I could not have said it any better. People who back Mr Makate clearly have no what it means to put your own capital on the line, the risks involved or how someone who works for a company will at best get a bonus and would definitely not share in the company's profits. If Mr Makate is so set on sharing in a company's profits why didn't he start his own telecommunications company with his own capital?

"The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all." - Joan Robinson

Another two million Zimbabweans on their way to South Africa.

There are two issues here: 1. The law needs to be seen to be done. It's not happening in the RSA.Witness Porritt and the Zuma gang. I have long said the perp walk serves a purpose. No question in my mind 2. The rich can get away with anything. Jooste is never going to go to jail he is going to keep this going for the next 20 years ... and he has the money to do it. There are two systems of justice in SA....one for the rich and the politicians and one for the rest of us. Most of the facts pertaining to malfeasance at Steinhoff are outlined in "Steinheist". Surely this man should be locked up pending trial..? Is there a lawyer out there who can explain this to us ordinary folks?

This guy is so far down a rabit hole he can't see the wood from the trees anymore. R47 million is a huge sum of money for an idea that is not even patentable in South African law. It's just an idea and many other people had the same idea. So many lawyers/investors are probably involved in sponsoring his case that even if he get awarded R100 million he would barely get anything out.

It doesnt stop-Steinhoff, Omnia, Blue Label, Sasol, banks debtors below R50k worthless, -why invest in this country-no upside anywhere

Poor MTN. They must have irritable bowel syndrome as the Nigerian gangsters try and recover some of this from them. How ironic-one of the most dishonest places on the plant gets caught out by the brits for real money!!

I think this is a slightly unfair comment. Having lived in Europe for two years now I can honestly say that SA retailers are light years ahead in terms of ranging, presentation and service compared to high street retailers in Europe. Note I am not talking about high fashion boutiques, just your middle of the road clothing stores for undiscerning shoppers like me

Johan: What is the current effective cost of storage? Thanks.

Here I have to agree... So this morning I received the video clip doing the rounds of the taxi accident (in GP) that claimed 9x lives. Whilst watching the severed limbs and broken bodies lying around a taxi shell ripped apart; I kept asking myself just one question - How will this "fantastic" new piece of inept government legislation prevent these types of accident from happening..?

Or maybe they are less concerned about childish gestures and are simply allocating capital effectively and efficiently.

I think your comment about hatred from the locals is not true. Remember, the black party that is spewing racist rhetoric only got 10% of the latest vote, and could not even manage to win one province or one local gov in 2014 elections. So, you no right to assume that every black person is an EFF. By the same token, not all Afrikaners belonged to AWB - the former Afrikaner fringe lunatics. The majority of SAns who did not make reasonable material gain since 1994 are mostly hoping for the better for their kids and the next generation. Hence, they are taking their kids to colleges at great expenses from Capitec loans.

Does a word like wrongfulness exist? Sounds horrible to me and I am a second language English speaker.

Can you imagine the size of the disaster if interest rates in the USA were at the levels they are in South Africa at the moment? If it was not for the deflationary spiral after the Great Financial Crisis, Sasol would have been history like Steinhoff. When interest rates are near zero, it is really difficult to go bankrupt.

Fund Managers need to monitor Sasol closely going forward,as all is not above board. The Company is responding reactively and defensively to the concerns raised by its shareholders,which is dusturbing.The company's leadership and performances over the past 10 yrs or so, have been extremely disappointing to say the least.

South Africa, a modern day tragedy. But wait until the masses get restless after realising their political masters have deceived them and have little or no money to feed the 'everything for free' mentality. I see unprecedented social unrest and a humanitarian crisis on the horizon. What should be clear to all is that for South Africa to live the ANC must die.

At last an article to tell it like it is. The unvarnished truth. Sadly, there's no time left to play a long game, we're all out of time. Like the 75 days left to Brexit, we're in the bottom of the 9th. There's just the fascination of watching a slow motion train wreck. The world is headed for a huge hard landing. And this time the crash doesn't look survivable (unless you're holding gold). This is no environment in which to launch an austerity program. Ask Argentina. They've just hit the wall and are going to bounce off it with some more of the populism that got them into the mess in the first place. Of course it's not going to work, but we're rapidly getting past anything that ever could. Sound familiar? Afraid so. We are going to find the keys to the reserve Bank and money printing, as well as the joys of prescribed investments. Maybe we'll even draw up plans for that smart city. And we're going to double down on all the rubbish policies that got us here in the first place. And Cyril will be about as effective as the rabbit in the headlights. And your financial advisor is going to tell you to hang onto the crashing market for dear life cause that's what worked in the last century when everything was completely different. There's no fun here for anyone.

"A pessimist is an optimist with experience". The entire Zimbabwean economy was never bigger than the economy of Durban, and socialist policies collapsed it. The Venezuelan GDP was larger than the South African GDP, they have the largest oil reserves in the world, their labour force is better educated than ours, and still, socialist policies drove them into a hyperinflationary collapse. The German economy was the strongest in the world, their workers were highly skilled and they were hard workers, and still, the Weimar government collapsed that economy into a hyperinflationary spiral. When you leave Johburg and you travel south on the N1 and you go past Beaufort West, Laingsburg and Touwsriver, where are you heading? What is your destination? Cape Town most probably. You are definitely not heading for Beit Bridge. The size of the vehicle you are travelling in does not matter much. If you are heading towards Cape Town, it does not matter whether you are travelling in a bus or a motorbike, you are still moving south. When a socialist government takes control of your economy, the size of the economy won't save you from the inevitable. Only a change in direction can save the economy, and at the moment we are still heading south. We will be heading south until Eskom is broken up and privatised, all SOE's are privatised, all municipal services are privatised and the ANC is no longer in government. The direction we are moving in will only change when the Ramaphosa faction goes into coalition with the DA and FF+ to implement free-market policies. No economy and Gross Domestic Product can withstand the destruction caused by socialist policies. The fact that we still have an economy left after 25 years of ANC rule merely attest to the strength and resilience of the infrastructure and capacity that was built by individuals who represent the free-market mindset. Those individuals with their skills and their mindset are rejected and ridiculed by the current regime. When you constantly hear the chants "Down with Capitalism Down!" and "Employers must fall!" "Bosses must fall!", "Down with Colonialism Down!" you know that a loaf of bread will soon cost R100 000.

A prophet of doom and a realist are two different people. Maybe Mr Cairns has missed the last nail that has been driven into our coffin: the NHI. This will require nationalization of the private medical sector's assets, put millions out of work and after the the looters and tenderpreneurs have taken their share, nothing will be left for actual medical care. You will die clutching your money, with no place to go and no doctor to consult. Read the Daily Maverick and see that a new round of looting has started at Prasa, while we all are fooled into thinking the Zondo commission will make the corrupt more wary. No, it is impossible to overstate the grave danger we are in.

The following story proves the insanity of the South African labour situation: The labour unions form part of the tripartite alliance. The tripartite alliance forms the government. The government determines the size of the social grant and the subsidy to frail care centres for the aged on social grants. The local labour union took some of the cleaning staff at the frail care centre on an unprotected strike and the demanded higher wages and higher bonuses. When I explained to them that it is in fact their own union does not want to increase their salaries and bonuses they stared at me with blank faces. So, I had to lay it out - tripartite alliance - government - determine social grants and subsidy - pays workers. Then they looked at the leader of the union, who wore a white cowboy hat, and he started cursing and threatened to burn down the frail care centre. We fired them all and appointed new staff. Now we employ 50% fewer workers and we save a lot of money to the benefit of the patients. When we look back on this unfortunate episode we realise that the leader of that union actually did us a huge favour. He saved us a lot of money. We realised that, although it was not his intention, he is actually our biggest donor. The law of unintended consequences.

The single biggest problem of any government is ignorance of facts. FACT: Poverty will be part of any country, does not really matter official policies. FACT:The only driver for economic growth is free enterprise with creativity. FACT: Money does not argue, it just walk away. FACT: Disaster will strike any country if facts are ignored.

There are certainly things that can be done to fix the economy: fire 1.5 million redundant and useless public servants, Eskom employees and the parasites in other SOEs. Scrap communist lunacy like EWC, the NDR and the NHI. Getting rid of the pernicious AA and BEE practices. Enforce border controls. None of the above is going to happen, however. Instead, the ANC is doubling down on its communist insanity and accelerating the NHI. They are moving in 180 degrees the wrong direction at increasing speed. The so-called prophets of doom are much like Churchill. When Churchill was asked how he knew what Hitler was going to do, the answered that the read what Hitler wrote, and believed him. I suggest Mr Cairns reads the ANC's decades old NDR plans.

While it is fashionable to blame the ANC for this, Pretoria, Cape Town and Johannesburg are misruled by the DA. If anything, the DA is worse when it comes to gouging its ratepayers. South Africa's 3 largest parties are clearly all of a socialist bent, viewing their subjects as mere milch cows, to be tapped dry at every opportunity.

I can't believe how silly these foreigners are! It's not as if the government is threatening to take property without compensation, or that SOEs are contaminated by incompetent cadre EE appointees, or that these same SOEs are completely bankrupt, or that the government is threatening further socialist madness? Oh, wait......

The honest truth is that the governing party has no capacity to build a nation, a country or an economy for that matter.

This entire case is absurd and reeks of an entitlement mentality. If I, in the normal course of my workday, come up with an innovative idea related to my work, surely my employer, who pays me to do my work, owns that idea? I can't now turn around and say I want to be the owner or patent holder of such an idea. The whinger must just get lost.

Without being technical about above article, just this, municipal costs are killing landlords, I rent out 4 properties in Gauteng (West Rand) and could increase rental for last 3 years or will face vacancy, I pass basic municipal charges to tenant and these have rocketed sky high, add how SARS is scrutinizing now us "rich and wealthy" because you have more than one property, owning rental property in SA just doesn't make sense to me anymore

Individuals who employ their own capital and run the risk of losing that capital while they develop their business ideas may be called entrepreneurs and they deserve the right to the profits if there are any. An individual who uses the capital of other people and takes no risk with his own money while he demands a right to profits is not an entrepreneur but rather a parasite. Some parasites are hard to get rid of. For his idea, he deserves a bonus of some sort but his claim on the profits of the company is parasitic behaviour. He exhibits the typical BEE mentality of maximal exploitation and zero contribution.

As some Americans are inclined to say, "do the math". Ireland, a country of 4.7m largely educated and skilled people has a higher gdp than SA. Here in SA we have not even started the turnaround of our educational system and our birthrate continues unabated thanks to government inertia. It takes very little guesswork to figure out where we are headed.

The shareholders appoint the board. They should fire the entire board and then appoint new members to the board. This circus at board level is the result of apathetic and delinquent shareholders. The board is merely a reflection on the shareholders. This is valid for a free-market economy. But wait, in South Africa, we have a specific law that appoints specific board members. The BEE board member is forced upon the board by the state. The state actually took control of the board. Therefore, the infighting and circus at the board of Old Mutual resemble the infighting and circus in Luthuli House. BEE laws will eventually turn the board of every company in the country into a circus.