BizNews Radio
Welcome to BizNews Radio where we interview top thought leaders and business people from South Africa and across the globe.
BNC#9 | Fired for pitching an 'unlistable' idea, Afrimat CEO v Heerden built a R10bn company anyway
Fired from a small quarrying company in 2005 for pitching an idea a lawyer called "unlistable," Andries van Heerden went and built it anyway. Twenty years on, that idea is Afrimat: a R10 billion JSE-listed miner spanning iron ore, manganese, anthracite, rare earths and now cement, after last year's Lafarge…
BNC#9 | Sasol CEO Simon Baloyi: Turning around an SA giant through Trump, tariffs and turmoil
He started out as a bursary student from a village with no electricity or running water. Now Simon Baloyi runs one of South Africa's biggest industrial employers. In his first full year as CEO (2024) he turned a loss of nearly R70 a share into double-digit profit. Baloyi's BNC#9 keynote…
BN Daybreak: US-SA trade ultimatum; Baloyi on Sasol's profit pivot; Knysna's crisis; Lafarge cleanup
Wall Street dipped as investors braced for retail earnings from Home Depot, TJX and Walmart. In Knysna, Ron Weissenberg says a R70-80 million provincial intervention has barely dented entrenched corruption despite Hawks investigations. From BNC#9, Theo de Jager detail 14 Washington meetings pushing the US to link trade to farm-murder…
BNC#9 | '3 Amigos': Mulder, Papenfus, de Jager on a strained GNU, US-SA relations, FMD crisis + more
They've been dubbed 'the Three Amigos', and a year on from their first appearance as a trio at BNIC#2 in Hermanus, Dr Corné Mulder, Dr Theo de Jager and Gerhard Papenfus are back with an inside account of the Washington meeting that could reshape South Africa's relationship with the United…
Why king maker coalitions and municipal interventions fail…
With The Hawks investigating corruption at Knysna Municipality amid a failing intervention, Ron Weissenberg of The Accountability Group (TAG) tells Chris Steyn why interventions and money are not the solution. “They tend to paper over the problems and they address… emergencies on a short-term basis. However, when the money ends…
BNC#9 | Dean Macpherson: SA has a trillion rand for infrastructure, but it can't spend it (yet)
South Africa has budgeted a trillion rand for infrastructure over the next three years. It's spending less than it did twelve months ago. Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson lays out why: a tender system that awards roughly one in six bids, a construction mafia that until recently shut…
BN Daybreak: Malema WhatsApp claims; Mulder on GNU capture; Construction mafia arrests surge
Back from BNC#9 in the Drakensberg, Daybreak opens with Safe Citizen's Jonathan Deal on the Madlanga Commission, where WhatsApp chats allegedly link Julius Malema to Major-General Feroz Khan and tobacco businessman Mohammadh Sayed. Malema calls it ordinary parliamentary oversight. At the conference, FF+ leader Corné Mulder warns GNU parties risk…
The NdB Sunday Show: Malema’s WhatsApps, Mchunu’s R700 000 forklifts, Matlala’s paper trail...
In the latest edition of the NdB Sunday Show, Chris Steyn and Safe Citizen Founder Jonathan Deal take a deep dive into the latest testimony at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry after 159 days of testimony. “I think that we could say that this week the Madlanga Commission stopped being…
BNC#9 | Dr Iraj Abedian: SA's 80-year bond with Iran, and why America's Middle East era is ending
Reza Shah of Iran died in exile in a house in Johannesburg in 1944. Eighty-two years later, an Iranian-born South African economist stood up at BNC#9 to explain why that strange, half-forgotten history still shapes how Pretoria thinks about Tehran, and why the war now raging between Iran, Israel and…
BN Daybreak: Dawie Roodt slams ANC; Ian Cameron on SAPS; Wall Street highs; OpenAI and Anthropic
Today on BizNews Daybreak, Wall Street celebrates record highs while OpenAI and Anthropic eyes a massive IPO. Locally, Dawie Roodt blames ANC ideology for South Africa's economic woes, and Ian Cameron exposes severe dysfunction and backlogs within SAPS. On the global front, Dr. Iraj Abedian analyses America’s retreat from the…
BNC#9 | Dawie Roodt: "Incompetent" ANC is the "most destructive force South Africa has ever seen"
Dawie Roodt says South Africa's taxpayers are being squeezed harder than ever, and he has the fresh numbers to prove it. In this BNC#9 keynote, the Efficient Group chief economist walks from 300,000 years of human history to the latest Reserve Bank bulletin to make one argument: the state is…
BNC#9 | Ian Cameron: "Fire, fire, fire more": Five-point plan to fix SAPS, and how long it will take
Half of South Africa's police stations don't answer their own phones. There's a DNA backlog running past 300,000 cases, sitting behind rapists who are still walking free. And SAPS spends R102-billion a year on salaries for a leadership structure of 722 generals and brigadiers. Ian Cameron, chair of Parliament's Portfolio…
BNC#9 | Rob Hersov: Why mafia, gangsters and tenderpreneurs make SA so difficult to turn around
Rob Hersov became a household name in South African business circles for one speech and two words. Four years on, he's back on the BizNews stage with a harder, more complicated message: the country is not fixed, the ANC is not gone, and the crisis is deeper than most people…
BN Daybreak: Mashele on the ANC’s terminal decline; Hersov on SA’s investability; Nvidia $500B plan
In today's BizNews Daybreak, Prince Mashele predicts the ANC's terminal decline by 2034, while Rob Hersov warns South Africa is uninvestable due to a massive illicit economy. Globally, subdued US inflation eases Fed pressure, and Nvidia unveils a $500 billion AI infrastructure plan. Plus, we hear Bernard Mostert's inside story…
BNC#9 | Prince Mashele: ANC is finished; Zille for Jozi; where his new movement will show its hand
Prince Mashele doesn't do polite predictions. At BNC#9 in the Drakensberg, the political analyst and author of The Fall of the ANC lays out exactly how he believes South Africa's governing party ends: not with a bang, but a slow bleed to zero seats within two elections. He explains why…
BNC#9 | GHL: Four months into the job, the new DA leader's plan to get 50 + 1%
Four months after taking over as DA federal leader, Geordin Hill-Lewis used his first BNC address to lay out exactly how he plans to close the gap on the ANC, why Cape Town's gun conviction numbers should worry everyone, and what one ANC mayor told him in private that he…
BN Daybreak: Hill-Lewis on DA's future; Duduzane Zuma on MKP; Wiese on Jooste betrayal
In today's episode, Christo Wiese discusses Markus Jooste's betrayal and his fight for restitution. We also cover the DA's optimistic vision to reverse South Africa's decline and Duduzane Zuma's call for big business cooperation. Globally, signs emerge of a potential US-Iran arrangement over the Strait of Hormuz, while the US…
BNC#9 | Duduzane Zuma: Why the country should be grateful for JZ, and a stark choice for SA business
He once said he wouldn't join his father's party. Now he's its second-in-command. Barely a week into the job, Duduzane Zuma used the BNC#9 stage to tell South Africa's business leaders exactly what he thinks they've got wrong, about land, about the Reserve Bank, and about the "masses" he says…
BN Daybreak: Oil rallies; Anthropic deal; Intel $20B sale; Berkshire buybacks
Today's BizNews Daybreak covers Donald Trump’s stance on Iran and rising oil prices driving Brent crude past $87. Tech highlights include Anthropic’s $9.1 billion data center deal with Riot Platforms, Intel raising $20 billion through share sales, and security risks of rogue AI models. Plus, Berkshire Hathaway accelerates share buybacks…
NdB Sunday Show: A year without Neil de Beer - remembering the man who never backed down
Nearly a year after Neil de Beer's death, the NdB Sunday Show looks back at the moments that made him impossible to ignore. From tearing into the NHI Bill to naming his own "ten most wanted" list of state capture figures, de Beer never softened a line for anybody. What…