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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. The R325 million grant pot for the year had been fully committed. He told Alec Hogg why he could not simply walk away, why conventional finance turned a fundable farm into an unfundable one, and why he could not say whether the Department of Agriculture or the Land Bank had dropped the ball. He also had a message for city dwellers who took food security for granted. With El Niño forecast for the season, the clock was already running.

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. Cameron describes the horrific level of disfunctionality he found on an unannounced oversight visit yesterday to the Kempton Park Police Station. He also has harsh words for Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi who had announced the lockdown. “Him and the minister are speaking about lockdown operations. They can't even lock down a police station.” Meanwhile, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu's special leave has cost taxpayers R3.2 million. “(and) he still enjoys VIP Protection...per minister they spend more or less R8 million rand annually on their VIP Protection…(which) gets nearly R900 million more per year than Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences units…That they say it is getting the relevant attention, is simply a lie.” Lastly, Cameron reveals the finding of the postmortem of Sky, the arson-detection dog found with horrific injuries in a cage at the SAPS veterinary facility.

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 explained, with a childhood story about jelly setting under a tree, how he thought the GNU would change after 4 November. On sport, he said old legislation had tied his hands as suspensions piled up at Swimming SA and beyond, and he named the venue he wanted for South Africa's Formula One return. Then he turned to crime, and explained why he believed the Constitution itself stood in the way.

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 without bail and has vanished. The DA's Lisa Schickerling says acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia has plans but no implementation, and Operation Prosper isn't prospering. Plus Neal Froneman's Cape Town F1 bid, and Anthropic's IPO prospectus.

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 fix itself and the other could not, and why he believed too many of the country's sports federations were run by politicians dressed up as administrators. He went through the suspensions that have piled up since March, from SASCOC to athletics, swimming, karate and netball, set out what he would do in Gayton McKenzie's shoes, and asked why an Olympic champion had to fight her own federation for her prize money. His challenge to everyone else in South African sport: Comrades has done it, so what is stopping you?

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 that was delayed further by two months, apparently because of electricity supply issues and the pathologist being on maternity leave”. Although the police promised to rearrest him on receipt of the report and the prosecutor promised to subpoena him on evidence of a cell phone number placing him at the crime scene, her family have seen no such progress. Now, 14 months after the murder, they have been told the fingerprints are still to be verified, meaning - with the huge forensics backlog - this simple matching exercise could take four years. Her father charges: “The violence was such that he severed her jugular vein, her carotid artery, and penetrated her lung…he could have killed a wild boar with the power that he used with that knife….He intended to kill her. He stabbed her with force enough to kill a wild animal.” In voice recordings left on the phone of his estranged wife, the suspect claims that the victim had attacked him and had stabbed herself in the back. Listen to those recordings here.

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 an income at the wrong point in the market cycle. Van der Vyver makes the case for a better outcome than the industry's usual fix of dialling down risk as retirement nears, arguing instead for rethinking how the investment journey itself is designed. That thinking includes a newer model called Collective Defined Contribution, which Old Mutual is set to roll out its own version of in the coming weeks. It is based on sharing risk across a group of members rather than each person carrying it alone, Van der Vyver also explains what this means if you're already retired and living with the risk of simply outliving your money. – Linda van Tilburg

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 protect the process. Speaking the day after Donald Trump's 22 September address to the UN General Assembly, former Eskom grid chief Andy Calitz traced how energy infrastructure became a military target, from Ukraine's power grid to the Strait of Hormuz, and explained why the threats against Iran sent shudders down his back. Jasmine Opperman asked who was watching South Africa's spies with the Inspector-General of Intelligence suspended, and Helen Zille explained why a DA-run Joburg would look like an empty plot for months before anything rose out of the ground. Reuters rounded off with the latest from Wall Street.

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 meant to protect women are the ones that are committing these crimes…So there's no trust in the SAPS. And if you as a female can't trust to actually phone the police and know that they're gonna come and assist you, then you really are on your own…” Shickerling describes how poor service delivery has further fuelled crime with roads so bad that not even taxis can use them, forcing women to walk long lonely roads without streetlights and hemmed by tall grass. “They live in areas where there's nobody patrolling, so there's nobody in the street except for obviously the criminal elements.” Asked about remedial actions being taken by Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia, she says: “...the problem that we have is that everybody comes with these grand plans and it's wonderful, but there's no implementation.”

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 founder Jakkie Cilliers argues stability, not democracy, drives growth in the short run. Helen Zille denies any ANC talks and spells out how the DA could still lose Joburg at 40%.

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 One says no, and why he believes a modern Grand Prix is a week-long spectacle that old circuits simply cannot host. He also tackled the question hanging over every South African bid: after the Lady R affair, what stops government's foreign policy from sinking this one too? And he made his case for why Cape Town, not the team behind it, is the winning card.

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 intelligence would likely just be pushed in a direction or ignored…The ANC has a laager mentality…They close ranks like it happens with ZanuPF, like it happens with Frelimo. And what happens in that laager, stays within that laager.” As for corrupt and sexually deviant officials being vulnerable to recruitment from foreign intelligence agencies, Opperman says: “Already recruited...if you start talking about the leaking of intelligence, I would love to know how many of them…that raw intelligence reports are leaking at the speed of light, that it's being given to Iran to BRICS countries…this is a probability”. Another “red light” is the Presidency's grip on intelligence. “If you…see how many of those issues are being run directly from the Presidency. That's a serious issue. It's not right. Something is wrong here: a president cannot run the country out of this office on all these issues.” Opperman also gives an update on the ransom demand for the South African and others kidnapped by ISIS in Mozambique, as well as the 11 Iran-SA-Hamas crypto wallets.

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 shut the DA out of Joburg even at 40%. She described Joburg's budget as a fiscal fiction and gave a detailed account of how, in her telling, Julius Malema steered Herman Mashaba's mayoralty one decision at a time. She named the one condition any coalition partner would have to accept, and explained how the DA might still govern eThekwini if MK falls short of a majority.

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 structural modelling. In his latest book, Africa's Road to Prosperity: 10 Things to Know, Cilliers doesn't pin Africa's future on its youthful population, technological leapfrogging or natural resource wealth. In fact, he argues that a median age of 20 imposes a heavy dependency burden that constrains economic growth and can make democratic systems more volatile, not less. Technology, meanwhile, is an enabler rather than a shortcut. His confidence instead rests on demographic ratios gradually maturing and a larger, more integrated and productive African market emerging. The conversation also explores several of the practical policy ideas he sets out in the book, including scaling "industries without smokestacks", modernising land tenure systems and how converting communal land, such as KwaZulu-Natal's Ingonyama Trust, into a bankable asset could unlock capital for farmers. Cilliers also shares his views on Africa's geopolitical options, arguing for closer alignment with Europe and India, and discusses the risks facing South Africa as growing numbers of voters lose faith in the ability of democracy to deliver.

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 Germany scored one of its own. He explained why the world's largest machine has nobody in charge of it, why no energy source is truly clean, how Sasol's Secunda plant out-emits an entire European country, and why South Africa keeps losing offshore gas investment to its neighbours. And he had one blunt message for voters about what they are entitled to demand.

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 debarment over three test trades worth R301, and Andy Calitz, long tipped for Eskom, calls load shedding a South African own goal.

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 price. Wheatley said the trades were a clumsy test of a broken brokerage platform, conceded they were "silly" and "ill-conceived", and denied any intent to profit. He explained why his own board stepped away from him, what the ruling has done to his family, why he will not blame his Bitcoin advocacy, and how quickly his appeal could be decided. Alec asked the question many in business are now asking: if this can happen to him, who is next?

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 more to come. Bozell told Alec Hogg how close the two countries came to a deal, what he offered to fund, why he says he never called for Thabo Mbeki to mediate, and why he believes Pretoria is wrong if it thinks it can simply wait out Donald Trump. He also had a message for South African business: the next move is theirs to push for.

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 foreign tenderpreneur Lawrence Mudzinganyama, who threatened to kill women who turned down his advances in a Sandton restaurant; the R1,9-billion tax billl for the still-free Tembisa Hospital tender don, Hangwani Maulema, the nephew by marriage of President Cyril Ramaphosa; Ambassador Roelf Meyer's performance in the US, as well as the Freedom Front's mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay, Bill Harrington, who served a lengthy prison sentence for the murder of an activist during the Apartheid years. Moeng describes Mchunu as “one of the most privileged suspects in contemporary South Africa”. He also reveals that a senior government official told him that “the art of surviving a senior position in government is to make sure they also eat”

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 ever be paid. AfriForum's Barry Bateman explains why the NPA will now prosecute Julius Malema for calling a former principal a rapist. Plus Trump's UN threat to annihilate Iran, and a record Nasdaq close.

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 alleged sexual grooming of a 16-year-old girl. Until his suspension over alleged criminal underworld links, the general was part of a cabal whose agenda was to have him as the next National Commissioner of Police. He was arrested at a strip club yesterday and is set to move from the police station to prison until his bail hearing because of an alleged escape plot. Also in court today was National Commissioner Fannie Masemola, who had charges against him withdrawn. Those related to alleged knowledge of a tender. He says he is ready to return to work.

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 prosecuted for crimen injuria after branding Jaco Pieterse, the former Bergview College principal, a child rapist.” “We are primarily established for the case of selective prosecution where the NPA or the police declined to pursue certain matters because of the status of certain individuals. Often it's politicians, but often it's also wealthy people.” In another victory for the unit, it has secured another costs order compelling the NPA to cover the costs of successfully privately prosecuting a rapist. Meanwhile, AfriForum CEO has also offered private prosecution assistance to the families of the women murdered in Ekurhuleni. “The system has collapsed and women are certainly being abandoned by the criminal justice system…our doors are in fact open to any person who requires any kind of assistance within the criminal justice sphere.”

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 tender kingpin's R1.9 billion tax bill. Elections analyst Wayne Sussman then walked through where all eight of South Africa's major parties stand two months out from the local government elections, predicting a "car crash" for the ANC and a strong run for the DA in the metros. And Christo van der Rheede of the FW de Klerk Foundation made the case that Washington's new visa restrictions on South African officials are a strategic blunder that hands the ANC a political gift. Plus a Reuters update on the Bessent-He Lifeng trade talks and a record night on Wall Street.

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 Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia is asking Home Affairs to have a look at his status in South Africa as he is from an SADC country. And he will appear in court on October 1. They also give viewers an update on the murders of 9 women in Ekurhuleni where Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi told fearful residents not to get emotional; the belated sacking of suspended EMPD Chief Julius Mkhwanazi following five arrests since April; and Tembisa Hospital tender don Hangwani Maumela being hit with a R1,9 billion tax bill while still roaming free. Meanwhile, the latest crime statistics show that 72 women were reported raped every day the past two months.

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 pivot to athletes. Christo van der Rheede calls Rubio's visa restrictions a strategic blunder that hands the ANC a smokescreen. Plus Alec Hogg on sifting fake news, and a mixed Wall Street close.

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 either going to be lost or have to be sorted out by coalition”. He has good news for the DA: “I think they're well on track to being the most popular party when we tally the votes in the eight metropolitan areas after election day.” The party tipped for provincial power in KZN is former President Jacob Zuma's MKP. “I think uMkhonto weSizwe are well on track to be the largest party.” Also listen to Sussman explain why the PA's Gayton McKenzie “is very well positioned to be a winner in this election”; why ActionSA's Herman Mashaba “is going to be the kingmaker” in Johannesburg; why it is likely to be a “difficult election” for Julius Malema's EFF; why the Freedom Front Plus of Corne Mulder is “likely to grow somewhat in this election”; and why the IFP is not going into this election with the "confidence" with which it entered the previous one.

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, audit what really happened, then find a way to keep supporting the athletes without the money running through a federation under a corruption cloud. Drawing on his years running sponsorship for Coca-Cola, and on cautionary tales from West Ham United to the International Olympic Committee, Ross made the case for morality clauses South African sport still doesn't use, and for putting athletes like Tatjana Smith and Roland Schoeman on the boards that are supposed to serve them.

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 government elections. Van der Rheede also takes issue with the framing of Afrikaners by the Trump administration, arguing that associating Afrikaners only with white people is problematic. In an interview with BizNews, Van der Rheede argues that the real culprits have already been identified in the findings of the Zondo and Madlanga commissions and that Washington had a far more effective and far less divisive path available to it. He appeals to the US to reconsider its approach to South Africa if it is interested in saving the country and a society in which all enjoy the fruits of a hard-earned constitutional democracy. – Linda van Tilburg

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 again rather than retire. In this conversation with Ernst van Zyl, Hogg walked through the full history: the SABC newsroom he ran the year Nelson Mandela was released, the corporate takeover that pushed his stake in his own company down to 18 percent, the year of gardening leave that turned into a second startup, and the decision to own almost all of BizNews himself this time. He also covered what BizNews has become since 2013: a newsroom that moved from Bryanston to Hermanus, a YouTube and podcast audience of around a million people a month, and two annual conferences that now sell out within weeks of opening.

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 July deadline. Plus Wall Street rallies while the Fed hikes for the first time since 2023.

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 the ANC seems willing to simply wait out the Trump presidency, and why he believes ordinary South Africans, not the "comrades" benefiting from ANC patronage, are the ones now pushing back. He also lays out his read on the coalition scramble coming after 4 November, throws down a direct challenge to the DA over Tshwane and Johannesburg, and explains why he thinks South Africa's next real change of government could arrive well before 2029.

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 went to university, sat down with Alec Hogg to explain why the xenophobic crackdown on foreign traders barely dented the spaza sector, why Pick n Pay's QualiSave format misread who actually shops in a township, how a social grant became one woman's ten-year start-up fund, and why an entire generation of township entrepreneurs is quietly building wealth in bread, eggs, hardbody chickens and handset finance while the formal economy stalls.

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 crisis for the African National Congress (ANC) ahead of the Local Government Elections (LGEs) in November this year; the body tally of raped and murdered women in Ekurhuleni rising to 9 as Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi gives criminals a heads-up of a lockdown; the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) dropping charges against National Commissioner Fannie Masemola; and a year of sittings of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into Police and Political Capture.

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 Tehran, Moscow and Hamas made this outcome close to inevitable. Denker Capital's Kokkie Kooyman weighed in on how South African banks are quietly benefiting from the same Iran war that's rattling oil markets, even as FirstRand heads for the exit in the UK and the country drifts closer to Beijing and Moscow. AfriForum's Jacques Broodryk laid out a disturbing new report on the patterns of torture behind 47 farm attacks. And on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to fight an oil-driven inflation spike, sending stocks lower.

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 scalpel beats the sledgehammer, why AGOA is not off the table whatever the ambassador implies, and why South Africa's own record with Tehran, Moscow and Hamas made this outcome close to inevitable. He also had a hard question for South Africans weighing in on BEE and land expropriation from here: does it matter that Washington agrees with you, if agreeing with Washington is now politically radioactive.

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 three banks keep poaching each other's executives, and why a punishing war between Iran and the United States is, oddly, good news for bank profits and bad news for everyone else. He also weighed in on Washington's new visa restrictions on South African officials, what a strong DA showing in the upcoming local elections would mean for the rand, and why he thinks South Africa's own BEE rules are capping the entrepreneurial growth the country badly needs.

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 members of minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa.” In his reaction, Broodryk says: “We've been asking for direct sanctions against these political leaders for quite some time now, publicly and as well as in discussions with the US…we hope that the work that we've been doing has had some kind of an impact on the steps that the US has now taken. Because this is what we've been asking for, for international pressure so that the South African government can stop dismissing minorities' complaints and concerns the way that they have been doing for the last 30 years.” Broodryk also unpacks a new AfriForum report – focused on 47 separate violent farm attacks - that reveals a recurring pattern of torture. He says AfriForum will now continue to expand and strengthen its 178 neighbourhood and farm watches and invest in volunteer training as well as the expansion of its specialised response capabilities, technology, and communication networks.

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 card, or a child studying in America could be caught up in it too. Within hours, US Ambassador Brent Bozell was on X calling it "only the first step in a series of escalatory measures." Alec Hogg traced the arc from Trump's February 2025 executive order through the Oval Office ambush, where a 2020 roadside memorial became "over a thousand" burial sites on camera, to this week's announcement, and laid out what it actually changes for anyone with capital, a career, or a conscience invested in South Africa.

Action Society's Juanita du Preez tells BizNews six bodies in Kempton Park finally forced a multidisciplinary task team, years after the Gaby Ndaba case stalled on DNA backlogs, while the station tops the country for kidnappings with 76 in three months. DA eThekwini mayoral candidate Haniff Hoosen says the ANC is finished in the city and rates his chances against MK at 50/50. Leon Kluge recounts how Cape storms nearly sank South Africa's Chelsea Flower Show display. Plus Amodei, Altman and Musk's AI slowdown call, and a Wall Street selloff as the Senate blocks Trump's crypto bill.

Leon Kluge pulled off a hat-trick no South African had managed before: three straight gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show, the world's most prestigious garden show. But this year's win very nearly didn't happen. Storms and flooding tore through the Western Cape days before the harvest, cutting farmers off from the airport and leaving Kluge with no backup plan and no government funding to fall back on if the flowers didn't land in time. He sat down with Alec Hogg at the Chelsea Flowers exhibition in Stanford to explain why fynbos, the smallest and strangest of the world's floral kingdoms, cannot survive without fire, why a single protea sells for twenty-five pounds in the London flower market, and what a plant that farms its own assassin bugs reveals about survival in the wild.

Haniff Hoosen made the trip from Durban to BizNews's Hermanus studio with a blunt message: the ANC is finished in eThekwini, and what replaces it could be worse. The DA's mayoral candidate walked through how a metro that once out-drew Cape Town for tourists now loses 65% of its water to 13,000 active leaks, why he believes MK is running a placeholder candidate to make way for a scandal-tainted former mayor, and why he isn't arguing with The Economist's description of South Africa drifting into a "mafia state." He also put a number on his own chances in November: five out of ten, a coin flip between the DA and a party he says is already broke.

In this BizNews interview, Chris Steyn and Juanita du Preez, the national spokesperson for Action Society, talk about the killing spree of a suspected serial rapist (or group of rapists) in Ekurhuleni. By yesterday (Monday), five bodies had been found, four in Kempton Park, one in Olifantsfontein, and this morning (Tuesday), another one in Kwa-Thema. Four of the bodies were found in Kempton Park where the police station has a 0.4% success rate in solving crimes. Kempton Park is also the kidnapping capital of South Africa with 67 reported kidnappings between April and June this year (2026). Among the victims identified so far is Elizabeth Tsontso Moselakgomo, who disappeared while out running. Many women reported missing are still unaccounted for as Ekurhuleni sits on thousands of cold cases. SAPS has now dispatched specialist investigators, but Du Preez fumes: “Now that the bodies are piling up, now all of a sudden we get a multi-disciplinary task team investigating. Why now? Why must we have six bodies for things to start moving around? We are in a national disaster for GBV if I'm not mistaken.”

Nineteen times out of twenty, the man Cape Town's police catch red-handed with an illegal gun walks free. JP Smith explains why, and why he's taking national government to court over it. Intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman lays out something most South Africans haven't clocked: 14 active Bitcoin wallets linked to Hamas, offices operating in the open, and Islamic State using our own organised crime networks as a door into the country. Then, at the close of BNC#9, David Shapiro and Piet Viljoen make the case for staying, both with their money and their outlook: undervalued JSE stocks paying investors handsomely just to hold on, and a reminder that South Africans, whatever else is going wrong, are still hopeful, resilient and friendly to strangers. And on Wall Street, an AI-fuelled selloff runs straight into a Federal Reserve decision this week.

JP Smith has spent years being told his city is one of the world's most violent. He didn't dispute it. He explained why. Nearly every gun his officers pulled off the street came back to bite them: nineteen times out of twenty, the man caught red-handed walked free, because Cape Town cannot investigate its own arrests. That fight over investigative powers, now heading to court against national government, ran alongside almost everything else that landed on his desk this fortnight: a pet bylaw row that briefly convinced half the city it was about to be taxed for owning a cat, a cabinet minister repeating a gangster's phone call on camera, a R3 billion construction site with a 28s gang boss's family on the books, and a straight answer to the question everyone keeps asking him: would he help Helen Zille fix Johannesburg. Alec Hogg sat down with the MMC for safety and security to get all of it on the record.

Retired senior advocate Chris Marnewick spent six years on the Pistorius trial record and tells Alec Hogg the conviction should have been culpable homicide, not murder, blaming social media groupthink for a "big lie" of gender-based violence. Analyst Jasmine Opperman reveals 14 active bitcoin wallets in South Africa channelling funds to Hamas. Financial Mail's Rob Rose unpacks how the Competition Commission wrongly named salesman Bryan Brownrigg in its rand-rigging case, wrecking a decade of his life. TymeBank's Coenraad Jonker says AI will enable bankers, not replace them, and Sakeliga's Piet le Roux takes employment equity quotas towards international courts.

In this week's NdB Sunday Show, intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman of Fulcrum Analytics, reveals to Chris Steyn that there are 14 active cryptocurrency wallets linked to Hamas in South Africa. “We know that Hamas has offices in South Africa. We know that they allowed freedom to move…And that there are definite financial streams going to Hamas, going to Hezbollah.” Opperman also shares the latest information on the South African recently kidnapped by ISIS in Mozambique, and further describes how ISIS-trained operatives take part in criminal operations in South Africa. “...the door for ISIS in South Africa is organised crime.” As for why the South African government would allow terrorist organisations to operate here, Opperman says: “...our government is ideologically blinded by the history of support they gained…it is as if the South African government is confusing their past with foreign policy.” Meanwhile, Opperman warns that US President Donald Trump has made a “fatal mistake” and that “we have entered fast and furious radicalisation…my concern is that the next generation of violent extremists, violent terrorists has already been generated.”

At the close of BNC#9, Alec Hogg sat down with David Shapiro and Piet Viljoen to unpack the conference. Viljoen made the numbers case for South Africa: bar the two big banks, every stock in his portfolio trades at a discount of thirty percent or more to what he thinks it is worth, and the market is effectively paying investors fifteen percent a year just to stay put. Shapiro made the human case, and the uncomfortable one, running through what three days without power does to a family in Johannesburg, and why he still believes America out-competes an ageing Europe on sheer will to win.

Piet le Roux runs the organisation that has taken on the South African state more than any other business group this year, and he came to BNC#9 to explain why. Sakeliga beat the government on foot and mouth disease vaccines, international airline licensing and estate agents' BEE certificates in 2026 alone, and it wasn't finished. In this Q&A with Piet Viljoen, le Roux traced Sakeliga's strategy back four hundred years to a merchant alliance most people have never heard of, explained why the organisation deliberately avoids chasing individual officials into court, and previewed an AI system built to read every government gazette so his team doesn't have to. He also took audience questions on a minister's response to Sakeliga's court wins, on personal accountability, and on what a self-funded, twenty-person team can realistically take on next: the Reserve Bank.

Bryan Brownrigg was never a currency trader. He sold foreign exchange to Standard Bank's institutional clients for 23 years. But when the Competition Commission decided that 28 banks had run a single conspiracy to rig the rand, his name went into the complaint anyway, and it took a decade and a Constitutional Court ruling to get it out again. Financial Mail editor Rob Rose told Alec Hogg how one wrong assumption metastasised into a case that dragged banks, courts and taxpayers through ten years of litigation, and why Brownrigg is only one entry on a longer list. A tribunal sat on a merger decision for six years and then gave a reason for the delay that turned out not to be true. A R14 billion Vodacom fibre deal collapsed. A black-owned retailer was blocked from selling its own business. Rose's argument is blunt: South Africa's competition watchdogs have stopped policing competition, and started doing something else.

In this interview with Irakli Rekhviashvili, Tyme Group co-founder Coenraad Jonker gives his take on what actually protects a digital bank once the competition catches up, and why he thinks the old rules of banking no longer apply. On competitive advantage, he says: "I'm saying to my guys increasingly, I don't think there is a moat. I liken it to the time when people lived in walled cities with trenches dug around them. And then airplanes arrived, and people could fly over cities, and those walls became totally irrelevant." On why so many banks still fail to serve the poor profitably, he states: "It's not the customer that's the problem, it's the banks that's the problem." Jonker, whose group counts Brazil's Nubank among its backers, also puts a number on the group's New York listing ambitions, revealing: "I think it's more likely we'll be ready in 2030 than in 2028." He traces it all back to Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital, which he read during his MBA at GIBS in 2001. "I read the book in 2001 when I was busy with my MBA at GIBS... it lit a fire. It sort of started me thinking completely differently about the challenges of financial inclusion and financial exclusion."

For six years, retired senior advocate Chris Marnewick worked through the 3,000 page record of the Oscar Pistorius trial, line by line, against the judgments that decided his fate. His conclusion, set out in a new book, is that the Supreme Court of Appeal got it wrong: Pistorius should have been convicted of culpable homicide, not murder. Marnewick argued that the cross-examination crossed lines an American or Canadian court would not have allowed, and that the picture the public built from social media, of an hour-long argument ending in a killing, was never supported by what was actually heard in court. He spoke to Alec Hogg about the witness who pointed in the wrong direction, the three words that changed Pistorius's sentence on a second appeal, and why he says the public became a victim of what he calls the big lie.