BizNews

The FW de Klerk Foundation says it is not a platform to attack governments, nor is it a platform to "lobby for certain groups internationally." That follows the departure of its executive director, Christo van der Rheede, after he called US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's decision to impose visa restrictions on a select group of South Africans "a profound strategic blunder" those risks handing th...

Asbestos is still sitting in South Africa's embassy building in The Hague, and according to the DA's Ryan Smith, nothing has moved on the chancery. Smith told Linda van Tilburg that DIRCO was not being transparent, that UK public representatives such as Lord Peter Hain could help get answers, and that money meant for embassy buildings was being lost to party politics, citing an estimated R1.4 bill...

The Democratic Alliance is considering seeking help from British political parties as it tries to get answers about the costly renovation of South Africa House in London. Ryan Smith, the DA's spokesperson for international relations and cooperation, told Biznews in an interview that key information remains difficult to obtain despite a series of parliamentary questions to Minister Ronald Lamola. S...

By BizNews editor Alec Hogg's count, South Africans have bolted nine gigawatts of solar onto their roofs, more than three times what the state's own renewables programme has delivered. There are more than three private security guards for every police officer. And on the road past Richards Bay, he and his wife clocked five kilometres of trucks waiting to get into the harbour. In the opening keynot...

Six US anti-terrorism lawsuits against MTN have moved into discovery, and Simone Heradien warns the claims - that MTN paid protection money to tower operators in Iran, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan - could reach Cyril Ramaphosa, who chaired the group at the time, and feed Donald Trump's executive order on South Africa. The DA's Ryan Smith tells Linda van Tilburg that Dirco won't say what R170 millio...

In the latest NdB Sunday Show, gender activist and former president of the Pretoria Diplomatic Association, Simone Heradien, talks to Chris Steyn about The Grand - also known as the unofficial HQ of the Sandton Police - where suspended Deputy National Commissioner General Shadrack Sibiya was arrested on rape and sexual grooming charges. The Grand is also at the centre of an investigation into a fo...

Ipsos had MK on 55% in eThekwini and the DA on 17%. Dean Macpherson told Alec Hogg he did not trust those numbers, and said the DA would end up either the largest party in Durban or the largest party in its governing coalition. The DA's KwaZulu-Natal chairperson walked through a little-known rule that, in his telling, leaves only two realistic contenders for Durban's mayoralty, and explained why a...

Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson tells BizNews the infrastructure debate is no longer about money but procurement: of 2,800 big tenders published in a year, only one in six was awarded, and 90% of failures trace to weak feasibility work. His department now spends R600 million over three years preparing projects itself. A political commentator reviews the week: commission hearings, Ramaphosa's...

“If we're going to look for angels in this stuff, we're not going to find angels. It's the list of the devils, it's where do we choose, what is the thing to focus on, the least worst thing to focus on.” These are the words of political commentator Solly Moeng in his latest chat with Chris Steyn. Moeng slams Cyril Ramaphosa for “forgetting” that he is President. He also comments on the latest testi...

In December 2011, Rael Levitt brought the hammer down on Quoin Rock, Dave King's Stellenbosch wine estate. Within months, Auction Alliance, the business he had spent 20 years building, was gone. In studio with Alec Hogg, Levitt went back over the auction that undid him: the vendor bidder he placed in the crowd, the lie he told billionaire bidder Wendy Appelbaum, and the attempted fix after the eve...

The Private Prosecution Unit of AfriForum has taken up a number of cold cases in which the police have failed to trace or arrest or re-arrest known suspects. In this interview with Chris Steyn, the unit’s Barry Bateman, reveals details of some of those cases as well as the responses received from the Acting National Police Commissioner to questions from Advocate Gerrie Nel. In one of these cases,...

Gayton McKenzie told Alec Hogg he had never been wrong with a prediction, then put the DA at 38% in Cape Town and named the councils he expected the PA to win outright. The real obstacle in Joburg, he said, was not the DA but Helen Zille, though he still left the door open to working with her. The morning after Ramaphosa's address on gender-based violence, Ian Cameron told Chris Steyn the presiden...

David Lupafya spent 25 years at AT&T, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin before coming home to grow grain on 1,300 hectares outside Potchefstroom. He did what careful farmers do: planned a season ahead and put more than R5 million of his own money down on tractors, a combine and implements, counting on the Land Bank's blended finance scheme to cover the rest. Then, weeks before planting, the phone rang...

In his latest interview with Chris Steyn, Ian Cameron, the chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, has a very blunt response to President Cyril Ramaphosa's latest address to the nation in which he outlined measures to deal with gender-based violence: “The president lied”. One “blatant lie” was increased police visibility in Kempton Park where there has been a spate of femicide....

Gayton McKenzie said he had no time to sue Helen Zille, but plenty to say about her. Five weeks before the local government elections, the Patriotic Alliance leader and Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture gave Alec Hogg his account of the Joburg coalition deal he said the DA had broken, called the DA a younger brother of the ANC, and ran through the councils he expected the PA to win outright. He...

Comrades board member Rory Steyn tells Alec Hogg that Swimming South Africa, whose top two officials are suspended by World Aquatics, needs the governance overhaul cricket went through - a majority of independent directors, with Olympian Tatjana Smith the ideal candidate. Fourteen months after their daughter's murder, her parents are still waiting: the suspect was released from a police station wi...

In two years, Comrades runners threw out a board accused of vote-buying and steering tenders to friends, and cut ties with the provincial and national athletics bodies to run their own race. Swimming South Africa had to wait for an integrity panel in Switzerland to act. Rory Steyn, Nelson Mandela's former bodyguard and now a Comrades Marathon Association board member, told Alec Hogg why one could...

In this interview with Chris Steyn, two grieving parents describe their 14-month fight to bring to justice the alleged killer of their daughter Kerry Vorster. The suspect's whereabouts are a mystery after he was released, allegedly without paying bail, having no physical address and without providing a contact number. The police allegedly took four months to try to obtain the post mortem report th...

Two equally responsible South Africans can do everything right, save diligently, keep their costs down, earn a decent long-term return, and still retire with very different outcomes. Fred Van der Vyver, executive head of product solutions at Old Mutual Corporate, tells BizNews the reason often comes down to nothing more than timing, whether someone retires, is retrenched, or simply starts drawing...

Twenty-seven people were killed in two mass shootings in a single weekend, and the DA's Lisa Schickerling wanted to know where the police were. She told Chris Steyn why growing criminal networks had to be dismantled, and why the leadership of the private security regulator, raided by the SIU and the Hawks in a R130m training-contract probe, should have been placed on precautionary suspension to pr...

In this interview Chris Steyn and Lisa Schickerling, the Democratic Alliance (DA) spokesperson on Police, talk about a country in the grip of fear in the wake of mass killings, multiple murders, crime increasing in areas where the SANDF have been deployed, and suspended Deputy National Commissioner of Police General Shadrack Sibiya on rape and sexual grooming charges. “The very people that are mea...

Jasmine Opperman tells Chris Steyn the Islamic State's raid on a Niassa hunting camp was opportunistic resupply, not ransom: a splinter group pushed back west by security pressure, burning a communications tower, clinic and police station and taking up to 14 vehicles. Neal Froneman explains to Alec Hogg why landlocked Kyalami cannot host a modern Grand Prix and why his Swartland site can. ISS foun...

He turned around mines others had written off and built Sibanye-Stillwater into a global giant. Now Neal Froneman wants to bring Formula One back to South Africa, on 600 hectares of Swartland farmland rather than at Kyalami. In conversation with Alec Hogg, the Blue Mountain Racing chairman explained why he treats the R6.7bn project like a mine still in exploration, what the fallback is if Formula...

On the latest NdB Sunday Show, Chris Steyn asks veteran intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman why South Africa’s intelligence agencies do not seem to intervene when they become aware of corruption and other criminal activity in official ranks. She says “the whole national analysis capacity has been diluted to the extent that it's non-existent” - and even if that should be available, such intellige...

She said she hadn't exchanged a single word with the ANC about a post-election deal. Helen Zille then told Alec Hogg who she thought was talking to them. The DA's Johannesburg mayoral candidate took on Corné Mulder's claim of a backdoor ANC pact and compared Gayton McKenzie's Patriotic Alliance to the early 20th-century American Mafia. She also set out the coalition arithmetic she believes could s...