Podcasts from the Edge

So Donald Trump becomes President. Former DA leader and GNU co-architect Tony Leon tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that while the Trump White House may indeed smile benignly on South Africa it is highly unlikely. We have built an arc of Trumps biggest targets — we’re “misaligned”. We are close to Iran and close to China. We have attacked Israel, which Trump has sworn to defend and, probably worst, we run a trade surplus with the US. So let’s not go expecting the next few years to be a walk in the park.

Celebrated South African trade and industry specialist Donald MacKay tells Peter Bruce in this Edition of Podcasts from the Edge that he thinks Donald Trump is going to win the November 5 US presidential election and that the result could spell trouble for South Africa. If Trump declares war on imports into the US, our problem isn’t Agoa, which in reality affects only R2bn a year of SA exports to the US. It’s that the US market is worth around 10 per cent of our total exports. “It’s a big big deal,” he says, and Trump now is a far more dangerous proposition to global trade than he was when he first ran for the White House in 2016.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that digitising our the entire chain of documentation between the state and us citizens, and for inbound travelers, “is completely doable” despite the weaknesses of the state-owned IT agency, Sita. He says officials are working overtime and even at weekends to clear visa application backlogs and he wants it all done by Christmas. And as the DA MP who forced the ANC to hand over records of its secretive deployment committee, he says he’s not nearly done and that the courts are backing him.

Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean McPherson tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that are are “pots and pots of money” available to finance the right infrastructure projects in South Africa. And the National Treasury sits on a nominal R950bn for infrastructure. The trick though is to get something actually done. Infrastructure is complicated and expensive but McPherson says he is going to push as hard as he can to turn South Africa into a construction site.

Reports that Justice Minister Thembi Simelani took what she calls loans worth R575 600 from a financial advisor who paid her out of commissions he had earned as part of the looting of the VBS bank should be enough for President Cyril Ramaphosa to require her immediate resignation. That the payments to the minister were made -- to buy a Sandton coffee shop -- are not contested. She insists they were legal but so then does everyone else found in possession of the proceeds of crime.

Rise Mzansi leader and former Business Day editor Songezo Zibi says the Government of National Unity has seven months to get the country out of the woods. And he tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that the DA is simply incapable of understanding why its competitors behave the way they do.

Combative and passionate South African investor and industrialist Vuslat Bayoglu and Peter Bruce cross swords over the virtues of coal and renewable energy in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge but both agree than plans in the latest Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) to build a new 3 000MW gas-fired power station are plain mad. Why pay dollars to import gas when you can buy South African coal in Rands?

Jorge Heine, arguably Chile's most illustrious modern diplomat, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that South Africa has no choice but to follow an Active Non-Alignment path in its diplomacy as the US and China square up to one another. Heine has been ambassador to South Africa, India and China for Chile, Latin America's most prosperous country. The world has already entered a second Cold War, he warns. The safest place is is equidistant from both.

The world is closer to war than it has been for decades. As the US and China square up to each other, any of the flashpoints in the Middle East, Ukraine, Taiwan and the South China Sea could erupt at any time. All it would take is one rash act. World War 1 began with a Bosnian separatist, Gavrilo Princip, shooting and killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife in 1914. It turned out the world then was ripe for war, South African Institute for International Affairs chief Elizabeth Sidiropoulos tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. And it may be ripe again now.

Technology is dramatically speeding up change. The first meeting this week of the Cabinet of President Cyril Ramaphosa's new coalition Cabinet must quickly come to grips with the ferocity of the revolution rushing towards South Africa. In all probability they will ignore it. But as futurist Neil Jacobsohn tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, we. are already behind the curve. Artificial Intelligence will change almost every aspect of our lives and while renewable energy will kill off almost 3m jobs in the coal and oil and gas industries, the International Energy Agency reckons it'll create another 13m in their place. Time to get on the bus.