https://newsletter.en.creamermedia.com
Home  Magazine  Cartoon

Receive our free daily newsletter:

Cartoon

DIALOGUE KNOT: Few truly have much hope that the National Dialogue will yield the solutions needed to put out the fires associated with the country’s paltry growth and deep-rooted social problems. It has also now become something of a political knot after the firing of the Democratic Alliance’s Andrew Whitfield for a travel indiscretion. Those who dislike the current composition of the Government of National Unity will, no doubt, help fan the flames.
DIALOGUE KNOT
18th July 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
WORRYING SIGNS: A recent Human Sciences Research Council survey showed that most adults are concerned that political parties are being influenced by donations from wealthy elites. This, despite low levels of support for laws such as the Political Funding Act. The apparent contradiction most likely stems from growing dissatisfaction with the political and democratic status quo, which the survey also confirmed.
WORRYING SIGNS
11th July 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
HOWZAT
HOWZAT
4th July 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
FACTS & STATS: While it is not certain whether the renowned American writer Mark Twain really said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”, the following quote is also often attributed to him: “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.” The pliability of South Africa’s own unemployment statistics is now under the spotlight after Capitec CEO Gerrie Fourie questioned Statistics South Africa’s figures, despite these being based on a methodology that is far more orthodox than Fourie’s.
FACTS & STATS
27th June 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
FUTURE IMPERFECT: The immediate threat of the so-called ‘gas cliff’ may be mitigated through a proposed move by Sasol to divert some methane-rich gas, produced synthetically from coal, to industrial consumers until 2030. This will come at a higher cost than current imports from southern Mozambique, but should extend the supply plateau from 2028 to 2030. There is still little certainty what will happen thereafter, though.
FUTURE IMPERFECT
20th June 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
METRO MESS: For those living in South Africa’s largest cities, the latest report by the Auditor-General of South Africa was no surprise. Only the City of Cape Town received a clean audit, pointing to ongoing problems with financial management. And where finances fail, so do services, whether water or electricity, waste removal or traffic lights, or the proper maintenance of roads.
METRO MESS
13th June 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
CONFLICT & DRAMA: Reality shows such as Survivor and The Apprentice, which Donald Trump coproduced, thrive on conflict and drama. South Africans had a front row seat as the now President Trump turned his Oval Office meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa into a reality show on political steroids. Targeted to domestic voters, world leaders will think twice before doing likewise. But as Maximus in the blockbuster Gladiator yelled after dispatching his opponents with murderous force: “Are you not entertained?”
CONFLICT & DRAMA
6th June 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
ON THE EDGE: South Africans have become almost numb to our extreme unemployment scourge. News about the latest deterioration in the official unemployment rate to 32.9% in the first quarter failed, therefore, to send the shockwaves it truly should have. The potential and real social ills that accompany such rates should be keeping us all awake at night.
ON THE EDGE
30th May 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
TRADE TUSSLES: The most extreme tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump on ‘Liberation Day’ have been paused and some bilateral ‘deals’ have been struck. Nevertheless, the trading environment is tighter and more uncertain than was the case at the start of the year and there are few immediate prospects of any return to a rules-based system. Instead there is an ever increasing number of flimsy bilateral barter deals.
TRADE TUSSLES
23rd May 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
ACTION: It may be the third attempt, but crafting a Budget that meets the expansionary aspirations of some, the demands for cuts by others, while remaining within the debt limits desired by just about everyone else will be an extremely difficult balancing act. What’s more, the growth and, thus, probably the revenue outlook will need to be moderated relative to the February projections to remain credible.
ACTION
16th May 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
NEW PERIL: South Africa was hoping to begin breaking free from its low-growth trap this year. It avoided what would have been another self-inflicted wound by allowing the spat over VAT to break up the Government of National Unity. But the uncertainty created by the tariff wars could well knock us down yet again.
NEW PERIL
9th May 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
STEEL ECHOES: The similarities in the debate over the future of British Steel, in Scunthorpe, England, and ArcelorMittal South Africa’s Newcastle Works, in KwaZulu-Natal, are striking. While production and jobs at the UK plant have been saved through government taking control, the current Newcastle reprieve is being paid for by the State-owned Industrial Development Corporation. In both cases, though, the longer-term outlook is unclear.
STEEL ECHOES
2nd May 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
Cartoon image
WREAKING HAVOC
25th April 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
EXTREME RIDE: Those in business who previously believed that President Donald Trump’s most extreme instincts would be tamed by stock market reactions and/or unfavourable polls have been rudely awakened by his disastrous tariff announcements. With the internal guardrails having been dismantled in the sycophantical Trump 2.0 executive, many now fear the worst.
EXTREME RIDE
18th April 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
TARIFF WALL: Ahead of his first Presidential term, Donald Trump campaigned on building a wall on the US-Mexico border that he insisted Mexicans would pay for. In his second, the US President is building tariff walls and insisting that the costs will be borne by the exporting countries. Economic history and theory show that US businesses and consumers will be the ones paying the initial costs, however.
TARIFF WALL
11th April 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
PRESSURE COOKER: Even those who claim to be “tuning out” for fear of “news burnout” are unconsciously aware that the world has entered a perilous new era. That’s not to say change is not needed as the world chafes at its old-normal seams. But there is a risk that some of the changes will have calamitous consequences, as the most powerful cook in the geopolitical kitchen turns up the heat and shows little appetite for pressure regulation.
PRESSURE COOKER
4th April 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
BRIGHT SPOT
BRIGHT SPOT
28th March 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
ON AGAIN, OFF AGAIN: With US President Donald Trump having flip-flopped twice on his stated intention to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, markets continue to feel the effects of the uncertainty created. This uncertainty is amplified further by the threat of so-called reciprocal tariffs and in South Africa by the real prospect of being removed as a beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act.
ON AGAIN, OFF AGAIN
21st March 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
DEADLY CUT: The US government’s decision to halt funding for African HIV programmes was not unexpected. Nevertheless, the sudden manner of the withdrawal is both disruptive and potentially deadly for tens of thousands of people who have been heavily reliant on the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief since 2003. Unless alternative funding is found, and found quickly, the hitherto successful fight against the disease itself could be set back decades.
DEADLY CUT
14th March 2025 By: Terence Creamer
HAT-TRICK
HAT-TRICK
7th March 2025 By: Darlene Creamer
1
 2 3

Topics

Sponsored by:

Breathalysers

Alcohol Breathalysers (Pty) Ltd. was established in 2004 with the aim to make available reliable, affordable and accurate digital breathalysers to... 

Sponsored by:

Building

Agility, flexibility and an innate evolutionary mindset has seen diversified infrastructure construction company Concor adapt to meet the changing... 

Sponsored by:

Crushing

Weir Minerals is a leading supplier to the mining, aggregate and recycling industries. Trio® crushers are designed and built with advanced... 

Sponsored by:

Electrical

Established in 1948 by George “Monty” Pratley, the Pratley stable of companies rests on a foundation of research and innovation. Drawing from over... 

Sponsored by:

Flowmeters

KROHNE is a world-leading manufacturer and supplier of solutions in industrial process instrumentation. KROHNE Pty. Ltd. in Midrand is place of... 

MORE 

Showroom

The Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
Mining
The Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy

The SAIMM started as a learned society in 1894 after the invention of the cyanide process that saved the South African gold mining industry of the...

VISIT SHOWROOM 
Lion Alcolmeter® 700
Health & Safety
Alco-Safe

Developed to exceed the latest EN 15964 standards for police breathalysers proving that it will remain accurate and reliable for many years to come.

VISIT SHOWROOM 
Alcohol Breathalysers
Health & Safety
Alcohol Breathalysers

Supplier & Distributor of the Widest Range of Accurate & Easy-to-Use Alcohol Breathalysers

VISIT SHOWROOM 
Schauenburg SmartMine IoT
Mining Equipment
Schauenburg SmartMine IoT

SmartMine IoT has been developed with the mining industry in mind, to provides our customers with powerful business intelligence and data modelling...

VISIT SHOWROOM 
MORE 

Press Office

WEG
Weir
Engen
SRK Consulting
Consort Technical Underwriting Managers
Alco-Safe
MORE 

Announcements

One Year On, Have We Learned Anything from the CrowdStrike Outage? – NETSCOUT Comments
When Africa's resources run out, who will need her?
OPEC Must Lead the Charge to Reverse Global Fossil Fuel Financing Bans
Pilanesberg improves anti-poaching and conservation with digital radio network upgrade
MORE 

What's On

Mining Indaba
C&I Energy & Storage Summit Zambia
Africa’s Green Economy Summit AGES 2026
CMAS Event Listing: Carbon Markets Africa Summit – CMAS 2025
ICE-SA Annual Lecture 2025: Lower uMkhomazi Bulk Water Supply
MORE 

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Subscribe

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Subscribe

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

➕

➕

➕

➕

➕

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

➕

➕

➕

➕

➕

➕

➕

➕

➕

➕

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION

➕

➕







Magazine cover image
Read Now

301

pqt: 0.173s - ct: 0.32s - 186pq - 2rq
Subscribe Now