''Top pickers and bottom pickers, become cotton pickers'' Methinks the most important ''ongoing decision'' to make is the sector wherein to invest!

DA turned once-green and scenic Cape Town into a heat-island hell-hole. Endless development of land (witness the destruction of Durbanville and Somerset West) with estate after estate of soulless, generic housing widgets for the semigrant pillocks who now have to live out of buckets in their fastly depreciating off-plan abodes... Didn't help that the smug Cape Town Eco-Nazis chopped down all the "alien" trees, turning once lush forests into sunbaked hell-holes....

Since the excess inflows from Tencent have started materliasing, Naspers has been throwing money at anything that looks vaguely like growing into something significant. The reason for this is that Naspers has realised that all of the businesses in their historical stable are in their waning phases and Naspers has an incredible amount of dead wood from the legacy of their support for the apartheid government. They simply don't have the culture to allow innovation within Naspers. They don't allow for intrapreneurs and innovators. It's still very much the patriarchal, conservative Afrikaner culture running the show there. In the modern world, I don't believe that Naspers is anything at all without Tencent. Unfortunately the mindset within the group doesn't reflect that.

They just have the most expensive electricity in the world but sure they must be very efficient or it would be twice as expensive! People will believe anything if someone in a suit ( or with an degree in economics ) tells it to them.

South-Africa's electricity is basically the cheapest in the world so what are people screaming about? Eskom could be run better and they can probably make the cheapest electricty in the world even cheaper but the question sort of boils down to why people who are so ignorant about everything are so mad about this ?

You don’t need to privatize it - too many politics included - just liberalize the market and let other players in.

In Germany municipal employees get pay increases despite overextension. They strike and get their increases just like the Escom employees. One essential difference is in place - unlike the Escom employees the Germans are highly effektive and definitely not overnumbered.

We can comment all we like when the ANC decides to destroy another industry there is nothing that can be done. So sad and tragic.

We can comment all we like when the ANC decides to destroy another industry there is nothing that can be done. So sad and tragic.

I could'nt understand a word this guy was saying, but my five cents worth is that unless the crime figures come down radically i.e. Cash in transit heists, (like Hollywood gangster movies) rape, murder, corruption, fraud, racism from the likes of Malema, violent protests blocking nation highways,etc etc, it's going to be difficult to attract people from outside of this country to spend there hard earned cash here.

Valuable info in deed. The are still puzzling questions Why SARS leave this to a tax payer to correct ? Why don't they SARS correct it automatically. This is not only affecting what the employer has paid as a severance benefit but the PENSION,PROVIDENT funds if you have cash them as well as they are included in the lump sum aggregate as per the guide What correct code should be used for Pension withdrawals? What code s

‘’There are three things which the public will always glamour for, sooner or later, novelty, novelty, novelty” Thomas Hood (1799-1845) Estate Agents mantra: Location, location, location. Tony Blair’s political priorities: Education, education, education. Tim Rice’s ‘’Oh what a circus’’ Chapter 11: Book, book, book. If I was Naspers , my mantra would be : Diversify, diversify, diversify.

Brilliant.

Socialism is the strongest force of destruction invented by man. The damage done by the economic system of socialism is much worse than a nuclear explosion. We have the best scientists in the world in charge of nuclear experiments and nuclear facilities, but we have the scum of society, with the lowest mental capacity in charge of the socialist experiment. The capitalist system, with property-rights at its foundation, builds capital and enables wealth-creation. Socialism is the antithesis of capitalism and turns assets into liabilities. Competent workers living on the farm was an asset for the farmer before ANC intervention. ESTA- and security-of-tenure laws turned worker's houses on the farm into a liability for the farmer. Having families living on the farm now diminishes the value of that farm. The houses on the farm remain unoccupied as a result. The ANC turned assets into liabilities. Ownership of, and shareholder in a mining company was previously regarded as an asset. The Mining Charter turns the ownership of a mine into a liability. The capital value of the shareholding is destroyed as profitability comes under pressure from BEE, EE, local beneficiation, labour laws and populist political demands. The owner is forced to share his assets and profits with so many people, but the tax liability remains. The mineral wealth will stay under ground as a result. The socialist experiment is now extended to healthcare. No doubt, both the membership of, and shareholding in medical schemes will also now become a liability. Current world-class medical services will become unavailable as a result. How long will the socialist experiment last? Until all wealth has been destroyed and all assets have been turned into liabilities.

How do we know that this company will be able to pay your claim in future? Are they regulated and have guaranteed reserves.

If only part of what I have read about Jooste since 6December2017 is true - this guy will never be allowed to be a director of any company again - even the little fish and chips café on the corner.(That is on the assumption that SA authorities and Regulators are up to doing a proper job) As for Wiese - - well, well, lets see. SO far he has lost money and image, but nothing more - I predict he is in serious legal trouble.

"However, the draft charter still greatly increases the regulatory burden on mining companies in South Africa. Its adoption of a 30% ownership target contradicts all the assurances earlier provided by the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) that the 26% target was immutable and would not later be changed. Now that the DMR has gone back on this pledge, the risk of the ownership target being raised once again – perhaps to 51% next time – looms all the larger." In other words, you can't trust these shifty communists. Who knew?

Government is a ponzi scheme

Government is a ponzi scheme

Only those with profound intellectual impairment (read ANC) would fail to see the relationship between this: https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-opinion/draft-2018-mining-charter-better-but-still-profoundly-flawed/ and this: http://moneyweb-2.instantmagazine.com/investor/the-moneyweb-investor-issue-45/minings-miserable-future

Eskom will any day now be the trigger for the total collapse of what is left of SA manufacturing and eventually the whole economy. If you think the unemployment and so-called "service delivery protests" we have now are bad, watch this space. Zombie apocalypse coming to a suburb near you. I personally have no sympathy whatsoever with the overpaid, under-performing Eskom employees - of which there are 50% too many to begin with. They should get 0% increase and at least half should be retrenched, beginning with management.

Proper and very informative factual presentation by Antoinette Slabbert.

Very informative but how does this disprove Schüssler’s average. Managements figures are not included in the above. It is pathetic that there is this number of employees whilst Eskom has numerous third party contractor companies also involved and paid. My question who is running day to day operations Eskom or these outside companies?

As a teacher with a 4 year degree your starting salary in this country is around R18000 per month before deductions. This is only slightly more then what a general laborer earns at Escom. But if you are working for a school, before you are employed by the Department of Education, you can earn as little as R8000 per month. This may become an extended period if your skin color is too pale. In many cases these teachers who have been teaching for years earn less then laborers at Escom. And then lets add into the mix the millions of Rands the Escom executives paid themselves as bonuses for 'doing their jobs well' a couple years ago..? We now know of course that they were not doing this. In fact the only thing they were doing well was supervising the looting and corruption..

The other day on the plane, coincidentally, I sat next to one of the top guys from the SA Communist Party. He is currently acting as an advisor to the Minster and is helping to sort out the mess in the Northwest province. We got into a conversation and when I told him that Communism failed everywhere it was implemented e.g. Russia, East Germany, Vietnam, Angola , Mozambiqe, Cambodia etc his response was that the idea was good but the implementation still needed to be refined (clearly the 100 million who died from Communist oppression needs “refining”) . His view was that his domestic also “wants to have nice things and capitalism says it is her own mistake for not having nice things.” In his view we need full scale socialism to which I responded that we already have one of the most distributive societies in the world where more people are on social grants than those who actually work. Add to that: free healthcare, free education and free university tuition to boot. However, in his view we still have a long way to go to “improve” on this. With respect, heaven help us with these types of advisors for the Minister. Fools who are blind leaders leading their blind followers to nowhere.

The reason private healthcare exists in the first place is because state healthcare is rubbish. They do not have the human resources nor the infrastructure to meet their current obligations and they want to implement NHI, what a joke! (See Oncology crisis KZN, Life Esidimeni tragedy) While I agree that all South Africans should have access to quality healthcare this should not be an expense to the already overburdened taxpayer. Instead of worrying about medical aid reserves the minister should be addressing corruption and fraud within his own department. Maybe then they will have more money for NHI. My problem with NHI is this: 1. It is going to be run by the same people running the show now, meaning it will be a circus. 2. The burden of NHI will fall on the taxpayer via compulsory contributions whether you use the service or not. 3. The standard of healthcare will not improve, meaning you will have to pay for NHI and still have medical aid if you want good quality healthcare. Just another exercise in bleeding the taxpayer

A Communist who believes that all property should be owned by the State is advocating the acceleration of the release of title deeds to individuals? I am confused but I think so is he. Blind fools leading their blind followers around in the dark.

Nice journalism, keep digging! It is what we all suspected - unions just strike to show their members they are still there. What is more concerning is that a big portion of the staff complement are really not needed - merely token BEE appointments. They could halve the Eskom salaries and rather give increases to ones who really need it.

I think communists have gotten to quite like the free-market capitalist standard of living we have today :P

Good read with the last paragraph pretty much summing up the ANC, government in general and the country overall And it needn’t be

"While I agree that all South Africans should have access to quality healthcare." Yes, in an ideal world, everyone should have access to everything and we should all play nicely. However, in order for this to all happen, people have to take responsibility for themselves and play their part. This is simply not happening. It is just easier to make it someone else's problem, which is simply unacceptable. You cannot just demand things because other people have them, you need to work towards them. Things worth having take time and discipline to build. Rome was not built in a day. NHI is simply a populist policy that is aimed at garnering votes from the "poor". The fact that it would be monumentally destructive in reality does not matter.. that is a problem for another day, and by then the votes will be in and some more nonsensical rhetoric can be constructed to divert attention away from another disaster that should never have happened. What we really need is a child policy. Two children max, and you only get a grant for the 1st child (if needed). More than 2 children, you should either have to pay additional "child tax" and/or get sterilized. If you cannot be responsible, why should other people have to be responsible for you? There are many more grant recipients than taxpayers now, and the ratio is growing every year. Simply not sustainable. As is the % of unemployed youth (growing every year), who turn to drugs, prostitution and crime because they have no skills and make poor life choices. Fewer children are cheaper/easier to educate and discipline,and would mean fewer freeloaders/"revolutionaries" to support in the future. We live in the 21st century, its time to start acting like it.

Exactly. The socialists and communists are now fast running out of other people's money. This will not end well.

This article is ok as far as it goes. However, the following also needs consideration. The table of salaries displayed are the Basic Rates for each grade. The table does not reflect other forms of remuneration such as Shift Allowances, Housing Allowances, tool allowances etc, nor other benefits such as Medical Aid, Pension Funds, Funeral Benefits etc. Also take into consideration annual paid leave, sick leave, family responsibility leave, study leave etc. There are also the annual and long term bonuses. Eskom employees also have access to Loans and low interest rate Bonds. There is also the company funded internal and external training/study which takes place. There will be other benefits not mentioned. The actual TOTAL COST TO COMPANY needs to be worked out for each grade to truly understand how much Eskom employees actually earn p.a.

Well, that effectively kills off the mining industry. What will the communists tackle next? Thanks for the informative article.

These basterdos are just after ONE thing...the R 60 billion kept in reserve by the medical aids.

Private health and then probably private schools. Governments idea is to get everyone equal, no matter how low that bar is.

Excellent summary. Any hopes that the ANC would realize that their Stakeholder policies are killing the industry and change course have been dashed. Instead they try doing the same thing and expect a different outcome. Absolutely no idea how to run an economy.

Consider the Eskom Pension Fund report from last year (2017). Total Member Contributions of R1.14 billion at a rate of 7.3% of salaries (excl bonuses) for 46 000 workers implies an average basic salary of R340 000. (This will be understated as some employees don't contribute at 7.3%). This defined benefit fund is another cash cow for those on the Eskom gravy train (remember Molefe's R30m benefit?)

The bottom line is the damn utility is broke and cannot AFFORD increases for its employees. It is apparently borrowing money at the moment to pay its salaries. So that inevitably means that you and I, the ever-loving S. African taxpayer, will be bailing them out.

I have given up on SA. It's just another failed African state. Forget about long term views here. 5 year view max. That is why its impossible to invest in any mining company here. They have a 10-20 year view. Anycase, I now have to figure out where to invest my money outside SA. Investing on the JSE or any other SA exchange is one sure way to financial ruination.