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In today's NdB Sunday Show with Chris Steyn, Political Analyst Mzo Mpolase slams President Cyril Ramaphosa's latest utterance on the looming loss of AGOA. "You're running a country here, you're not running some ANC ideological office. This is the fate of the economy, the fate of many jobs, which you promise every time. So to hear this, it's almost as if … how low can we go as a country that our president will basically do running commentary of something that they stand right in a position where they can change. And then he speaks as if it's God's will that it will be this way…all it needed was decisions from you, political will from you, and a sense of diplomacy and a sense of understanding what our national interest is." Mpolase says South Africa needs a "never-again" moment. Dissecting testimony before the Madlanga Commission, he says: "When you look at some of the individuals that have thus far been implicated or are having court cases now, you do feel that there is perhaps a hand behind these individuals…the almost strategic targeting of provincial, local government, by entities…there has to be some power behind it orchestrating all of this." Mpolase also looks at the future of coalition rule.

Two days after telling Parliament that South Africa had emerged from the fiscal wilderness, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana gave up part of his weekend to explain what that did and didn't mean. He conceded the tax burden had reached levels no finance minister should be comfortable with, and that growth of 1.2% was a long way from where he wanted it. His answer was not more tax, but cleaner spending and a hard look at the rules he said had stopped gas explorers in South Africa before they struck in Namibia, and left mining exploration far behind Canada and Australia. He also defended sending more money to failing municipalities, signalled a rethink on crypto, and set the record straight on his clash with the Reserve Bank governor.

In the latest Electoral Road Show with Chris Steyn and analyst Wayne Sussman, he shares the eNCA-MarkData Local Government Elections Survey results for eThekwini and Tshwane. It shows that former President Jacob Zuma's MKP is polling at 48% and heading for an outright majority in eThekwini with the ANC way below at 14,5% while the DA came in at 25,2%. "The ANC is on track across KwaZulu-Natal, not just eThekwini, to lose about five hundred councillors on election day…This is going to be a devastating result." Sussman adds that having reviewed the six major metropolitan areas in South Africa, "not once has the African National Congress been the leading party in our polls… this is absolutely unprecedented." Another unprecedented result is that now "the DA is bigger in Johannesburg than in Tshwane". In Tshwane, the poll has the DA in the lead at 33,9% to the ANC's 24,9%. Listen to Sussman unpack these latest poll results in detail and give an election preview with six Metros surveyed.

Lesaka grew out of Net1, whose subsidiary's social grants contract ended up before the Constitutional Court. Now it wants to take deposits from the same grant recipients it lends to. In a follow-up to their strategy conversation, Alec Hogg put the harder questions to executive chairman Ali Mazanderani: who carries the legacy of Cash Paymaster Services, what borrowers really pay on a R5,000 loan, and who protects the customer when one company is both banker and lender. Mazanderani gave little ground. He called the banker-and-lender criticism nonsensical, argued that for many rural borrowers the real alternative is a loan shark, and asked why a loan is fine for someone with a city job but not for someone living on a grant.

A tariff investigation in South Africa is meant to take six months. Donald MacKay, whose XA Global Trade Advisors released its latest import duty report this week, told Alec Hogg the average had stretched to 40 months, and that the oldest open case was old enough to start school. He explained why the International Trade Administration Commission was only part of the problem, how a groundnut processor gave up waiting and shut its factory, and why ArcelorMittal had become the most protected company in the country while the businesses downstream paid for it. He was also unusually calm about losing AGOA, called Washington's demands badly delivered but not irrational, and warned that secret deals attached to tariff decisions created exactly the conditions where corruption could take root, though he stressed he had no evidence it had.

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba tells Alec Hogg he will work with any party where the numbers make sense, but if the DA wants a Johannesburg coalition, Helen Zille and Cilliers Brink must go first, calling both untrustworthy. He is wary of MK's instability but rules no one out. A BizNews Premium portfolio update asks whether Clicks is a bargain or a trap after a 47% slide, with headline earnings up 4.4% and just 2.7% once buybacks are stripped out. Plus Dr Carla Mitchell on Africa's half-million-dollar moon mission, and Wall Street's AI selloff.

A fresh poll had Herman Mashaba running more than twice as strong as his own party in Johannesburg. He called it laughable. Thirteen days before the local elections, the ActionSA leader told Alec Hogg he would be disappointed with anything under 30% in Joburg and set himself a target of half of Soweto's wards. He explained what the 2024 election cost ActionSA, why he stayed out of Parliament to rebuild, and which two DA figures would have to go before he would share a council with the party. He also laid out his three conditions for any coalition partner, his plan to fold Joburg Water and City Power back into the city, and a blunt message for the officials he says crept back in after he left office. And he explained why a professional fisherman never bothers with the dam.

Alec Hogg went into this episode wanting to sell two shares. The rules he built for the Ricardo portfolios talked him out of at least one. In the first of a new run of Premium portfolio updates, he put four fresh sets of results through the same valuation test: Afrimat, whose iron ore profits all but vanished while its quarries quietly earned their keep; Clicks, a business still growing that had turned into a valuation problem; Chubb, the insurer walking away from business it thought was underpriced; and Teledyne, the sensor maker that had just posted the best quarter in its history. One share was put on probation with three tripwires. Another was left hanging until the next Ricardo webinar, along with a new rule and a JSE share the market had priced for a decade of decline.

Enoch Godongwana told Parliament that South Africa had emerged from the fiscal wilderness. Dawie Roodt agreed the corner had been turned, then explained why the reasons should worry anyone who pays tax. William Saunderson-Meyer asked who really gained from 547 parties crowding the 4 November ballot, Ian Cameron described what he found inside three Tshwane police stations, including a motorbike parked in a kitchen, and ACDP deputy president Wayne Thring set out how much water and money eThekwini was losing. Reuters rounded things off with the latest from Wall Street.

In his latest interview with Chris Steyn, Ian Cameron, the Chair of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, shares the shocking findings of his latest oversight visit. He describes finding, at one station, over 30 detectives sharing an office container with only three chairs and one laptop and no official detective telephones. He also details horror findings at two more stations. Cameron says SAPS members are pleading for help. “I've already submitted the reports this morning to both the Minister and the National Commissioner and we will be following it up...” Also discussing the biggest shocks from the Budget Review, Cameron says: “...Only one out of 10 murders are actually detected properly. Remember, it doesn't necessarily mean it is solved or that there's success or prosecution. This is just a complete detection process. So I am extremely concerned.” Lastly, he says police members are hailing the downfall of former Deputy National Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya and former Crime Intelligence deputy chief Feroz Khan. “...Really dedicated ground level members are saying, but this is good riddance. They've been wishing for resolve for so long.”

Enoch Godongwana told Parliament that South Africa had emerged from the fiscal wilderness. Dawie Roodt agreed the corner had been turned, just not for the reasons the minister would want. Debt had stabilised and the primary surplus was growing, but the improvement came from a commodity windfall, an aggressive SARS and a tax burden Roodt said was the highest it had ever been, rather than from growth. Speaking to Alec Hogg hours after the mini budget, the Efficient Group's chief economist took aim at the money flowing to badly run municipalities two weeks before the local vote, the politics behind the fuel levy cut and the social grant court case still hanging over Treasury. He finished with blunt advice for taxpayers, investors and ratepayers.

Johannesburg twice handed its mayoralty to a party that won less than 1% of the vote. With 547 parties and almost 137,000 candidates chasing 10,526 council seats on 4 November, Jaundiced Eye columnist William Saunderson-Meyer argued that most of those names were vanity projects or job-seekers, and that the big parties quietly benefited from the clutter. He told Alec Hogg why ActionSA's Herman Mashaba could end up a kingmaker but not a queenmaker in Joburg, how two party leaders reached powerful parliamentary posts on well under half a percent of the national vote, and why a cross next to a no-hoper might end up somewhere the voter never intended.

With Local Government Elections looming, all eyes are on KZN. In this interview with Chris, Steyn, eThekwini Mayoral Candidate and Deputy President of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), Wayne Thring, describes how his party resisted bribery involving millions and even an offer of an ambassadorship. “Our councillors were offered incentives, millions of Rands, to join a particular coalition bloc which was with the ANC and the current coalition bloc in eThekwini. And they resisted, they refused. And that's the calibre. I myself was enticed with positions when I was serving in 2013. I was enticed with positions at a national level. I was offered an ambassador position if I would resign from the ACDP to join the ruling party. I refused.” As for his party’s decision to stay out of the Government of National Unity (GNU), he said: “We were invited and positions obviously were forwarded for the ACDP. But because of the tainted track record that the ANC have, we would have found ourselves having to defend, like the coalition partners are now having to defend at a national level, some of the policies of the ANC. Or if not defending, having to be quiet and silent so as not to rock the boat.” Thring is adamant that his party would never go into a coalition with the ANC, MKP and the EEF. “We have boots on the ground currently in all of the wards across eThekwini to ensure that a party like the MKP, and I must add ANC and EFF, amongst some of the others…we are working hard to ensure that political parties like these do not cause more damage, bring more chaos to South Africa…”

Cape Independence Party leader Jack Miller tells BizNews what a good night looks like on 4 November, and how a five-megabyte upload limit on the IEC's portal kept Cape Exit off the 2024 ballot entirely. Security analyst Willem Els says the secrecy around the trial of Jacob Zuma's former spy boss Thulani Dlomo, accused with a fellow SSA official of looting R12 million in secret funds, is no surprise, and may be only the tip of the iceberg. Orion Minerals CEO Tony Lennox explains why Glencore as both funder and sole buyer suits Prieska.

Nineteen years after turning a Facebook group into a political party, Jack Miller still hadn't won the Cape its independence, and he told Alec Hogg he had made his peace with the possibility that he never might. What he hadn't given up on was the leverage. With the Cape Independence Party fielding candidates in almost every Western Cape ward on 4 November, Miller set out how a small slice of the vote could push the DA below 50% and turn CapeXit into a kingmaker with a single price: referendums. He described being carried out of the Cape Town council chamber, argued that voters' fear of the ANC was misplaced, explained why the Referendum Party ended up in the FF Plus rather than with him, and named the parties he would and wouldn't work with. He closed with a claim about South Africa's governments that few would share: that each has a shelf life, and the current one is nearing the end of its own.