BusinessLIVE - For Your Ear

SundayTimes business reporter Khulekani Magubane speaks to Deputy Director General for Export Promotion and Outward Investment, Lerato Mataboge at Dept. of Trade and Industry on energy security in Africa.

Business Times reporter Dineo Faku speaks to new Harmony Gold CEO, Beyers Nel at the at the 2025 Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town.

Business Day Senior Motoring correspondent Phuti Mpyane chats to Toyota Motors SA CEO Andrew Kirby about the threats to exports, tax and Chinese vehicles in SA.

Business Day editor-in-chief Alexander Parker speaks to Ford Africa president Neale Hill about the company's decision to spend R5.2bn to turn its SA subsidiary into the only global manufacturer of plug-in, hybrid-electric Ranger bakkies.

The Covid-19 pandemic is the ultimate catalyst for digital transformation and will greatly accelerate several trends already well under way before the pandemic. According to research by Vodafone, 71% of firms have made at least one new technology investment in direct response to the pandemic. This shows that businesses are planning or have implemented new business practices for a post-Covid-19 wor...

Harare — A government official on Friday invaded a farm owned by a white commercial landowner in Zimbabwe in yet another twist that highlights the policy inconsistencies in Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform programme. The farm invasion comes just a few weeks after the government said it will allow some white farmers that lost their land to the violent land reform programme to return...

SA is in a situation: the citizens and the president may be on the same page, but much of the governing party is on a different page, holding back necessary reform as a result. The last time we were in this situation, the president was FW de Klerk and the governing party was the National Party. In 1991, the leader needed a strong mandate for change to negate those in his party stopping him from im...

It will be interesting to see how the charge against the woman who pointed her gun at “protesting” EFF members is going to be handled. It has taken ages for the case against EFF leader Julius Malema to go anywhere. Irony of ironies, Malema was charged for committing a similar offence. Will “Annie Oakley” be treated in similar fashion? Or does cowpoke Juju enjoy political pr...

Thank you for the space and attention Business Day gave to the controversy surrounding the release of Walt Disney’s Mulan (“How do you solve a problem like Mulan (../../world/2020-09-09-how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-mulan/)?” September 9). I have been watching the prominent advertising campaign China has been using in SA’s media, including Business Day, to signal its inte...

Every year since 2017 the US department of health & human services has declared opioid misuse to be a nationwide emergency. Since January, when the agency made its latest declaration, the problem has worsened. From January to June abuse of synthetic and illegal opioids rose 13%. Fatal overdoses have already topped 2019’s record-setting figures. What’s different about the increase s...

What is the purpose of the SA Post Office other than providing sheltered employment for loyal ANC cadres? It was bad enough under Mark Barnes, who quit while he was behind, but it gets no better. Last week I received a medical invoice dated February 24, an income tax certificate dated February 29 and a pension fund communication from London dated March 1. I also received three letters addressed to...

On October 1 2012, the scene was set for the judicial commission of inquiry to commence its hearings into the Marikana massacre. Forty-four people were killed, 34 of them by police, in August of that year. The night before I had been with George Bizos, Jason Brickhill, Miriam Wheeldon, Bongumusa Sibiya, Avani Singh, Michael Power — all lawyers at the Legal Resources Centre (LRC). George, Jas...

When Covid-19 hit there was no doubt that the impact on SA would be huge. For the business community and its leadership, centred in the country’s economic powerhouse, Johannesburg, there were major concerns about the way in which the city could be affected. Now that the country has passed its initial coronavirus peak, the city is springing back to life at speed. But numerous questions remain...

There is now clear blue water between the DA and other political parties in SA after their recent policy conference. The DA has recommitted itself to the principles of nonracism and redress on which it was founded, and proposed alternative redress policies to the failed race-based policies that have not materially affected the lives of South Africans, other than those few members of the well-conne...

There is growing interest in the concept of a basic income grant in SA, brought to the fore by the devastating effects of Covid-19. Many years after civil society and economic advisers first raised the debate, it is once again a proposal deserving our attention as we face up to the horrendous economic damage brought about by the pandemic, and the desperate plight of the majority of South Africans...

Beijing — China is tightening rules and imposing capital demands on sprawling empires such as Ant Group and China Evergrande Group in its latest attempt to curb risks in the nation’s $49-trillion financial industry. The new regulations will require licences for nonfinancial companies that do business across at least two financial sectors, and which are designated as “financial ho...

It was meant to be the week when Opec nations gathered in Baghdad to celebrate the cartel’s six decades as a dominant force in global oil markets. Instead, Opec and its allies will convene online and reflect on whether the coronavirus has thwarted their best efforts to keep the market afloat. After reviving crude prices from an unprecedented collapse over the spring, Opec is seeing the recov...

New York/Los Angeles — When deadly wildfires tinted Western skies a Martian hue this week, homeowners with their own rooftop solar systems were able to tell with great precision just how much useful sunlight reached them through the gloom: next to none. Wednesday was “the worst generation day, ever”, said Mary Holstege, a retired software engineer in Cupertino, California, who we...

Cox’s Bazar — Three years ago, Myanmar’s military burnt the Rohingya village of Kan Kya to the ground and bulldozed over its remains. In 2019, the government erased its name from official maps, according to the UN. About 5km from the Naf River that marks the border between Myanmar’s Rakhine state and Bangladesh, Kan Kya was home to hundreds of people before the army chased...

London — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is pressing ahead with legislation on trade despite a warning from Brussels that it could wreck any future relationship and an acknowledgment by his government that it violates international law. The Internal Market Bill is aimed at ensuring Britain’s four constituent nations can trade freely with one another after leaving the EU, but the g...

A shipment of 29 primates from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was intercepted in Zimbabwe on Wednesday. The illegal shipment was headed to SA. According to a media release from DRC's minister of environment and sustainable development‚ Claude Nyamugabo Bazibuhe‚ three Congolese and a Zimbabwean national have been arrested and are expected to appear in court soon. Bazibuhe said bord...

Tokyo — A shipping accident offshore Mauritius that polluted its beaches with fuel was partly caused by a lack of crew awareness, according to the Japanese company that chartered the vessel. Mitsui OSK Lines also said the ship was using the wrong type of nautical charts as it veered towards the island nation and ran aground on July 25, president Junichiro Ikeda said at a press briefing Frida...

It’s no secret that in this economy the well off, or “haves”, have done very well at the expense of everyone else. We see it in the record-high stock market, the expiration of extra US jobless benefits and the higher death rates among black people from Covid-19, to name just a few examples. The return to schools will drive these inequities further apart, with long-lasting economi...

Washington — Hackers linked to Russia, China, and Iran are trying to spy on people tied to both US President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, Microsoft said on Thursday. The report came as Reuters reported that one of Biden's main campaign advisory firms had been warned by the software giant that it was in the crosshairs of the same Russian hackers who intervened in the 2016...

1. Soak up the sun A Barcelona hospital is letting its Covid-19 patients out into the sun, partly in a bid to increase their vitamin D intake, after a Spanish study suggested it reduces intensive care unit (ICU) admissions. The study was published in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, and participants were divided into two groups. The control group received standard care...