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A week before Sygnia shareholders vote on an expanded share incentive scheme, Magda Wierzycka was not playing defence. Responding to a Financial Mail report that cast the plan as an enrichment scheme, she told Alec Hogg it was about holding on to a long-serving executive team and being able to hire a CFO, or a successor CEO, at today's market rates. Then she went further. With 30 days' notice and no restraint of trade, she said a weak vote would leave her asking whether she still wants to work for other shareholders, at a time when she believes stakes in private giants like Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX can make her more than Sygnia has in 20 years. She also said the dispute with former partner Andre Crawford-Brunt was settled, previewed a fund giving South African investors access to those companies, and warned that every division at Sygnia would have to be rebuilt for the AI era.

South African rally driver Max Smart won Africa’s place in the FIA Rally Star Programme, where he raced for three years, and went on to the Junior World Rally Championship. Now competing in Spain, he leads the Spanish Gravel Rally Championship for PCR Sport by a single point going into the final round in Granada. In an interview with BizNews, Smart talks about winning a stage on ice in Sweden having never seen snow, and how he has come up with a way to finance the R600,000 a rally cost of competing, which includes his 20 Club sponsorship programme and learning the skills of a mechanic in his team’s workshop. And where did it all start? With a video game, and a momager who helps him keep it going. As a young driver going it alone, he is still building the partnerships that will keep his Ford Fiesta Rally2, “an absolute monster” of a car, on the road. - Linda van Tilburg

Wicknell Chivayo handed out Rolls-Royces, posed with piles of cash and bought a R160 million home in Clifton. Then, days after Open Secrets asked the Hawks to investigate how R800 million from a Zimbabwean election contract landed in his South African accounts, his helicopter came down outside Harare. Michael Marchant, head of investigations at Open Secrets, traced how a man with a fraud conviction and a decade of damaging headlines moved money through South African banks, estate agents and luxury car dealers, and why the presidents who praised him at his funeral may have their own reasons to keep the myth alive. He argued this was never only Zimbabwe's problem: with his estate now up for grabs and a fresh FATF review looming, the Chivayo case had become a test of whether South Africa can stop being a parking lot for the continent's dirty money.

William Saunderson-Meyer tells Alec Hogg that MK will outlast Jacob Zuma: dead or alive, Zuma has shaped South African politics, and any ANC recovery has to run through a party he expects to grow and to take control of Durban's council. Patriotic Alliance co-founder Charles Cilliers hits back after the DA's Tertuis Simmers called the PA a criminal enterprise, accusing him of insulting poor voters. Open Secrets' Michael Marchant traces how the late Wicknell Chivayo's inflated R1 billion Zimbabwean election contract pushed R800 million into South African accounts. Plus the latest from Wall Street.

Is Jacob Zuma the glue holding MK together, or has the party already outgrown him? In the first of his weekly conversations with Alec Hogg on BizNews, William Saunderson-Meyer, whose Jaundiced Eye column has run every week since 1993, said he didn't buy the common wisdom. He argued that MK had tapped a deep well of grievance against the ANC, that it stood to grow in the local elections, and that the ANC's road back to power may run through MK. He sized up Duduzane Zuma as heir apparent, compared the family's split to Romulus and Remus, and described Gayton McKenzie as a hyena of the political wilderness. Then he laid out one set of numbers he keeps coming back to, and why it should worry anyone counting on a weaker ANC.

Earlier in the week, the DA's Tertuis Simmers sat in the same BizNews studio and called the Patriotic Alliance a criminal enterprise dressed up as a party. Charles Cilliers, the PA co-founder and former newspaper editor who wrote Gayton McKenzie's life story, came back with his reply. He told Alec Hogg what he made of the vote-buying claims in George, why he believes the DA cannot lead a coalition, and his version of the Joburg deal that collapsed over a single mayoral committee post. He took on the Beaufort West fundraising questions and the "coloured nationalist" label, and explained why the PA would still hold its nose and work with a party it finds nauseating. He would not say what the PA's first demand will be if it holds the balance of power after 4 November.

The company once known as Net1 has just posted its first full-year profit and is telling the market to expect adjusted earnings to compound at more than 40% a year. Executive chairman Ali Mazanderani, who says he has helped build seven multibillion-dollar fintechs from Brazil to Europe, told Alec Hogg why he believes South Africa's big banks are structurally unable to win the township economy, and why local capital has been too cautious to back the challengers. He also set out what the pending Bank Zero deal would do to Lesaka's debt, why nine in ten South African merchants still don't take card payments, and why he accepted a pay deal that only works if the share price does.

Nelson Mandela Bay has been through nine coalitions in ten years by Retief Odendaal's count, and the DA's mayoral candidate said he would not try to run a ten-party government again. Political scientist Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana, co-author of The Zuma Effect, explained why Jacob Zuma's comeback came as no surprise to him, and why he believes MK is as chaotic as the man who founded it. Lesaka executive chairman Ali Mazanderani argued that the market was already waking up to the fintech's story, and that cash was not coming back. Reuters rounded off the show with the latest from Wall Street.

Jaco Zuma’s ambition to become president of South Africa was rooted in personal interests: to evade the law and assuage his dire financial circumstances - and his faction used chilling tools to get and keep him in power for as long as possible. So says political scientist Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana, the co-author of the “The Zuma Effect”, a five hundred-page work regarded as the definitive work on the Zuma era. In this interview with Chris Steyn, he describes what happened behind the scenes with the making of a personality cult, the remaking of the African National Congress (ANC), the disbandment of The Scorpions, the manipulation of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and other law enforcement institutions, as well as Zuma’s “intelligence project” Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhewebane. “So you have these series of undeserving people who don't expect to have these positions on their own merit. They're shocked that they're even appointed. So they spend most of their time paying back this debt to the…

Retief Odendaal ran Nelson Mandela Bay for eight and a half months before a no-confidence vote removed him in 2023. Three weeks out from the 4 November local elections, with a new poll putting the DA and ANC almost level in the metro, the DA's mayoral candidate told Alec Hogg why his party has gone to court to make mayor Babalwa Lobishe personally liable for leasing a R25m municipal transformer to a private company. He laid out how a metro with cash in the bank keeps handing infrastructure money back unspent, why he says its top management posts sit empty, and why he will not sign up for another ten-party coalition. He also explained why, despite all of it, he still calls Nelson Mandela Bay the country's most fixable metro.

Freedom Front Plus leader Corné Mulder tells BizNews the government of national unity could technically run to 2029, but Parliament can dissolve itself from May next year and a new ANC president elected in a year's time could recall Cyril Ramaphosa. Mulder also reveals the DA agreed early on to leave international relations to the ANC, and says the FF+ has declared a dispute under the GNU's deadlock-breaking mechanism over the US standoff. Plus DA Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers on the premiership, Donald MacKay on what really hollowed out manufacturing, Willem Els on the Ballito teen, and Wall Street.

A six-year-old girl was critically injured in a school stabbing this morning allegedly by a former pupil who also planted a homemade bomb at a Ballito Mall in March. Describing the attack, Willem Ells of the Institute for Security Studies and the Security Initiative for Africa, says: “He was armed with a homemade firearm as well as a kitchen knife with a six-inches long blade. And apparently he discharged the firearm and it did not function. So there could have been some more fatalities there, but then he attacked the little girl.” Els recalls a previous interview in which he spoke to Steyn about how the “Lone Wolf” teenager had “idolised the Columbine shooters in America and that he wanted to do the same in order to cement his name in history…” As for why this teenager was roaming the streets after the failed bomb attack, Els - who is also an explosives experts - charges: “I think we need to ask those questions high up and more questions should be asked because what we gathered is that the police that…

A week after an ANC committee chair floated treason and suggested stripping critics of their citizenship, Corné Mulder joked that the state had better move fast, because his tax return was due. Then he got serious. The Freedom Front Plus leader told Alec Hogg why he believed the threat had no constitutional footing, why he had moved to invoke the GNU's deadlock-breaking mechanism rather than fight it out in a cabinet he called stacked against his party, and why he thought the ANC was misreading Washington. He also told the story of a grandfather sentenced to death for a killing that never happened, set out who he would and wouldn't govern with in Tshwane, Joburg and the Western Cape, and explained why he expected the FF+ to be the good story of the 4 November vote.

The DA finished first in Ekurhuleni, the metro that once carried the ANC over the line in Gauteng, but by less than two percentage points, and with no party anywhere near a majority. Wayne Sussman took Chris Steyn through the first eNCA MarkData metro poll and explained why the East Rand mattered more than many people assumed. In Hermanus, the DA's Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers told Alec Hogg he would never govern with the Patriotic Alliance. Asked whether the DA took coloured voters for granted, he answered with job-seeker databases, housing lists and a lottery draw for public works jobs, and described the message he believed the PA was selling. Boxer chief executive Marek Masojada described what happened in his stores once grant-week money ran out, and what his shoppers had stopped putting in their trolleys. Reuters closed with oil's jump after attacks on a Saudi airport, a reminder of the fuel costs Masojada said were already squeezing South African households.

Boxer's shoppers fill their pantries in grant week and run short by mid-month. Diesel has pushed up taxi fares, rice is selling for a fifth less than a year ago, and like-for-like sales barely moved. Yet the discounter sold nearly 4% more goods, opened its 600th store and cleared its long-term bank debt. On results day, chief executive Marek Masojada told Alec Hogg what his customers are leaving on the shelf, how AI went from taking meeting minutes to the core of the business in six months, how deals with controlling shareholder Pick n Pay are kept at arm's length, and what stands between Boxer and a thousand stores. He also named the question he expected investors to press hardest.

With 23 days to go to the local government elections, the DA's Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers sat down with Alec Hogg in Hermanus and drew a hard line. He said he would never govern with Gayton McKenzie's Patriotic Alliance, and described what he said he had seen with his own eyes during the by-elections that cost the DA three wards in George. He spoke about the 2024 building collapse in George that killed 34 people, why no one has yet been charged, and the one outstanding report he said is holding up the police. Simmers set out the party's battle plan town by town, from Knysna, which he called a blueprint for poor local government, to Bitou, where the DA has twice missed an outright majority by fewer than 30 votes. He also owned up to the biggest mistake of his ministerial career, and answered the question he said follows him everywhere: does he want to be the next premier?

In this edition of the Electoral Road Show with Chris Steyn and analyst Supremo Wayne Sussman, he unpacks the polling results of the first two of six metros surveyed in the highly scientific eNCA MarkData 2026 election poll. In Ekurhuleni, the DA emerged first with 31.2% of the vote, the only party to breach that 30% mark. Second was the ANC with 29.4%. A distant third was MKP at 11.5%. The EFF came in fourth place at 9.2%. In Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA is in the lead with 37.7% of the vote just ahead of the ANC on 37.4%. Coming in third is the EFF at 8%. “The job for the DA as the leading party is how can they stretch that lead in the coming weeks. The job for the ANC is to re-emerge, try to re-emerge as the largest party in Ekurhuleni. And the other parties will be looking at these polls and saying, look, this is a golden opportunity. The ANC is not doing well. What can they extract from the ANC? There's a lot to play for, for each and every single one of the major parties over the next few weeks.” Sussman…

Intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman warns Chris Steyn that instability ahead of the local elections could expand beyond the state's capacity to control, with the military underfunded and crime intelligence unable to pay sources. David Shapiro and Alec Hogg return to the Dimension Data Campus saga, asking why Jason Goodall would sign away R350 million, and whether the remaining directors' defence that NTT's Japanese owners knew all along can hold. Alec also unpacks Africa Bitcoin Corporation, where the board has publicly opposed its own 76% shareholder bloc's push for two new directors. Plus Wall Street's Friday rally.

In this interview with Chris Steyn, Independent Intelligence Analyst Jasmine Opperman warns that an expansion of instability in South Africa in the lead-up to the Local Government Elections would likely be beyond the government's capability to control. “We have never seen the ANC in a crisis situation, political power-wise, as now. The fact of the matter is at the political level, they’re lost. If we look at their law and order, they are completely out of their depth. The military can only do so much, and once that fails, we have nothing else to fall back on.” She was speaking with the country in the grip of anti-immigration riots that have seen buildings and businesses and vehicles torched and looted with physical clashes between police and protestors. “I cannot help but think that the MK’s hand is involved in all of this…The quicker the ANC starts realising that ethnicity is a real issue and people are taking pride, the better. I just don't think that the police intelligence capability, nor national…

One of the Campus Six has cracked. Jason Goodall, former chief executive of Dimension Data and NTT, signs a statement naming four former colleagues and agrees to pay NTT R208.6 million. In a special BizNews Edge, Alec Hogg reads the private WhatsApp Goodall sent those same colleagues on the day he settled, puts the four’s detailed reply on the record, and asks why a man would pay that much to say something untrue. Paul Hoffman SC explains why the appeal court may never consider the statement at all. Alec then turns to Africa Bitcoin Corporation, formerly Altvest, where the board has publicly opposed its own controlling shareholder. And he answers the questions put to him on social media: how BizNews came to own shares in the company, why it hasn’t sold them, and the disclosure he admits he should have made.

Two days after their first take on the Dimension Data campus saga, David Shapiro and Alec Hogg came back to it with the remaining four directors' rebuttal in hand. The four said Jason Goodall's statement contradicted what he had said under oath, and that NTT's Japanese owners knew about the deal all along. Shapiro and Hogg asked how that defence squares with Goodall's account, and why a man who rose to run NTT would hand back so much money and implicate his former colleagues. Shapiro questioned what the six's claimed R70 million stake actually bought them, wondered aloud what the sixth man's silence means, and admitted he owed Jeremy Ord an apology over his account of the company's share sales two decades ago.

Political commentator Solly Moeng asks why the Madlanga Commission has heard Hangwani Maumela's name but has not called him, warning that commissions keep naming minions while the powerful are quietly protected. Paul Hoffman SC of Accountability Now unpacks Jason Goodall's bombshell confession over Dimension Data's Campus deal, saying it amounts to fraud and asking whether the criminal justice system will finally act. Afrimat CEO Andries van Heerden on the group's worst half ever, why cash generation held up, and the Lafarge lifeline. Plus Wall Street slides as an OpenAI revenue report hits chipmakers.

In this interview, Chris Steyn talks to political commentator Solly Moeng about concerns relating to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s future handling of the recommendations of the Madlanga Commission. “We have to be supremely naive to think that the president doesn't go back to the party that deployed him to the top leadership of the ANC and just look at who sits around the table in the party to say, guys, here's a report. What do we do about it? So the discussion that we should be having in South Africa is what happens when the people who must implement the recommendations of the commission's report are themselves a problem.” As for certain people still not being called or still avoiding appearances before the commission, Moeng says “It's very easy, in the current system, for the public to be thrown peanuts and we're like, yeah, yeah, things are happening. But the key honchos get away with a lot of stuff because of political management of the evidence that comes from the commissions. It cannot just give us…

Afrimat has been on the JSE for 20 years and has never had a half like this one. A strong rand and Iran-driven shipping costs battered its iron ore exports, the ferrochrome smelters that bought its anthracite went quiet, and the group swung to a headline loss. Yet a day after the trading update, Andries van Heerden was not in retreat. He told Alec Hogg how the old Lafarge quarries, mocked when Afrimat bought them, had kept the group afloat, why a new iron ore mine could change the maths before the year is out, and why he would say no more about the cement talks for fear of straying into insider information. He also faced the question every shareholder was asking: is this the bottom? His answer was more honest than comforting.

In this interview Paul Smith, the Head of Local Governance at Kagiso Trust, talks to Chris Steyn about the launch of the #StartWhereYouAre Playbook, the anchor tool of its nationwide #StartWhereYouAre active citizenship and voter education campaign leading up to the 2026 Local Government Elections. He describes how the playbook can be a tool for shifting the relationship between citizens and their government from passive acceptance to active engagement. The practical guide shows South Africans exactly how to move from wanting to participate to exactly what they can do. The playbook uses a comic-strip format with relatable characters and everyday scenarios to demonstrate the citizen action cycle: Notice → Understand → Report → Organise → Follow up.”We have to think carefully about how we sever the incestuous relationship between administration and politics. We have to break the link between those who have got to deliver and those who have to do oversight… Once we have a government in place, it's no longer…

One of the Campus Six broke ranks this week, and David Shapiro said it was only ever a matter of time. On BN Daybreak, he unpacked Jason Goodall's admission in the R1.4bn Didata property saga and asked who would carry the can now; the four executives Goodall named deny wrongdoing. Safe Citizen's Jonathan Deal argued that South Africa takes its standards from the very top. Police committee chair Ian Cameron said SAPS had spent its budget while reaching barely half its targets, and should not be handed more money. Kagiso Trust's Paul Smith set out how voters could hold councils to account after 4 November, and Piet Viljoen explained why cheap local shares could pay off even if nothing changed.

For two years, the Dimension Data executives known as the Campus Six insisted they had done nothing wrong. Now one of them has signed a statement saying otherwise. Former Didata and NTT chief executive Jason Goodall admitted to being secretly on the buying side of the R1.4bn sale of The Campus in Bryanston while advising NTT on the selling side, named four former colleagues, and agreed to pay NTT about R208m. Those he named deny wrongdoing and are awaiting an appeal ruling. David Shapiro, who went to school with the Ord brothers and has watched Didata since its 1980s heyday, told Alec Hogg why he believed someone in the group was always going to crack, where he thought the case goes now, and why the damage may reach well beyond the boardroom. Alec recalled the day Jeremy Ord gave him the hairdryer treatment.

In his latest interview with Chris Steyn, Safe Citizen Founder Jonathan Deal expresses concern that - despite the scale of revelations at the Madlanga Commission - certain people “may be protected by people at the top in terms of what they have done and how much the public will get to know about that.” He charges: “In February this year, President (Cyril) Ramaphosa said that organised crime poses the most immediate threat to our democracy. Yet, it appears to me that it is the people at the top of our country who are setting the bar on organised crime. And so when the world asks what is going on in South Africa, I don't think that the investigation should be starting in a tavern, I think it should be starting at the highest levels of government…” Deal warns: “When the people at the top are implicated in lying, stealing, cheating, murdering, and for covering for each other and protecting each other, the nation takes its lesson from that standard…People in high positions all around the world do the most…

Why is the National Sex Offenders Register still not public? Parliament's police committee chair Ian Cameron tells Chris Steyn he sees no urgency from government, and that a random sample of just ten offenders turned up 113 rape convictions, 12 murders and 67 life sentences. MOVE SA's Rali Mampeule says Johannesburg now takes seven years to approve a development, one shopping centre took 18, and wants the private sector to step in. Value investor Piet Viljoen tells Alec Hogg the delisting wave shows South Africa is bumping along the bottom. Plus Wall Street's record close.

Two big JSE companies had received buyout offers in under a month, one of them listed for 62 years, and value investor Piet Viljoen said both deals undervalued the businesses on a ten-year view. He also expected most shareholders to take the money anyway. A day after Sanlam's R505-a-share offer for the rest of Santam, and weeks after India's Solar Industries moved on Omnia, Viljoen told Alec Hogg why insiders and foreign buyers were seeing value that local investors kept missing, and what the delisting wave said about where the market sat in its cycle. He took on the Reg 28 offshore debate, BEE and the 4 November elections, and held his ground when Alec challenged him on MK, before turning to Wall Street, where he argued that a handful of AI stocks were masking real damage beneath record highs as US bond yields climbed to levels last seen in 2002.

The CEO of the South African Housing and Infrastructure Fund and President of the new political party, MOVE SA, Rali Mampeule, has joined the hotly-contested race for Mayor of the City of Johannesburg. In this interview with Chris Steyn, he expresses confidence that he can duplicate in the public sector what he has achieved in the private sector. “In the last six years, through my fund, The South African Housing and Infrastructure Fund, we have delivered more than 68,000 land housing opportunities. …Let's compare that with what the mayor of Ekurhuleni has done in the last five years. I don't think you can match that…We've delivered eleven thousand six hundred and forty jobs through the SAHIF Fund (and) through my investment in a company called MetroFibre, which I bought from Patrice Motsepe, we have connected more than 500,000 households with fast Internet... We've taken more than 100,000 kids to school through the Mampeule Foundation…So we've done it - and we think we can do it better with a better budget…

In his latest interview with Chris Steyn, Ian Cameron, the chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, reveals details of his 30-day campaign to expose convicted sexual offenders. “I've decided that if they won't make the National Register for Sex Offenders public, then we'll start releasing the names and the faces of people.” Just one of those, Nkosinathi Phakathi, was convicted of ninety counts of rape. Reacting to news that a close relative of a sacked deputy Crime Intelligence chief General Feroz Khan, was gunned down on the R21 in Boksburg last night, Cameron says: “I think something that needs to be noted from this - and a lot of the previous bloodshed that has been seen - whether allegedly targeted against someone like Khan or anyone else for that matter that has been mentioned or brought to testify at the Madlanga Commission - shows us what a deep dark pit of underworld mess this whole thing is.” As for former Police Minister Bheki Cele possibly facing criminal charges relating to his…

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 the ANC an election gift. In an interview with Biznews, the foundation's director, Coetzee Bester, said he had a very good working relationship with Van der Rheede and that the resignation came as a bit of a shock to the board. He described the split as a difference in methodology rather than policy. Bester said the foundation will not address many international positions because they are not its objective, and it does not try to create or break leaders. It focuses on reconciliation and peace globally, with a very strong stance on nuclear weapons, and on constitutional reform and maintenance at home, so that the…

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 billion in aid to Cuba. Alec Hogg explained why nine gigawatts of rooftop solar, more than three times what the state's renewables programme delivered, amounts to privatisation by stealth. The FW de Klerk Foundation's Coetzee Bester spoke about the early departure of Christo van der Rheede after his criticism of US visa restrictions, calling it a difference in methodology rather than policy. Reuters explained why Revolut, now valued at $115 billion and seeking a South African banking licence, is giving bank bosses sleepless nights, and wrapped up a record close for the Nasdaq.

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. South Africa was closed for renovations earlier this year without any public announcement, after years of neglect of the iconic building on Trafalgar Square. Lord Peter Hain has described the neglect as "frankly disturbing and shameful." Embassy staff have now returned and the work on the exterior appears to be complete, but DIRCO is not forthcoming about what is happening inside the building and when it will be finished. Smith says DIRCO has put the cost at around R170 million, more than double the DA's earlier estimate, but has not indicated what the money is for. He says the party might now ask the UK's Liberal…

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 keynote of the 19th International Business Conference at Arabella, Alec told around 300 business academics that the noise around South Africa hides a clear signal: the collapse of an ideology driven by people who were passionate but, in his words, economically ignorant. He set out five signals, from privatisation by stealth and regulators under strain to coalition politics, the collapsing cost of intelligence and a fragmenting world order, and explained why they leave him more excited about the country, not less. He closed with what Socrates, Warren Buffett and the late Bill Lynch taught him about acting when you will…

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 million of South Africa House renovations will buy. Dean Macpherson gives Alec Hogg his read on KZN's coalition maths. Plus Wall Street's rally, and Nike's slide.

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 former Sandton police station commander in relation to a photograph showing a stripper in what appears to be a police uniform. On the international relations front, Heradien explains why she thinks President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment of Roelf Meyer’s performance was a great diplomatic move, but also warns of implications for South Africa - and the president personally - from the “terror-funding” case against MTN that has now moved to the discovery phase in the US. Heradien, once a dedicated African National Congress (ANC) activist - who worked for Willie Hofmeyer - says she now finds herself in “political…

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 single councillor could decide who runs many KZN councils. Wearing his ministerial hat, he argued that the trillion rand set aside for infrastructure was not short of money but stuck in procurement, with only one in six big tenders awarded. He described how the Independent Development Trust went from an entity he considered shutting down to tripling its cash in a year, why the state was now selling land it did not need, and how he squared administering the Expropriation Act with his own party's court challenge against it.

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 silence, and Julius Malema's leave to appeal his firearm conviction. AfriForum's Barry Bateman tells Chris Steyn police keep saying GBV suspects were "circulated" while cold cases go nowhere. Plus Wall Street edges up as October Fed hike odds collapse.

“If we're going to look for angels in this stuff, we're not going to find angels. It's the LEAST of the devils, it's WHOM 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 testimony before the Madlanga Commission where taxi boss Joe Sibanyoni showed clearly that he is “used to being feared’; Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) CIC Julius Malema’s being granted leave to appeal his firearms discharge conviction and sentence as well as his belated apology to a judge; the bail application of suspended Deputy National Police Commissioner General Shadrack Sibiya who was arrested for alleged sexual offences; and disgraced MP Fadiel Adams going to the High Court to challenge the withdrawal of charges against National Commissioner General Fannie Masemola. Moeng also gives his take on the latest…

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 event that he admitted made it worse. He described years of investigations, a Consumer Commission ruling that was later overturned, and legal advice to stay silent that he now believes was wrong. Then came the comeback: an MBA in Los Angeles, a run-down warehouse in Epping, and one investor whose backing changed how the banks saw him. Alec put the question his book, It Takes a Tsunami, invites: is it a confession, or a defence? Levitt gave his answer, and told his 40-year-old self what he wished he had known.

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, AfriForum points out that “for five years now, you've got a man who raped a woman, came back a week later and tried to murder her, and he's been on the run since then. This is somebody who I would say has the potential to continue doing that…” Responding to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s GBV 60-day case audit order, Bateman says with reference to the cases they have taken on: “We've put together the list. We've given it to the police, and their response on each one is, we've circulated and it's gone to the Tracing Team. It doesn't cut it. If that's the response that the SAPS or the authorities are gonna give to the…

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 president had lied, and described what he did not find on unannounced visits to Kempton Park and Tembisa police stations. Grain farmer David Lupafya walked through the sums that separate a fundable farm from an unfundable one, and why the Land Bank's phone call weeks before planting left him on the wrong side of that line. McKenzie then put a three-week clock on the government guarantee he said South Africa's Formula One return depended on, and named the circuit he wanted first. Reuters rounded off the show from Wall Street, where a softer-than-expected inflation reading cooled bets on an October Fed rate hike and the S&P…

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…

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,…