Jamie Holley, CEO of Traxion, Africa’s largest private rail and rail services company, tell Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that the company is dead keen to participate in the long-promised concessioning of rail routes owned by Transnet to the private sector and now that Transport Minister has released an almost complete Network Statement the final preparations for the award of concessions are in place. But there’s a problem. Transnet's track and systems are old and broken, in “a critical state of disrepair” according to the statement. And Transnet, which moved 226m tonnes of bulk and freight in 2017/18 managed only 152m tonnes in 2023/24. So while train operators are lining up to run on the Transnet corridors, the track and the systems on them need eye-watering investment. If the government get the money flowing it could make a huge difference to our fortunes and Holley believes it will. And it wasn’t the truck that forced rail off the rails he reminds Bruce, “it was just maintenance"

Rise Mzansi leader and SCOPA chairperson in parliament, Songezo Zibi tells Peter Bruce in this first edition of the Podcasts from the Edge of 2025 that with the turn of Donald Trump to the White House and the removal of constraints from social media platforms like X (Twitter) and, now Facebook, he fears for where South Africans might go to look for the truth. Right now, he says, the truth can be whatever you’re able to make other people believe. A young democracy like South Africa, he warns, is vulnerable. "We need to make the truth more interesting,” he says. “We need to get the truth into the ring. What does bloodlust on behalf of the truth look like?"

Eskom Chairman Mteto Nyati tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that South African’s crisis is about a lack of leadership. It was there at the start…. Like the rest of us he worries about the country but reckons our problems can be solved with discipline and application. Even in the most broken-down schools students are getting great grades where they have excellent headmasters. And while you can’t just scrub coal out of our energy future, — too many jobs depend on it — he says Eskom will fight its own corner and in 10 years’ time will be 30% renewable, 10%-15% gas and a doubling at least of our current nuclear capacity.

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?