read and comes after a 10% tax on all share deals on the Zimbabwean Stock Exchange bought that market to an absolute halt, as its knees.
It seems that whatever capitalism is left just has to be torn [...]

Interesting. Some of the talk has been that if South Africa can successfully maintain its conservative fiscal and monetary policies, while increasing foreign exchange reserves, the country will move from being a net debtor nation to being a net creditor nation by the end of 2006.
In plain english, South Africa will be a net lender [...]

Vodacom recently announced that they are in the process of cutting 5PM to 8PM call rates by 50%.suggests that this will spread (although MTN reportedly already has a similar scheme in place).
Vodacom’s decision to cut call rates isn’t surprising in itself, but perhaps rather the reason why they’ve been undertaken is. There it’s potentially a [...]

Regular readers will notice I’ve been on something of a small campaign about ways to (and how not to) accelerate the South African economic growth rate, having written quite a bit thus far here, here, here and here.
The Economist meantime highlights how Telkom’s monopoly is directly contributing to bloated telecoms costs for the local outsourcing [...]

Is it really that wise to try accelerate the economic growth rate by increasing State spending and the annual budget deficit to a rate of 4% of GDP? I don’t believe so for several reasons.
That suggested deficit of 4% is actually a high number for any central State to incur and would only be justified [...]

It’s possible. I once gave the address of this blog to a DA MP in the National Assembly, and who knows, maybe he passed it on to Papa T (I made that up myself). Here’s Tony Leon on the creepy SA/Iraq correlation (hat tip to Trevor for noticing this):

“The murder rate in South Africa, at [...]

It’s usual fare to bash China for trade imbalances – both in the US, the EU and in other nations (Brazil is increasingly doing so too). But perhaps one should rather focus on China, Japan and the European Union’s behaviour in the global financial bond markets. Together these three are actually preventing the global bond [...]

One of the factors restraining the South African growth rate is the critical shortage in skilled workers in specific areas of the skilled economy and includes the crime rate as well as healthcare policies.
It’s relevant if one considers the argument as well that a skilled worker can lead to, on average, three unskilled jobs being [...]

South Africa’s economic growth rate for the second quarter in the year came in at No doubt about it, there is a general trend of acceleration even though it will decline in the immediate future. Still, the overall annual growth rate is likely to come in at over 4%, the highest in over two decades [...]

Is it just me or are parts of the local press itself becomingabout supposed new versions of the old UDF (United Democratic Front) coming into being? They seem to hint, or at least believe, it’s a return to the idealism driven formula of the entity’s opposition to the then Apartheid state.