South Africa’s public market is broken. The number of listed companies has more than halved, with a further 20 already expected to delist in 2022. We need to start fixing it.
The ANC-led government entered its fifth term with an own goal: an electricity crisis. This was long in the making. It dated back to decisions taken in the 1990s that there was no need to invest in new power stations as there was “overcapacity”, and perhaps also to a sense in some quarters that Eskom, the national electricity supplier, would be privatised and private investors would come in. The process of awarding tenders, and the vested interests that emerged from this, together with a failure to carry out proper preventive maintenance, on top of outright bad management at Eskom, led, by the end of 2014, to both planned and unplanned power outages (known euphemistically as “load shedding”).
Unjust : Egypt s property registration plans face popular backlash
Millions of homeowners in Egypt could be forced to pay three percent of their property s market value or lose access to water and electricity
Up to 95 percent of properties in Egypt are unregistered, according to the minister of justice (Reuters/file photo) By Published date: 1 March 2021 14:48 UTC | Last update: 3 weeks 4 days ago Angels don t enter homes unregistered in the Property Registration Office, is a joke cracked by Egyptians about their government s plan to make the delivery of gas, drinking water and electricity to their homes conditional on registration.
Egyptians are facing the move with satire and comedy - but this is far from a laughing matter.