While the vast majority of commentators painted a gloomy economic picture for the immediate future at the start of 2011, at least one reputable institution is seeing it differently. The greatest global boom of all time has barely begun. Over the next 40 years, economic growth will quicken even more  as the rising powers of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America reach their full stride, writes  Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in an article in The Telegraph.

It was a stunning reversal of fortunes, or an abysmal anti-climax, depending on whose flag you were flying in the second One Day International between South Africa and India at the Wanderers in Johannesburg on Saturday. Hopefully it is read as a timely wake-up call by the national selectors.

Yes, I know I have my metaphors a bit mixed up with the question in the heading and that one is usually either as sober as a judge or as drunk as a lord, but then the umpires during the second cricket test match in Durban made me so hopping mad with some of their decisions that I could not think straight.

At a time when the local government sector appears to be headed towards a major turning point with the promise of revitalisation, more professional management and improved service delivery, the countdown to South Africa’s third round of democratic municipal elections is in full swing. Local government and these elections have become highly topical in South Africa because of widespread protests against poor service delivery at many municipalities.

An announcement early December last year by the South African Department of Energy (DoE) that it received 384 responses from renewable energy developers to a request for information issued at the end of September for the initial phase of the country’s renewable energy feed-in-tariff (Refit) programme, is but one tiny sign of the dramatic changes that lie ahead in South Africa and globally on the energy front.

While the attention of most international financial commentators has for some time now been focused on the sovereign debt crisis in mostly Europe and while Portugal’s bond issue last week went fairly well, the next big financial crisis seems to be brewing at quite another level and could threaten the social fabric of much of the developed worid.

The events of a single day in three continents are a lesson in the interlocking crises that will define the decade. A recurrent theme in this series of columns is that in the second decade of the 21st century the global community faces grave insecurities in three areas: the environment, conflict, and the economy,  writes Paul Rogers.

Although the government has built more than two million low-cost houses since 1994, there is still a huge housing backlog. But, as long as the perception of a substantial portion of the population is that affordable housing and free housing is one and the same thing, it is unlikely that the backlog will ever be wiped out.

With the countdown to South Africa’s municipal elections underway, political parties will increasingly focus on those political issues that could either win them votes or embarrass their opponents. On some fronts the dogfight has started.

True to custom 2011 has started with all sorts of predictions of what could lie ahead during the course of the year and further. We have made a collection of some of the more prominent and/or interesting ones. We do not, however, offer to take poison on any of them – as the New York Times wrote at the turn of the millennium: “… the quick pace of change might be making the future less predictable, but it has also made the world's state of constant transformation more familiar, less forbidding, to everyone."

A culture of representative democracy does not yet really reside with a substantial slice of the South African population judged by the results from two separate studies. In fact a culture of protest, which often turns violent, as the preferred way to engage especially local authorities seems to have become entrenched over recent years.

The Australian Open in Melbourne could become Rafael Nadal’s half-way house to the ultimate accolade: becoming arguably the best tennis player of all time. If the world’s number-1 ranked tennis player wins the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, he will create a unique piece of tennis history by becoming the first player since Rod Laver in 1969 to win four straight Grand Slam singles titles.

One person's mess can sometimes be another person's opportunity and if not handled carefully government's waste-management strategy could rob as many as 30 000 of South Africa’s poorest citizens of a livelihood.

This edition of “Worth a read?” provides a review of the Kindle, Amazon’s portable e-book reader. However, this is not your standard review. Most reviewers of electronic devices can explain to you in detail the inner workings of the device, using terms like Linux-based network platforms and encoding. In other words, their reviews are useless to a Luddite like me.

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