By Linda van Tilburg
- As the new CEO of Eskom, Andre de Ruyter is fast-tracked into his new job; unions are already warning him that they will fight him at every turn. Earlier the cabinet announced that Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan is mandated to negotiate with De Ruyter to take up his position earlier to deal immediately with issues of governance, lack of financial management and stabilising the operations at Eskom. The National Union of Mineworkers said they will march to Eskom’s office on de Ruyter’s first day and demand that he resisted efforts to split Eskom into three units.
- Drought has plunged millions of Zimbabweans and Zambians into darkness as hydro-power dams dry up in the drought crippling the two countries. Rolling blackouts lasting 18 hours a day have choked the two economies and ballooning debt has left them unable to afford imports to help cushion shortages. Namibia’s electricity generation has also dropped to below 40% of its capacity because of the drought. Even if it could, Eskom can’t help as it doesn’t have enough capacity to keep the lights on in South Africa. The power crises in the three countries has exacerbated economic strain. Bloomberg reports that Zimbabwe’s GDP is expected to shrink this year, Zambia is on course for its slowest expansion in more than two decades and South Africa is staring down a second recession.
- News from the markets is that the All Share Index on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange rose by 0.77% yesterday led by a 2.53% increase in Naspers shares and the banks. The biggest winner of the day was Sasol with shares surging 6.35%. In New York, Sasol shares shot up by 8.42% after the company indicated that issues at its Lake Charles chemicals project in the United States has been resolved and that part of the project has come on stream. Although the Rand slipped in early trade against the dollar; it recovered by the end of the trading day in Johannesburg to R14.28 cents to the US dollar.
- MTN’s mobile money service goes live next year. It will enable customers to pay, send and receive money using their mobile phones. MTN SA CEO Godfrey Motsa said in a statement that it is a pivotal step in MTN’s strategy and represents the cell phone provider’s participation in the next step of increasing convergence between financial services and mobile technology. The Service is called MoMo and will run on the Ericsson Converged Wallet. As a start MTN customers will be able to use the service to send money to any mobile phone number in the country and it can be used for prepaid services such as paying for electricity and purchases at selected till points.
- Cricket news is that Graeme Smith, the new Director of Cricket is engaging experienced Proteas that played with him in his quest to repair South Africa’s cricket honour. Jacques Kallis one of the world’s great all-rounders will be re-united with head coach Mark Boucher and Smith after their leading roles on the pitch in helping South Africa to rank no 1 across all three formats. Charl Langeveldt is also set to be added to the coaching setup after the Bangladesh Cricket Board said yesterday that the former paceman had been released from his role of bowling coach.
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