Author: Alec Hogg
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BN Daybreak: Trevor Manuel on SOE corruption; Trump’s fresh strikes on Iran; SA’s police DNA backlog
Listen here In today’s BizNews Daybreak: Trevor Manuel delivers a scathing account of how South Africa lost SAA and Eskom, while the IRR’s John Endres warns that trying to wait out the Trump administration could cost the country billions in investment. We also unpacks the first monthly drop in US consumer prices since 2020 under…
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BizNews Edge: How an “unlawful” Pretoria factory churned out fake weight-loss jabs for years
Listen here South Africa’s weight loss jab boom has a dark underside. A Pretoria pharmacy, iDexis, was producing roughly 84,500 units of semaglutide a month — more than Novo Nordisk’s entire local sales of Ozempic and Wegovy — under the guise of a one-off “compounding” exemption meant for individual patients. Regulators only inspected the premises…
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Trevor Manuel delivers blunt diagnosis to NDR: SAA “was stolen,” Eskom destroyed by greed
Trevor Manuel ran South Africa’s finances for thirteen years under Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, delivering genuine budget surpluses rather than the interest-adjusted kind. That record gives weight to what he told a mostly ANC audience at last week’s NDR and Economic Strategy seminar: South African Airways “wasn’t privatised, it was stolen,” and Eskom, once…
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Ian Cameron: “Strategic” top cop corruption & shock DNA backlog
Listen here In this wide-ranging interview with Chris Steyn, Ian Cameron, the Chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police, details the shocking DNA testing backlog. “…this is literally how a child rapist, a child murderer, any murderer or rapist for that matter walks free. This is literally the way that the State, the inability of…
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Ivo Vegter: From London to Pretoria, governments are assembling the machinery of media control
From the UK’s “trustworthy news” green paper to the EU’s private-message scanning and Washington’s equity stakes in AI firms, Ivo Vegter tracks a global drift toward state control of information, justified everywhere as protection from misinformation. South Africa is no exception: the Films and Publications Board, an apartheid-era institutional descendant, already vets online content, while…
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Vanguard’s Davis on BizNews: Who gains in an AI-charged economy?
Vanguard’s global chief economist Joseph H. Davis argues AI will deliver a bigger economic shift than markets expect, but that the winners won’t be the hyperscalers and chipmakers currently commanding valuations. Davis draws on history (electricity, the automobile, the internet) to argue value accrues to users, not builders, of transformative technology. For South African investors…
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Matisonn: The Leon “scandal” has it backwards. SA needs more business lobbying, not less.
The DA’s internal row over John Steenhuisen’s criticism of Tony Leon and Resolve Communications has reignited claims of “state capture” – including over Elon Musk’s Starlink, whose local rollout remains tangled in South Africa’s ownership laws. Veteran journalist John Matisonn argues the real scandal isn’t that ministers meet business people, but that they don’t listen…
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Another strike against NHI (and NOT emigrating): UK maternity deaths rising and worsening
Britain’s NHS is grappling with rising maternal mortality, missed 2025 safety targets and stark racial disparities in birth outcomes, despite far higher healthcare spending than South Africa. A damning review led by Valerie Amos found staff shortages, toxic hospital cultures and cover-ups after harm, while critics say it dodged tougher scrutiny of regulators. For South…
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The Economist: What separates a good question from a bad one
The Economist’s Bartleby column unpacks the research on what makes a question effective. From “boomerasking” (asking just to talk about yourself) to the “curveball” questions that move share prices on earnings calls, The Economist explores all. For South African boardrooms and investor briefings, where tough, consistent questioning is often the difference between real oversight and…
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BN Daybreak: Iran war oil surge; Apple sues OpenAI; Endres on SA’s fixed investment woes
Listen here In today’s BizNews Daybreak we cover the escalating US-Iran conflict and its impact on soaring crude oil prices. In South Africa, Dr. John Endres critiques low fixed investment rates, SARU faces backlash over overpriced Springbok tickets, and over 53,000 undocumented foreign nationals are successfully repatriated. Finally, Apple hits OpenAI with a massive trade-secrets…
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Director’s Cut – John Endres: Why SA’s growth story still isn’t landing — and what would change that
In this Director’s Cut of BizNews editor Alec Hogg’s conversation with IRR CEO John Endres, the full, unedited exchange goes well beyond BEE and the diaspora. Endres unpacks why R1.8 trillion in corporate reserves and R1.5 trillion parked offshore still isn’t flowing home, why Washington’s frustration with Pretoria is bipartisan and deepening, and why Treasury’s…
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Over 53,000 foreign nationals sent home as Musina processing centre eases migration crunch
A month after President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled a five-point migration plan, South Africa’s deportation drive has shifted from policy to large-scale execution. More than 53,000 foreign nationals have been processed for deportation or voluntary repatriation, with Malawians making up the vast majority. The speed of the Musina processing centre’s construction, and the heavy reliance on…
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BizNews Edge: Why the IRR’s John Endres is more bullish on SA than Britain
Listen here John Endres, CEO of the Institute for Race Relations, tells BizNews that the elite consensus defending BEE is cracking, even as its beneficiaries defend it loudest. He points to the Starlink saga – blocked partly over empowerment shareholding while a pricier, slower rival wins state favour – as proof the policy is running…
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A decade after Oilgate, SANPC gets the keys to South Africa’s fuel reserves
In 2016, BizNews broke news that the government had quietly sold off South Africa’s entire 10 million-barrel strategic oil stockpile at a steep discount, with no public tender. An anonymous industry insider sat down with us at the time and detailed how the deal – involving Glencore, Vitol and Taleveras, and rock-bottom storage fees –…
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Tim O’Reilly: Elon Musk is building a brand of capitalism Adam Smith would hate
Elon Musk, born in Pretoria and long associated with his South African roots, has built an empire that inverts the very system meant to restrain it. In this essay for The Economist, Irish-born American author, publisher and entrepreneur Tim O’Reilly argues that Musk’s SpaceX listing gave him roughly 85% of voting power while stripping investors…
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BN Daybreak: US Strikes on Iran; Teen mall bomb plot; Springbok ticket anger hit SA
Listen here As fresh American strikes on Iran trigger sirens in Bahrain, global traders are left asking whether the world’s most vital oil chokepoint is still open for business. Congressman Greg Stanton warns of surging fuel prices and a war with no clear endgame, new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh heads to Capitol Hill to face…
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How diversified is your portfolio actually?
By Lloyd Uren* When investors sit down with us to review their portfolios, one word comes up more than any other: diversification. They point to a global fund here, a local equity tracker there, and feel reassured that their money is spread across different markets and asset classes. That reassurance is understandable. In many cases,…
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Third force claims in the anti-immigrant protests: Conspiracy theory or calculated propaganda?
When cabinet ministers Mamoloko Kubayi and Ronald Lamola suggested Israel and allied states were behind South Africa’s anti-immigrant protests, they revived a familiar tactic: deflection. Political scientist Kenneth Moeng Kgwadi traces a pattern stretching from Mbeki’s economic policies to the 2008 xenophobic violence, the Zuma-era scandals and Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala controversy – moments where the…
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Mailbox: Could SAPS’ secure radio rollout hold more untold secrets?
Hello Alec, As the Madlanga Commission continues my memory is activated. This is in relation to a business associate of mine who originally worked for Motorola SA, where I met him and worked for him worked for a while. When Motorola disinvested in the mid 80’s I started my own company both in SA and…
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Doli incapax no more? The Ballito mall bomb and SA’s case for rethinking child justice
The Economist’s article republished below asks who counts as capable of evil, tracking a global trend of lawmakers lowering the age of criminal responsibility in response to shocking child-perpetrated crimes. South Africa has its own case in point: a radicalised 15-year-old planted a viable bomb in a packed Ballito mall food court, glorifying Columbine on…