₦airaland Forum

Pretoria – Gross domestic product contracted 0.7% for the first quarter of 2017, indicating that the country has entered into a recession, according to deputy director general of Economic Statistics at Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) Joe de Beer.

The latest GDP data was released by Stats SA on Tuesday.

The contraction follows the GDP decline of 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2016. In 2016, the economy grew only 0.3% for the year.

Compared to the previous year, GDP growth came to 1%. “Over the last four years there were instances of negative economic growth prior to the last two quarters,” said De Beer.

The main contributors to the contraction were the trade and manufacturing industries. Trade declined 5.9% and manufacturing contracted 3.7%.

The agriculture and mining industries were the only sectors which made positive contributions. Agriculture increased growth by 22.2% on the back of the drought recovery, and mining grew by 12.8%.

However, expenditure on GDP contracted by 0.8% in the first quarter.

Household consumption declined 2.3%, with spend of food and non-alcoholic beverages, clothing and footware and transport the major contributors to negative growth.

Gross fixed capital formation grew by 1%, mainly due to machinery and equipment which grew by 7.9%.

Net exports contributed negatively to growth and expenditure on GDP, while goods and services contributed negatively to growth in exports. Exports of mineral products and vehicles and transport equipment were largely responsible for the decrease in goods, according to Stats SA.

Imports, which increased 3.2%, were driven by imports of mineral products.

Government consumption expenditure contracted 1%.

Recently the World Bank projected low growth for the following two years. The World Bank expects growth of 0.6% for 2017, 1.1% for 2018 and 2% for 2019. The projections for 2017 and 2018 are 0.5 and 0.7 percentage points less respectively than its January 2017 figures, Fin24 reported.

http://www.fin24.com/Economy/sa-enters-recession-as-gdp-contracts-for-a-consecutive-quarter-20170606

Any Engineer that has seen a demolition would know this was definitely not caused by a structural defect

It definitely looks like an attack, (reminds me of 911), The only difference in this case, I'd say may be the bomb was planted around the building and the guys in the helicopter had the trigger.

Am saying this because of the way in which the building came down (demolition style). Lets not rule out an attack, Nigerians should be wise and vigilant.

It could have been any other building in Lagos.

Iv got all BURNA BOY on Replay WHAT ""They call me Bruna""

Awsome so so Awsome

She tried, its not easy

Combingmaster: TB Joshua is not just a false prophet but also the leader of the Illuminati me members in Nigeria,sooner or later he will be unveiled.

If you see Illuminati starring you in the eye..Am sure you wouldn't recognize

The world is deep

If you do not go to SCOAN you therefore have not right to comment or judge this Man of God

Some of the ignorant people commenting on this post have not even listened or had the opportunity to watch a T.B Joshua's message
Its better to keep quite, watch and pray for only God will judge on the last day]

Be wise

Good Move

This is what Naija needs, Empowering our youths

Hope they put the money to good use

Deportation is not the answer, Nigeria needs to tighten its borders especially the northern links with minimal security

Otherwise it makes no sense deporting someone that will return to the country in the next 24-48hrs.

::No child deserves to be killed; village or no village WTF!!!

Some fools after reading the post still want to know the reason for the protest

THERE GOES OUR DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS:::EVERY MAN HAS A RIGHT TO PEACEFUL PROTEST

jidewin:
heheheh see RSA getting angry at an "ONLINE REPORT"... you know its so interesting how we all could become patriotic when our country seem to "ridiculed" by foreign parties but whilst at home...all we do every now and then is wish to have the head of our respective leaders.African is in the cares of greedy leaders...whether West or South.

RIGHT ON POINT

AjanleKoko: There is significant truth in the report anyways. The South African economy is flat right now, and most investors from that country are pushing to move into Nigeria.

There are lots of opportunities to invest in Nigeria, due to the teeming population, the resource wealth, and infrastructure deficit. And the governments right now (State and Federal) seem to be pushing for development right now.

The question is..How flat is the South African economy compared to Nigeria's:: The projection that the Nigerian economy on paper looks good might just be another myth...Lets also keep in mind that South Africa is a member of the dreadful power 5 the BRICS nation which happens to have china in it.

And so we should not only be at the mercy of one business day journalist or the projected statistics conducted with a few markets.

I am not saying Nigeria will not exceed South Africa, But we as a people still have much more to do in comparison.

DON BABA

For those who have been following the story

See live stream of the Pretoria Magistrate court below


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JZB3pwgxvY&feature=youtu.be&newstate=430f94a43afa6770c6653f6e1f1c58ba

NAK WAHOOOO FOR NOLLYWOOD

[size=17pt]NIGERIANS!!!!!!!!!!!!! RESPECT THE DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/size]

[size=15pt]Nigeria + Politics What a disaster[/size]

Working alone in the office one faithful Saturday morning,
I decided okay since I dint take my pills the previous night let me take it and relax a little..
So I took the pills and blanked out on my laptop,snoring and sleeping.........after like 40 min of incredible sleep
the Group CEO of the company walks in and tapped me...Mr MAN IS THIS THE WORK YOU ARE DOING.....
OH HEAVENLY FATHER...So out of all Saturdays this Man decides to come to the office today
I felt like the ground should just open and swallow me........Will never forget this in my whole life

Nairaland has to SHAPE UP or SHAPE OUT
This is becoming Ridiculous,Cant even find a good topic on the front page
THINKING OF LAUNCHING MY OWN FORUM

BULLLLLLSSSSSHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My DEAREST BRO
AMECHI RASAKI DISU

GOD HELP NIGERIA...

Am a professional House Husband

I don't see anything wrong if you wear it inside your shirt, Some people have sentimental attachment to stuff
I waer a dog tag with my baby's pic on it, But inside my shirts

(I wonder how this made front page, there is more Important news out there, Sick moderators)

Rather replace this with Nelson Mandela's Hospitalization

Dude I feel you pain..Am also going through the same
But am happy because it feels good to help my family...Just dont let it break your back
Try and find Joy in it..otherwise its kind of a waste..one day you will get major favor

BE THANKFUL FOR THE THE JOB YOU HAVE AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO HELP PEOPLE

Isnt the world coming to an end on the 21st of DEC.....I will wait till the 22nd before I go buy gifts

Just a Big MESS

More Pics

BLACK ON BLACK VIOLENCE..... EVEN THE WHITE DID NOT DO THIS TO THE BLACKS


The Marikana Massacre and The South African State's Low Intensity War Against The People



By Vishwas Satgar.

The massacre of the Marikana/Lonmin workers has inserted itself within South Africa’s national consciousness, not so much through the analysis, commentary and reporting in its wake. Instead, it has been the power of the visual images of police armed with awesome fire power gunning down these workers, together with images of bodies lying defeated and lifeless, that has aroused a national outcry and wave of condemnation. These images have also engendered international protest actions outside South African embassies. In themselves these images communicate a politics about ‘official state power’. It is bereft of moral concern, de-humanised, brutal and at odds with international human rights standards; in these ways it is no different from apartheid era state sponsored violence and technologies of oppressive rule. Moreover, the images of police officers walking through the Marikana/Lonmin killing field, with a sense of professional accomplishment in its aftermath, starkly portrays a scary reality: the triumph of South Africa's state in its brutal conquest of its enemies, its citizens.
At the same time, the pain and suffering of the gunned down workers has became the pain of a nation and the world; this has happened even without the ANC government declaring we must not apportion blame but mourn the dead. In a world steeped in possessive individualism and greed, the brutal Marikana/Lonmin massacre reminds us of a universal connection; our common humanity. However, while this modern human connection and sense of empathy is important, it is also superficial. This is brought home by a simple truth: the pain of the Marikana/Lonmin workers is only our pain in their martyrdom. They had to perish for all of us to realise how deep social injustice has become inscribed in the everyday lives of post-apartheid South Africa’s workers and the poor. The low wage, super exploitation model of South African mining, socially engineered during apartheid, is alive and well, and thriving. It is condoned by the post-apartheid state. This is the tragic irony of what we have become as the much vaunted ‘Rainbow nation’.


Moreover, the spectral presence of the Marikana/Lonmin massacre speaks to us about another shadow cast by the ‘Rainbow’ fairytale. It forces us to confront the hard edge of violence fluxing through our stressed social fabric. At one time, violent crime – car jackings, robberies, rapes, murders – defined our everyday understandings of violence. Our narration of these violent events constructed a sense of criminal violence as a major fault-line running through South African society. Such violence spreads fear, racial division and a sense of siege. It has been our undeclared civil war. However, the social geography of violence changes with the Marikana/Lonmin moment. A new faultline is revealed. Such a faultline has been in the making deep inside South African society through xenophobic attacks, violent police attacks on striking transport and municipal workers (over the past few years), violence against gays and lesbians especially in township communities, and police complicity in thwarting legitimate protest actions in poor communities and informal settlements. Through a failure to act decisively (in some instances like during xenophobic violence or by failing to provide policing in informal settlements) or through orchestrated violence the South African state is at war with the working class within its borders; it is a ‘low intensity war’. More specifically, such a war spans shootings, intimidation, failure to allow communities to lay charges, failure to investigate crimes perpetrated against poor communities, failure to be responsive to the safety needs of poor communities, fabrication and smear campaigns against local leaders, complicity with goons linked to local politicians (particularly the ANC) and a failure to act knowing that innocent lives are in danger.


A few examples of police orchestrated low intensity warfare working in cahoots with ANC goon squads or local politicians against communities illustrates this more clearly. This is based on testimony received from activists. First, after Abahlali Basemjondolo (Shack Dwellers movement) successfully challenged the Slums Act in the Constitutional Court, ensuring community participation to determine whether there can be relocation from an established community they became the target of police-ANC violence. In early 2010 an ANC goon squad violently removes Abahlali from Kennedy Road informal settlement. This is also captured in a documentary entitled:Dear Mandela. The police carry out arrests of Abahlali leadership on trumped up charges and public violence which are eventually kicked out of court. Abahlali is not able to return to Kennedy Road informal settlement.


Second, a more recent example in Umlazi township Durban also shows this police-political party nexus working in insidious ways to suppress community demands. The local Unemployed Peoples Movement (UPM) and ward 88 residents demanded a recall of their ANC councillor and a democratisation of the ward committee. In their perception the ANC ward councillor was corrupt, failing to deliver and engaging in clientelistic control of development resources. This unleashed a series of reprisals. On 23 July the leader of the UPM was arrested under false charges. The complainants turned out to be incited by the councillor working in cahoots with the station commander at Umlazi police station. These charges could not stick but they held the leader of UPM for a day. It would seem these trumped up charges were meant to prevent him from leading a community meeting being held on the same day. This story has many twists and turns with the police-ANC apparatus constantly trying to intimidate the UPM and residents of Ward 88 in the course of this struggle.


What is striking about these examples is there challenge to mainstream academic and media explanations of community based violence as being merely reducible to intra-ANC battles. In all these instances a conscious awakening and challenge by communities and movements to the ANC state unleashes a low intensity destabilisation of these community forces through the police-ANC state nexus.


Contrary to Zwelinzima Vavi, the General Secretary of COSATU, who believes South Africa is poised to experience the shock of a ‘ticking time bomb’ rooted in deep inequality and unemployment, this bomb is already exploding in various locales. However, the response of the ANC state has been about a recourse to low intensity violence. The Marikana/Lonmin massacre merely brings this trend into sharp relief. The challenge to COSATU is simple: does it want to remain a democratising force, with a proud history, and take a stand with the wider working class or does it want to be complicit in the low intensity war against the broader working class and citizenry? At a mass meeting on 22nd August at the University of Johannesburg the Marikana workers and community passionately appealed for solidarity. Such solidarity actions are congealing into but not limited to: calls for a national and international day of solidarity action with Marikana workers (including 3 minutes of silence on August 29th at 1pm as a symbolic reference to the 3 minutes it took the callous South African Police Services to mow down the 34 workers on 16 August 2012); support for solidarity strike action emerging within the platinum mining industry; a call for an independent ‘peoples commission of enquiry’ to ensure full transparency, testimony and justice for the Marikana workers and communities afflicted with state-ANC violence; calls demanding the withdrawal of charges and immediate release of miners held in police custody and calls for an end to the police siege and harassment of the Marikana communities. Marikana as a defining moment in post-apartheid politics is essentially about galvanising the battle to reclaim South Africa’s democracy from below. It resonates with and expresses the desire of the majority to end the ugly reality of South Africa’s deep seated and racialised class based inequality that has been widening under ANC rule.

These pictures are horrible

Please open at own risk [size=8pt][/size]

situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!situation critical !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pic

pic