BizNews

Johannesburg could get its first outright DA majority in living memory, and John Endres thinks that single number, 50 percent, might matter more to South Africa's next twenty years than anything happening in parliament. In this wide-ranging Q&A from BNC#9, the IRR chief executive explains why talent and investment only come back to a broken city once they believe the coalition running it will last...

South Africa's public servants have R3.6 trillion sitting in a pension fund that Wayne Duvenage calls a plunder pot, and he's not being polite about who's been dipping into it. In this Q&A from BNC#9 , the OUTA CEO takes on the PIC's revolving door of chairmen, explains why cadre deployment is really just a mechanism to loot state entities, and gives his most direct answer yet on whether Johannesb...

Ramaphosa's impeachment inquiry loses its evidence leader just as his court challenge opens, Mashatile is still nowhere to be seen, and Dr Iraj Abedian tells Alec Hogg at BNC#9 that the world's only superpower has lost a war it won't admit to losing. Then Tatjana Smith, SA's most-decorated olympian, finally says out loud what she's been fighting behind closed doors after Swimming SA's president an...

The night before she raced for a World Championship title, Tatjana Smith wasn't thinking about her stroke. She was thinking about a fine. South Africa's most decorated Olympian tells Alec Hogg how Swimming SA threatened to fine her tens of thousands of euros for wearing the wrong swimwear, how her prize money sat in the federation's account for over a year, and why she's only speaking now that the...

Three of South Africa's toughest voices, one no-holds-barred Q&A. At BNC#9 in the Drakensberg, Dr Corné Mulder, Dr Theo de Jager and Gerhard Papenfus fielded questions from delegates on AGOA's future, a BEE court battle they say is being decided by judges swapped out overnight, and what business is prepared to do if government pushes further. Along the way: the maths behind Helen Zille's Joburg bi...

In their latest weekly chat, Chris Steyn and political commentator Solly Moeng talk about President Cyril Ramaphosa winning another round in his impeachment fight while the man waiting in the wings, Deputy President Paul Mashatile, has not been seen officially since July amid rumours that he might have been poisoned. “We don't have a president who's able to focus on governing, on leading, on uniti...

America hasn't just lost ground in Iran, says economist Iraj Abedian, it's lost the myth of being unbeatable. Speaking at BNC#9, Abedian lays out the binary choice facing Washington and Tehran, the alliances quietly reshuffling around Israel, and the human cost hidden behind the headlines. Then comes the question every South African investor needs answered: which side should we be on? His answer w...

AfriForum's Morné Mostert tells BizNews the ANC's plan to merge Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni into one mega metro fails the science test - bigger municipalities don't perform better - and mainly boosts councillors' pay, which scales with size. From BNC#9, Dawie Roodt tells Alec Hogg he'd rebuild confidence by literally cleaning up the country, then hand himself the finance ministry to build...

According to Nomvula Mokonyane, First Deputy Secretary-General of the African National Congress (ANC), the party is considering a fundamental review of the country’s municipal structures, including the possible amalgamation of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni into a single “megatropolis”. In his reaction, Morné Mostert, Local Government Affairs Manager for AfriForum, tells Chris Steyn that his...

While many individual investors and emigrants are postponing major financial decisions amid ongoing geopolitical uncertainty and upcoming elections, Sebastian Steyn, Head of Dealing at Sable International, says businesses do not have the same luxury. Steyn told BizNews that South Africa’s growing Business Process Outsourcing sector and multinational SMEs continue to receive revenue in foreign curr...

The taxman, the Reserve Bank and your crypto wallet: Dawie Roodt doesn't hold back. In this Q&A straight after his BNC#9 keynote, the Efficient Group chief economist explains why officials want your phone and your passwords if you try to take money offshore, why roughly 200 000 taxpayers are propping up the entire country, and why he thinks the new Transformation Fund could spell the end of BEE as...

A brigadier's pips on a secretary with zero police experience. A rape kit that costs the state eight times what it should. A cocaine pipeline running through a West Coast holiday town. One year after he was shot at during an oversight visit in Philippi, Police Portfolio Committee chairperson Ian Cameron sits down at BNC#9 to talk about what he's actually found inside South Africa's police service,...

Prince Mashele has a warning for KwaZulu-Natal: when Jacob Zuma dies, he believes MK's hold on the province won't survive him. On this Daybreak, the political analyst spells out the party he's quietly building to replace the ANC, who he says is bankrolling it, and why he'd rather copy Singapore than "African democracy." Then Rob Hersov makes the case that Johannesburg is being run like 1920s Chica...

Prince Mashele has a warning for KwaZulu-Natal: when Jacob Zuma dies, MK goes with him. In this Q&A from BNC#9, the political analyst behind a new project to unseat the ANC gets blunt about the money he can't yet raise, the small group he says quietly bankrolls South African politics, and why he'd rather copy Singapore than "African democracy." He also names names on who he's backing in Johannesbu...

Rob Hersov isn't sure Helen Zille can fix Johannesburg. Not because she isn't capable, but because of who she'd be fighting: an "international mafia" he says has spent 20 years perfecting the art of looting the country's richest city and knows exactly how to disappear when the pressure's on. In this unfiltered BNC#9 Q&A, Hersov compares Joburg to 1920s Chicago, weighs up whether South Africa needs...

In today's episode, Ron Weissenburg explains the constitutional path to an early South African national election before 2029. Nurture Brands discusses their ambitious goal to build a R10 billion business through strategic consolidation. Christo Wiese unpacks how property title deeds could unlock dignity and economic wealth for millions, while David White highlights the hidden benefits of B-BBEE pr...

In this edition of the NdB Sunday Show, Ron Weissenberg of The Accountability Group (TAG), tells Chris Steyn how South Africa could have a new government by next year instead of after the 2029 national elections. He says it can be achieved in accordance with a Constitutional provision for Parliament to be dissolved between national elections once a minimum of three years have passed since it was e...

Riël Malan joins Alec Hogg in Hermanus for a wide-ranging conversation about entrepreneurship, resilience and building businesses with purpose. From growing up in a farming family and launching Fruits Unlimited to creating 36 startups and leading Nurture Brands, Malan reflects on failure, leadership, partnerships and the lessons learned along the way. He discusses his transformative sabbatical, th...

With South Africa’s premier universities oversubscribed and the cost of popular overseas destinations like the UK, US, Australia, and Canada soaring, families could pivot to highly competitive, cost-effective global alternatives. Sable International’s Brent Morris told BizNews in an interview that Mauritius, the UAE, and Malaysia now offer highly attractive degrees, rivalling the total costs of st...

"Running a business is really complicated," says David White, founder and CEO of DRG, BusinessFit SA and The Africa Marketing Initiative, and the resulting "entrepreneurial time poverty" is what quietly kills small businesses long before bad ideas do. In conversation with Irakli Rekhviashvili, White explains how BusinessFit's open source self-assessment platform works as a "mentor multiplier" for...

Johnny Copelyn turned a one million rand trade union investment fund into HCI, a business now worth well over ten billion rand, without ever raiding the pockets of the workers who backed him. In one of his last interviews as CEO, he talks candidly about a bank that nearly went under on his watch, buses set alight in a running battle with the taxi industry, and why HCI is still ploughing money into...

In today's BizNews Daybreak, Geordin Hill-Lewis outlines the DA's ambitious push to govern six metros. MK Deputy President Duduzane Zuma confirms that land expropriation without compensation will happen as party policy. We also explore why South Africa’s anxious youth should look to Zambia's optimistic turnaround. Plus, BOSA’s Roger Solomons warns about Cape Town’s rising unaffordability, and US m...

In this interview with Chris Steyn, Build One South Africa (BOSA) mayoral candidate for the City of Cape Town, Roger Solomons, describes how unaffordable it has become for ordinary citizens to live and do business in the Mother City. “I've crisscrossed the city, not just during this campaign trail, but during my public service, across all of Cape Town, all 118 wards, and the overwhelming majority...

Zambia just handed Hakainde Hichilema a landslide second term, and its youth have gone from 10% optimistic about the future to 55% in under six years. Paramount Group founder and Africa Youth Survey chair Ivor Ichikowitz explains why, and doesn't hold back on what it says about South Africa, where youth optimism is the lowest of the 16 countries the survey covers. His verdict on what Pretoria coul...

Five metros are up for grabs, the ANC has slipped to third place in its own heartland, and Geordin Hill-Lewis says the party's decline can no longer be reversed. In this Q&A with Alec Hogg and the BNC#9 floor, the DA federal leader and Cape Town mayor lays out exactly how close the race in Johannesburg and Durban really is, why he will not go near an MK coalition, what the Madlanga Commission has...