TimesLIVE Podcasts Podcasts from the Edge

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.
Weekly English South Africa News Commentary · Politics
86 Episodes
1 – 20

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”…
6 Jun 13 min

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…
31 May 15 min

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…
24 May 12 min

A Brigety too far…

Apology or not from the US ambassador in SA, the governments slack handling of the visit of the Russian freighter, the Lady R, to the Simon’s Town naval base last year has become a huge deal from which there is no easy out. The American position continues to be that…
17 May 21 min

Leadership is about the country, not the party

The one lesson we can take out of the mess in the Johannesburg City Council is that leadership in local government doesn’t always come with a mayoral chain. The DA is stuck with the notion that because it's the biggest party it should also be the mayor. But that’s being…
9 May 14 min

When you see a fork in the road, take it

Trade is the end of the process of dreaming, investing, creating jobs and making things other people want to buy. In South Africa though the obvious seldom has right of way. In this episode of Podcasts from the Edge, South Africa's leading trade consultant, Donald MacKay, head of XA Global…
12 Apr 41 min

The Book of John

Newly re-elected Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen went out on a very long limb at the end of the party’s Midrand congress on Sunday, putting his job on the line for an extremely short term objective — preventing the formation of a coalition government between the ANC and the EFF…
3 Apr 11 min

Heaven will have to wait

We're stressed and anxious. The State is barely functional and in many places it has already failed. While a new minister tours power plants his old, formerly absolutely vital, job is unfilled. While the private sector could fix or make a real difference to the country in weeks if not…
29 Mar 15 min

What Was That?

The EFF’s National Shutdown on Monday was a political failure and, if anything, argues Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, would end up strengthening the ANC and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s hand if it is ever repeated. Who would have thought a politician normally as tactically astute…
22 Mar 10 min

How a stinking government kills its children

Peter Bruce is enraged in this episode of Podcasts from the Edge by the absolutely needless death of a four-year-old girl, Langalam Viki. She fell into a pit latrine in her Eastern Cape school last week and drowned. He wants to know why the government, despite all its promises and…
14 Mar 12 min

A Hiding To Nothing

Peter Bruce despairs of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s late night reshuffle in this latest edition of Podcasts from the Edge. The new Electricity Minister, Prof Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, was just down the corridor running Ramaphosa’s infrastructure programme. If the Electricity State of Disaster he announced a month ago was so urgent why…
7 Mar 19 min

The writing on the wall…

Peter Bruce goes solo again in this new edition of Podcasts from the Edge, suggesting that former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter’s revelations about corruption inside Eskom and the direct involvement of cabinet ministers is probably the real reason President Cyril Ramaphosa is being so slow to name a new…
28 Feb 15 min

Absolute zero

There is "almost zero chance" Eskom or another intervening authority, can end load shedding in South Africa any time in the next two years, one of South Africa’s leading energy experts, UCT's Prof Anton Eberhard, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. He says President Cyril…
21 Feb 30 min

Send in the Clowns...

That used to be theatre-speak for when something went wrong on stage and the crowd began to boo. At South African Tourism there seems to be no need. In this episode of Podcasts from the Edge Peter Bruce digs in to the would wide web (i.e. his phone) to find…
13 Feb 14 min

True Crime Stories

In his first podcast monologue Peter Bruce takes his Podcasts from the Edge into new realms. Basically because a guest didn’t pitch up he wonders pout loud when President Cyril “The Vanisher” Ramaphosa's reshuffle is going to happen or even if it ever will. Rumours have Gwede Mantashe keeping his…
6 Feb 10 min

Say what?

Veteran energy analyst and journalist (and electrical engineer) Chris Yelland tells Peter Bruce in this illuminating edition of Podcasts From the Edge that it is going to take something special for Eskom to meet the exacting deadlines it has set itself to restore Eskom’s vanishing Energy Availability Factor. Fixing the…
24 Jan 49 min

Half full? Half empty? Or just not full?

As Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Commission, Dr Crispian Olver is at the very centre of South Africa’s swirling energy policy debate. The commission’s job isn’t just to plan a way forward for the country, but to find the money to do it. In this first 2023 edition of…
16 Jan 33 min

Curb your enthusiasm folks… 2029’s the year; not 2024

Even if the ANC falls below 50% of the vote in the next general election in 2024 it’ll be able to form “a relatively easy” coalition with a small and perhaps like-minded party in Parliament. Cyril Ramaphosa will shake off the Phala-Phala game farm cash heist problem that stalks him…
29 Nov 2022 27 min

Cyril's big call

Elections analyst Michael Atkins walks Peter Bruce through the bewildering maze of a rapidly approaching Constitutional crisis over our electoral system. The government has ignored advice from its own Ministerial Advisory Committee and is sending a Bill to the president to sign allowing independent candidates to stand for elections against…
31 Oct 2022 33 min
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