Podcasts from the Edge

Not a moment too soon

People have been celebrating with some relief the publication of Songezo Zibi’s new book, Manifesto. It’s been a long time coming and with characteristic reticence, former Business Day Editor Zibi tells former Business Day Editor Peter Bruce in this episode of Podcasts from the Edge that he still isn’t quite…

20 Jun 2022 32 min

In six weeks Cyril can save South Africa

Whatever your politics, there’s no doubt that Eskom’s unreliable power supply, the worsening condition of its kit and the prospect of a complete Eskom system failure are the single biggest barriers to investment and growth in South Africa. Something radical has to be done and it has to be done…

13 Jun 2022 35 min

Let's try not to pass gas

As business and the State lean towards gas as an intermediate fuel between our current dependence on coal and our future commitment to renewable energy, some voices are being raised about the futility of inventing, building and paying for an entirely new energy infrastructure to power South Africa, only for…

6 Jun 2022 32 min

Too complicated to contemplate?

Peter Bruce asks South Africa’s busiest and arguably most influential agriculture and land advisor, Wandile Sihlobo, why the newly-released Agriculture and Agro-processing Masterplan is so complicated. Does he really expect this ANC government to be able to do any of the things the plan says the state will do? In…

23 May 2022 34 min

Just, please, stop talking and get on with it

Goldfield CEO Chris Griffith tells Peter Bruce in this episode of Podcasts from the Edge that he thinks South Africa is still investable but that the state makes too many plans that it doesn’t implement. On the cusp of switching on a 50MW renewable power project to help power close…

16 May 2022 32 min

It's decision time

You don't hear a lot (or enough) about South Africa's Presidential Climate Commission but it is at the very centre of what happens to us as an economy over the next two decades. Unless the highly unlikely occurs and President Cyril Ramaphosa is somehow removed from office, It is this…

9 May 2022 40 min

Make the call already

Ukraine Ambassador to South Africa, Liubov Abravitova tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that preparations for her President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to take a call from President Cyril Ramaphosa are afoot but, boy, is it hard getting the attention of senior figures around Ramaphosa. The sooner…

11 Apr 2022 30 min

The worst of all

Analysts and journalists who couldn’t function without Robin McGregor's fine Who Owns Whom were shocked rigid in 2008 when this giant figure was brutally stabbed to death in his new home in Tullbagh. He was 79 and full of life. A murderer was quickly found, tried and put in prison…

28 Mar 2022 33 min

How would you like your transition Sir? Just, or corrupt?

When the great and the good are lining up to manage South Africa’s transition from coal fired energy to renewable energy, you just know money is going to do most of the talking. Now that business has thrown its weight behind minerals and energy minister Gwede Mantashe’s favourite new fuel…

18 Mar 2022 35 min

Gas is just so much hot air...

When Eskom plunges is into load shedding, it is often because it is diverting power to pump water uphill for its storage systems, or filling up the tanks at the 20 diesel generators it uses when its plant falls over. In other words, we may mot have enough storage. So…

14 Mar 2022 38 min

There is a crack, we must get through

Climate change is now so severe that unless we speed up our adaptation now, by 2050 more than 250 000 people will die each year directly because of heat, undernutrition, malaria and diarrhoea. That’s according to a new report compiled by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Heat…

7 Mar 2022 32 min

Batteries not included

Gas is minerals and energy minister Gwede Mantashe’s New Big Thing. He can barely contain his irritation with the renewable energy lobby as it racks up legal successes against fossil fuel exploration offshore. We should, he told and energy symposium last week, avoid becoming “an island of angels” on the…

28 Feb 2022 30 min

Don’t look down

Valli Moosa, former environment minister and deputy chair of the Presidential Commission on Climate Change, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts From The Edge that South Africa’s transition to green technology is inevitable. “Nobody wants to invest in fossil fuels,” he says. The Commission is charged with negotiating…

14 Feb 2022 34 min

SA has a power problem? Just nuke it.

Former Eskom chief nuclear officer David Nicholls was once chief engineer on a nuclear submarine. So he isn’t scared of the technology. What does scare him is “renewable” energy technology. As he tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. “If you’re going to tell me renewables…

7 Feb 2022 35 min

Cyril's search for just one horse

President Cyril Ramaphosa's problem as he approaches ANC elections at the end of this year is which of the two horses he rides -- party unity and clean government -- does he get off? Listen as former Cosatu head and Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa colourfully educates Peter Bruce on the…

31 Jan 2022 35 min

The biggest story of our lives

Peter Bruce speaks to author and journalist Simon Mundy about his groundbreaking new book, Race For Tomorrow, gripping, real-time dispatches from the frontlines of the way climate change is reshaping our world. From Mongolia to California, Israel and Brazil to Ethiopia and Iceland, humans are suffering from events they cannot…

24 Jan 2022 50 min

Our Hiding To Nothing

Peter Bruce talks exclusively to Wits vaccinologist and Dean of medicine Prof Shabir Madhi about our response to the Omicron Covid variant. And there is good news and bad (beyond that fact that Japan has entirely closed its borders, including to the economies that have shut SA out). First, early…

29 Nov 2021 29 min

And now? What happens now?

Is South Africa in a growth crisis or a debt crisis? Economists and experts wildly disagree. One important figure pressing the government to provide more social relief in the face of widening poverty and hardship is former investment banker Colin Coleman. Listen in to this edition of Podcasts from the…

22 Nov 2021 45 min

Austerity in SA? It’s just not happening...

If you’re on the Left, or trying to score quick political points, then President Cyril Ramaphosa is imposing a harsh period of fiscal austerity on South Africa. If you’re in the sensible middle, he is doing nothing of the sort. South Africa is already spending more than it earns, as…

16 Nov 2021 26 min

Stop squatting on South Africa’s spectrum

Listen in as digital entrepreneur and former FNB CEO Michael Jordan joins Peter Bruce on Podcasts From the Edge to make an impassioned plea for Icasa, the telecommunications regulator, to stand up to local cellphone giants and retrieve extra digital spectrum loaned out at the start of the Covid pandemic…

25 Oct 2021 29 min