New data from Lightstone Explore reveals which shopping malls in South Africa drew in the most foot traffic over the 2017 festive season. The information was included in the group’s festive season review, which together with car tracking group Tracker, looked at the movement of over 150,000 drivers and travellers between 1 and 31 December 2017. While the likes of Black Friday may drive a lot more foot traffic to malls with the lure of specials and sales, the December festive period is still the time when shops see the most visits. “Most individuals will visit a mall at least once during the holiday period,” Lightstone said. The below graph rates the most visited shopping centres over December 2017:   Sandton City in Johannesburg ranks as the most visited mall, with over 44,600 people passing through over December – a 3% increase from the norm. However, it’s malls like Gateway and The Pavilion in Durban, where the biggest jumps are seen. “The increase in number of visits indicates the escalation from November to December 2017, while it is expected that the number of visits increase at the coast with the migration of inland visitors,” Lightstone said. Dwell Time percentages indicate the increase in the duration of visits in specific centres with Gateway Theatre of Shopping achieving the highest lift. This can be credited mostly to its sheer size but also to the mix of offerings the shopping centre has for the entire family, the data gr

South Africa may have a new finance minister soon following the replacement of its president, but whoever replaces Malusi Gigaba will still face a 50.8 billion-rand ($4.4 billion) hole in the nation’s finances. With growth in Africa’s most-industrialized economy lagging that of peers after its second recession in less than a decade, tax collections have dwindled. That’s intensified the difficulty faced by Gigaba at the National Treasury in striking the balance between finding more revenue and not choking off the country’s fragile recovery. In October, his officials estimated public debt will exceed 60 percent of gross domestic product by 2022. The next month, the government pledged to cut spending by a further 25 billion rand over the next three years to avert another downgrade of its rand debt to junk. Since then, Moody’s Investors Service has warned it might deliver just such a ratings cut, and an uncosted pledge by former President Jacob Zuma for free higher education for poor students added 12.7 billion rand to the country’s financial needs.  

The likelihood of further downgrades of South Africa’s sovereign credit ratings during 2018 appear to be remote in the light of recent political developments, including the election of Cyril Ramaphosa as the new president of the country. According to prominent researchers at the University of Pretoria and the North-West University, current positive sentiment and expectations of economic and political stability should prompt rating agencies to seriously consider upward adjustments of their ratings of South African sovereign debt. Prof Riaan de Jongh, director of the Centre for Business Mathematics and Informatics at North-west University, said that credit rating agencies should seriously consider an upward adjustment of the current rating for South Africa, or at least changing the outlook from ‘negative’ to ‘positive’ due to the ‘forward looking nature’ of the sovereign rating. According to De Jongh, it will indeed be hard to justify an upward adjustment if credit rating agencies focus largely on historic data and do not recognise fundamental shifts in the future economic outlook for South Africa. “The state of the nation address by newly elected President Cyril Ramaphosa is clearly the start of a new beginning and a dramatic turnaround in how the government is going to address deficiencies in exactly those factors that will form the basis of the analyses that the rating agencies use”, de Jongh said. According to Dr Conrad Beyers, Barclays Afri

“I see only hope for our Country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good for their country, come together to work for it”. Reflecting on these words of Reverend Theophilus Msimangu in Alan Paton’s, ‘Cry, the Beloved Country’, I write this piece for the love that I have for our beloved country. Our nation has experienced the most tragic decade since the fall of apartheid. How did we, the beloved rainbow nation, full of potential and the promise of a bright future sink into the abyss of immorality through greed, corruption and the inhumanity of a few individuals? For almost the entire past decade we have lived our lives amidst a national tragedy. How is it possible that our beloved rainbow nation could have disappeared into an abyss of sadness, greed, corruption and inhumanity? I do not have the answers to the questions. But each of us, as South Africans, have to use our rights as enshrined in our Constitution, to take more control of our destiny. We have to do this as a nation united, and we have to do it now. We owe it to the young people of our country and future generations. Our new democracy was built on the Freedom Charter and is guided by the Constitution. These documents codified the principles that were to guide our democratic order. Unfortunately, the principles of these sacred documents have largely been put in the back burner by many, including some of those who

The day before it was supposed to start, an application by the Chamber of Mines for a judicial review and setting aside of the reviewed Mining Charter has been postponed. "I am certain we will be able to resolve the current impasse and agree on a Charter that both accelerates transformation and grows this vital sector of our economy,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement. The application was set to be heard in the North Gauteng High Court starting on Monday. But on Sunday evening both the mining advocacy body and the Presidency put out statements saying that negotiations would again commence. "The Presidency has indicated that the president is committed to resolving the impasse over the Mining Charter and to facilitate a process of developing a new Mining Charter, inclusive of all stakeholders and in the interests of the industry and the country as a whole," the Chamber said in a statement on Sunday afternoon. "In line with the spirit and the tone of the message as stated by the President during SONA on 16 February, the Chamber of Mines is agreeable to the request by the Presidency to give negotiations a chance." "The Chamber of Mines wishes to reiterate its position that only a negotiated Mining Charter taking on board the views and inputs of all key stakeholders will enjoy the support and endorsement of all stakeholders." Space for engagement 

Mninwa Mahlangu, South Africa’s ambassador to the US, flew into Cape Town early last week ahead of the now indefinitely postponed state of the nation address (Sona). Mahlangu is one of Parliament’s guests and was invited in his capacity as a former chairperson of the National Council of Provinces. Now waiting indefinitely, he is one of Parliament’s presiding officers who were invited to the event. Other guests include former presidents, current heads of the Pan African Parliament and members of the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum. Parliament is paying for Mahlangu’s accommodation as well as his local transportation costs. The occasion brings to Cape Town heads of the judiciary and provincial legislatures, an imbongi who Parliament flies in and accommodates if he or she is from outside the Western Cape, eminent persons including nine radio competition winners – one from each province – and school children who form the civil guard and junior guards. The latter are generally from local schools. Kwaito star Arthur Mafokate, who frequently attends the event, took to Twitter on Wednesday morning to offer the platform’s users the use of his hotel rooms, for which the hotel wouldn’t refund him. While it may be too early to quantify the costs of this week’s unprecedented postponement of the annual address, Parliament has been negotiating with suppliers to cap the costs at the rate they would have charged had the event gone ahead