One of the country’s top creative advertising agencies, Young and Rubicam (Y&R) South Africa has joined forces with the Tomorrow’s Leaders Convention in a bid to put the spotlight firmly on the media and advertising industry’s current and emerging talent.

Morne du Plessis, a former Springbok captain, once famously remarked that a draw is as thrilling as kissing your sister. Normally, one will have to agree with Du Plessis, but that should not distract from the tie in the Cricket World Cup match between India and England in Bangalore that finished in a stalemate. It was an epic encounter, and arguably one of the greatest One Day Internationals ever contested.

The Vodacom Super Rugby competition is only in its second week but already there are signs that this campaign could be a draining experience for the Springbok management team and wives of husbands in a country in which rugby is the state religion in some quarters.

As Eskom’s multi-billion-rand expansion projects to meet South Africa’s rising electricity demands steadily forge ahead, the projects and especially its new Medupi and Kusile coal-fired power stations have generated a barrage of criticism and opposition over energy-source choices, delays, escalating costs, planning, funding issues, environmental concerns and more.

At this point in the Arab world’s Berlin-wal -moment Libya has taken centre stage, with concerns about its impact on oil supplies already reflected in the highest crude-oil prices in almost three years. The events in the Middle East and North Africa, however have much wider implications, also for South Africa. What is happening in the tiny island-state of Bahrain is probably strategically much more serious.

Although a national budget and its presentation are not focused on foreigners but rather on local voters, smaller countries in the global pond like South Africa need foreign capital and therefore foreign approval of the way that the government interacts with the local economy directly and with the international economy indirectly, writes Heinrich Kruger.

As municipalities across the country are getting ready for the local government elections, many are balanced on a knife’s edge in more ways than one. Facing some of them is a number of possible developments that could in various ways affect their stability and their smooth functioning.

With what is happening in the Arab world in the line of protests against totalitarian regimes and constantly being referred to in news reports as a revolution, I started to wonder about the origin of this politically loaded term. Maybe what is happening with Mubarak and co. has all been in the stars.

There were no real surprises in the budget that finance minister Pravin Gordhan presented to parliament on the 23 February. In fact, it represented continuity to such an extent that some even called it boring.
But, for that we should be grateful.

The first overall impression of the latest budget delivered on 23 February is that it is the same story of the past 17 years – what a disappointment!? But, of course it is not all bad news and there are some very positive aspects of the budgets being delivered by the various ministers of finance since 1994, writes Ulrich Joubert.

Things simply will not settle down in South Africa’s mining sector. Conflicting policies, agendas and interests continue competing for dominance, leaving the sector shaky and uncertain. While this state of affairs clearly seems to be impacting negatively on foreign investor confidence, South African mining houses continue to invest in the sector despite the uncertainty.

The long-awaited summit of the African National Congress (ANC) and its partners - the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the South African Communist Party and South African National Civics Organisation - apparently has not succeeded in resolving their bitter differences. Instead, the differences and divisions were hidden behind a façade of unity for the forthcoming local government elections, allowing more time to come up with agreement on a common “programme of action”.

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