Month: December 2018

JOHANNESBURG – The six-week -long National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) strike at Gold Field’s South Deep, which ended yesterday, is the latest indication of the leadership crisis facing the union, which played a key role in establishing Cosatu in 1985.
The NUM scored an own goal in the way in which it handled the strike at South Deep, South Africa’s only remaining ultra-deep mine, with members falling victim to a vicious leadership squabble involving branch and national leadership.

The union’s national leaders failed to step up to the plate quickly enough to end the strike due to internal battles and scores to settle.

The branch leaders literally held members who wanted to return to work to ransom by refusing to end the strike – a bad indictment on the union whose membership has dropped from 300000 in 2011 to 187000 last year.

The national leadership moved to suspend the branch leaders following an attack on its Gauteng regional chairperson Ndlela Radebe during a mass meeting at a stadium in Randfontein last week.

The meeting ended in violence and Radebe’s stabbing as tensions boiled over.

This could have been averted by more prompt action.

The national office eventually intervened and ended the strike on Tuesday. The strike was led by the branch on November 2 to oppose the retrenchment of 1100 employees and 400 contractors at the loss-making mine.

While the intervention by the union’s national office must be lauded as a step in the right direction, it is too little too late as this has cost members hard-earned wages.

The strike couldn’t have come at a worse time and has set members on a slippery financial debt slope ahead of the festive season.

Where was the union’s national office when the members indicated that they no longer wanted to strike?

Philip Vilakazi, the NUM’s deputy president, said yesterday that both the union’s branch and mine management babhedile, meaning they had messed up, in isiZulu.

“South Deep is in s**t now, because it has isolated itself from negotiations under the auspices of the Minerals Council since 2015. That is the crux of the matter.”

However, the company said the strike wasn’t about wages but re- trenchments, which weren’t part of any collective agreement.

South Deep is rich in gold reserves but has been poorly run for a long time with gold output nowhere near where it should be.

Meanwhile, four employees have been killed in several violent incidents at Sibanye’s gold operations Kloof, Driefontein and Beatrix, where the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union has gone on strike over higher wages.

The violent and protracted nature of the strikes in Sibanye-Stillwater and South Deep is disappointing, given that the industry is still suffering the effects of the five-month platinum belt strike and the Marikana massacre in 2012.

It is also sad, given that two years ago labour, business and the government agreed to the National Economic Development and Labour Council Accord on collective bargaining and the Code of Good Practice.

These accords were commitments that these parties had agreed, that in the event of violence and intimidation during strikes, they would do everything in their power to ensure that the strike was solved as promptly as possible.

But the reality is that the accords just look like hot air, and in the meantime employees are dying.

Source:https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/opinion/failed-gold-sector-strike-ends-but-num-leadership-crisis-continues-18492685

Eskom is considering the sale of smaller assets as the state-owned power utility weighs solutions to a liquidity crisis that contributed to a wave of rolling blackouts, according to people familiar with the matter.

The supplier of almost all South Africa’s power is in advanced talks to sell its home-loans business, with local billionaire Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital Investments in line to take some or all of the operation, said the sources, who asked not to be identified as the plans are still private.

The division, called Eskom Finance, has an R8.7bn ($613 million) loan book and about 16 000 customers.

Eskom didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment. African Rainbow Capital declined to comment.

Eskom is seeking funding after the company resumed scheduled power cuts in late November, following a hiatus of more than three years. The Johannesburg-based utility is struggling to stay on top of maintenance costs and the servicing of a debt pile of about R419bn, while coping with the aftermath of a string of corruption scandals during the presidency of Jacob Zuma, who was ousted earlier this year.

The utility wants the National Treasury to absorb R100 billion of its debt as part of a rescue plan, according to a fund manager. However, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has said that the company should instead go to the bond market to raise cash. Eskom should also consider selling its two large new coal-fired power stations to help repair its finances, FirstRand Chief Executive Officer Alan Pullinger said in an interview last week.

For Motsepe, the purchase of Eskom’s home loans division would help develop his financial-services business. The entrepreneur, who made the bulk of his $2.1 billion fortune from mining, is planning to start a digital-only bank, known as Tyme, by the end of the first quarter of 2019.

Source:https://www.fin24.com/Economy/eskom-is-said-to-mull-asset-sales-as-billionaire-motsepe-circles-20181213

CAPE TOWN – Coal will still be part of South Africa’s energy mix of the future, although it will not enjoy the same dominance it is currently enjoying as an energy source.
This is according to Anthony Julies, deputy director general at the National Treasury.

Julies was part of a panel discussion on Vision 2030: The IRP (Integrated Resource Plan) 2018 and infrastructure – Connecting Gas and Renewable Energy, at the Energy Week 2018 summit held in Cape Town this week.

Julies said that having an energy mix in the Treasury was important and already the White Paper for 2012 – 2025 identifies various energy sources.

“We anticipated that we would have gone to the level of 30percent renewable and private participation and as far as we are concerned as the Treasury, all of these energy sources should be prioritised because it is that energy mix of the future that is inevitable,” said Julies.

The session was moderated by Andrew Herscowitz, a co-ordinator for Power Africa, US Agency for International Development.

When asked by Herscowitz to identify what that energy mix is, Julies said this would include coal, nuclear, all kinds of renewables such as solar, wind and gas.

“That is the way of the future, because coal is not and will not have in future the dominance as an energy source it has always had. Yes, it has played a particular role and Eskom has played a particular role in that context, and so Eskom in the future will not be the Eskom of the past.

“There will be a diminishing role for coal and there will be an increasing role for gas and others in the future,” said Julies.

Julies said the Treasury had guaranteed R200billion for renewable energy.

“That is what we have on our books right now and so we really ought to have had a much higher take on it right now. One could argue in a way that on the extent that we were able to deliver on the Independent Power Producer Programme has in fact led to some avoidance of load shedding,” said Julies.

Source:https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/energy/coal-will-remain-energy-source-for-still-some-time-18492641

Research and data group Lightstone has compiled a list of cars that you can afford on your current salary – showing how much more you’d need to earn per month to keep affording them.

The latest data from the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa) light commercial vehicle sales saw a decline of 6.1% year-on-year in November 2018, while the passenger car sector experienced a 5.4% drop.

The medium and heavy commercial vehicle market, meanwhile, saw a 17.5% and 16.2% increase, respectively.

According to vehicle financing group WesBank, the drop in domestic sales could be attributed to the latest interest rate hike, which pushed lending rates up by 25 basis points – however, despite the hike and the pressures on South African consumers, the car market “remains robust”.

Wesbank said its data showed that South Africans are still keen to buy cars – though a lot of the focus has shifted to the used car market. This, the group said, is indicative of stress in the new car market amid the pressures on household disposable income.

The group’s data also showed that motorists are holding onto their cars for longer.

Naamsa, meanwhile, said that it expects the car market to remain under pressure over the medium term, anticipating only a modest recovery.

Lightstone’s data, looking at the salary changes between 2017 and 2018 needed to afford the same vehicle shows what pressure consumers have come under.

In 2017, someone who earned R18,400 a month could afford to buy a new Toyota Etios 1.5 Xi – by 2018, the salary requirement had increased by almost 9% to R20,000 a month for the same vehicle.

The data is based on current South African vehicle prices and salaries (May 2018), and assumes that people are not going to spend more than 20% of their gross monthly income on financing a car. The calculations also assumes that the cars are financed over five years at an interest rate of prime + 2%.

This trend is seen across almost all the salary bands covered by Lightstone, with only five bands coming under CPI (5.2%).

With the car price in the top band (Maserati GranCabrio) not increasing between 2017 and 2018, the required salary actually decreased.

Source:https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/289076/the-cars-you-can-afford-to-buy-with-your-salary-in-south-africa/

INTERNATIONAL – Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was granted bail by a Canadian court, allowing the executive to stay in her Vancouver home as she awaits a possible extradition to the US over fraud charges.

Justice William Ehrcke of the British Columbia Supreme Court agreed to release Meng on condition she post bail of C$10 million (R107.06m), including at least C$7m in cash, and submit five people who would act as “sureties” – guarantors to ensure she complies with the bail terms who would lose the cash or other assets they put up if she were to flee.

Meng broke into tears and wiped her eyes upon the announcement from the judge. The viewing gallery applauded. Meng, 46, was arrested on December 1 at the request of US authorities as she changed planes in Vancouver while on her way from Hong Kong to Mexico to Costa Rica to Argentina to France and back to China. Before the ruling, she seemed almost relieved at the prospect of a break from the punishing pace.

The mother of four is accused of conspiring to defraud banks to unwittingly clear transactions linked to Iran, in violation of US sanctions.

Source:https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/international/cfo-granted-bail-of-c75m-18492696