BizNews Radio

Epizody

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  Leon Kluge: The botanist turning South Africa's flowers into gold 15.09.2026 42min

  Leon Kluge pulled off a hat-trick no South African had managed before: three straight gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show, the world's most prestigious garden show. But this year's win very nearly didn't happen. Storms and flooding tore through the Western Cape days before the harvest, cutting farmers off from the airport and leaving Kluge with no backup plan and no government funding to fall back on if the flowers didn't land in time. He sat down with Alec Hogg at the Chelsea Flowers exhibition in Stanford to explain why fynbos, the smallest and strangest of the world's floral kingdoms, cannot survive without fire, why a single protea sells for twenty-five pounds in the London flower market, and what a plant that farms its own assassin bugs reveals about survival in the wild.
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  With the ANC finished, eThekwini's mayoral contest comes down to the DA and MK 15.09.2026 38min

  Haniff Hoosen made the trip from Durban to BizNews's Hermanus studio with a blunt message: the ANC is finished in eThekwini, and what replaces it could be worse. The DA's mayoral candidate walked through how a metro that once out-drew Cape Town for tourists now loses 65% of its water to 13,000 active leaks, why he believes MK is running a placeholder candidate to make way for a scandal-tainted former mayor, and why he isn't arguing with The Economist's description of South Africa drifting into a "mafia state." He also put a number on his own chances in November: five out of ten, a coin flip between the DA and a party he says is already broke.
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  6 bodies found: Killing spree of “serial” rapist… 15.09.2026 15min

  In this BizNews interview, Chris Steyn and Juanita du Preez, the national spokesperson for Action Society, talk about the killing spree of a suspected serial rapist (or group of rapists) in Ekurhuleni. By yesterday (Monday), five bodies had been found, four in Kempton Park, one in Olifantsfontein, and this morning (Tuesday), another one in Kwa-Thema. Four of the bodies were found in Kempton Park where the police station has a 0.4% success rate in solving crimes. Kempton Park is also the kidnapping capital of South Africa with 67 reported kidnappings between April and June this year (2026). Among the victims identified so far is Elizabeth Tsontso Moselakgomo, who disappeared while out running. Many women reported missing are still unaccounted for as Ekurhuleni sits on thousands of cold cases. SAPS has now dispatched specialist investigators, but Du Preez fumes: “Now that the bodies are piling up, now all of a sudden we get a multi-disciplinary task team investigating. Why now? Why must we have six bodies for things to start moving around? We are in a national disaster for GBV if I'm not mistaken.”
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  BN Daybreak: Cape Town's conviction crisis, terrorists on SA soil, AI stock wobble, BNC#9 wrap 15.09.2026 15min

  Nineteen times out of twenty, the man Cape Town's police catch red-handed with an illegal gun walks free. JP Smith explains why, and why he's taking national government to court over it. Intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman lays out something most South Africans haven't clocked: 14 active Bitcoin wallets linked to Hamas, offices operating in the open, and Islamic State using our own organised crime networks as a door into the country. Then, at the close of BNC#9, David Shapiro and Piet Viljoen make the case for staying, both with their money and their outlook: undervalued JSE stocks paying investors handsomely just to hold on, and a reminder that South Africans, whatever else is going wrong, are still hopeful, resilient and friendly to strangers. And on Wall Street, an AI-fuelled selloff runs straight into a Federal Reserve decision this week.
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  Cape Town's crimefighter, JP Smith, on the court battle that could reshape SA policing 14.09.2026 56min

  JP Smith has spent years being told his city is one of the world's most violent. He didn't dispute it. He explained why. Nearly every gun his officers pulled off the street came back to bite them: nineteen times out of twenty, the man caught red-handed walked free, because Cape Town cannot investigate its own arrests. That fight over investigative powers, now heading to court against national government, ran alongside almost everything else that landed on his desk this fortnight: a pet bylaw row that briefly convinced half the city it was about to be taxed for owning a cat, a cabinet minister repeating a gangster's phone call on camera, a R3 billion construction site with a 28s gang boss's family on the books, and a straight answer to the question everyone keeps asking him: would he help Helen Zille fix Johannesburg. Alec Hogg sat down with the MMC for safety and security to get all of it on the record.
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  BN Daybreak: Pistorius 'big lie'; Hamas crypto wallets; Comp Com overreach; EE quotas; Wall St up 14.09.2026 15min

  Retired senior advocate Chris Marnewick spent six years on the Pistorius trial record and tells Alec Hogg the conviction should have been culpable homicide, not murder, blaming social media groupthink for a "big lie" of gender-based violence. Analyst Jasmine Opperman reveals 14 active bitcoin wallets in South Africa channelling funds to Hamas. Financial Mail's Rob Rose unpacks how the Competition Commission wrongly named salesman Bryan Brownrigg in its rand-rigging case, wrecking a decade of his life. TymeBank's Coenraad Jonker says AI will enable bankers, not replace them, and Sakeliga's Piet le Roux takes employment equity quotas towards international courts.
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  Jasmine Opperman: Hamas-SA: 14 Bitcoin wallets 13.09.2026 18min

  In this week’s NdB Sunday Show, intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman of Fulcrum Analytics, reveals to Chris Steyn that there are 14 active cryptocurrency wallets linked to Hamas in South Africa. “We know that Hamas has offices in South Africa. We know that they allowed freedom to move…And that there are definite financial streams going to Hamas, going to Hezbollah.” Opperman also shares the latest information on the South African recently kidnapped by ISIS in Mozambique, and further describes how ISIS-trained operatives take part in criminal operations in South Africa. “...the door for ISIS in South Africa is organised crime.” As for why the South African government would allow terrorist organisations to operate here, Opperman says: “...our government is ideologically blinded by the history of support they gained…it is as if the South African government is confusing their past with foreign policy.” Meanwhile, Opperman warns that US President Donald Trump has made a “fatal mistake” and that “we have entered fast and furious radicalisation…my concern is that the next generation of violent extremists, violent terrorists has already been generated.”
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  BNC#9 | Wrap-up panel: Joburg, Zuma, AI, JSE v S&P, gold, small caps, and conference highlights 11.09.2026 32min

  At the close of BNC#9, Alec Hogg sat down with David Shapiro and Piet Viljoen to unpack the conference. Viljoen made the numbers case for South Africa: bar the two big banks, every stock in his portfolio trades at a discount of thirty percent or more to what he thinks it is worth, and the market is effectively paying investors fifteen percent a year just to stay put. Shapiro made the human case, and the uncomfortable one, running through what three days without power does to a family in Johannesburg, and why he still believes America out-competes an ageing Europe on sheer will to win.
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  BNC#9 | Le Roux Q&A: Sakeliga's 2026 scorecard, BEE and FMD wins, SARB next in line 11.09.2026 32min

  Piet le Roux runs the organisation that has taken on the South African state more than any other business group this year, and he came to BNC#9 to explain why. Sakeliga beat the government on foot and mouth disease vaccines, international airline licensing and estate agents' BEE certificates in 2026 alone, and it wasn't finished. In this Q&A with Piet Viljoen, le Roux traced Sakeliga's strategy back four hundred years to a merchant alliance most people have never heard of, explained why the organisation deliberately avoids chasing individual officials into court, and previewed an AI system built to read every government gazette so his team doesn't have to. He also took audience questions on a minister's response to Sakeliga's court wins, on personal accountability, and on what a self-funded, twenty-person team can realistically take on next: the Reserve Bank.
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  SA's Competition Commission has become a handbrake on the economy: Rob Rose 11.09.2026 20min

  Bryan Brownrigg was never a currency trader. He sold foreign exchange to Standard Bank's institutional clients for 23 years. But when the Competition Commission decided that 28 banks had run a single conspiracy to rig the rand, his name went into the complaint anyway, and it took a decade and a Constitutional Court ruling to get it out again. Financial Mail editor Rob Rose told Alec Hogg how one wrong assumption metastasised into a case that dragged banks, courts and taxpayers through ten years of litigation, and why Brownrigg is only one entry on a longer list. A tribunal sat on a merger decision for six years and then gave a reason for the delay that turned out not to be true. A R14 billion Vodacom fibre deal collapsed. A black-owned retailer was blocked from selling its own business. Rose's argument is blunt: South Africa's competition watchdogs have stopped policing competition, and started doing something else.
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  He built a $1.5bn bank. Now Revolut, Discovery Bank and PEP are circling 11.09.2026 50min

  In this interview with Irakli Rekhviashvili, Tyme Group co-founder Coenraad Jonker gives his take on what actually protects a digital bank once the competition catches up, and why he thinks the old rules of banking no longer apply. On competitive advantage, he says: "I'm saying to my guys increasingly, I don't think there is a moat. I liken it to the time when people lived in walled cities with trenches dug around them. And then airplanes arrived, and people could fly over cities, and those walls became totally irrelevant." On why so many banks still fail to serve the poor profitably, he states: "It's not the customer that's the problem, it's the banks that's the problem." Jonker, whose group counts Brazil's Nubank among its backers, also puts a number on the group's New York listing ambitions, revealing: "I think it's more likely we'll be ready in 2030 than in 2028." He traces it all back to Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital, which he read during his MBA at GIBS in 2001. "I read the book in 2001 when I was busy with my MBA at GIBS... it lit a fire. It sort of started me thinking completely differently about the challenges of financial inclusion and financial exclusion."
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  Was Oscar Pistorius convicted of the wrong crime? A 36 year advocate says groupthink sentenced him 11.09.2026 30min

  For six years, retired senior advocate Chris Marnewick worked through the 3,000 page record of the Oscar Pistorius trial, line by line, against the judgments that decided his fate. His conclusion, set out in a new book, is that the Supreme Court of Appeal got it wrong: Pistorius should have been convicted of culpable homicide, not murder. Marnewick argued that the cross-examination crossed lines an American or Canadian court would not have allowed, and that the picture the public built from social media, of an hour-long argument ending in a killing, was never supported by what was actually heard in court. He spoke to Alec Hogg about the witness who pointed in the wrong direction, the three words that changed Pistorius's sentence on a second appeal, and why he says the public became a victim of what he calls the big lie.
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  BN Daybreak: DA's fake doctor, Sky the police dog, SA Sports mafia, Eskom's AI opportunity 11.09.2026 19min

  A Cape Town councillor who admitted to faking his medical degree is reportedly still in line for a promotion, and political commentator Solly Moeng says the DA cannot say no to this one without starting to look like the ANC it built itself against. Meanwhile, a police dog named Sky died after being left injured and unattended overnight at a facility Parliament's police portfolio committee chair Ian Cameron says has been covering up animal neglect for years. And South African sport had its worst week yet: the bosses of Swimming SA and SASCOC both suspended, Olympic swimmer Roland Schoeman naming names, and journalist Graeme Joffe, run out of the country over a decade ago for reporting on exactly this, explaining why he still isn't celebrating. Plus Stafford Masie on the spare power Eskom is sitting on and what it could mean for African AI, and the latest from Wall Street.
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  BNC#9 | Masie Q&A: Eskom's extra gigawatts are AI's gateway into SA economy 10.09.2026 39min

  Stafford Masie says the AI industry is not actually running out of electricity, it is running out of places to plug in. The real bottleneck for OpenAI and Anthropic in the United States is grid connection points that can absorb the violent power swings inference computing demands, without blowing transformers or blacking out whole regions, as happened in Portugal last year. His argument at BNC#9: South Africa, sitting on a stable grid with gigawatts of curtailed surplus power, is unusually well positioned to host that compute for the rest of Africa, the way it once became a base for telcos and banks. He also spoke about why he thinks autonomous AI agents will out-transact humans within months, the regulatory framework he is helping build with the Reserve Bank to govern them, and the security risks of prompt injection and data poisoning that come with it.
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  Four federations, four suspensions. Graeme Joffe says it's a "deeply rooted cancer" 10.09.2026 26min

  Graeme Joffe started digging into South African sports administration back in 2012, and it cost him his career, his safety, and, he says, his ability to ever go home again. Talking to Alec Hogg, Joffe walked through everything that has unravelled since: the presidents of SASCOC, Athletics South Africa and Swimming South Africa all suspended within weeks of each other, the entire executive of Karate South Africa suspended by its world body, and Olympic swimmer Tatjana Smith's prize money held back for over a year. Joffe named the people he has spent more than a decade chasing, from Danny Jordaan to Mark Alexander to Jurie Roux, and explained why, in his telling, so little ever actually changes at the top of South African sport. He also revisited what it cost him personally: a R21 million defamation suit, death threats, and a criminal charge that means he still cannot safely set foot in the country he reported on for most of his career.
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  Ian Cameron: Another SAPS cover-up exposed! 10.09.2026 18min

  In this interview with Chris Steyn, Ian Cameron, the Chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, exposes a huge cover-up over many years of animal maltreatment at the SAPS Roodeplaat Veterinary facility. Speaking following the death of the arson-detection dog Sky, he said: “That hospital, if this is the way that they look after animals, is as good as a morgue for animals. It's almost a case of if you, as a dog handler, have to send your dog to Roodeplaat, in many cases, you can say your goodbyes because you're not guaranteed that you would get your dog back. And I don't say this lightly. I say this because of the amount of cops that have called me over the last two days, pleading their cases about their dogs previously sent there, came back worse, or didn't come back at all. So, in the coming days I am going to expose even more since as far back as 2019 about criminal investigations that were made to go quiet, disciplinary processes that were not followed and just ignored at Roodeplaat, and how a lot of the animals that have died over the last few years could have still not only lived but lived prosperously.”
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  BNC#9 | Shapiro Q&A: SA's ideology problem, reading market signals, and how AI tripled his output 10.09.2026 39min

  At BNC#9, veteran stockbroker David Shapiro told delegates that AI had roughly tripled his own output, and he is not slowing down at 78. He argued that South Africa's real obstacle is not regulation but ideology, and that it is costing the country a venture capital industry, a functioning collateral-free lending market, and a mining sector he believes is sitting on far more gold than it is using. He also explained why he cannot make a living from the JSE alone, why he sends most of his clients' money offshore, and the one signal he trusts more than any headline: what the share price is actually doing while the story is still being told.
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  Solly Moeng: DA in danger of becoming the ANC 10.09.2026 17min

  In his latest weekly chat with Chris Steyn, Political Commentator, Solly Moeng urges action from the Democratic Alliance (DA) over reports that the party is considering promoting Cape Town councillor - and fake doctor - Abdulkader “AK” Elyas to either Parliament or the Western Cape legislature despite guilty findings relating to the falsification of his qualifications. “If it doesn't act against him, it's going to be in trouble. Then… it's slowly, slowly becoming the ANC…. it's an accumulation of things that are happening in the DA space that are making it harder and harder to distinguish from the ANC.” Moeng also comments on the biggest ever pre- by-election crisis facing the African National Congress; President Cyril Ramaphosa’s impeachment inquiry stalling - yet again; the president’s failure to act against Special Leave Police Minister Senzo Mchunu; the dirt on Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) CIC Julius Malema emerging at the Madlanga Commission; and the court room altercation between tenderpreneur “Cat” Matlala and his fiery Advocate.
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  "Two suspensions don't fix 20 years": Roland Schoeman joins the fight against Swimming SA 10.09.2026 26min

  Roland Schoeman won three Olympic medals for South Africa. In this interview with BizNews editor Alec Hogg, Schoeman says that didn't buy him any protection from Swimming South Africa: he describes being flown home from the US at the federation's own expense just to hear a second doctor confirm what the first had already told them, and being blocked from a World Cup he'd already paid his own way to attend. Days after the federation's president and CEO were provisionally suspended by World Aquatics over alleged abuse of power and fake documents, Schoeman tells Hogg that two suspensions don't fix twenty years of it, and names the swimmers he wants to see speak up next.
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  BN Daybreak: 54 days to elections, 48,000 tons of gold untouched, SOE failures, Piet Viljoen 10.09.2026 13min

  Fifty four days out from South Africa's local government elections, Geordin Hill-Lewis told BizNews nobody else is even campaigning yet, and made his case for why the DA could end up governing seven of the country's eight big metros. Sam Montsi, whose memoir Defying Barriers charts a career from exile in Lesotho to running businesses on two continents, told Chris Steyn where the politicisation of state-owned company boards went wrong. Dr Duarte da Silva made the case that South Africa isn't running out of gold, it's sitting on 48,000 tons of it, and explained why almost nobody in Pretoria seems to be listening. And at BNC#9 in the Drakensberg, value investor Piet Viljoen answered a delegate's question about executive pay, incentives, and what he calls his investing North Star. Plus the latest from Wall Street, via Reuters.