A bad week for Lindiwe Sisulu

A bad week for Lindiwe Sisulu

Lindiwe Sisulu’s fall from grace has been a vertiginous plunge into the political abyss. Seldom has a collapse been as dramatic or as sudden. One minute a minister of state, ANC “royalty” and the only survivor of a Mandela cabinet; the next, nothing. All she got for years of service to the party were fewer than 50 votes in a presidential nomination from the floor of the ANC conference this week — and a lot of mocking laughter. Not a nice way to leave the building, but the vanity she brought to her jobs may have been her undoing.

A good week for Roy Bagattini

Let’s ignore the roughly R24bn paid for David Jones, not to mention the subsequent billions bled from Woolworths’s share price as — surprise —  the acquisition of an outdated department store didn’t pan out the way then CEO Ian Moir thought it might. Current CEO Roy Bagattini has finally removed Woolies’s Australian albatross — along with its R17bn of liabilities — in a deal that looks to be no fire sale. Now management can finally focus on what it should have all along — the core South African business and its Country Road operations in Australia. The effect on Woolies’s share price was muted but caps a redoubtable turnaround year for the group. Bagattini can administer himself an extra bag of Chuckles this festive season.