Features

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s government will announce within a month how it plans to fix Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the embattled state utility that supplies more than 90 percent of the nation’s power. There are no easy remedies. The company is 419 billion rand ($30.9 billion) rand in debt, is losing money hand over fist, has way more staff than it needs and its aging and poorly maintained plants can’t always…

SUDAN (Capital Markets in Africa)  – Sudan’s embattled president took aim at activists who’re using social media to organize demonstrations calling for his ouster, saying only elections can bring political change in the protest-wracked African nation. “Changing the government can’t be achieved by using WhatsApp or Facebook, it is only through the ballot box and the Sudanese people are the only body that can determine who is supposed to rule this country,” Omar al-Bashir told a televised…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s minister of mineral resources and chairman of the ruling African National Congress, is facing allegations that he took bribes from Bosasa, the services company accused of paying off politicians in order to win state contracts and avoid prosecution. Richard le Roux, a former regional technical coordinator for a unit of Bosasa, on Thursday told a judicial inquiry that’s probing government corruption how the company spent…

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – The head of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and other officials resigned with immediate effect, the government said. Chairman Job Whabira and the other commissioners will step down on Thursday, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Misheck Sibanda said in a statement handed to reporters in the capital, Harare. “All commissioners have gone on leave pending the finalization of their terminal benefits,” Sibanda said, without providing a reason for…

KAMPALA (Capital Markets in  Africa) – Step into a cinema in Uganda’s capital and you could watch an action-packed retelling of President Yoweri Museveni’s ascent to power. Step outside of it and Museveni could be watching you. A new surveillance system with hundreds of cameras on Kampala’s streets; a glitzy biopic made by the president’s daughter — superficially they have little in common. But in the East African country the former rebel has ruled with a…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – A senior ex-Barclays Plc executive said he was worried that a secret payment the lender made to Qatar to secure a bank-saving investment during the 2008 financial crisis would be seen as a bribe. Richard Boath, who was then head of Barclays’ European financial institutions group, told in-house lawyer Judith Shepherd in July 2008 about his concerns that a journalist would come across a planned payment to Qatari companies, prosecutor Ed Brown…