BizNews Radio
Welcome to BizNews Radio where we interview top thought leaders and business people from South Africa and across the globe.
BN Edge | Sygnia’s founder Magda Wierzycka says it’s time for the firm to reinvent or vanish
A week before Sygnia shareholders vote on an expanded share incentive scheme, Magda Wierzycka was not playing defence. Responding to a Financial Mail report that cast the plan as an enrichment scheme, she told Alec Hogg it was about holding on to a long-serving executive team and being able to…
From 185km/h on gravel roads to the ice of Sweden, Max Smart carves a new path in world rallying
South African rally driver Max Smart won Africa’s place in the FIA Rally Star Programme, where he raced for three years, and went on to the Junior World Rally Championship. Now competing in Spain, he leads the Spanish Gravel Rally Championship for PCR Sport by a single point going into…
BN Edge | Michael Marchant: how a Zimbabwean tycoon parked his fortune in SA
Wicknell Chivayo handed out Rolls-Royces, posed with piles of cash and bought a R160 million home in Clifton. Then, days after Open Secrets asked the Hawks to investigate how R800 million from a Zimbabwean election contract landed in his South African accounts, his helicopter came down outside Harare. Michael Marchant,…
BN Daybreak: Saunderson-Meyer on MK after Zuma; PA's Cilliers hits back at DA; Chivayo's R800m trail
William Saunderson-Meyer tells Alec Hogg that MK will outlast Jacob Zuma: dead or alive, Zuma has shaped South African politics, and any ANC recovery has to run through a party he expects to grow and to take control of Durban's council. Patriotic Alliance co-founder Charles Cilliers hits back after the…
Jaundiced Eye: WSM on MKP, the Zuma factor, and the KZN battleground
Is Jacob Zuma the glue holding MK together, or has the party already outgrown him? In the first of his weekly conversations with Alec Hogg on BizNews, William Saunderson-Meyer, whose Jaundiced Eye column has run every week since 1993, said he didn't buy the common wisdom. He argued that MK…
BN Edge | Zille, Simmers and the DA's coalition problem: with the PA's Charles Cilliers
Earlier in the week, the DA's Tertuis Simmers sat in the same BizNews studio and called the Patriotic Alliance a criminal enterprise dressed up as a party. Charles Cilliers, the PA co-founder and former newspaper editor who wrote Gayton McKenzie's life story, came back with his reply. He told Alec…
BN Edge | Can Lesaka do to SA's big banks what fintech did in Brazil?
The company once known as Net1 has just posted its first full-year profit and is telling the market to expect adjusted earnings to compound at more than 40% a year. Executive chairman Ali Mazanderani, who says he has helped build seven multibillion-dollar fintechs from Brazil to Europe, told Alec Hogg…
BN Daybreak: DA to win NMB outright?; Ndletyana on Zuma, MK; Lesaka's growth; Wall Street latest
Nelson Mandela Bay has been through nine coalitions in ten years by Retief Odendaal's count, and the DA's mayoral candidate said he would not try to run a ten-party government again. Political scientist Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana, co-author of The Zuma Effect, explained why Jacob Zuma's comeback came as no surprise…
The Zuma Effect: the plots and the power plays
Jaco Zuma’s ambition to become president of South Africa was rooted in personal interests: to evade the law and assuage his dire financial circumstances - and his faction used chilling tools to get and keep him in power for as long as possible. So says political scientist Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana,…
BN Edge | Dry taps, broken services, no management: can Nelson Mandela Bay be saved?
Retief Odendaal ran Nelson Mandela Bay for eight and a half months before a no-confidence vote removed him in 2023. Three weeks out from the 4 November local elections, with a new poll putting the DA and ANC almost level in the metro, the DA's mayoral candidate told Alec Hogg…
BN Daybreak: Mulder on GNU's lifespan; Simmers on premiership; MacKay on SA's decline; Ballito teen
Freedom Front Plus leader Corné Mulder tells BizNews the government of national unity could technically run to 2029, but Parliament can dissolve itself from May next year and a new ANC president elected in a year's time could recall Cyril Ramaphosa. Mulder also reveals the DA agreed early on to…
“Ballito Bomb Boy” stabs 6-year-old girl in school attack
A six-year-old girl was critically injured in a school stabbing this morning allegedly by a former pupil who also planted a homemade bomb at a Ballito Mall in March. Describing the attack, Willem Ells of the Institute for Security Studies and the Security Initiative for Africa, says: “He was armed…
BizNews Edge | Corné Mulder on coalitions, the DA, the PA and the GNU’s shelf life ahead of Nov 4
A week after an ANC committee chair floated treason and suggested stripping critics of their citizenship, Corné Mulder joked that the state had better move fast, because his tax return was due. Then he got serious. The Freedom Front Plus leader told Alec Hogg why he believed the threat had…
BN Daybreak: DA edges ANC in Ekurhuleni, Simmers rules out working with PA, SA consumers squeezed
The DA finished first in Ekurhuleni, the metro that once carried the ANC over the line in Gauteng, but by less than two percentage points, and with no party anywhere near a majority. Wayne Sussman took Chris Steyn through the first eNCA MarkData metro poll and explained why the East…
CEO Marek Masojada on Boxer's balance sheet and the battle for shoppers
Boxer's shoppers fill their pantries in grant week and run short by mid-month. Diesel has pushed up taxi fares, rice is selling for a fifth less than a year ago, and like-for-like sales barely moved. Yet the discounter sold nearly 4% more goods, opened its 600th store and cleared its…
Tertuis Simmers on George, Knysna and the Western Cape towns the DA wants back
With 23 days to go to the local government elections, the DA's Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers sat down with Alec Hogg in Hermanus and drew a hard line. He said he would never govern with Gayton McKenzie's Patriotic Alliance, and described what he said he had seen with his…
DA in knife-edge lead over the ANC in two metros | The Electoral Roadshow with Wayne Sussman
In this edition of the Electoral Road Show with Chris Steyn and analyst Supremo Wayne Sussman, he unpacks the polling results of the first two of six metros surveyed in the highly scientific eNCA MarkData 2026 election poll. In Ekurhuleni, the DA emerged first with 31.2% of the vote, the…
BN Daybreak: Opperman on pre-election instability; DiData's R350m riddle; ABC board defies majority
Intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman warns Chris Steyn that instability ahead of the local elections could expand beyond the state's capacity to control, with the military underfunded and crime intelligence unable to pay sources. David Shapiro and Alec Hogg return to the Dimension Data Campus saga, asking why Jason Goodall would…
The NdB Sunday Show: Pre-election instability could spread beyond government control
In this interview with Chris Steyn, Independent Intelligence Analyst Jasmine Opperman warns that an expansion of instability in South Africa in the lead-up to the Local Government Elections would likely be beyond the government's capability to control. “We have never seen the ANC in a crisis situation, political power-wise, as…
BizNews Edge: Alec Hogg weighs in on DiData, answers questions on ABC/Altvest
One of the Campus Six has cracked. Jason Goodall, former chief executive of Dimension Data and NTT, signs a statement naming four former colleagues and agrees to pay NTT R208.6 million. In a special BizNews Edge, Alec Hogg reads the private WhatsApp Goodall sent those same colleagues on the day…