Rise Mzansi is the new kid on South Africa’s heaving political block. Its founder and leader, former Bus9ness Day editor Songezo Zibi, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that the new party is “onboarding” 20 people a week — they’re not members but people promising electoral support. If he keeps that up until an election between mid-May and mid-August next year he could collect 7% of the vote. And more if the rate of onboarding increases. Zibi says he isn’t joining the Multi-Party Charter, triggered by DA leader John Steenhuisens “Moonshot Pact” last April. But he will talk to them after the election. Meanwhile, he says, Rise is not trying to become an opposition to the ruling ANC, but an alternative to it. South Africa, he says, desperately needs time out from the ANC.

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The Springboks won an almost impossible rugby test match on Sunday, beating Rugby World Cup hosts France in what many commentators have called the greatest game of rugby ever played. But as Peter Bruce warns in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, there is a dark side to winning that cannot safely be ignored. As tempers flare and as war and death spreads in the Middle East following the Hamas atrocities in Israel on October 7, there is a danger that Europe, and perhaps Paris in particular, becomes a dangerous place to be. The State de France, where the ‘Boks play at least one more game, and possibly two, has been targeted by Muslim extremists in the past. Both the Louvre museum and the Palace of Versailles Paris were closed and evacuated after terrorist threats last weekend. We must be careful...

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A gigantic flood smashed through the village of Stanford in the Western Cape last week, leaving Podcasts from the Edge presenter Peter Bruce in awe of the silent power of water. Fortunately no-one lost their life but there were some close calls. Its hard, and probably foolish to apportion blame for the rain but, he argues, management of the Klein River and possibly others in the province needs attention. If reeds and other vegetation is damming flood waters near homes, and if municipalities are content to allow residential construction on flood planes then someone’s going to get hurt.

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The General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill is an attempt to rewrite what South Africa’s national interest it. On a first read it turn out to be almost exactly the government interests as well. So opposing government policy, advocating for it to fail or funding legal challenges to literally anything the government wants to do could have to running into trouble with the intelligence agencies. It is’t funny, says Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts From the Edge. If we are not careful, the next target, after the NGOs are beaten back, will be opposition parties and the media.

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President Cyril Ramaphosa told the country on television on Sunday night that the recent Brics summit in Johannesburg was all about creating “a fairer and more inclusive world order”. New World Orders are the stuff the Russian and Chinese leaders dream about. To hear them slip so easily from a potential new vassals lips must be satisfying. No more work involved! But Peter Bruce argues in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that expecting dictatorships, autocracies, tyrannies, monarchies and one party states to change the world for the better is just plain bonkers. The more power they are handed by naiive leaders like Ramaphosa the more the world will begin to look like their countries. Then they’ll chew him up and spit him out.

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The Brics summit in Johannesburg last week has left a simmering argument among South Africans in its wake. Was it a good thing or bad. Who have we become involved with and does it even matter? For some the Brics summit represented an historic turning point but most proponents of that view are too young to have witnessed a turning point before so how do they know? What is clear is that the original five Brics which numbered three democracies, are now, following the expansion of the group to 11 members, are now overwhelmingly undemocratic and that has to be a pity. At some stage, argues Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, it will matter.

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The Brics summit in Johannesburg this week is a giant talk shop. Go back to the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement in the late 1950s and you’ll find much of today’s grand talk about a New World Order lying, word for word, under decades of dust. So why should things be different now? It is hard to find anything concrete, or even interesting, in any of the rhetoric in the lead-up to the summit. There’ll be no new currency to trip up the dollar. And how will the BRICS decide on new membership? What are the rules? Do human rights play a part? If the do how are the Chinese and Russians members? And what about trade? Ramaphosa said on Sunday night we had exported R450bn worth of goods to China, the US, Germany, Japan and India. What he didn’t say is that the Brics members in that list trade like they were our new colonisers — they take a minerals and send us back the finished goods. Still, lets hope they all have a great party.

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Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen has pulled off something of a coup by getting author, commentator and scholar William Gumede to chair his Moonshot Pact gathering of opposition party leaders in Johannesburg next week. Well done him, says Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from The Edge. People, including Bruce, were sceptical when the idea to launch a multiparty coalition-type effort ahead of next year’s coalition was first announced in April. But the Gumede appointment signals something important has happened to DA thinking about how this might all be done. It lends next week’s gathering real credibility and whether or not the pact is able to topple the ANC next year — an ambitious target — our politics might actually be coming back to life. The opposition, once comatose, is suddenly sitting up in bed again.

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This time, business is not trying to fix, like, everything. This time it is just trying to fix three things. It is sort of a lesson learned in trying to tie up with government, but will greater focus — a new business partnership focusses only on electricity, logistics and crime — mean better, or any, outcomes? That remains to be seen, says Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, because at some stage when you do business with the ANC, you end up in the mud with the real boss, the ANC itself, and not many people survive that intact.

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Eskom’s Energy Availability Factor a week ago was 56.3%, a long way from where Eskom and the government keep telling it is or jolly well should be. The cold plays havoc with good intentions and the result seems to be a spiralling diesel bill. Who is paying it?, asks Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. The bigger question is this: The democratic state bounced back from a deep apartheid-induced recession after 1994. Can it do it again now? Is the state strong enough? Are the skills still there? Why are we waiting?

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