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A week before Sygnia shareholders vote on an expanded share incentive scheme, Magda Wierzycka was not playing defence. Responding to a Financial Mail report that cast the plan as an enrichment scheme, she told Alec Hogg it was about holding on to a long-serving executive team and being able to hire a CFO, or a successor CEO, at today's market rates. Then she went further. With 30 days' notice and no restraint of trade, she said a weak vote would leave her asking whether she still wants to work for other shareholders, at a time when she believes stakes in private giants like Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX can make her more than Sygnia has in 20 years. She also said the dispute with former partner Andre Crawford-Brunt was settled, previewed a fund giving South African investors access to those companies, and warned that every division at Sygnia would have to be rebuilt for the AI era.

South African rally driver Max Smart won Africa’s place in the FIA Rally Star Programme, where he raced for three years, and went on to the Junior World Rally Championship. Now competing in Spain, he leads the Spanish Gravel Rally Championship for PCR Sport by a single point going into the final round in Granada. In an interview with BizNews, Smart talks about winning a stage on ice in Sweden having never seen snow, and how he has come up with a way to finance the R600,000 a rally cost of competing, which includes his 20 Club sponsorship programme and learning the skills of a mechanic in his team’s workshop. And where did it all start? With a video game, and a momager who helps him keep it going. As a young driver going it alone, he is still building the partnerships that will keep his Ford Fiesta Rally2, “an absolute monster” of a car, on the road. - Linda van Tilburg

Wicknell Chivayo handed out Rolls-Royces, posed with piles of cash and bought a R160 million home in Clifton. Then, days after Open Secrets asked the Hawks to investigate how R800 million from a Zimbabwean election contract landed in his South African accounts, his helicopter came down outside Harare. Michael Marchant, head of investigations at Open Secrets, traced how a man with a fraud conviction and a decade of damaging headlines moved money through South African banks, estate agents and luxury car dealers, and why the presidents who praised him at his funeral may have their own reasons to keep the myth alive. He argued this was never only Zimbabwe's problem: with his estate now up for grabs and a fresh FATF review looming, the Chivayo case had become a test of whether South Africa can stop being a parking lot for the continent's dirty money.

William Saunderson-Meyer tells Alec Hogg that MK will outlast Jacob Zuma: dead or alive, Zuma has shaped South African politics, and any ANC recovery has to run through a party he expects to grow and to take control of Durban's council. Patriotic Alliance co-founder Charles Cilliers hits back after the DA's Tertuis Simmers called the PA a criminal enterprise, accusing him of insulting poor voters. Open Secrets' Michael Marchant traces how the late Wicknell Chivayo's inflated R1 billion Zimbabwean election contract pushed R800 million into South African accounts. Plus the latest from Wall Street.

Is Jacob Zuma the glue holding MK together, or has the party already outgrown him? In the first of his weekly conversations with Alec Hogg on BizNews, William Saunderson-Meyer, whose Jaundiced Eye column has run every week since 1993, said he didn't buy the common wisdom. He argued that MK had tapped a deep well of grievance against the ANC, that it stood to grow in the local elections, and that the ANC's road back to power may run through MK. He sized up Duduzane Zuma as heir apparent, compared the family's split to Romulus and Remus, and described Gayton McKenzie as a hyena of the political wilderness. Then he laid out one set of numbers he keeps coming back to, and why it should worry anyone counting on a weaker ANC.

Earlier in the week, the DA's Tertuis Simmers sat in the same BizNews studio and called the Patriotic Alliance a criminal enterprise dressed up as a party. Charles Cilliers, the PA co-founder and former newspaper editor who wrote Gayton McKenzie's life story, came back with his reply. He told Alec Hogg what he made of the vote-buying claims in George, why he believes the DA cannot lead a coalition, and his version of the Joburg deal that collapsed over a single mayoral committee post. He took on the Beaufort West fundraising questions and the "coloured nationalist" label, and explained why the PA would still hold its nose and work with a party it finds nauseating. He would not say what the PA's first demand will be if it holds the balance of power after 4 November.

The company once known as Net1 has just posted its first full-year profit and is telling the market to expect adjusted earnings to compound at more than 40% a year. Executive chairman Ali Mazanderani, who says he has helped build seven multibillion-dollar fintechs from Brazil to Europe, told Alec Hogg why he believes South Africa's big banks are structurally unable to win the township economy, and why local capital has been too cautious to back the challengers. He also set out what the pending Bank Zero deal would do to Lesaka's debt, why nine in ten South African merchants still don't take card payments, and why he accepted a pay deal that only works if the share price does.

Nelson Mandela Bay has been through nine coalitions in ten years by Retief Odendaal's count, and the DA's mayoral candidate said he would not try to run a ten-party government again. Political scientist Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana, co-author of The Zuma Effect, explained why Jacob Zuma's comeback came as no surprise to him, and why he believes MK is as chaotic as the man who founded it. Lesaka executive chairman Ali Mazanderani argued that the market was already waking up to the fintech's story, and that cash was not coming back. Reuters rounded off the show with the latest from Wall Street.

Jaco Zuma’s ambition to become president of South Africa was rooted in personal interests: to evade the law and assuage his dire financial circumstances - and his faction used chilling tools to get and keep him in power for as long as possible. So says political scientist Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana, the co-author of the “The Zuma Effect”, a five hundred-page work regarded as the definitive work on the Zuma era. In this interview with Chris Steyn, he describes what happened behind the scenes with the making of a personality cult, the remaking of the African National Congress (ANC), the disbandment of The Scorpions, the manipulation of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and other law enforcement institutions, as well as Zuma’s “intelligence project” Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhewebane. “So you have these series of undeserving people who don't expect to have these positions on their own merit. They're shocked that they're even appointed. So they spend most of their time paying back this debt to the president for doing something that they never thought they would ever achieve in their lives.” As for Zuma’s “revenge” MKP, Professor Ndletyana says: “MKP couldn't escape Zuma's personality because JZ believes in personalised rule. So he's formed the party in his own image. When Zuma dies, the party dies.”

Retief Odendaal ran Nelson Mandela Bay for eight and a half months before a no-confidence vote removed him in 2023. Three weeks out from the 4 November local elections, with a new poll putting the DA and ANC almost level in the metro, the DA's mayoral candidate told Alec Hogg why his party has gone to court to make mayor Babalwa Lobishe personally liable for leasing a R25m municipal transformer to a private company. He laid out how a metro with cash in the bank keeps handing infrastructure money back unspent, why he says its top management posts sit empty, and why he will not sign up for another ten-party coalition. He also explained why, despite all of it, he still calls Nelson Mandela Bay the country's most fixable metro.

Freedom Front Plus leader Corné Mulder tells BizNews the government of national unity could technically run to 2029, but Parliament can dissolve itself from May next year and a new ANC president elected in a year's time could recall Cyril Ramaphosa. Mulder also reveals the DA agreed early on to leave international relations to the ANC, and says the FF+ has declared a dispute under the GNU's deadlock-breaking mechanism over the US standoff. Plus DA Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers on the premiership, Donald MacKay on what really hollowed out manufacturing, Willem Els on the Ballito teen, and Wall Street.

A six-year-old girl was critically injured in a school stabbing this morning allegedly by a former pupil who also planted a homemade bomb at a Ballito Mall in March. Describing the attack, Willem Ells of the Institute for Security Studies and the Security Initiative for Africa, says: “He was armed with a homemade firearm as well as a kitchen knife with a six-inches long blade. And apparently he discharged the firearm and it did not function. So there could have been some more fatalities there, but then he attacked the little girl.” Els recalls a previous interview in which he spoke to Steyn about how the “Lone Wolf” teenager had “idolised the Columbine shooters in America and that he wanted to do the same in order to cement his name in history…” As for why this teenager was roaming the streets after the failed bomb attack, Els - who is also an explosives experts - charges: “I think we need to ask those questions high up and more questions should be asked because what we gathered is that the police that attended the scene handed the IED back to his parents. That is completely, completely against the law to do that. “

A week after an ANC committee chair floated treason and suggested stripping critics of their citizenship, Corné Mulder joked that the state had better move fast, because his tax return was due. Then he got serious. The Freedom Front Plus leader told Alec Hogg why he believed the threat had no constitutional footing, why he had moved to invoke the GNU's deadlock-breaking mechanism rather than fight it out in a cabinet he called stacked against his party, and why he thought the ANC was misreading Washington. He also told the story of a grandfather sentenced to death for a killing that never happened, set out who he would and wouldn't govern with in Tshwane, Joburg and the Western Cape, and explained why he expected the FF+ to be the good story of the 4 November vote.

The DA finished first in Ekurhuleni, the metro that once carried the ANC over the line in Gauteng, but by less than two percentage points, and with no party anywhere near a majority. Wayne Sussman took Chris Steyn through the first eNCA MarkData metro poll and explained why the East Rand mattered more than many people assumed. In Hermanus, the DA's Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers told Alec Hogg he would never govern with the Patriotic Alliance. Asked whether the DA took coloured voters for granted, he answered with job-seeker databases, housing lists and a lottery draw for public works jobs, and described the message he believed the PA was selling. Boxer chief executive Marek Masojada described what happened in his stores once grant-week money ran out, and what his shoppers had stopped putting in their trolleys. Reuters closed with oil's jump after attacks on a Saudi airport, a reminder of the fuel costs Masojada said were already squeezing South African households.

Boxer's shoppers fill their pantries in grant week and run short by mid-month. Diesel has pushed up taxi fares, rice is selling for a fifth less than a year ago, and like-for-like sales barely moved. Yet the discounter sold nearly 4% more goods, opened its 600th store and cleared its long-term bank debt. On results day, chief executive Marek Masojada told Alec Hogg what his customers are leaving on the shelf, how AI went from taking meeting minutes to the core of the business in six months, how deals with controlling shareholder Pick n Pay are kept at arm's length, and what stands between Boxer and a thousand stores. He also named the question he expected investors to press hardest.

With 23 days to go to the local government elections, the DA's Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers sat down with Alec Hogg in Hermanus and drew a hard line. He said he would never govern with Gayton McKenzie's Patriotic Alliance, and described what he said he had seen with his own eyes during the by-elections that cost the DA three wards in George. He spoke about the 2024 building collapse in George that killed 34 people, why no one has yet been charged, and the one outstanding report he said is holding up the police. Simmers set out the party's battle plan town by town, from Knysna, which he called a blueprint for poor local government, to Bitou, where the DA has twice missed an outright majority by fewer than 30 votes. He also owned up to the biggest mistake of his ministerial career, and answered the question he said follows him everywhere: does he want to be the next premier?

In this edition of the Electoral Road Show with Chris Steyn and analyst Supremo Wayne Sussman, he unpacks the polling results of the first two of six metros surveyed in the highly scientific eNCA MarkData 2026 election poll. In Ekurhuleni, the DA emerged first with 31.2% of the vote, the only party to breach that 30% mark. Second was the ANC with 29.4%. A distant third was MKP at 11.5%. The EFF came in fourth place at 9.2%. In Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA is in the lead with 37.7% of the vote just ahead of the ANC on 37.4%. Coming in third is the EFF at 8%. “The job for the DA as the leading party is how can they stretch that lead in the coming weeks. The job for the ANC is to re-emerge, try to re-emerge as the largest party in Ekurhuleni. And the other parties will be looking at these polls and saying, look, this is a golden opportunity. The ANC is not doing well. What can they extract from the ANC? There's a lot to play for, for each and every single one of the major parties over the next few weeks.” Sussman says questions about service delivery and other key issues produced “very worrying responses for those in government, for those leading. The electorate is not satisfied with the state of local government, with the way our cities are being run.” In next week’s show, the polling results for Johannesburg and Cape Town will be unpacked.

Intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman warns Chris Steyn that instability ahead of the local elections could expand beyond the state's capacity to control, with the military underfunded and crime intelligence unable to pay sources. David Shapiro and Alec Hogg return to the Dimension Data Campus saga, asking why Jason Goodall would sign away R350 million, and whether the remaining directors' defence that NTT's Japanese owners knew all along can hold. Alec also unpacks Africa Bitcoin Corporation, where the board has publicly opposed its own 76% shareholder bloc's push for two new directors. Plus Wall Street's Friday rally.

In this interview with Chris Steyn, Independent Intelligence Analyst Jasmine Opperman warns that an expansion of instability in South Africa in the lead-up to the Local Government Elections would likely be beyond the government's capability to control. “We have never seen the ANC in a crisis situation, political power-wise, as now. The fact of the matter is at the political level, they’re lost. If we look at their law and order, they are completely out of their depth. The military can only do so much, and once that fails, we have nothing else to fall back on.” She was speaking with the country in the grip of anti-immigration riots that have seen buildings and businesses and vehicles torched and looted with physical clashes between police and protestors. “I cannot help but think that the MK’s hand is involved in all of this…The quicker the ANC starts realising that ethnicity is a real issue and people are taking pride, the better. I just don't think that the police intelligence capability, nor national intelligence has the ability to realise that we must be careful here. We are walking into a spider web that can destabilise.” Opperman also gives the details behind the ransom paid for the South African held captive by Islamic State Mozambique, describes how they use collaborators to cash out ransoms at dedicated crypto currency ATMs, and identifies by name for the first time the IS leadership just across the border from South Africa.

One of the Campus Six has cracked. Jason Goodall, former chief executive of Dimension Data and NTT, signs a statement naming four former colleagues and agrees to pay NTT R208.6 million. In a special BizNews Edge, Alec Hogg reads the private WhatsApp Goodall sent those same colleagues on the day he settled, puts the four’s detailed reply on the record, and asks why a man would pay that much to say something untrue. Paul Hoffman SC explains why the appeal court may never consider the statement at all. Alec then turns to Africa Bitcoin Corporation, formerly Altvest, where the board has publicly opposed its own controlling shareholder. And he answers the questions put to him on social media: how BizNews came to own shares in the company, why it hasn’t sold them, and the disclosure he admits he should have made.