The Local Government Elections are a little under three weeks away and last night President Cyril Ramaphosa declared that November 1, the date set out for the elections, will be a public holiday.
A welcome announcement for employees who may not have been able to get the time off to go and exercise their democratic duty.
With each election cycle, there is always a barrage of twists and turns as smaller political parties jostle with each other and make their case to the electorate as to why they should be voted into power rather than the ANC.
This cycle has been no different, but it has been particularly marked by the DA’s policy positions, campaign rhetoric and the official oppositions’ missteps and fumbles throughout the campaign.
The latest one coming last week when the party first stood by its controversial posters in Phoenix, KZN and subsequently backtracked when questioned about the racial undertones of the message on the poster.
Michael Morris writes in the Daily Friend about the DA’s campaign poster foibles in a decision he calls “ill-judged”, Sydney Majoko writes in The Citizen that the DA needs to win lost ANC votes and stop waiting around the governing party to self-destruct (For subscribers).,
Tim Cohen writes in the Daily Maverick, that it’ll be politics as usual and the ANC will probably win in the municipalities where the margins are close. And with load shedding rearing its ugly head again this week, Cape Town mayoral candidate Geordin Hill-Lewis details the DA’s plan to end load shedding in the Cape Metro in a piece published in Business Day.
Here’s what else you need to know today:
The race for the top job at the apex court is on following judge Mogoeng Moegoeng’s official retirement yesterday from the position.
Now it is up to President Ramaphosa to appoint a new chief justice of the Constitutional Court. Serjeant at the Bar writes in News24 (For subscribers) that EFF leader Julius Malema’s support for judge John Hlope should come as no surprise and argues that if Hlope were to take over at the ConCourt it would probably be the end to the defence of constitutional governance.
While the Sunday Times Daily argues that only a handful of the eight candidates being considered for the job should make it to the final shortlist from which the president will make his choice. The publication argues that neither John Hlope nor public protector Busiswe Mkwebane, who are both part of the group of eight, should not be considered as they face possible impeachment from their current positions while anyone who hasn’t served as a judge shouldn’t be considered either according to the newspaper. (Register to read)
In the Daily Maverick, Shaheeda Mia dissects Woolworths’ strategy of trying to become a major retail player in the Southern Hemisphere when it decided to acquire Australian brand David Jones in 2014 only for it to write-off of A$1.149-billion after it failed to take off locally.
Also in DM, Natale Labia writes that the Reserve Bank needs to seriously consider a rate hike following a month of volatility from global markets with more on the horizon.
Bruce Whitfield comments on a new study by S&P Global in the Financial Mail, which found that companies that had women as CEOs and CFOs had better stock price performance when compared with the market average.
