Author: Chris Steyn
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Cops fight crime in private vehicles as their “role models” are arrested: Richard Chelin, Willem Els
Listen here In their latest interview with Chris Steyn, Willem Els of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and Richard Chelin, an independent governance expert, share details of the war on drugs and crime in South Africa. Describing the struggle of dedicated detectives, Els reveals “for the past three months at one of the units…
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BizNews Edge: R3.5tn pension fund manager PIC in crisis as FSCA launches Section 135 probe
Listen here The PIC’s governance crisis has reached the regulator. Hours after suspending CEO Patrick Dlamini and acting CIO August Uys, the board now faces a formal FSCA Section 135 investigation into governance, leadership and transparency at the R3.5 trillion asset manager. DA federal finance chairperson Dr Mark Burke tells Alec Hogg why this is…
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Nouriel Roubini on BizNews: Gulf tensions simmer, but oil shocks aren’t what they were in the 1970s
Nouriel Roubini argues that even as tensions over the Strait of Hormuz simmer unresolved, oil shocks have lost their power to derail economies the way they did in the 1970s. Strategic reserves, energy efficiency gains, OPEC discipline breakdowns and the AI investment boom have all blunted the impact, he writes. For South Africa, a net…
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Matisonn: Zille’s blue bakkie brigade hits Joburg streets while ANC hasn’t even found its candidate
Two DA campaign fronts collided this week. In Tshwane, mayoral candidate Cilliers Brink launched an urgent court bid accusing council speaker Mncedi Ndzwanana of manipulating a vote to suspend city manager Johann Mettler while letting CFO Gareth Mnisi off on serious misconduct charges, by disqualifying 13 councillors’ votes after the fact. Mnisi already faces scrutiny…
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Uber’s R240bn Delivery Hero swoop is good news for Prosus
Uber’s $14.8bn (R240bn) all-cash takeover of Germany’s Delivery Hero, announced this morning, is the latest and largest deal in a wave of consolidation reshaping the food delivery industry after its pandemic-era overexpansion. It carries a direct South African angle: Prosus, majority-owned by Naspers and the JSE’s largest constituent alongside its parent, holds just under 17%…
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What SA’s own finfluencers reveal about our financial sins
The Economist’s survey of celebrity financial gurus skips an instructive case: South Africa. We have no single Ramsey or Lewis — instead a swarm of forex and crypto “finfluencers” promising outsized returns, the same appetite for quick money that fed multi-billion-rand collapses like Mirror Trading International and Africrypt. Genuine voices like Magnus Heystek preach equities…
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SpaceX shares briefly dip below IPO price as AI hype cools, one month after record listing
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose founder still holds South African citizenship, has seen its stock slide below its $135 IPO price barely a month after a record $86 billion listing, its fourth straight day of losses. Analysts say investors are growing wary of how much of SpaceX’s valuation rests on its xAI ambitions rather than near-term…
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Godongwana to review PIC CEO Dlamini’s suspension after board briefing
South Africa’s $219 billion (about R3.6 trillion) Public Investment Corp, custodian of government workers’ pensions, has suspended CEO Patrick Dlamini pending a probe into governance allegations, deepening a leadership crisis that’s seen a revolving door of executives. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana says the government wasn’t involved in the board’s call, but he and Deputy Minister…
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BN Daybreak: PIC executive exodus; South Africa House shut in London; US interest rate hikes
Listen here In today’s BizNews Daybreak, US-Iran tensions steady oil and Korean tech stocks slide. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh defends his personal trading, while South Africa’s PIC faces a deepening executive exodus. We also unpack more on the DA’s Tony Leon lobbying scandal, the temporary closure of London’s SA House, and a blunt warning from…
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Solly Moeng: Revenge politics & criminal vengeance – Leon, Steenhuisen, Hill-Lewis, Johnson, Mashazi, Malema
Listen here In his latest chat with Chris Steyn, political commentator Solly Moeng dissects the widening scandal around Tony Leon’s lobbying amid former Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen’s mission of vengeance and the damaging fall-out for the party. “…what is very clear is that the DA is no longer just walking on still waters…Geordin…
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Director’s Cut – Ryan Smith: Dirco neglect, not a planned upgrade, behind South Africa House closure
South Africa House, the country’s historic diplomatic landmark in London’s Trafalgar Square, has closed for major renovations, sparking fierce political debate. The DA accuses DIRCO of years of neglect, poor maintenance and a lack of transparency, while government insists the closure is temporary and planned. Ryan Smith argues the controversy exposes wider failures across South…
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BizNews Edge: How South Africa House fell into disrepair on Dirco’s watch
Listen here South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, a fixture of SA’s diplomatic presence in London since 1933, has closed its doors, with the DA’s Ryan Smith blaming decades of Dirco neglect and Dirco insisting it’s a planned upgrade. Alec Hogg unpacks the row, plus three stories reshaping money and power: the PIC’s suspension of…
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Dr Duarte da Silva: Wits Basin isn’t just Gold galore — it’s got a lot of valuable Uranium too
The latest report in Dr Duarte da Silva’s Gold Papers series says the Witwatersrand is one of the world’s great uranium provinces hiding in plain sight. An estimated 600,000 tonnes of uranium sit on surface in the region’s gold tailings, a by-product discarded for decades while prices were too low to justify recovery. With uranium…
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Webinar: Final opportunity to invest in the Jaltech Income Opportunities Fund before it closes
The Jaltech Income Opportunities Fund (“Jaltech IOF”) is approaching its final close, with only R20 million of investment capacity remaining. As one of BizNews’ longstanding investment partners, Jaltech has already welcomed a number of members of the BizNews tribe into the fund. For those who have not yet had the opportunity to invest, this webinar…
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An open letter to SARU President Mark Alexander: Fix ticketing before NZ tests in September, not after
SA Rugby says its ticketing review will fix things, just not until 2027. This is conveniently after the Boks’ biggest paydays of the year, the New Zealand tests in September. BizNews tribe members and staunch rugby fans Rory Steyn and David Coutts-Trotter have crunched the numbers, and the “cost recovery” story doesn’t quite hold up…
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TCS editors: How to tell when you’re being fed a narrative by the media
This article was first published by The Common Sense Using the SARS “rogue unit” saga as its case study, The Common Sense’s editorial board sets out six ways to protect yourself from information operations — coordinated efforts to distort public perception and justify action against a target. The advice: don’t be naïve about institutional corruption, ask…
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Katzenellenbogen: The Leon lobbying furore is a storm in a teacup
Ousted agriculture minister John Steenhuisen has accused former DA leader Tony Leon and his firm, Resolve Communications, of engineering his sacking over the foot-and-mouth disease response, dubbing agricultural lobbyists “AfriMaga.” Daily Friend columnist Jonathan Katzenellenbogen argues the real driver was DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis’s political calculation, not Leon’s influence, and that lobbying (including Resolve’s work…
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Nigel Farage and Prince Harry share a common enemy: the free press
Writing for Bloomberg Opinion, Martin Ivens draws an unlikely parallel between Nigel Farage and Prince Harry, both of whom blame “the Establishment” or the press for troubles of their own making. Farage faces scrutiny over undisclosed donations and links to a convicted fraudster, while Harry lost a costly privacy lawsuit against the Daily Mail’s publisher.…
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When blue-chip IBM starts behaving like a penny stock, something is wrong with the market: Robert Burgess
IBM has swung wildly in 2026: its steepest one-day fall since 2000 in February, its biggest rally since 1968 in May, a record high in June, and now its worst one-day drop since 1968 after missing second-quarter sales forecasts. Bloomberg Opinion executive editor Robert Burgess argues this volatility reflects a market increasingly driven by speculation…
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The conspiracy theories that turned out to be true
By C.B. Stephenson What is the appropriate thing to say to a conspiracy theorist? Sorry I ever doubted you? You ever feel like the tinfoil-hat crowd is just the early-adopter programme for tomorrow’s history books? Turns out the difference between “crazy conspiracy theorist” and “prescient whistle-blower” is usually about fifteen years and a declassification stamp.…