Podcasts from the Edge

Earth to ANC: Avoid disappointment - lower your expectations

The last election Jacob Zuma fought as leader of the ANC were the local government polls on 2016. The ANC vote collapsed to just over 54% nationally and set off a series of events that eventually saw him removed from office. Listen now as razor-sharp independent elections analyst Dawie Scholtz…

18 Oct 2021 29 min

The DA may not have an economic policy but its message this election is new

Former DA leader Tony Leon tells Peter Bruce on this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that the DA is not selling a value proposition in these current local government elections campaign. “Rather,” he says, “its transactional.” Vote DA and we’ll fix your problems. The two cover a lot of…

5 Oct 2021 29 min

Money for nothing and your pills for free

If you’re running a large workforce and the guy cleaning the entrance to the lift you ride to the top floor has nothing to fall back on when he’s sick, shame on you. Not every company can put the entire workforce on Discovery or Bonitas but in the edition of…

22 Sep 2021 27 min

What’s the rush?

Former Umkonto We Sizwe commander, SanParks boss and Home Affairs director general, Mavuso Msimang is widely recognised as one of the most level-head people to emerge from the struggle against apartheid. Now retired, he has been corralled by President Cyril Ramaphosa to do an almost impossible job and to speed…

20 Sep 2021 28 min

The day the TV went black

Arguably the most storied foreign correspondent still working in newspapers, the UK Sunday Times' chief foreign correspondent, Christina Lamb, talks to Peter Bruce in this exclusive interview from Kabul. Journalist and author, Lamb knows Afghanistan intimately, having covered the story for 33 years, from back when the Soviets occupied it…

7 Sep 2021 31 min

Why Duferco is just walking away

Ludovico Sanges is MD of Duferco, one of the biggest producers of galvanised and coated steel products in South Africa. The corrugated iron on your roof could easily have been milled at its plant in Saldanha. Durferco is also easily one of the biggest employers on the West Coast. But…

31 Aug 2021 24 min

Does “intervention” work?

Peter Bruce talks to former UN Special Representative in Afghanistan, Nicholas ‘Fink’ Haysom in this edition of Podcasts From the Edge. Is it worth the effort trying to build democracy in countries that have never experienced it?Haysom reminds us that for the Taliban, the power to govern comes from above,…

23 Aug 2021 23 min

How to tame a bad spy

With South Africa’s intelligence services found grotesquely wanting before and during the looting and destruction of July President Cyril Ramaphosa has removed the minister of intelligence and not replaced her at all. Instead, the agencies, domestic and foreign, will report into the presidency itself. That’s led some people to argue…

10 Aug 2021 25 min

Why is clean energy just so, well, exhausting

If you’re about to buy a new car do you stay with petrol or do the environmentally right thing and go electric? On the face of it not the most complex of decisions, except that the electric car you’re buying now might be obsolete sooner than you think if proponents…

2 Aug 2021 30 min

What eye? What needle?

If there is a rational centre to South African politics, DA leader John Steenhuisen want his party to be in the middle of it. He sees our politics changing inevitably, as the ANC’s loss of coherence and unity becomes more clear. What he can’t be sure of, he tells Peter…

26 Jul 2021 37 min

When the Lions go, where does SA rugby go?

In many ways, UK Sunday Times rugby writer Stuart Barnes tells Peter Bruce in this latest edition of his Podcasts from the Edge, “professional rugby is going to break apart the greatest rivalry in rugby history — South Africa and New Zealand.” Listen as Barnes, a former Bath, England and…

13 Jul 2021 30 min

Flying lessons with Minister Pravin Gordhan

From South African Airways to Eskom’s transition from coal and private investment in South African harbours, the political noise surrounding any meaningful movement or reform in South Africa’s political economy can often drown out the facts, or at least that facts the reformers say they see. Listen in as Peter…

5 Jul 2021 37 min

Big job — saving Johannesburg

There’s no denying Johannesburg has seen better days. It is dirty and broken and now the centre of a Covid-19 firestorm as the Delta variant runs through South Africa’s financial hub. But don’t underestimate Johannesburg’s resilience and deep love for it that much of its population has. Listen here to…

28 Jun 2021 27 min

Who’s been a bad boy then?

How come China gets to be vastly corrupt and grow so strong at the same time? Why can’t we do that in South Africa? Is their corruption better than ours? Actually, it may be. Peter Bruce talks to leading economic historian Keith Breckenridge about a new book that studies the…

21 Jun 2021 29 min

Will we ever cotton on?

As Ebrahim Patel ploughs on, recasting South African industry in his own image, good news stories on the ground are hard to find and one of the minister of trade, industry and competition’s frequently used weapons in his drive to promote localisation and import substitution, the Industrial Development Corporation, reported…

7 Jun 2021 26 min

Can SA keep up with the Joneses?

Can South Africa compete in the global automotive industry as our economy stutters and stalls while our main car export destinations — Britain and the European Union — set their own markets tough new targets in emissions and carbon foot print (they’ll want to know how the electricity powering SA…

31 May 2021 34 min

Who do we think we are?

Peter Bruce gets a history lesson from South Africa’s top economic historian, Prof Keith Breckenridge. Trying to draw parallels between South Africa now, an economic wasteland coming out of a devastating pandemic, and South Africa a hundred years ago, an economic wasteland devastated by the deprivations of war and the…

24 May 2021 29 min

Localisation — is it siege or surge?

As the policy debate around localisation — or import substitution — as a formula for reindustrialising South Africa heats up, the lines are being drawn between fervent advocates of the government line on making imports as expensive as possible and trade liberals arguing for as few barriers to imports as…

18 May 2021 33 min

When Cyril speaks out of both sides of his mouth

If President Cyril Ramaphosa needed to take anything out of his two-day appearance at the Zondo Commission last week then he would have needed to put a lot more in than he did. Instead, he was allowed by his inquisitors to have his cake and eat it without ever being…

3 May 2021 35 min

The R1 deal that could make or break South Africa

In this latest edition of Podcasts from the Edge Peter Bruce talks to Seriti Resources CEO Mike Teke about the choppy waters suddenly surrounding the agreement to take over the vast coal-mining resources of South32. Combined with the Anglo American coal business Seriti has already acquired, the South32 mines would…

19 Apr 2021 31 min