One of South Africa’s top economists, Efficient Group’s Dawie Roodt, tears into what he believes is the sheer economic idiocy expressed by South African president Cyril Ramaphosa in Parliament yesterday. He says the billionaire ANC leader’s redoubling of an approach which has boosted his own bank account but made South Africa the world’s worst performing economy with the highest unemployment will accelerate the slide. Roodt spoke to BizNews editor Alec Hogg.

South Africa needs a new generation of leaders - maybe a non-politician to run the country. That is the view of Professor William Gumede of the School of Governance at Wits University. “I think…that maybe we need less of the hard people…a lot of our leaders, our political leaders, many of our black political leaders particularly, these are hard individuals, ruthless individuals, self-interested individuals, people who…don't care about inciting violence and dividing the country, blaming other communities. They will walk over the bodies of black and white South Africans to be in power,” he says. In this wide-ranging interview with BizNews, Professor Gumede dissects the Trump-Ramaphosa meeting in Washington; the performance of the Government of National Unity (GNU), as well as the Democratic Alliance (DA), Patriotic Alliance (PA), and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) - and their future prospects. He also outlines the possible strategy of former President Jacob Zuma with his MKP. He delves into the Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC) controversy, and suggests alternatives to current Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) practices. Meanwhile, Professor Gumede is working from the outside to “try to get all of these opposition parties with a constitutional base…to cooperate…to sort of nudge people and politicians to begin to realign our politics to a much more reason-based, common sense-based centre”. He says the country needs “at least a bridging period, a five-year period in South Africa's history for the country to calm down, for the country to be much more pragmatic, and for us to be more inclusive and to get the populists to the sidelines, the people who think that only one colour can run the country or only one political faction and one ideology can run the country.”

President Ramaphosa defends BEE amid growing economic frustration; Washington insider Joel Pollak unpacks how the Oval Office meeting really played out; and Prof. William Gumede charts a political path forward for South Africa. Internationally, Donald Trump pushes to slash foreign student quotas at Harvard while facing legal setbacks on his trade tariffs; Nvidia’s Jensen Huang shrugs off the noise as the AI giant posts blockbuster results, surging to a record high. Plus: a proudly South African entrepreneur expands Pret-a-Manger’s footprint in Joburg.

Trump Administration insider Joel Pollak shares how the US side reviewed last week’s Oval Office smackdown - and it doesn’t bode well for SA’s immediate future on trade or international relations. Pollak, once tipped as a likely US Ambassador to SA, provides perspective on the Ramaphosa camp’s clumsy spinning of a “successful” meeting - revealing the unvarnished truth with BizNews editor Alec Hogg.

The business rescue of Daybreak - a poultry farm bought by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) in 2015 for R1.2 billion rand - is not the only horror story involving the irresponsible use of the Government Employee Pension Fund (GEPF). In this interview with BizNews, Zirk Gous, the spokesperson for the Association for Monitoring and Advocacy of Government Pensions (AMAGP), says: “…we need to act on 33 billion rands which are squandered in irresponsible political high-risk investments. And that is an urgent thing.” He says the “core problem” is that both the Government Employee Pension Fund and the Public Investment Corporation are “under total political control…so the people which should be called to account for the pain and the suffering of the Daybreak employees (are the) Minister of Finance, (the) Board of Trustees of the GEPF, the Board of Trustees of the Public Investment Corporation.” Meanwhile, says Gous, they are investigsations options to prevent further bad investments. “…the key to that will be we will have to amend the legislation, the Government Employee Pension Law. We will have to amend the Public Investment Corporation Act to remove the political control.”

In this episode of the BizNews Briefing the body monitoring investments made for State pensioners says the Daybreak disaster is by no means an exception; we hear the story behind the Afriforum’s blockbuster video production on challenges to Afrikaners; Ian Cameron explains why analysing farm murders is complex; a global body language expert calls out Ramaphosa; why Rand strength is in prospect; and a JSE debut for Valtera (aka Anglo Platinum).

In his latest interview with BizNews, Ian Cameron, the Chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, busts myths and misconceptions about farm attacks. He speaks about the role that illegal foreigners sometimes play in these attacks and gives a breakdown of which nationalities rank in which provinces. He also shares research done of the motives and modus operandi of farm attackers gleaned from interviews with dozens of convicted felons. “So it's simply not as simple as saying that it's one group versus another because it's more complex than that.” Cameron also dissects the latest quarterly crime statistics that show a 10% decrease in murder. He further gives an insight into the current priorities of the Portfolio Committee on Police, one being the return to work of certain cops after disciplinary processes. “Now we've discovered one in the Eastern Cape that, in his disciplinary, admitted to committing an armed robbery. He admitted that he committed an armed robbery and his sanction in the disciplinary was two months of unpaid suspension and he's back at work. It cannot be that that is the type of people, that those are the kinds of people that we allow back in the police.”

Fresh from celebrating his 45 million-viewed documentary on the Afrikaner’s struggles, Afriforum’s Ernst van Zyl shares his insights on last week’s Oval Office smackdown. He spoke to BizNews editor Alec Hogg.

In today's BizNews Briefing, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein breaks ranks with a bold rebuke following SA’s Oval Office humiliation. Neil de Beer weighs in on who should have been there. Hekpoort reels from a squatter crisis, Trump faces corporate backlash, and Elon Musk lashes out in Qatar. Plus: Coronation, Stefanutti, Pepkor results, and Rupert’s final break from tobacco.

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