BUSINESS ENTERS POLICY DEBATE

What is Business Leadership SA? A voluntary association of the top 50 JSE companies and the largest 30 non-JSE listed companies. Why has it had such a low profile in the past? In the first 15 years there was an emphasis ...

NOT YET IN THE BAG
By Carol Paton
Regulations on the sale of plastic bags have had a negligible effect on recycling and the use of bags, with sales almost at levels they were before government introduced the regulations in 2003. In a new paper published by the CSIR,...

WINNERS & LOSERS

LOSER Reuben September As if life wasn't tough enough for the Telkom CEO, losing a supreme court of appeal bid allows the competition commission to enforce a R3,7bn anti trust fine against the company. WINNER ...

GINI COEFFICIENT
By Jacqui Pile
What is the Gini coefficient? It's a statistical measure of inequality developed by Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912. The lower a country's Gini score, the smaller the income gap between the richest and the poorest members of ...

NEW PLATFORM FOR HOUSING
By Jacqui Pile
Housing remains an emotional issue, as former housing director-general Billy Cobbett well knows (and as the recent policy spat between former housing minister Lindiwe Sisulu and her successor, Tokyo Sexwale, would seem to confirm). ...

HINDLE TO GO AFTER SPLIT
By Carol Paton
Education director-general (DG) Duncan Hindle will not be staying on when the department legally splits into the departments of higher education and basic education in March. Hindle, whose contract was due to run until 2011, says h...

COMINGS & GOINGS

Brian Kahn The Reserve Bank'ssenior deputy research head has been appointed economic developments adviser to the new governor, with chief economist Monde Mnyande as head of the outreach programme. Nazir Patel Take...

HIV/AIDS IN NUMBERS
By Razina Munshi
33,4m people are living with HIV/Aids. About 22,4m are within sub-Saharan Africa and 5m in Asia. World Aids Day was commemorated on December 1. 2m sufferers...

THE FRUITS OF YOUR LABOUR
By Claire Bisseker
Apricot harvesting takes place in the beautiful hamlet of McGregor at the end of November. Anyone can participate in the harvest at the annual Apricot Festival, which takes place at the Kingsriver Estate in the McGregor valley from N...

FIX THE SCHOOLS FIRST
By Robert Quarshie
"With 40% of all graduates being white, it is absurd to insist that whites should make up only 10% of the skilled labour force," says SA Institute of Race Relations researcher Kerwin Lebone. The Employment Equity Act aims to make th...

INSTANT VIDEO FLIPPING
By Robert Quarshie
Unlike tiresomely loading phone cameras with hideous-quality videos, the Flip Video UltraHD camcorder makes straight-forward one-touch video recording a breeze - with great playback quality. Simple-to-use and affordable, it uses advan...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

HELEN ZILLE DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE leader, on her visit to Port Elizabeth, the only SA metro without a metro police force ...