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This time of the year exactly 45 years ago, I had the privilege to be preparing for the passing-out parade of 1966’s intake of the then Air Force Gymnasium at Valhalla outside Pretoria. Meeting up over a weekend recently with some of the comrades from that memorable year set me thinking about the expression that old soldiers never die, they just fade away and some other wisdoms from military life.

In an era of political correctness and sophisticated communication, it would be unusual to find any corporation today that would openly support the views expressed by Milton Friedman.  In his famous article that was originally published in the New York Times magazine in 1970, Friedman argues that the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits (often paraphrased as “the business of business is business”), and accuses those businessmen who argue that business has responsibilities to provide employment, eliminate discrimination and avoid pollution of “preaching pure and unadulterated socialism,” writes Daniel Malan.

One for the ages …. the emphatic eight-wicket victory against Australia which offers South Africa a realistic opportunity for winning a home-test series against the Baggy Greens for the first time in 41 years, is arguably the Proteas’ greatest come-from-behind win ever, and a special occasion for the South African captain.

Perhaps the South African Football Association should appoint a sub-committee to investigate a twin-concern after BafanaBafana shared the Nelson Mandela Challenge plate by drawing 1-1 against Ivory Coast in Port Elizabeth on Saturday: Firstly we need to know why the crowd is so fond of booing the striker Katlego Mphela; and, secondly, establish ways of solving the striker-woes of Bafana Bafana.

Many climate change-experts have expressed the hope that the COP17-conference in Durban will deliver more practical outcomes than COP15 in Copenhagen and COP16 in Cancun. But they clearly have not paid much attention to the annual G20 meeting earlier in November 2011, or to the global carbon emissions of 2010.

Since the last discussion in Leadership Intelligence Bulletin on the growing threat of piracy, there has been no respite. The United Nations  has increased its efforts to address what is rapidly becoming an international crisis and canvass international support to fight back and turn the tide. More concerted efforts to improve co-operation to neutralise the threat of piracy are offered but no success is guaranteed.

When South Africa’s ruling ANC last week banished to possible political oblivion its enfant terrible, Ju Ju, perhaps better known as Julius Malema of the ANC Youth League, the party may perhaps have thought it had silenced Malema’s fiery demands for taking land from white South Africans without compensation. But it certainly did not kill the debate around land redistribution. In fact, all over Africa it has become a cry of considerable anguish.

At its 10th annual conference in New York last week the world’s largest organisation of democratically elected former presidents and prime ministers from 56 countries turned their attention to how information and network technologies are influencing and changing the world, as we know it: from politics to economics to social habits. While there is a global movement in the offing on the back of these technologies the conference posed the question: What could benefit more from this phenomenon than democracy?

As aerial warfare is entering a new controversial phase in its history with unmanned and remote controlled targeted killings with what has become known as drones, there is extreme irony in the fact that the world’s latest concluded war only weeks ago ended in Libya with just such an attack on the fleeing convoy of president Gaddafi. It represents a grim commemoration of the first bomb from the air 100 years ago in that very same country.

Change in the international system comes in large and small doses, but fundamental patterns generally stay consistent. From 1500 to 1991, for example, European global hegemony constituted the world’s operating principle. Within this overarching framework, however, the international system regularly reshuffles the deck in demoting and promoting powers, fragmenting some and empowering others, and so on, writes George Friedman.

The politically non-aligned Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) says it wants to revive and complete a merger with the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu) started in 2007. The formation of such a new super federation could pose a significant challenge to the ANC-aligned Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) and could even change the face of labour relations in South Africa.

International credit rating agencies (CRAs) are increasingly coming under scrutiny from governments for possible tighter regulation as suspicion is growing that their supposedly neural role as mere observers is not as clearcut as it should be. South Africa, where planed legislation to have them register has already been announced, last week became the latest example of an apparent attempt by an agency to play an activist role beyond just clinical credit rating.

Although the cards seem to be stacked against him after the ANC’s National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) suspended him from the party it might be too early to write Julius Malema’s political obituary. The real story to watch in the developments around the ruling party is probably also not his, but the fight back by president Jacob Zuma in the run up to next year’s elective conference at the end of the ANC’s centenary year celebrations.