Sharp Sharp

Three scandals, one theme. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova, joined by Patrick Smith from Africa Confidential, dig into the week the Democratic Alliance turned on itself. Former DA leader Tony Leon’s lobbying firm, Resolve Communications, has allegedly sought audiences with government ministers on behalf of clients including SpaceX’s Starlink, while John Steenhuisen has gone public claiming Geordin Hill...

The June 30 deadline came and went, and South Africa held remarkably steady. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova, joining from Mount Frere in the Eastern Cape, unpack what actually happened and why the anticipated chaos never materialised. Then they go deep on who is really behind March and March. Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, the former Vuma FM broadcaster whose movement grew out of a contract dispute with an ANC...

June 30 is days away. March and March have set their deadline and all foreigners must leave South Africa. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova dig into what happens when the deadline hits, whether the security forces can hold it together, and what the Zulu king's extraordinary intervention ahead of June 30 actually means for how this plays out. They also get into Geordin Hill-Lewis removing John Steenhu...

Fifty years after the Soweto uprising, South Africa's schoolchildren are still being failed. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova mark June 16 with a retrospective that asks not what went wrong but what went right — and finds that racial harmony, against all the odds and against the global trend, is the unexpected success story of post-apartheid South Africa. Then they turn to the ledger of failure. Eig...

President Cyril Ramaphosa went on national television this week to say South Africans are not xenophobic. But the Human Sciences Research Council data tells a different story — those willing to welcome all immigrants dropped from 26% to 15% in four years, while the bloc that wants no immigrants at all grew from 30% to 42%, the highest hostility on record since 2003. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova are...

A 61-year-old woman in church clothes just beat the ANC in a ward they have held since 1994. Eight votes. Maki Tshabalala, the DA's new Ward 28 councillor in Emfuleni in the Vaal Triangle, wiped the floor with a party that had 90% of that ward in 2011 and is now down to 31%. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova dig into what it means for the November local government elections, why communities always kn...

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose dig into a week of high political drama as President Cyril Ramaphosa files his affidavit arguing why the Phala Phala impeachment report should be set aside - and why the whole saga looks set to drag well past the November election. The ANC elders are breaking ranks, caretaker presidents are circling, and the succession whispers are getting louder. Then: Johannesburg. Afr...

South Africa increasingly resembles a mafia state, where it can cost as little as R2,000 to organise a hit. This week, Rob Rose and Zukile Majova dig into the case of taxi boss Joe "Ferrari" Sibanyoni, and the prosecutor who was too scared to show up in court. From cut-price hired hitmen to the brazen killing of AKA on Florida Road, they ask whether the rule of law has simply collapsed i...

The Constitutional Court ruled last week that Parliament failed in its duty when it buried the section 89 panel report on Phala Phala. An impeachment enquiry is now required. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova dig into everything you need to know about how $580,000 in cash ended up stuffed under a couch on Cyril Ramaphosa's game farm, why a Sudanese businessman left without his buffaloes, and why the...

A man was eaten by a crocodile in the Komati River this week. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova used it as the perfect metaphor for what is happening to ordinary South Africans right now. Paraffin is now R28 a litre at the regulated price and R40 by the time it reaches a village spaza shop. It is the fuel of the poorest South Africans heading into winter and nobody in government seems to care. Rob and Zu...

Xenophobia is spreading from Durban to Pretoria to Johannesburg. The March on March movement is shutting down CBDs, politicians from the ANC to ActionSA are fuelling it, and the police are taking selfies with the march leaders instead of stopping them. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova dig into why this lawlessness is possible and why the leadership vacuum in law enforcement is letting it happen. Then th...

A minor bumper bashing in Emmarentia this week ended with a man shot dead in front of his children, his wife wounded, and a country asking itself how it got here. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova dig into South Africa's road rage crisis and what the numbers actually say — 1,453 murders in a single quarter linked to road rage and provocation, SA ranked first in the world for aggressive driver behavio...

Julius Malema is in court in East London and Rob Rose and Zukile Majova have thoughts on whether a judge should ever factor in what happens outside the courtroom when handing down a sentence. Then they get into the big one: the DA just elected Geordin Hill-Lewis as leader and the question is whether another white guy at the top is enough of a break from the past. Zuks's grandmother wouldn'...

Trump threatened to wipe out an entire civilisation, then chickened out an hour before his own deadline. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova unpack the TACO moment heard around the world and what it means for South Africa's foreign policy in an era of creeping authoritarianism. They also get into the rebel faction inside the ANC that wants to collapse the GNU and replace the DA with the EFF and MK, why...

Trump's war on Iran has sent the fuel price through the roof and South Africa is feeling it hard. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova dig into the three rand a litre relief cut and whether the government can sustain it, Ramaphosa's investment conference and the smoke and mirrors around two trillion rand, the fascinating poll showing 47% of ANC voters want Patrice Motsepe as their next leader, why R...