Category: News
-
BN Daybreak – Wed 10 June 2026: US strikes Iran; SpaceX demand; Joburg budget woes; SA Competition Court backlog
Listen here In this episode of BizNews Daybreak, US forces strike Iran after a helicopter downing, SpaceX’s IPO sees massive demand, and IBM bets billions on quantum computing. In South Africa, the Competition Appeal Court slams egregious six-year delays crippling corporate deals, while Johannesburg’s bleak budget exposes critical cash shortages and severe utility infrastructure backlogs.…
-
Jemmy Button and the lost Yaghan: A tragic encounter in Tierra del Fuego
By Peter Dearlove Four young people were taken from their tribe in the remote land of Tierra del Fuego as ransom for a stolen boat in 1830, yet they were treated like celebrities and introduced to the British King and Queen in London. When they were taken home it seemed they had everything they needed…
-
Local drugmakers sound alarm: Import policies gutting SA medicine manufacturing base
Local pharmaceutical manufacturers in South Africa, represented by Pharmaceuticals Made in SA, are warning that government procurement policies are increasingly favouring imported medicines over local production. They argue that this shift, driven by large state tenders such as HIV/AIDS drugs, vaccines and solid-dose medicines, is reducing local manufacturers’ market share, threatening jobs and weakening national…
-
SA’s middle class in crosshairs—DBE moves to ban screening at Model C schools
This article was first published by The Common Sense. In a country where public education consistently ranks near the bottom of global assessments, the Department of Basic Education has chosen to target the system’s few functioning islands of excellence. As The Common Sense reports, a new parliamentary proposal would strip former Model C schools of…
-
Steenhuisen was warned—repeatedly. South Africa’s FMD disaster is his to own.
This is a damning piece of accountability journalism. South Africa’s foot-and-mouth disease crisis was not an unforeseeable catastrophe — it was a failure foretold, in letters, meetings, technical notes and court papers, by farmers, veterinarians, industry bodies and an independent economist. Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen chose the plan, centralised the plan, and defended it even…
-
Rob Hersov’s Cabinet of Extraordinary People
Rob Hersov has never been shy about what he thinks of South Africa’s political class, and this piece is vintage Hersov — provocative, pointed and packed with names, with quite a few BNC#9 speakers among them. Taking Cyril Ramaphosa’s bloated 32-portfolio Cabinet as his foil, the businessman proposes a leaner 20-ministry structure built around competence…
-
Solly Moeng: Vote out “all these mad men and women in politics”…
Listen here In his latest interview with Chris Steyn, political commentator Solly Moeng comments on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s poor handling of the immigration (and other) crisis; the mysterious social media campaign to position Freedom Front Plus Minister of Correctional Services Pieter Groenewald as a future president; questions about the R30 million “donation” to Rise Mzansi,…
-
De Ruyter vindicated: Australia leaves SA in the dark on electricity pricing
When André de Ruyter argued that Australia’s renewable energy revolution offered lessons for South Africa, critics fired back that electricity in Australia was roughly twice the price of Eskom’s. They were wrong — and the numbers have moved further against that argument since. MyBroadband’s analysis shows that a decade of above-inflation Eskom tariff hikes, 179%…
-
BN Power Lunch: Joburg’s Budget crisis, the $3tn IPO wave, and what it means for SA markets
Listen here Johannesburg’s new budget lays bare a city in financial distress: less than 10 days of cash reserves, a R220 billion infrastructure backlog, and revenue targets that ignore the fact that nearly half its water never gets billed. Alec Hogg dissects the numbers that every ratepayer and bondholder should see. Then: Jubilee Metals tries…
-
Cambridge historians see SpaceX and think East India Company — and the parallels are alarming
When SpaceX lists on the Nasdaq this week at a record $1.75 trillion valuation, investors will be pricing the world’s dominant rocket company, its vast Starlink satellite network, and Elon Musk’s bundled AI venture. But in this powerful piece from our partners at Project Syndicate, two Cambridge academics see something else entirely: the monopolistic East…
-
BN Daybreak – Tue 9 June 2026: OpenAI and SpaceX IPOs; Israel-Iran truce; PPC profits; FIFA tourism struggles
Listen here In today’s Daybreak episode, OpenAI files for a fall IPO and SpaceX’s oversubscribed listing targets a $1.8 trillion valuation. Meanwhile, Israel and Iran ease strikes after Trump’s intervention. Locally, a new AGOA proposal allows South African firms to opt out of BEE to avoid US tariffs, PPC’s 84% profit surge triggers stock volatility,…
-
The loudest room in South African finance: JSE floor traders reunite 30 years after the screen took over
Listen here In June 1996, the JSE’s open-outcry trading floor fell silent forever. Thirty years on, Irakli speaks to Bernie Montgomery — clerk-turned-broker — who recalls the chaos, camaraderie, and colourful lunches that defined an era before the screen took over.
-
BizNews Power Lunch: Markets don’t reward good results — they reward surprises
Listen here Omnia and Sygnia deliver standout half-year numbers and shareholders cheer. PPC posts 84% profit growth and the stock drops 3.5%. Alec Hogg unpacks three SENS announcements that tell you everything about how markets actually work — and why beating expectations matters more than beating last year.
-
Kenneth Rogoff on BizNews: AI gold rush has winners and losers — Africa not in the running
Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economist and former IMF chief economist, has seen enough financial booms and busts to know who gets left behind. Writing from San Francisco — where AI billboards jostle for space and engineers contemplate retirement at 35 — he turns his gaze outward. The AI revolution, he argues, is not just widening inequality…
-
Hartford: The struggle generation that built non-racial SA — and the movement that betrayed it
A quiet commemoration at Wits University last month marked the life of Fink Haysom — lawyer, activist, constitution-builder, and one of the great non-racial voices of the 1980s democratic struggle. Opened by President Ramaphosa, the event was as much a eulogy for a lost political era as it was for the man himself. The values…
-
Bregret now UK’s majority view — so why won’t anyone call another Brexit referendum?
Ten years ago, 52% of Britons voted to leave the European Union, changing the course of history. Today, that same share wants back in. A new Ipsos poll of British adults finds that public opinion on Brexit has effectively inverted — with only 33% now saying the UK should stay out. Nearly half of Britons…
-
Is the AI arms race about to outrun human judgment? The Economist thinks so
When Anthropic — whose Claude chatbot has become indispensable to coders worldwide — files for what could be one of history’s biggest IPOs later this year, it will do so after calling for a global slowdown in AI development. Cynical? Perhaps. But its co-founder, Jack Clark, puts the odds at 60% that by 2028, an…
-
Riots, evacuations and trade threats: How South Africa’s migrant crisis went regional
South Africa is at a familiar and dangerous crossroads. Anti-immigrant sentiment — at its highest since 2008, when 60 people died and 50,000 were displaced in xenophobic attacks — has exploded into street protests, with activists demanding all undocumented foreigners leave by June 30. President Ramaphosa responded with a televised address promising deportations, border controls…
-
Storms, no cover, no comeback: Why SA agriculture is sitting on a ticking time bomb
South Africa’s farmers are on the frontline of a worsening climate crisis — and most are dangerously exposed. A string of devastating storms has exposed a gaping hole in agricultural risk coverage, with many farmers, particularly smaller and emerging ones, carrying little or no insurance. The losses are mounting, the recovery times lengthening, and food…
-
BN Daybreak – Mon 8 June 2026: Oil rises; R2bn hospital scandal; AGOA off-ramp proposal; Apple AI
Listen here This morning’s Daybreak covers global market movements as oil ticks up amid Middle East tensions and tech shares slump globally. Meanwhile, Apple prepares to unveil its overhauled Siri and new AI features at WWDC. Locally, Lauren Evanthia addresses a massive R2 billion South African hospital scandal, Tara Roos breaks down Johannesburg’s R200 billion…