Yes! We have another interest rate cut. The Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) concluded their meeting today which started yesterday and have decided to cut interest rates by 100 basis points. This simply means that interest rates will come down by 1% meaning the prime lending rate is now 13%. Now you will be paying less on your mortgage or car loan.
This comes as good news to most of us as we have a loan of one form or the other. They say that South Africans in total have an accumulated debt of R1 trillion! That is a lot of money. But hopefully now with the 1% drop in interest rates we can cut the amount of debt we have. There is also the possibility that interest rates will come down by another 1% next month.
Reserve Bank governor, Tito Mboweni however warned us that now that the MPC is meeting every month, it does not mean they will be cutting interest rates every month. So we have to enjoy the cuts whilst they last. With the way the wold economy is going, we should be a bit happy with these interest rate cuts as things could easily be worse.
The Constitutional Court has ruled that registered voters living overseas can vote for in the elections on April 22. South African citizens living abroad who are not yet registered will not be allowed to vote. Those who can vote must notify the chief electoral officer of their intention to vote by March 27, the court ordered.
Now that this judgment has been passed, how much of an impact will it have on the outcome of the votes come April 22? I guess it all depends on how many foreigners are out there and who are registered to vote. There is no clear indication yet of the exact number, with some saying it could just be a small handful of a few thousands with some thinking they may be in the hundreds of thousands.
On Friday, 6 March, Zimbabwe lost one of its greatest mothers, Susan Tsvangirai, the wife of Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. The couple were involved in a car accident when they were traveling to their rural home. The Tsvangirai’s together with their driver and body guard were in a Land Cruiser which was clipped by a Nissan UD truck which forced the Land Cruiser to overturn and subsequently took the life of Susan Tsvangirai. The moment news of the accident broke, many people suspected foul play. This was not a surprise as many high ranking people in Zimbabwe have been killed in car ‘accidents’.
What raised even more suspicion this time around is that the international press were quick to come out and say that Mrs. Tsvangirai has passed away in a car accident whilst the local Zimbabwe media was saying she was in intensive care. Usually the local media would want to hold back such news before the public knows, but in this case the public new already what had happened. Mrs. Tsvangirai never made it to intensive care as she was declared dead on arrival at Beatrice Hospital which was the closest hospital to the scene of the accident.
