South Africa

The African National Congress swept to victory in the local government elections on 5 December, winning 59 per cent of the total vote (AC Vol 41 No 23)....

Procedures for voting in the local government elections of 5 December were complicated but voters seemed to take that in their stride and the poll was accepted as...

President Thabo Mbeki faces his toughest battle for voters yet in local government elections on 5 December (AC Vol 41 Nos 17 & 19). A predicted low turnout...

South Africans feel unsafe. Fear of criminals demoralises people and is a major cause of emigration. High expectations therefore attach to the first black Commissioner of Police, Jackie...

In the Cape Town area in the past 27 months, 21 bombings have caused three deaths and injured at least 130 people. In Cape Town itself, a major...

Black union militants are planning new clashes with the African National Congress government over jobs and labour law reform. But many union leaders would prefer a compromise that...

The African National Congress has emerged from its national general council, held in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth on 11-15 July, looking more like the Western-style social...

Zimbabwe's land rows have touched a sore nerve in South Africa, where land hunger is a lively, if partly suppressed, political issue and where white people still dominate...

The African National Congress inches ahead with privatisation, though its partner, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), links this to the redrawing of labour laws to...

Inspiring a broad resistance front is not the same as running a pragmatic government, as the African National Congress has discovered. To iron out the long-standing and often...

South Africa's policy on Zimbabwe's crisis has been run entirely by President Thabo Mbeki and officials in the enlarged presidency. The department of Foreign Affairs has been sidelined....

One of the country's sharpest and most popular politicians Defence Minister Mosiuoa (Patrick) Lekota has a daunting task ahead of him if he is to reform the military...

Income taxes and the budget deficit are down, defence spending is up. That conservative combination in Finance Minister Trevor Manuel's budget on 23 February won plaudits from business,...

A decade after Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and South Africa's political revolution started, his successor Thabo Mbeki is launching another revolution,It aims to overthrow the apartheid...

The failed attempt by Nicky Oppenheimer, Chairman of De Beers, to meet the United States Justice Department's Joel Klein at the business people's festival in Davos, Switzerland last...

The first real post-apartheid government will start work after President Thabo Mbeki opens parliament on 4 February, focusing at last on economic and administrative reform, rather than on...

In courting the country's three million Afrikaners, President Thabo Mbeki wants to harness their still formidable financial power to boost a flagging economy. Ministers concede that despite the...

Africa Confidential has learned that more than 100 companies are considering applying to the South Africa Reserve Bank for listing on foreign stock exchanges. This follows the giant...