News Flash - Netanyahu, Omar al-Bashir, Magashule

Local electioneering will continue to dominate the news cycle as the campaigning heats up ahead of next month’s elections. Expect to see increased service-delivery protests and the concomitant finger-pointing we saw in Alex this week.

Global News

Brexit has been delayed until the 31^st of October, but there is still no clarity on what is happening with the actual Brexit deal.
WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange was arrested in London at the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he spent seven years in asylum. According to the Embassy, Assange was a “discourteous and aggressive” guest prompting them to withdraw their protection. He now faces extradition to the US.
Kirstjen Nielsen resigned from her position as US Homeland Secretary on Sunday; this came after President Trump pushed to close the El Paso border. Nielsen argued against this stipulating its dangers and that it would just close off legal trade and travel, but migrants will just go between ports. To which Trump responded, “I don’t care”.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has stepped down in the face of months of mounting civil protest and military intervention. The protestors are demanding that the military council also step down claiming that they are part of the same corrupt regime.
Benjamin Netanyahu is set for his fifth term as Israel’s prime minister as his political contender conceded defeat.

Local News

The rand has once again had a volatile week, but a strong week. It strengthened to its strongest level since February, to below R14.00.
The IMF downgraded SA’s already anaemic economic growth even more. In its quarterly World Economic Outlook, it cut SA’s growth forecast for 2019 to 1.2% from 1.4%.
Here is an article by Rebecca Davis from the Daily Maverick where she examines how seriously we should consider that President Ramaphosa may be removed after the general election.
There has been a lot of reporting this week on Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s new book on Ace Magashule, titled, Gangster State. The book has been met with much controversy and has been called fake news by Magashule. Stephen Grootes thinks that it has revealed weakness in how much power Magashule wields.
If you would like to read an article on the long-term challenges facing Eskom, follow this link. For a small snippet here is the following,
“Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which supplies almost all the nation’s power, will lose more than a quarter of its current generating capacity over the next decade as it shuts ageing coal-fired plants. Replacing that output and adding capacity needed to meet rising demand will take years and cost more than R1trn ($71bn), according to government estimates. The problem is likely to worsen exponentially after 2030 as more plants reach retirement age.”
Mining production decreased by 7.0% year-on-year in February, while in January there was a retracement of 3.3%. Manufacturing production increased by 0.6% year-on-year in February but was down 0.9% in January.