Finweek - English

eras come to an end. During the recent municipal elections, the ANC – dominant in post-apartheid politics – got less than half of South Africans’ vote. The death of former president FW de Klerk is also an end of an era – although his legacy is being bitterly disputed. For markets, November 2021 signals the end of easy monetary policy in the world’s largest economy, the US. That country’s central bank is starting to scale back monetary easing, which may in due course temper rampant asset price increases across the globe (beware, crypto fans). It also seems like the end of an era for low inflation as price increases across the world remain stubbornly higher due to a raft of contributing factors, including constrained shipping capacity, microchip shortages and the…

before a global pandemic disrupted our lives, the most pressing worldwide question, from Davos forums to corporate boardrooms, from farmers to politicians, was simple: How do we stop climate change? And as we learn to live with the pandemic, fears about the future of our planet are likely to return. I spoke to two experts in the field of sustainability to ask them about what business leaders can do to mitigate the effects of a changing climate. Megan Sager is the founding director of the Sustainable Solutions consulting and advisory group. Willem Fourie is associate professor at the Albert Luthuli Leadership Institute at the University of Pretoria where he heads the South African Sustainable Development Goals Hub. Climate change, I suggest to them, is likely to introduce severe risks and greater volatility…

at the height of the electioneering season, politicians usually display the art of bamboozling voters to influence them to write down X next to the names of their political organisations on the ballot papers. On campaign trails, the over-promising and sweet-talking politicians mislead voters, sparing no one from die-hard fans, opposition supporters, to sceptics, and the notoriously undecided fence-sitters. Towards the tail-end of the recently-concluded local government elections, Fikile Mbalula, the ruling ANC’s head of elections, found himself on the wrong side of South Africans after he denied that his party boss, President Cyril Ramaphosa, had promised to build a million houses in Alexandra township, Johannesburg. Ramaphosa made the outlandish promise at a political rally in 2019 at the tiny, over-crowded township to whip up support for the ANC. Mbalula’s denial that riled…

JSE REACHES HIGHEST LEVEL 70 000 The JSE closed at a new record high of 70 091 points in mid-November, following the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, among other factors. The statement depicted an encouraging fiscal outlook as a growth recovery, spike in commodity prices and an upwardly revised GDP projection contributed to the reduction of the country’s debt and narrowed the budget deficit. MINING OUTPUT DROPS -3.4% Data from Stats SA showed that annual mining production fell by 3.4% in September. Coal, platinum group metals and gold were the biggest drags, decreasing by 8.9%, 7.5% and 6.9% respectively. When compared to the second quarter, output shrank by 0.6%, implying that mining will likely make a negative contribution to third-quarter GDP. US INFLATION ROCKETS 6.2% US inflation soared to 6.2% in October compared with a year earlier as surging…

THE GOOD Germany said at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow they will give South Africa €700m to help with phasing out the use of coal. The aim is to mobilise $8.5bn with the World Bank and others to promote developing renewable energy sources in the country. THE BAD The total debt currently owed by students to South African tertiary institutions amounts to around R14bn and is set to escalate if not addressed. Schools are also at breaking point due to unpaid fees, according to a school survey by the TPN Credit Bureau. THE UGLY Out of the 26m registered voters, only 46% cast a vote in the 2021 municipal elections. Voter turnout was 58% in the last local government poll in 2016. Turnout declined notably in urban wards and was particularly low in township…

despite relatively good prospects for rain for the 2021/2022 season, the local agricultural sector is currently experiencing mixed production conditions. This can, among other things, be ascribed to the enormous disruptions that the world is currently having to contend with amid the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the chairman of Agbiz, Francois Strydom, the world’s trade routes and the supply chains of virtually all products are currently plunged in chaos. Shipping costs have doubled since the beginning of the pandemic. Given the good run in the prices of hard and soft raw materials, the price of wood and the derivative packaging costs have more than doubled. In addition, many plants that have thus far depended on fossil fuels have stopped investing given the tremendous pressure to switch over to clean energy. “This switch…