BizNews

At a time when news headlines across Africa highlight political friction, economic distress and security concerns, a guarantee of better times ahead may sound almost provocatively optimistic. Yet Dr Jakkie Cilliers, founder of the Institute for Security Studies and head of its African Futures and Innovation Programme, bases that guarantee not on hope, but on rigorous demographic data and structura...

He was on the shortlist to run Eskom and lost out to André de Ruyter. Years later, Andy Calitz, who ran South Africa's transmission grid before a career that took him from Shell to Gazprom's control room and the helm of LNG Canada, still thinks about it most weeks. In conversation with Alec Hogg, he called load shedding a South African own goal with no equal among significant countries, and said G...

US Ambassador Brent Bozell tells Alec Hogg he now looks back fondly on "strained" relations: given a 15-day deadline, Pretoria sent an eloquent six-page letter that answered none of Washington's five asks. BizNews unpacks the second seizure of suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu's phones - targeted, not a fishing expedition, 14 months on. Warren Wheatley breaks his silence on the FSCA's 20-year...

Three trades, R301 in total, and a 20-year ban from the financial sector. Warren Wheatley, the chartered accountant who helped put together the Capitec empowerment deal and went on to found Altvest, now Africa Bitcoin Corporation, broke his silence to Alec Hogg days after resigning as CEO. The FSCA says he, his wife Tatum and his chief investment officer coordinated trades to inflate the share pri...

Six months after warning a Hermanus room full of business leaders that Washington's patience was wearing thin, US Ambassador Brent Bozell returned to BizNews to explain what happened next. Five asks, a 15-day deadline and a six-page reply that, in his words, answered none of them. The result: visa bans on unnamed officials, every item on the negotiating table withdrawn, and a warning that there is...

In their weekly chat, Chris Steyn and political commentator Solly Moeng talk about the second seizure of of electronic devices belonging to Special Leave Police Minister Senzo Mchunu; the arrest of tenderpreneur Cat Matlala’s wife, Tskanane; the rape case against suspended Deputy National Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya; the latest testimony at the Madlanga Commission of Inquriy; the BEE abuse by for...

Deputy National Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya is in custody on rape, sexual grooming and human trafficking charges; police committee chair Ian Cameron tells BizNews it is chilling that he was once in line to lead the SAPS. Action Society's Juanita du Preez says EMPD chief Julius Mkhwanazi's firing took five arrests, and doubts Tembisa tender kingpin Hangwani Maumela's R1.9 billion tax bill will eve...

In their latest interview, Chris Steyn and Ian Cameron, the Chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, unpack a day of high drama with the court appearance this afternoon of suspended Deputy National Commissioner General Shadrack Sibiya who is now facing charges of rape, sexual grooming, and human trafficking. The cases involve the alleged rape of an 18-year-old girl and the allege...

In this interview with Chris Steyn, Barry Bateman of AfriForum’s Private Prosecution Unit talk about the criminal prosecution now being faced by both ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula and EFF leader Julius Malema “This is the second case where AfriForum’s Private Prosecution Unit has succeeded in convincing the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) that a politician (Mbalula) should be prosecute...

A tenderpreneur bragged on video that he could kill women and walk free. By the end of the weekend he'd lost his company, his lease and his freedom of movement, with three government ministers now circling his contracts, his ratings and his immigration status. Action Society's Juanita du Preez joined Chris Steyn to unpack it, alongside the belated sacking of a suspended metro police chief and a te...

In their latest chat, Chris Steyn and Juanita du Preez of Action Society talk about the video of the tenderpreneur threatening to kill women in the powder room of a Sandton restaurant after they turned down his advances. Transport Minister Barbara Creasy has now ordered an investigation into his tenders. Infrastructure Minister Dean McPherson has ordered an investigation into his ratings. And Acti...

Elections analyst Wayne Sussman tells Chris Steyn the local government poll is shaping up as a car crash for the ANC, which failed to submit any candidates in its Eastern Cape strongholds of Port St Johns and Ngquza Hill and lost proportional lists in Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley. Bank of America's Brad Ross says sponsors facing Swimming SA's missing R50 million should freeze, audit and...

In this edition of the NdB Sunday Show with Chris Steyn, Elections Analyst Wayne Sussman dissects the preparedness and likely outcome for South Africa’s top eight political parties ahead of the Local Government Elections in November. He predicts a “car crash” for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC “going into the election knowing that there are a number of …municipalities and ANC heartlands which are...

Swimming South Africa has two officials suspended, a high performance centre with more than R50 million unaccounted for, and an Olympic champion who says she waited over a year for prize money the federation then charged her interest on. So what does a sponsor actually do with that? Bank of America's Brad Ross, speaking to Alec Hogg in a personal capacity, laid out the playbook: freeze the funds,...

The Trump administration has escalated its pressure on South Africa, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing new visa restrictions over land expropriation laws and racial discrimination against the Afrikaner minority. Christo van der Rheede, executive director of the FW de Klerk Foundation, calls it a profound strategic blunder, one that risks handing the ANC a political gift ahead of local...

This interview was livestreamed on Conscious Caracal on 11 September 2026. Find Ernst van Zyl's Conscious Caracal Podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/@UCeNFLCUJ2lM1S_H32ICVs4w Before BizNews, there was a bank job Alec Hogg quit within three years, a company called Moneyweb he built from a room above his garage and then lost control of, and a High Court letter that convinced him to start all over...

FF+ leader Corné Mulder tells Alec Hogg that Pretoria's foreign policy has exhausted Washington's patience and that the ANC could collapse well before 2029. New US visa restrictions name no names, making official travel to America a gamble. Kasinomics author GG Alcock says the deportation drive barely dented a trillion-rand township economy, with spaza volumes back to normal within weeks of the Ju...

South Africa just joined a short and unflattering list of countries facing individual US visa restrictions, and Freedom Front Plus leader Corné Mulder says he saw it coming from a manifesto launch stage days before it happened. He tells Alec Hogg why he thinks Cyril Ramaphosa's habit of avoiding decisions has left the country exposed to an American administration that has run out of patience, why...

South Africa's townships are not a side economy. According to GG Alcock, author of the Kasinomics book series, they're a trillion-rand-plus market that the country's biggest listed companies are already quietly fighting over, from Shoprite's cash-and-carry pivot to Capitec's entrepreneur accounts to Pepkor's handset financing. Alcock, who grew up in a mud hut in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, and never we...

In their latest weekly chat, Chris Steyn and Political Commentator Solly Moeng talk about both President Cyril Ramaphosa and Deputy President Paul Mashatile having been declared unfit - because they are too ill - to perform official duties; the US the visa restrictions for certain - still unamed -government officials; the performance (or lack) of US Ambassador Roelf Meyer; the 181 lost candidate c...

Washington stopped talking about South Africa in the abstract this week. Marco Rubio named individual officials for visa restrictions over land seizures, race-based discrimination and incitement, and the US ambassador in Pretoria called it only the first move. Hudson Institute's Joshua Meservey explained why Washington chose a scalpel over a sledgehammer, and why South Africa's own dealings with T...

The night before this interview, Marco Rubio picked up a weapon Washington has never used against South Africa before: visa restrictions aimed at individual officials, not the country as a whole. Hours later, the US ambassador in Pretoria said it was only the start. Joshua Meservey of the Hudson Institute had spent months arguing publicly for exactly this approach, and told Alec Hogg why the scalp...

FirstRand just put its UK business up for sale after a motor finance mis-selling scandal turned an eight-year-old acquisition into a multi-billion-rand headache, and analyst Kokkie Kooyman of Denker Capital walked Alec Hogg through what it's actually worth. He explained why Capitec is quietly trying to build six versions of itself across Eastern Europe and Latin America, why South Africa's big thr...

In this interview with Chris Steyn, Jacques Broodryk, the Chief Spokesperson for Community Safety at AfriForum, hails the announcement by the Trump administration of visa restrictions for those “responsible for, or complicit in, the enactment or implementation of laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, and/or the incitement of imminent violence against...

Washington has stopped talking about South Africa in the abstract. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced a new visa restriction policy aimed not at the country, but at named officials inside the Pretoria government, over land seizures, race-based discrimination and incitement. No names were published, but the bar for inclusion is deliberately low, and family members with a US visa, a green...