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On June 4th, PowerFM 98.7 radio host Eusebius McKaiser interviewed AIDC Senior Researcher Dick Forslund regarding South Africa's current economic prospects and policy trajectory. Following is a partial transcript. PowerFM: Welcome, Dick. When we spoke yesterday, it...
Everyone, other thaN lunatics, troublemakers and the economically illiterate, is supposed to know that the demand by the striking platinum workers for a starting basic wage of R12 500 is plainly unaffordable. Indeed, anything even near R12 500 is supposedly so...
Only one week before the massacre in Marikana on 16 August last year, Bench Marks Foundation published its report, 'Policy Gap 6'. It was a part of a long series of critical studies of SA mining. It described in detail the social and environmental havoc created by...
The crisis of profitability in the platinum industry is a misleading phrase to describe the current situation. Platinum companies are still in fact making a profit. The issue is rather that they are no longer making the huge profits they did during the boom years of...
Women and children have been forced to endure the Cape's lashing winter winds and rain sleeping in the open in the Marikana area of Philippi. This is the result of illegal actions by the Democratic-Alliance-sponsored Anti Land Invasion Unit (ALIU), demolishing their...
Large-scale commercial agriculture produces an estimated 90% or more of marketed food in South Africa. Two-thirds to three-quarters of food is purchased from supermarkets, even by the poor, and corporate agribusinesses dominate supply chains from inputs to retailing....
NO NEED FOR RETRENCHEMENTS Delegates wrapped up the 19th annual African Mining Indaba in early February 2013 full of back-thumping promises to improve the public image of the sector. Little wonder that the mining captains feel the industry needs a facelift: since the...
A crisis in the capitalist system is a kind of wake up call: speculative bubbles burst, the price of assets [8] moves back towards their real value; the least profitable corporations go bankrupt, and capital is destroyed [9]. Crises are in a way part of Capitalism's...
Anglo's platinum operations are not "unprofitable". Rather, they are not "profitable enough". Plans to restructure will jeopardize the income of 14 000 workers and more than 100 000 dependents. AMCUs call to nationalize in response reflects the growing consensus on...