TimesLIVE Podcasts Podcasts from the Edge

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 Front Plus chief whip Corne Mulder tells Peter Bruce in this gripping edition of Podcasts From the Edge. It needs, he says, to understand the opportunity before it and while putting R1bn into an election. Does all the money get behind Jardine or can all “good” opposition (presumably excluding the EFF) share in it and get behind Jardine when parliament meets to elect a president after the election? Mulder also deals with the need to include the Patriotic Alliance in the Charter before it becomes a “kingmaker” after and wonders whether, just possibly, the Democratic Alliance might be lured into a Grand Coalition with the ANC if the ruling party vote slips below 50%.
5 Dec 2023 English South Africa News Commentary · Politics

Other recent episodes

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…
30 Apr 1 hr 08 min

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…
24 Apr 38 min

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…
17 Apr 46 min

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…
10 Apr 19 min

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…
13 Mar 39 min
All episodes