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 the US. It’s that the US market is worth around 10 per cent of our total exports. “It’s a big big...

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 wants it all done by Christmas. And as the DA MP who forced the ANC to hand over records of its...

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 McPherson says he is going to push as hard as he can to turn South Africa into a construction site.

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 were legal but so then does everyone else found in possession of the proceeds of crime.

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.

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 Rands?

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 entered a second Cold War, he warns. The safest place is is equidistant from both.

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 the world then was ripe for war, South African Institute for International Affairs chief...

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. Artificial Intelligence will change almost every aspect of our lives and while renewable energy...

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 "negative power" in the GNU in that while it can stop policy initiatives it doesn't agree with, it can't...

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 to deal with a collapse in the ruling party vote that occurred last week. It gives political...

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 elite trading at the expense of the public and smaller competitors who can't afford to join the...

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 even begin to re-industrialise the economy, Attard Montalto says and repeats the description of ANC...

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 minister of trade, industry and competition and the president from any involvement in big...

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 minister of trade, industry and competition and the president from any involvement in big...

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 organisation. She founded the Ground Work Collective and started simply doing what she loves — civic...

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 CEO of SAA and chairman of Vodacom and, more recently, a widely recognised public intellectual....

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 others if you yourself can temporarily inhabit the belief … (you) take a brief, elbow ambiguity...

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, industry and competition minister Ebrahim Patel a bad name and business is increasingly loath to...

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 of Southern African tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts From the Edge that now that...

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 when it actually starts campaigning is up. Mkokeli takes a dim view of President Cyril...

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 a vast new industrial undertaking, with new infrastructure and new rules. Peter Bruce talks to...