BizNews Radio

In our regular wrap of the past month’s performance of investment markets, Corion’s David Bacher explains why history may show the past 31 days were a major watershed, with value-driven investments taking over from growth. He unpacks the implications of a Great Rotation, which would help South African equities and resources in particular and drop relative returns from the US’s Big Tech stocks, which have outperformed for some years. Bacher spoke to BizNews editor Alec Hogg.

Vinny Lingham discusses Bitcoin's different futures under Trump vs. Biden, predicting significant impacts on the cryptocurrency's value. He anticipates US interest rate cuts in December, criticizes South Africa's investment climate, and highlights his focus on conscious health and nuclear power as key investment themes, including fish farming with SeaTopia.

Riots broke out in Venezuela following the presidential election on Sunday. BizNews spoke to one of South Africa's election observers there. In this interview, Madala Masuku, the Deputy SG of the South African Communist Party (SACP), gives a detailed explanation of the election system that is both electronic and manual, and shares the observations from polling day. He relates how President Nicolás Maduro had given foreign observers the assurance that he would accept defeat if he was voted out. Masuku also speaks about the “political jealousies” in the country; the role of contesting foreign interests; as well as the devastation sanctions wreaked on the economy.

A not-guilty verdict was handed down today for South African Police Services (SAPS) Whistleblower Patricia Morgan-Mashale - after almost two years of threats to her life liberty. This after she had been accused of spreading false allegations, circulating WhatsApp messages, and defamation. In this interview with BizNews, she goes into the agenda behind her malicious prosecution; and goes on to reveal how SMSes to former Police Minister Bheki Cele about secret military training camps were deleted from her phone while it was with the police; and how she was blocked by Zizi Kodwa, during his time as Deputy Minister for State Security in the Presidency, when she tried to follow up on the info shared on the secret military training camps. She also speaks about how she blew the whistle on firearms - meant for destruction - being stolen by police officers and sold back to the black market. Having lost her job in SAPS, Mashale now plans to start her own Whistleblower and Anti-Corruption Foundation.

SA’s Government of National Unity faces a major stress test after oil major Total yesterday announced its exit from a highly prospective gas field off the Southern Cape coast. The French multinational and its partners had already invested R8bn in exploring the field, around 10% of the total investment to get a project of this size operational. JSE-listed company HCI is a 10% shareholder in the abandoned field. DA shadow minister James Lorimer has been regularly updating the BizNews community on SA’s oil and gas story. He explains to BizNews editor Alec Hogg how Total’s exit from the Brulpadda and Luiperd fields will cost the country at least R100bn in foregone tax revenues and calls for the cause - a dysfunctional PetroSA - to be urgently addressed.

In a fund-raising talk for Rotary in Hermanus last week BizNews editor Alec Hogg answers the pressing questions of the BizNews tribe.

Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.

Join us for BizNews’ first investment-focused conference on Thursday, 12 September, in Hermanus, featuring top experts like Frans Cronje, Piet Viljoen, and more. Get insights on electricity and exploiting SA’s gas bounty from new and familiar faces. Register here.

In this interview, OMBA’s Sean Ashton delves deeper into last week’s research report where he unpacked the relative appeal of investing in the traditional S&P500 index and its equally weighted cousin - explaining how it is essentially a call on the timeless debate of Growth vs Value. Ashton uses the example of superstock Nvidia to explain how there is no simple answer to the conundrum faced by investors right now. He spoke to BizNews editor Alec Hogg.

In a fund-raising talk for Rotary in Hermanus last week, BizNews editor Alec Hogg addressed how local and international investors have reacted to the results of Election’24 and the Government of National Unity. Cutting through the noise, he eschewed popular narratives in favour of hard data that explains a perception this has been the nation’s most positive change since 1994.

Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.

Join us for BizNews’ first investment-focused conference on Thursday, 12 September, in Hermanus, featuring top experts like Frans Cronje, Piet Viljoen, and more. Get insights on electricity and exploiting SA’s gas bounty from new and familiar faces.

South Africa has become the new gateway to terror. So says Neil de Beer, the President of the United Independent Movement. He spoke to BizNews after the arrest of 95 Libyan nationals at a suspected secret military training camp and the sanctioning by US authorities of an ISIS operative as well as a trainer based in South Africa. De Beer warns: “…we better wake up because if we don't, the absolute terror now being cast in Mozambique, without a doubt, the horrific deaths and killings in DRC are going to come to roost in this country. And it's not doom and gloom. It's not spreading fear…you cannot deny that South Africa is becoming a hub, a centre, a logistical conduit to terror.” De Beer explains how lack of action previously could be because of sensitive links between suspected terrorists and powerful people. However, De Beer has words of praise for new Police Minister Senzo Mchunu who he says “absolutely is a doer”.

The African National Congress (ANC) has acted like “they're powerful players on the African stage”, but South Africa “really irritates most” other African countries because “they're always sticking their noses in everywhere”. So says the former Director of African Studies at the U.S. Army War College, retired Colonel Chris Wyatt, who witnessed the intense dislike for Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma after she was “forced on” the African Union as chairperson. “She went up there and her arrogance…and the distaste people had for her was pretty palpable when I was in Addis Ababa. She was less popular than syphilis.” Commenting on this year’s spate of deaths of SANDF soldiers in the DRC, he says: “They're like lambs sent to the slaughter. They're being sent there with insufficient resources, improper medevac, no air support, insufficient logistics. It's something that South Africa should not be involved in, but it's all part of the egotistical foreign policy of the African National Congress...” He warns that the SA force is going to find itself “increasingly vulnerable to M23 and about a hundred other rebel groups who have all their own agendas and most of its criminal”. Colonel Wyatt also dissects the “war” between the DRC and Rwanda and explains why President Paul Kagame’s welcome mat in the US is “wearing thin”.

Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.

Join us for BizNews’ first investment-focused conference on Thursday, 12 September, in Hermanus, featuring top experts like Frans Cronje, Piet Viljoen, and more. Get insights on electricity and exploiting SA’s gas bounty from new and familiar faces. Register here.