In his latest book, Screw business as usual, due for release in December this year Sir Richard  Branson asserts that capitalism has "lost its way" and financial profit should no longer be the main driving force behind big business. He says he wants to reflect "a vibrant and marked sea change from the way business always used to be done, when financial profit was the only driving force."

Well I think we now know it for sure: the premier of the Western Cape, Leader of the Democratic Alliance and thus of the biggest opposition party in the country, Helen Zille, is no angel. It was proved by the way she got herself embroiled in controversy around the very touchy subject of HIV – not only once, but twice within a single week.

Three weeks is a long time in the life of a politician, and an eternity in the existence of a national cricket team. Within three brief weeks, Australia has gone from zeroes to heroes. They drew the series against South Africa after meekly succumbing to the Proteas at Newlands. The Baggy Greens next won their first test at the Gabba against New Zealand in comprehensive fashion.

Orlando Pirates have been a study in inconsistency this season. The Buccaneers have blown hot and cold in the Absa Premier Soccer League. Yet they are back in the hunt for league honours after comprehensively beating the log leaders, SuperSport United, 3-0 this past Saturday. They will be the hot favourites to win the Telkom Knockout final against Bidvest Wits on Saturday after the students played with a lack of intensity and won’t draw much confidence from their 2-2 result against Golden Arrows.

Demand from new wireless broadband subscribers is driving growth in high-speed Internet in Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries but the latest data show a slowdown in fixed subscriptions in the first half of 2011.

No-one should be surprised to see many Angolans strutting around with a spring in their step. The old colonial master, Portugal, that ruled Angola from the late 15th century and only left in 1975 after a protracted and bloody liberation war, has returned, but this time not to conquer, but to ask for help.

Business Intelligence (BI) is touted as the enabler of sound business decisions through the use of accurate reports. However, the high failure rate of BI implementations over the years shows that simply incorporating BI into the organisation and producing reports is not a 'silver bullet,' writes Gary Allemann.

On the 20th anniversary of the global Sixteen Days of Activism campaign on gender violence, Shuvai Nyoni Kagoro asks whether ‘the millions of dollars spent in cash and human time’ have significantly reduced the violence women and other marginalised groups face ‘because of their gender’. She concludes that a constant cycle of planning, implementation, and measuring to asses progress and devise new strategies is needed.

South Africa has a huge forced migrants population with not enough being done to ensure they have access to services; and they are permanently exposed to the dangers of xenophobia with women particularly at risk, according to a recent study by the NGO Women’s Refugee Commission based on focused research in Johannesburg.

Conventional wisdom would have it that the stability of South Africa's relatively new democracy hinges on the success of this delivery process. Service protests are often cited as evidence that "delivery" has failed in the affected areas and thus that formal institutionalised politics has become unviable. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is too limited an understanding to be useful, writes David Christianson.

Breaking stalemates and deadlocks was at the heart of the challenge facing delegates at the COP17 climate summit in Durban as it moved into its final week, but hopefully South Africa won’t fail to capitalise on the green fever that has gripped the world. At the same time the Kyoto protocol seems doomed in the wake of an apparent widening gap between mature and emerging economies.

Of South African respondents to a recent global economic crime survey, 60% were victims of one of more frauds in the last 12 months. Cybercrime is on the rise and companies generally reported a significant increase in tax fraud and market fraud and to a lesser extent insider trading, while there are increasing numbers of internal economic crimes carried out by senior management.

Recent judgements of the Constitutional Court and the High Court of Appeal, for instance the Scorpions and Similane decisions, are often hailed in the media as “court victories”. This implies that the government and the courts are engaged in some kind of warfare and that the courts emerged as the victors. Marinus Wiechers, former Unisa vice-chancellor and emeritus professor of public law, asks the question: “Is this really so?”

Maybe the time has arrived to seek common ground between stakeholders in South African agriculture via a national indaba to effectively deal with what has become a truly national crisis: the pandemic of farm attacks that is seeing the numbers of the country’s  40 000 commercial farmers, responsible for feeding a population of 50 million, fast depleting. At present government and organised agriculture have adversarial perceptions on the causes of, and solutions to the crisis.

With the co-operation of the The LR Management Group, we can now bring you the leadership training tool 50 Lessons, which is a powerful force in the world of corporate learning. 50 Lessons is the worlds premier multimedia business resource, offering more than 1 000 personal and authentic video lessons from internationally respected business leaders. It can assist you to increase the utilisation and return on investment of your learning programmes immediately!