Tag: University of Witwatersrand (Wits)

In 2024 nominal average per person income in the UAE was US$ 49,400, roughly eight times that of South Africa’s US$ 6,250. On global rankings for GDP per capita, the UAE is among the top 25 countries, while South Africa ranks around the 110th, indicating the degree to which the UAE is ahead in relative living standards.

South Africa needs urgently to reflect on a landmark legislative initiative that is unfolding in the United States of America. Designed to curtail the expansive authority of federal agencies which can issue economically significant regulations without congressional approval, this effort marks a pivotal attempt by American lawmakers to reclaim their constitutionally enshrined role as the nation’s primary lawmakers.

As a result of the collapse of almost every government service and state owned enterprise, South Africans are perforce increasingly seeking ways to avoid or replace government services. State insurers have also failed.

Brokers are a feature of the medical schemes market and subject to extensive regulation in terms of the Medical Schemes Act, its regulations, and circulars issued by the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS). The CMS has announced it intends to revise Circular 20 of 2010, the prevailing circular dealing with brokers and has called for public comment.

Fixing prices is not the terrain of the Financial Services Conduct Authority (FSCA). In a recently published article, my colleague Dr Brian Benfield called for the outright abolition of regulatory price fixing with regard to the distribution of insurance products (i.e. insurance commission regulation Biznews). Indeed, it is astonishing that these regulations still exist.

The international company Meta (which owns Facebook and WhatsApp) has been referred to the Competition Tribunal, to be fined 10% of its turnover for violating Section 8 provisions of the Competition Act, which prohibit the abuse of dominance by a company.

The Competition Commission has recently prohibited a transaction between Emerging Capital Partners Africa (ECP) and Grand Parade Investments, a private equity firm listed in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The transaction would have seen ECP acquire Grand Parade’s stake in Burger King South Africa (BKSA) as well as Grand Foods Meat Plant (Pty) Ltd.

In 1985 the South African insurance industry voluntarily launched the Ombudsman for Long Term Insurance system. The Ombudsman for Short Term Insurance (OSTI) was launched some four years later in 1989. These bodies operated independently and separately from one another until last year.

During the 6th UN Global Road Safety Week from 17-23 May 2021, I challenge the assumptions about road safety, minibus taxi crashes, and who is responsible. In 2010 a minibus taxi driver lost his arm when a private vehicle hit him. The college-educated taxi driver, for whom driving was just a stop-gap job, was left disabled and unemployed. As his occupational therapist, I decided to take a closer look at minibus taxi crashes in Johannesburg and who is really responsible.

A new study challenges the presumption that all South-Eastern-Bantu speaking groups are a single genetic entity. The South-Eastern-Bantu (SEB) language family includes isiZulu, isiXhosa, siSwati, Xitsonga, Tshivenda, Sepedi, Sesotho and Setswana.