Author: Bloomberg
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Uber’s Durban-based African partner says EV demand turbocharged by Iran
Forget the green pitch, it’s the Iran war doing the selling. Fuel price shocks are pushing Uber drivers in Johannesburg onto electric cars, with Durban-based fleet manager Valternative expanding its 360-car pilot fast and eyeing seven more African countries. But the South African reality bites hard: freezing winter mornings with no heater, hours lost queuing…
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FT: Kenya’s sacred Mrima Hill sits on a rare-earth fortune the US, China and Australia all want
Seven mining consortiums, American, Chinese and Australian, are now shortlisted to dig into Mrima Hill, a sacred kaya on Kenya’s coast holding a $62bn stash of niobium, neodymium and radioactive thorium. For the Digo people who’ve guarded the site for generations, it’s not a resource, it’s their Tree of Souls. The stakes stretch well beyond…
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Roelf Meyer can’t stop the US refugee exodus – and shouldn’t waste his time trying: Corrigan
Ambassador Roelf Meyer wants Trump’s refugee order for Afrikaners revoked, and says as much on radio. Terence Corrigan argues he’s chasing the wrong target: the order is a symptom, not the disease. The real rupture is South Africa’s foreign policy, its expropriation law, its ICJ case against Israel, its warming ties with Iran and Russia,…
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WSM: Remembering Bill (RW) Johnson
This article was first published by PoliticsWeb He predicted ANC decline when the rest of the world was still cheering the Rainbow Nation, and it cost him his place in South African journalism for years. William Saunderson-Meyer looks back on a 40-year friendship with RW Johnson, the Durban-born, Oxford-trained political scientist who died this week…
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Saudi Arabia’s oil escape route is closing fast. Plan B won’t be cheap nor easy: Javier Blas
The Houthis have made good on threats to blockade the Red Sea, and Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a workaround to its workaround, leaning on old pipelines and secretive Israeli infrastructure to keep 5 million barrels a day moving. Oil is already back above $100 a barrel, a number that lands directly on South African…
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BN Daybreak: SA-Israel tension; Nvidia-OpenAI deal; US tariffs; Fed rate outlook; Energy Risks
Listen here In today’s BizNews Daybreak, we explore global market pressures, starting with new US Section 301 tariffs affecting South Africa and 60 other economies. Former Israeli adviser Mark Regev discusses strained Pretoria-Israel relations and ICJ genocide charges. Furthermore, we preview upcoming central bank rate decisions, Nvidia’s potential $250B OpenAI data center deal, tech mega-cap…
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Why not just invest in South Africa
By Charize Beukes* It’s one of the questions I hear most often, and a fair one: why invest offshore when you live in South Africa, earn in rands, and understand the local companies well? I’ll admit it, the JSE has served investors well recently. Over the past 10 years it has returned close to 12%…
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The NdB Sunday Show – Mark Regev: Israel and SA, Israel and the US, and the end game of the Iran War
In the latest NdB Sunday Show, Chris Steyn spoke to Mark Regev, the former senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On the bilateral relationship between South Africa and Israel, he says: “… it’s clear we’re going through a difficult period. South Africa says it wants to promote peace and justice in the Middle…
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The Economist: The rise of the deserving rich
New data compiled by The Economist across roughly 7,000 billionaires over 25 years shows a striking shift: for the first time, half of all billionaire wealth now comes from competitive, self-made ventures rather than “uncompetitive” sectors like mining, construction, gambling and inheritance. Post-Soviet oligarchs and property tycoons have lost ground, while founders in tech, finance,…
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Does safari tourism stress out wildlife? A dung study on a Gauteng reserve has an answer
Researchers spent a year at Somabula Nature Reserve in Gauteng, testing over 500 dung samples from impala, zebra, wildebeest and giraffe to see whether tourist traffic raises stress hormones. The answer: mostly no – three of the four species barely noticed visitors, with breeding cycles and dry-season food scarcity driving stress far more than game…
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Roelf Meyer will prioritise mending SA’s ties with Trump
Roelf Meyer – the veteran negotiator who helped architect South Africa’s 1994 transition – took up his post as ambassador to Washington this week, replacing Ebrahim Rasool, who was expelled last year. His top priority: getting Trump to revoke the February 2025 executive order that cut US aid to Pretoria over the (disputed) “white genocide”…
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Rooftop solar boom pushes South Africa toward a new energy era
South Africans have quietly built the equivalent of another Medupi or Kusile on their own rooftops – rooftop solar capacity reached 9,107.4MW by June 2026, up 35% year-on-year, driven by falling battery prices and Eskom’s above-inflation tariffs rather than load-shedding this time. The flip side is Eskom’s “death spiral”: as paying customers self-generate, its shrinking…
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US banking giant drops its bet on the Rand after SARB’s no change on rates
South Africa’s Reserve Bank stunned markets on Thursday, holding the repo rate at 7% in a split 4-2 vote – defying 17 of 20 economists polled, who had expected a hike after inflation jumped to 5% in June. The rand promptly weakened against both the euro and the dollar, its worst session since March. Below,…
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Yale Econ Prof Goldberg on BizNews: US switching off magnetic attraction for world’s talent
Yale economist Pinelopi Goldberg – a former World Bank chief economist – argues that Washington’s new student-visa rule marks a quiet retreat from America’s defining promise as a land of opportunity. From 15 September 2026, F-1 and J visa holders will be admitted for a fixed term capped at four years, replacing the open-ended “duration…
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Mag 7 sees worst day since tariff selloff as $797bn wiped off Big Tech amid AI spending fears
The AI trade that’s driven markets for three years just hit a wall. Alphabet and Tesla’s earnings spooked investors already jittery about ballooning capex commitments, and Wall Street answered with its worst Big Tech selloff since April 2025’s tariff shock. Add an escalating Iran conflict pushing oil higher, and you’ve got what one fund manager…
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The rise of ‘Me-conomics’ and why solo diners are winning: Howard Chua-Eoan
Solo dining in the US is up 23% in a year, and it’s not a fringe trend. From Japan’s ohitorisama culture to hot pot chains building solo booths, businesses worldwide are re-engineering around people who eat, travel and spend alone, a shift South Africa’s own rising single-person household numbers suggest isn’t going away either. Bloomberg’s…
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Matisonn: How the Arrest of Gen. Khumalo triggered Mkhwanazi’s July 6 bombshell claims
Before General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s explosive July 6 media conference alleging syndicate infiltration at the top of the police, there was the arrest of Crime Intelligence chief General Dumisani Khumalo. John Matisonn traces the chain, from a murdered whistle-blower and a disbanded task team to Police Minister Senzo Mchunu’s fateful decisions, and asks whether IDAC head…
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PIC saga: Masondo walks, but the real fight is only starting
Deputy Finance Minister David Masondo has resigned as PIC Chairperson, but Alec Hogg argues this is a strategic exit, not a clean one. With the CEO and acting CIO suspended, the FSCA investigating, directors resigning and a court date looming this week, Masondo used his final act to flag unresolved allegations rather than let them…
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Tesla’s worst day in a year hands short sellers a $4.3bn payday
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle giant just handed short sellers their biggest one-day windfall in months. Tesla shares cratered 14.5% on Thursday after a second-quarter earnings miss reignited doubts about the company’s costly AI and robotics ambitions, a stock many South African retail investors hold through EasyEquities and offshore ETF exposure. Bears are now sitting on…
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Amazon Leo will beat Starlink within a year, says Herotel CEO
Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha is betting big on Amazon Leo, the satellite broadband service launching in South Africa via Herotel from 2027. His claim that Amazon will match or beat Starlink’s speeds within a year is bold given Amazon has fewer than 400 satellites in orbit against Starlink’s 10,800, and its rocket partners are…