Podcasts from the Edge
Peter Bruce, veteran South African newspaper editor and commentator, interviews the country's social and political leaders and experts in a weekly effort to explain what is actually going on in this complicated country. Bruce's interviews are about making events easy to understand for people with little time to listen.
Episodes
Death of the Post Office (Part 1)
Listen in as banker, financier, entrepreneur and former Post Office CEO Mark Barnes tells Peter Bruce the story of his appointment as CEO of the South African Post Office in 2016, its recovery from constant State bail-outs and and his sudden exit in mid-2019 when President Cyril Ramaphosa, without warning, spun out the Post Bank and, with it, the SAPOs future as a viable business. In Part 1 Barnes
Cyril, a plodder by day and a cowboy in the dark?
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Why Helen Zille is unlikely to become Johannesburg’s mayor
Business Day parliamentary reporter Tara Roos tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that, while DA leader Helen Zille may secure the most votes in Johannesburg in the upcoming local government elections, she is unlikely to become mayor. Roos, whose new book Where To From Here unpacks South Africa’s political landscape in the wake of the 2024 elections, argues that Zille won’t
How the vanities of small differences trap Africa
Africa’s populations are exploding. By 2050 one in 10 children born in the world will be Nigerian. Right now 29 of the world’s top national fertility rates are African. But Africans need to find new power and position in the world. Widely-respected South African business leader Phuthuma Nhleko has just published a book, The Invisible People, to make the case for a new Pan-Africanism and tells Pete
Cyril picks a number, any number…
President Cyril Ramaphosa will tell delegates at the Sixth South African Investment Conference this Tuesday morning that he plans to raise R2 trillion in news fixed investment over the next three years. Or five years, depending on which articles you read on the Presidency website. Peter Bruce argues in this Podcast from the Edge monologue that Ramaphosa deliberately sets himself soft targets ,he k
Can we really make money out of our police stations?
The government is planning something quite audacious and it isn’t a high speed train from Tshwane to Durban. Instead it wants to create, out of the often dishevelled mass of land and property it owns through the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure, a national property company worth some R155bn … and it’ll be open to, indeed it’ll depend on, private investment. DPWI minister Dean Macphers
“You have to get your hand on the steering wheel of state”
Incoming DA leader Geordin Hill Lewis says that to grow the party it is going to need the votes of people who have never voted for it before. DA members can do the math, he says. But is he comfortable that those new voters are going to have to be black? “Let me just say, specifically to all black South Africans” he tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, “that we are deeply in
Stuck in the 80s, has the ANC found the perfect adversary in Donald Trump?
Songezo Zibi, leader of Rise Mzansi and chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in Parliament, tells Peter Bruce in this wide-ranging edition of Podcasts from the Edge that the ANC and US President Donald Trump might have been made for each other. "I never expected the kind of disruption that we see from Donald Trump,” he says, "and this is an ANC problem (because) the ANC doesn't perce
Steenhuisen is just following the vaccine rules
Agriculture author and expert Wandile Sihlobo tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that Agriculture mMinister John Steenhuisen has not option but to import foot and mouth vaccines through a centralised operation, despite the threats from many farmers to challenge him in court to fight for the right to do the vaccinations themselves. “We can't now produce any vaccines,” he s
If Ramaphosa caused the navy exercise fiasco, will anyone tell us?
If the past is any guide then some middle-ranking official of officer is going to take the fall for the cock-up at sea last week when an Iranian corvette took part in exercises off of False Bay with the South African, Chinese and Russian navies after President Cyril Ramaphosa, very late in the day, issued instructions (exactly what he said and whether or not he wrote it down we still don’t know) t
Why Imports don’t explain our decline
One of the best industrial minds in South Africa, XA Global Trade Advisors MD Donald Mackay, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that using import tariffs to protect local industry is a losing strategy. “ We assume that the reason our manufacturing sector more broadly struggles to compete is that we assume that an import tariff will fix it whereas the reason we struggle to
Amateur hour in South African diplomacy?
Former DA leader Tony Leon tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that South Africa is taking a chance in there way it is confronting US President Donald Trump’s decisions to boycott the recent G20 Summit in Johannesburg and his subsequent announcement that he would not permit SA to participate in the G20 under his chairmanship in 2026. Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola calling T
Fantastic Summit, but sadly no consensus
Peter Bruce argues, in this Podcasts from the Edge monologue, that while the G20 Summit in Johannesburg at the weekend went well, and that the West gathered around to support President Cyril Ramaphosa, he was unable to secure unanimous consensus on the Leaders’ Declaration he cleverly introduced at the beginning, rather than at the close, of the gathering. Whatever the gloss, the absence of the US
So, are we turning the economic corner or still getting to the corner?
Amid a flurry of upbeat economic news — a good mini-budget, a stronger rand, escape from the Grey List, the JSE on steroids and progress, on paper at least, on reform of South Africa’s moribund rail and ports system — Anne Bernstein, head of the Centre for Development and Enterprise tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that “I’m the first to welcome good news (but) we need t
Renewal? Seriously? How does the ANC cook with rotten eggs?
Veteran ANC leader Mathews Phosa, a former ANC Treasurer-general and Mpumalanga premier, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that he doesn’t take talk of renewal in the ANC seriously. It’s spin, he says. "The election of 2024 showed that (the ANC) has died from 57% to 40%. If you think that was bad, as we stand now it is going to go down to 26% unless something traumatic ha
Can the State step on the gas?
South Africa is taking a huge bet on a new fuel source for electricity — liquid natural gas (LNG). Electricity Minister Kghosientsho Ramokgopa has said we will target using LNG for 6 00MW of powerby 2030 but there almost no infrastructure to import it and no plant to make electricity from it. The government will gazette its 2025 Integrated Resource Plan in a matter of days. In this edition of Podc
Why Paul Mashatile should never be president
Deputy President Paul Mashatile is a flawed individual who should probably not be president, journalist and author Pieter Du Toit tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. Du Toit in his new book on Mashatile, The Dark Prince, lays out the complex web of personal and financial relationships that keep Cyril Ramaphosa’s probable successor that are now “so intertwined that his life
Time now to reopen our embassy in Tel Aviv?
US President Donald Trump’s flash coup in bringing fighting in Gaza to end end on Monday, along with the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, may still be on shaky ground but it’s a good moment for South Africa to grab and to reopen its embassy in Tel Aviv, which we shuttered a few years ago without ever breaking actual diplomatic relations. Now, Freedom Front Plus leader Corne Mulder tells P
Can Cyril get a US trade deal over the line?
President Cyril Ramaphosa goes to the US in the next few weeks to address the United Nations General Assembly. But will his trade negotiators currently in Washington have made enough progress by then to allow Ramaphosa to fly from New York to Washington to sign a trade deal that significantly reduces the crippling 30% tariffs US President Donald Trump has imposed on imports from South Africa? Form
Jumping Jack Flash just wants gas gas gas
“I do not see imported liquified natural gas as a long-term solution for South Africa or even a base power solution. I see it as a, as a peaking and a balancing solution,” energy analysts Chris Yelland tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. But gas is all the rage. Minerals minister Gwede Mantashe wants to spend a fortune building new infrastructure and South Africa has built
People, we’re tired
South African researcher, author and analyst Prof Richard Calland tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge “ are fatigued by a weak government, by extremely precarious socioeconomic conditions and by a sense of going backwards of not making progress. But it's easy to criticise our president. It's easy to say he's not ruthless enough, not decisive enough, not strategic enough but
Shooting the Messenger
The DA’s spokesperson on foreign affairs, Emma Powell, found herself at the wrong end of a powerful assault by the State last week after she notified the country that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Special Envoy to the US (and, subsequently, to North America), Mcebisi Jonas, had done little or no work trying to heal our battered relationship with the Donald Trump White House in the 90 plus days since
When a Trillion Rand might not be enough
President Cyril Ramaphosa said recently the State would spend more than a trillion rand over the next three years on building and repairing infrastructure. It sounds like a lot but it’s slightly more than just R300bn a year. Is that it? Public Works Minister Dean MacPherson tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge the R1trn is just what the State has at the ready to spend with p
"The Americans Really Want to Trade With Us"
As US President Donald Trump sends final notice to the South African government that he will impose a 30% tariff on its exports to the US on August 1, an Afrikaner delegation to the US, fronted by Freedom Front Plus leader Corne Mulder, has returned with a short list of points it says were given to them by senior White House officials when they met last week. "They really want to trade with us,” M
Why Enoch and the Treasury are fair game
There’ve been voices raised around the failure, twice, of finance minister Enoch Godongwana to pass a 2025 budget through parliament, each time trying in vain to slip in a VAT increase to cover for the ANCs inability to grow the economy. We should not, the argument goes, be flinging mud at an institution so central to our democracy, actually mentioned in the Constitution, whatever the politics may
Is Helen Zille bad for the DA brand?
Former DA leader Tony Leon, in his new book, Being There, says DA Federal Executive chair and former party leader Helen Zille may have many positive qualities but that “I doubt the party brand is enhanced by her continued presence at the top of the organisation”. Peter Bruce asks him in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge whether he still believes that and whether he thinks the DA is right to f
"Putin stole too much..."
“Over 20 years,” writer, investor and campaigner Bill Browder tells Peter Bruce in this Special Edition of Podcasts from the Edge, “Vladimir Putin and his friends have stolen a trillion dollars from Russia.” He has to distract his people or they’d lynch him and It’s why he can’t stop his invasion of Ukraine. Russia today, Browder says, is a much more totalitarian state than apartheid South Africa
What Business Wants from a GNU
Business for South Africa chairman Martin Kingston tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that business would prefer the current Government of National Unity to stick together despite the current crisis over the DA’s decision not to support the budget. Business is deeply involved in Operation Vulindlela, the reform process inside the Presidency but, says Kingston, they’re not
Steel yourself...
South Africa’s steel industry is in the crosshairs once again, and once again for all the wrong reasons. Itac, the department of trade, industry and competition’s trade regulator, has been instructed by minister Parks Tau to conduct arguably the widest tariff review in its history, of imported steel. This as Arcelor Mittal SA (AMSA), the country’s only integrated steelmaker, is being rescued by th
The deal Cyril has to do with Donald
Joel Pollak, probably the next US ambassador to South Africa, tells Peter Bruce in this revealing edition of Podcasts from the Edge, that President Cyril Ramaphosa and his senior officials got it hopelessly wrong when they responded to US President Donald Trump’s attacks on South Africa with personal criticism of him. ”When Trump commented on South Africa,” says Pollak, “you don’t accuse him of mi
Don’t do it
If he were a young Afrikaner, former Gauging Premier Mbhazima Shilowa tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, he wouldn’t take up Donald Trump’s offer of refuge in the US, expropriation act or not. For a start, “as a young Afrikaner I would be educated enough to be able to read between the lines. Trump is offering refugee status; in reality if you look at the laws and the exec
They’re mature, we’re premature…
Industrial strategy consultant Jake Morris enters the hot topic of industrial policy and tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that localisation has its place in industrial growth strategies and shouldn’t be automatically written off as many of its critics do. But they are only a part of many bigger and older success stories. “We have no choice but to follow a manufacturing-l
Trump takes the GNU back to the brink
In the space of a week DA leader John Steenhuisen has moved from threatening legal action against the Expropriation Act signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa to defending the Act following US President Donald Trump’s astonishing attack on the country. Can Steenhuisen survive his flip-flop? Can the GNU survive the obvious neglect of the DA’s interests and red lines. Former DA leader tell Pet
Cyril’s in his happy place
Believe it or not, veteran political editor and Business Day Editor-at-Large Natasha Marrian tells Peter Bruce in tis edition of Podcasts from the Edge, President Cyril Ramaphosa is enjoying an all-too-rare personal and political purple patch right now and has found his happy place. Pushing through first the Bela Bill and now the new Expropriation Bill has done wonders for his position inside the
Maintenance, it was always maintenance…
Jamie Holley, CEO of Traxion, Africa’s largest private rail and rail services company, tell Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that the company is dead keen to participate in the long-promised concessioning of rail routes owned by Transnet to the private sector and now that Transport Minister has released an almost complete Network Statement the final preparations for the award
The right kind of bloodlust
Rise Mzansi leader and SCOPA chairperson in parliament, Songezo Zibi tells Peter Bruce in this first edition of the Podcasts from the Edge of 2025 that with the turn of Donald Trump to the White House and the removal of constraints from social media platforms like X (Twitter) and, now Facebook, he fears for where South Africans might go to look for the truth. Right now, he says, the truth can be w
"We need leadership and discipline"
Eskom Chairman Mteto Nyati tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that South African’s crisis is about a lack of leadership. It was there at the start…. Like the rest of us he worries about the country but reckons our problems can be solved with discipline and application. Even in the most broken-down schools students are getting great grades where they have excellent headmast
So What?
So Donald Trump becomes President. Former DA leader and GNU co-architect Tony Leon tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that while the Trump White House may indeed smile benignly on South Africa it is highly unlikely. We have built an arc of Trumps biggest targets — we’re “misaligned”. We are close to Iran and close to China. We have attacked Israel, which Trump has sworn to
It's OK to be a little scared
Celebrated South African trade and industry specialist Donald MacKay tells Peter Bruce in this Edition of Podcasts from the Edge that he thinks Donald Trump is going to win the November 5 US presidential election and that the result could spell trouble for South Africa. If Trump declares war on imports into the US, our problem isn’t Agoa, which in reality affects only R2bn a year of SA exports to
Home Truths
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that digitising our the entire chain of documentation between the state and us citizens, and for inbound travelers, “is completely doable” despite the weaknesses of the state-owned IT agency, Sita. He says officials are working overtime and even at weekends to clear visa application backlogs and he wan
Pots and pots of money
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean McPherson tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that are are “pots and pots of money” available to finance the right infrastructure projects in South Africa. And the National Treasury sits on a nominal R950bn for infrastructure. The trick though is to get something actually done. Infrastructure is complicated and expensive but McP
Cyril's first GNU reshuffle loading?
Reports that Justice Minister Thembi Simelani took what she calls loans worth R575 600 from a financial advisor who paid her out of commissions he had earned as part of the looting of the VBS bank should be enough for President Cyril Ramaphosa to require her immediate resignation. That the payments to the minister were made -- to buy a Sandton coffee shop -- are not contested. She insists they wer
The DA is never wrong, Peter
Rise Mzansi leader and former Business Day editor Songezo Zibi says the Government of National Unity has seven months to get the country out of the woods. And he tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that the DA is simply incapable of understanding why its competitors behave the way they do. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about o
Why on earth gas?
Combative and passionate South African investor and industrialist Vuslat Bayoglu and Peter Bruce cross swords over the virtues of coal and renewable energy in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge but both agree than plans in the latest Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) to build a new 3 000MW gas-fired power station are plain mad. Why pay dollars to import gas when you can buy South African coal in
SA has the right stuff
Jorge Heine, arguably Chile's most illustrious modern diplomat, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that South Africa has no choice but to follow an Active Non-Alignment path in its diplomacy as the US and China square up to one another. Heine has been ambassador to South Africa, India and China for Chile, Latin America's most prosperous country. The world has already enter
Is there an adult in the room?
The world is closer to war than it has been for decades. As the US and China square up to each other, any of the flashpoints in the Middle East, Ukraine, Taiwan and the South China Sea could erupt at any time. All it would take is one rash act. World War 1 began with a Bosnian separatist, Gavrilo Princip, shooting and killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in 1914. It turned out
Matters of Fact
Technology is dramatically speeding up change. The first meeting this week of the Cabinet of President Cyril Ramaphosa's new coalition Cabinet must quickly come to grips with the ferocity of the revolution rushing towards South Africa. In all probability they will ignore it. But as futurist Neil Jacobsohn tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, we. are already behind the curve
Orchestrating Manoeuvres in the dark
Former DA leader Tony Leon has emerged mightily relieved to get his life back after two weeks spent in the political cauldron he left behind more than a decade ago. He tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that DA ministers in President Cyril Ramaphosa's are not going to be hogtied and will be able to make their presence felt. Though dominant, the ANC nevertheless has "n
And What Rough Beast Next?
Former Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has harsh words for the Independent Electoral Commission and praise for ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa and ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula following last week’s tumultuous election results. As he heads off to join the DA’s post-election negotiating team he tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that the Constitution wasn’t designed
If you're going to create winners where do the losers go?
Trade specialist and CEO of XA Global Trade Advisory Donald MacKay is unimpressed with the good press trade, industry and competition minister Ebrahim Patel has been getting (and giving himself) lately. At his lyrical best in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge he tells Peter Bruce that far from kick starting a re-industrialisation of SA, Patel's industry master plans have created a subsidised
For Crying Out Loud, Calm Down
The sun will rise after the May 29 election, an ANC/EFF coalition is highly unlikely and there are real signs that some of President Cyril Ramaphosa's reforms are beginning to find traction, economist and analyst Peter Attard Montalto tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts From the Edge. A big problem on both sides of the election though is the continuing failure of industrial policy to eve
Finally, white smoke from the DA’s policy chimney
They have an economic policy at last!! After years of chiding and goading the official opposition, in his newspaper columns, to produce an economic policy it has one at last, thanks to new policy chief Mat Cuthbert, Peter Bruce was so shocked he forgot to look at the time in this special edition of Podcasts from the Edge. It’s pro market rather than pro-business, says Cuthbert, but they’ll cut the
The Power of One Tough Zulu
In 2020 young Mbali Ntuli took on the might of the Democratic Alliance establishment and ran for the leadership of the party against John Steenhuisen. Not unexpectedly, she lost and not long afterwards branched out on her own — not, like many of the black leaders who left the DA after the last general election, to start her own party or to join another one but to start her own civil society organi
South Africa is a black country now
The ANC will win the forthcoming elections, the DA will come second and the EFF third, former ANC exile intelligence leader Oyama Mabandla tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. “Even if the ANC misfires,” he says, “there is still no alternative to it. In South Africa black people vote for black parties.” Mabandla came home to a business career that has seen him make deputy C
Is that column doric or iconic?
Peter Bruce talks about being a columnist in this latest edition of Podcasts from the Edge. He approves of the notion that while columnists are nominally journalists they are driven by their own opinions and a powerful drive to grab the attention of their audience. Citing London Times columnist Matthew Parr’s he describes writing a column for a living as “striking poses which will only convince ot
When business stops trying
Most of the import tariffs protecting South African companies in their home market have been in place for more than 20 years, trade expert Donald Mackay tells Peter Bruce in this episode of Podcasts from the Edge. That implies that in two decades the protected companies still have not become competitive enough to stand on their own two feet. It is given the trade instruments in the hands of trade,
Time to step on the gas?
On July 1 2026, just more than 28 months from now, a vast swathe of South African industry — from manufacturers of car windscreens, beer bottles, industrial powders and even bakeries — will grind to a sudden stop unless the government rapidly intervenes to encourage the construction in Mozambique of a new liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal. Jaco Human, CEO of the Industrial Gas Users Association
Why the ANC might be happy polling 40% — it's not even trying yet.
Opinion polls giving the ANC just 45% of the vote ahead of the coming general election are “good for the ANC”, veteran political writer and keen observer Sam Mkokeli tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. Just wait until the ruling party’s election machine gets going. At 45% percent (or 40% 0r 48% depending on the poll) given its performance in government the only way forward
Gwede Mantashe’s quiet race to build a gas-fired rival to Eskom
Largely hidden by the desperate public discourse over the future of Eskom and electricity in South Africa, Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe has been patiently building not only a case for supplanting coal with another fossil-fuel, LNG, but has now begun to lay down plans and actual tenders for an entire new cast powered infrastructure. It is all still a bit disjointed but in prospect is
And now for something all too familiar
Peter Bruce talks to trade and industry expert Donald MacKay in this first edition of Podcasts from the Edge for 2024. Why are our grand master plans failing? Because we’re trying to pick winners, says Mackay, and where you make winners in a market economy, there’ll also be losers. Steelmaker Arcelor Mittal, just two years ago the centre-piece of ANC government’s promised new re-industrialisation
What the hell is going on?
As former First Rand Chair Roger Jardine launches his new political party-cum-movement, Change Starts Now, quite how this is converted into him making a run for the Presidency in next year’s general election, as his funders hope, is about as clear as mud. Tony Leon, former Democratic Alliance leader, tells Peter Bruce in this entertaining final 2023 edition of Podcasts from the Edge that while he
A Rubicon for Big Business
Can big business really parachute its own candidate into the coming 2024 election and get him elected president? That’s the ambition, it seems, behind a bid to find a political home for Roger Jardine as revealed in the Sunday Times last Sunday. There’s up to a billion rand to back a new horse but is the circle of possible funder being too picky? “Business needs to cross its own Rubicon,” Freedom F
Time to Rise?
Rise Mzansi is the new kid on South Africa’s heaving political block. Its founder and leader, former Bus9ness Day editor Songezo Zibi, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that the new party is “onboarding” 20 people a week — they’re not members but people promising electoral support. If he keeps that up until an election between mid-May and mid-August next year he could col
Perhaps not quite the perfect match
The Springboks won an almost impossible rugby test match on Sunday, beating Rugby World Cup hosts France in what many commentators have called the greatest game of rugby ever played. But as Peter Bruce warns in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, there is a dark side to winning that cannot safely be ignored. As tempers flare and as war and death spreads in the Middle East following the Hamas a
High, dry and very lucky
A gigantic flood smashed through the village of Stanford in the Western Cape last week, leaving Podcasts from the Edge presenter Peter Bruce in awe of the silent power of water. Fortunately no-one lost their life but there were some close calls. Its hard, and probably foolish to apportion blame for the rain but, he argues, management of the Klein River and possibly others in the province needs att
Execrable English or Cunning Code?
The General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill is an attempt to rewrite what South Africa’s national interest it. On a first read it turn out to be almost exactly the government interests as well. So opposing government policy, advocating for it to fail or funding legal challenges to literally anything the government wants to do could have to running into trouble with the intelligence agencies. It i
Cyril Ramaphosa's sweet dreams
President Cyril Ramaphosa told the country on television on Sunday night that the recent Brics summit in Johannesburg was all about creating “a fairer and more inclusive world order”. New World Orders are the stuff the Russian and Chinese leaders dream about. To hear them slip so easily from a potential new vassals lips must be satisfying. No more work involved! But Peter Bruce argues in this edit
Honeyed tongues and hearts of gall
The Brics summit in Johannesburg last week has left a simmering argument among South Africans in its wake. Was it a good thing or bad. Who have we become involved with and does it even matter? For some the Brics summit represented an historic turning point but most proponents of that view are too young to have witnessed a turning point before so how do they know? What is clear is that the original
When will BRICS actually do something?
The Brics summit in Johannesburg this week is a giant talk shop. Go back to the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement in the late 1950s and you’ll find much of today’s grand talk about a New World Order lying, word for word, under decades of dust. So why should things be different now? It is hard to find anything concrete, or even interesting, in any of the rhetoric in the lead-up to the summit. T
Did the moon just get shot?
Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen has pulled off something of a coup by getting author, commentator and scholar William Gumede to chair his Moonshot Pact gathering of opposition party leaders in Johannesburg next week. Well done him, says Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from The Edge. People, including Bruce, were sceptical when the idea to launch a multiparty coalition-type effo
Business tries one more time
This time, business is not trying to fix, like, everything. This time it is just trying to fix three things. It is sort of a lesson learned in trying to tie up with government, but will greater focus — a new business partnership focusses only on electricity, logistics and crime — mean better, or any, outcomes? That remains to be seen, says Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, bec
Eskom’s Energy Availability bias
Eskom’s Energy Availability Factor a week ago was 56.3%, a long way from where Eskom and the government keep telling it is or jolly well should be. The cold plays havoc with good intentions and the result seems to be a spiralling diesel bill. Who is paying it?, asks Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. The bigger question is this: The democratic state bounced back from a deep apa
Say it out loud
For the past 10 years Nicola Harris has built up, under the radar, a stunningly successful NGO helping children in poor township schools transition from mother-tongue tuition to English. Using easily adapted computer software her NGO, Click Learning maintains some 18 000 tablets in 296 schools nationwide. In this edition of Podcasts from the Edge she tells Peter Bruce she aims to expand the number
Complain and campaign
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s complaining press conference on Sunday about how much harder his job is than any other ANC head of state has Peter Bruce struggling to contain his despair. Sure, State Capture, but he was inside it. Yes, Covid was a surprise but nowhere near as big a surprise as Ramaphosa’s rough-hewed handling of it. The shock of the rioting two years ago this week was all the greater
Cyril’s subtle shuffle shuttle
Either he doesn’t know what an economic mess we are in or he does and is hiding it really well, but President Cyril Ramaphosa has a spring in his step at the moment. It must be all the flying he has been doing in that 20 years old Boeing 737 Thabo Mbeki ordered way back. Warsaw, Kyiv and St Petersburg, back to meet the prime ministers of Denmark and the Netherlands and then back off to France for
Oh for a peace of the action
It is not only too early to tell whether or not President Cyril Ramaphosa’s peace mission was a success or not, there may be a case for not even trying to tell. He made a few points, his staff sadly made more than they should have and, all in all, a not very good time was had by all. Ramaphosa is surrounded by mediocre people, all chosen by his good self, so he is almost constantly badly advised,
Another Brief Encounter
How long will the new “partnership” between the Government and business last? Once the election next May is past, will the government still need it? Right now business is helping lower load shedding and promises to get trains running and the judicial authorities working again. But these partnerships come and go depending on the pressure the State is under. In this Edition of Podcasts from the Edge
The DA bowls me over
A New Democratic Alliance policy document, possibly out this week, threatens to do the impossible and to make the party interesting as a place of progressive ideas again. Given the state the country is in, not a moment too soon. For years the official opposition has been selling “good management” as its chief political weapon but with the arrival of a new policy chief, Mat Cuthbert, come signs tha
South Africa has a skills problem
South Africans are outraged to find themselves last in a prestigious survey of how well our fourth graders can read for meaning. And they should be angry. But the lack of education may not be, as so many people insist it is, the reason we cannot grow the economy. The reason we can’t grow is that we don’t have sufficient skills or we have discarded too early the people that do. In this episode of P
Crimea river
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s peace mission to Russia and what the intelligence ministry in his office calls “the” Ukraine next month is headed for the rocks almost before it sets sail. It will make the Russians look good (that’s probably the intent) and the Ukranians couldn’t very well be seen saying No to a whole peace team from Africa. So a game will briefly be played. There’ll be pictures of tal
