South Africa

The BRICS are not what they intended to be, never really were.
Today it’s clear that fascist-turned Brazil is out – so we are at RICS. There is not much to argue about. The world’s fifth largest economy, Brazil, has failed and betrayed the concept of the BRICS and the world at large. Whether you consider South Africa as a valid member of the BRICS is also questionable. Much of SA’s social injustice has actually become worse since the end of apartheid. Ending apartheid was a mere political and legal exercise.

With BRICS espousing multilateralism, a number of African and Asian leaders were invited to Johannesburg [PPIO]
The World Bank Group’s Doing Business report noted that the BRICS economies, Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa, introduced a total of 23 reforms, with getting electricity and trading across borders the most common areas of improvement.

In his maiden Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), Finance Minister Tito Mboweni started his speech with a quote from Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”.
The MTBPS is a central part of fiscal planning and is designed to outline how South Africa spends scarce resources for the benefit of all South Africans
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity… we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”.

The monarch realizes that under the ANC's land seizure plan, the country is likely to starve without white Boer farmers and he is forming a partnership with AfriForum, a nationalist group that includes white farmers, to develop agriculture on his land trust.

Tito Mboweni is being seen as the comeback kid in South Africa [Courtesy: Ministry of Finance]
When Tito Titus Mboweni was announced as the future Governor of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) in July 1998, South Africa’s financial markets reacted negatively.
But two decades later, they greeted his appointment as Minister of Finance with glee, resulting in the rand gaining more than 30 cents against the US dollar this week.

Long time listener and friend Nick aka @ArtisanLoaf joins me this week. We discussed Elon Musk, his various companies, and his strange and often bad business practices. We started off by talking briefly about Musk’s privileged upbringing in South Africa. We talked about Musk’s first big start with PayPal and his business relationship with Peter Thiel. We then moved onto Tesla and the way the company has been run. We discussed the poor business model that the company has employed under the leadership of Musk.

South Africa, a member of the BRICS nations and G20, is a beacon of hope for Africans beyond its borders. Her unique history and the exemplary negotiated political settlement following Apartheid remains one of the most highlighted periods of the end of 20th century.

Ramaphosa’s plan focuses on youth, women and small businesses, but was short on detail [GCIS]
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday unveiled his stimulus and recovery plan to boost economic growth after the economy entered a technical recession in the first half of this year.
“Fellow South Africans, it is generally agreed that in order for our economy to grow at a rate that will lead to job creation on a meaningful scale we need to significantly increase the level of investment,” said Ramaphosa in Pretoria.

Black First, Land First (BLF) party leader Lindsay Maasdorp, says white "existence is a crime". Maasdorp has come under fire in the past for his post on Facebook and Twitter stating, “I have aspirations to kill white people, and this must be achieved!”

Final sales grew 2 per cent in second quarter as exports surged 13.7 per cent
South Africa recently hosted the 10th BRICS Summit amid growing global trade tensions[PREUSS]
The South African economy reaped the benefits of a weaker rand as real final sales, which is gross domestic product (GDP) less the change in inventories, grew by 2.0 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter (q/q) seasonally adjusted annualized (saa) basis in the second quarter after exports surged by 13.7 per cent on the same basis, while imports grew at a slower rate of 3.1 per cent.