Happy SpaceX Day everyone. 

Today may go down in history as the day Elon Musk could become the world's first trillionaire, and the day SpaceX blasted off into the public markets.

The company already made history yesterday by selling 555.6 million shares priced at $135 each, raising the $75 billion that it was looking for and giving the company nearly achieved the $1.8 trillion valuation that it was targeting.

It equals the combined value of the 29 biggest IPOs in US history since 2000 – adjusted for inflation – including Meta, Google, Hilton, Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, Snowflake and GM.

Yes, it’s huge. So today, everyone will be watching SpaceX leave the launchpad. In yesterday’s note, I discussed in detail what to expect from this IPO today, and in the coming weeks and months, for those who are interested in what the future could hold for the company and for the rest of the market.

On earth, lunatic...

On Earth, it was a good old day where US President Donald Trump threatened to hit Iran hard – oil spiked, stocks fell – then he said that the countries were ‘close to a deal’ to extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz – oil fell, stocks rallied.

What’s unbelievable is that after three months of this nonsense, markets still move on words that have little substance. Alas. This morning, US crude is testing the $85pb level to the downside, its lowest level since the early days of the Iranian conflict. Yet there is no confirmation from Iranian media, and there is nothing to suggest that this time will be the charm.

But US and European futures are in positive territory at the time of writing, before the European open, with European indices leading gains, showing how eagerly European investors await the end of this conflict.

ECB hikes

Beneath the market optimism, the euro area was hit by the European Central Bank’s (ECB) first rate hike in almost three years, aimed at fighting inflation that spiked past the 3% mark amid rising energy prices. Lagarde said that inflation is spilling over into the rest of the economy.

Now, note that yesterday’s market action was mostly driven by the fall in oil prices, and not by the ECB decision, as benchmark 10-year European yields fell sharply and equity indices gained on falling energy prices. But the ECB hike is fundamentally bad news for European economies.

A rate hike is obviously never good news. It increases borrowing costs for companies and households and slows growth. And in the particular case of the euro area, growth prospects are already very meagre – I say meagre not to say negative. In Q1, the euro area reported a negative growth figure (-0.2% q-o-q), and the situation has probably deteriorated in Q2 due to the Iran-war-led energy crisis. To make things worse, another hike in September remains very much in play unless energy prices retreat sustainably over the summer.

And worryingly, the ECB hike will probably not make much difference to inflation.

 A rate hike is very efficient in the context of an economy facing demand-led inflation. By raising rates and slowing the economy and demand, the central bank can tame inflation. But in today’s context, inflation comes from an external shock. So we know beforehand that ECB rate hikes will likely have a bigger impact on growth than on inflation.

So why does the ECB hike? Because it can’t just sit and watch inflation rise without doing anything. In 2022, the ECB was criticised for reacting too late to the Ukrainian war led energy crisis. But back in 2011, it moved and hiked rates twice to cool rising inflationary pressures, only to reverse course after the economy fell off a cliff.

So what I am trying to say is that monetary policy is not an exact science. There are too many factors at play that make the same decisions echo differently across the economy. And central bankers have little control over the vast majority of those factors.

Today, we know that whatever central banks do, only an end to the Iran war, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a sustained decline in energy prices could ease global inflation worries and push the central bank hawks out of the room.

In summary, the positive reaction in European equity markets yesterday may hit a wall if oil prices spike again.

Keeping up with the central banks

Next week will be crowded with central bank decisions. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) is now increasingly expected to hike rates to slow the bleeding in the Japanese yen. The USDJPY fell sharply below the 160 mark yesterday after Trump called off attacks on Iran. But the pair rebounded above the 160 mark today. Intervention or not, the only thing that could stop the yen’s bleeding is a rate hike, ideally next week.

Then, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is broadly expected to hold fire next week after three rate hikes since January. The Bank of England (BoE) is expected to sit tight, too, as softer inflation has bought policymakers some breathing room. But that relief may prove temporary, as inflation will likely readjust to reality when the energy price cap is revised and higher energy costs begin feeding through to household bills.

In Switzerland, well, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is safe for now. Inflation in Switzerland rose too, but only to 0.6% on an annual basis as a reaction to rising energy prices, thanks to a strong franc that protected Swiss prices from rising too much. As such, low inflation gives the SNB the luxury to wait: wait for other central banks pressured by above-target inflation to raise rates, wait for the global economy to slow under the weight of the coming rate hikes, and wait for weaker demand to pull energy prices lower.

Time is everything in the current context. And in fine, if oil prices come down before Swiss inflation breaches the SNB's 2% target, Switzerland could emerge largely unscathed without lifting a finger.

Holy Switzerland.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, Senior Analyst at Swissquote.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

Happy SpaceX Day everyone. 

Today may go down in history as the day Elon Musk could become the world's first trillionaire, and the day SpaceX blasted off into the public markets.

The company already made history yesterday by selling 555.6 million shares priced at $135 each, raising the $75 billion that it was looking for and giving the company nearly achieved the $1.8 trillion valuation that it was targeting.

It equals the combined value of the 29 biggest IPOs in US history since 2000 – adjusted for inflation – including Meta, Google, Hilton, Airbnb, DoorDash, Uber, Snowflake and GM.

Yes, it’s huge. So today, everyone will be watching SpaceX leave the launchpad. In yesterday’s note, I discussed in detail what to expect from this IPO today, and in the coming weeks and months, for those who are interested in what the future could hold for the company and for the rest of the market.

On earth, lunatic...

On Earth, it was a good old day where US President Donald Trump threatened to hit Iran hard – oil spiked, stocks fell – then he said that the countries were ‘close to a deal’ to extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz – oil fell, stocks rallied.

What’s unbelievable is that after three months of this nonsense, markets still move on words that have little substance. Alas. This morning, US crude is testing the $85pb level to the downside, its lowest level since the early days of the Iranian conflict. Yet there is no confirmation from Iranian media, and there is nothing to suggest that this time will be the charm.

But US and European futures are in positive territory at the time of writing, before the European open, with European indices leading gains, showing how eagerly European investors await the end of this conflict.

ECB hikes

Beneath the market optimism, the euro area was hit by the European Central Bank’s (ECB) first rate hike in almost three years, aimed at fighting inflation that spiked past the 3% mark amid rising energy prices. Lagarde said that inflation is spilling over into the rest of the economy.

Now, note that yesterday’s market action was mostly driven by the fall in oil prices, and not by the ECB decision, as benchmark 10-year European yields fell sharply and equity indices gained on falling energy prices. But the ECB hike is fundamentally bad news for European economies.

A rate hike is obviously never good news. It increases borrowing costs for companies and households and slows growth. And in the particular case of the euro area, growth prospects are already very meagre – I say meagre not to say negative. In Q1, the euro area reported a negative growth figure (-0.2% q-o-q), and the situation has probably deteriorated in Q2 due to the Iran-war-led energy crisis. To make things worse, another hike in September remains very much in play unless energy prices retreat sustainably over the summer.

And worryingly, the ECB hike will probably not make much difference to inflation.

 A rate hike is very efficient in the context of an economy facing demand-led inflation. By raising rates and slowing the economy and demand, the central bank can tame inflation. But in today’s context, inflation comes from an external shock. So we know beforehand that ECB rate hikes will likely have a bigger impact on growth than on inflation.

So why does the ECB hike? Because it can’t just sit and watch inflation rise without doing anything. In 2022, the ECB was criticised for reacting too late to the Ukrainian war led energy crisis. But back in 2011, it moved and hiked rates twice to cool rising inflationary pressures, only to reverse course after the economy fell off a cliff.

So what I am trying to say is that monetary policy is not an exact science. There are too many factors at play that make the same decisions echo differently across the economy. And central bankers have little control over the vast majority of those factors.

Today, we know that whatever central banks do, only an end to the Iran war, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a sustained decline in energy prices could ease global inflation worries and push the central bank hawks out of the room.

In summary, the positive reaction in European equity markets yesterday may hit a wall if oil prices spike again.

Keeping up with the central banks

Next week will be crowded with central bank decisions. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) is now increasingly expected to hike rates to slow the bleeding in the Japanese yen. The USDJPY fell sharply below the 160 mark yesterday after Trump called off attacks on Iran. But the pair rebounded above the 160 mark today. Intervention or not, the only thing that could stop the yen’s bleeding is a rate hike, ideally next week.

Then, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is broadly expected to hold fire next week after three rate hikes since January. The Bank of England (BoE) is expected to sit tight, too, as softer inflation has bought policymakers some breathing room. But that relief may prove temporary, as inflation will likely readjust to reality when the energy price cap is revised and higher energy costs begin feeding through to household bills.

In Switzerland, well, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is safe for now. Inflation in Switzerland rose too, but only to 0.6% on an annual basis as a reaction to rising energy prices, thanks to a strong franc that protected Swiss prices from rising too much. As such, low inflation gives the SNB the luxury to wait: wait for other central banks pressured by above-target inflation to raise rates, wait for the global economy to slow under the weight of the coming rate hikes, and wait for weaker demand to pull energy prices lower.

Time is everything in the current context. And in fine, if oil prices come down before Swiss inflation breaches the SNB's 2% target, Switzerland could emerge largely unscathed without lifting a finger.

Holy Switzerland.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, Senior Analyst at Swissquote.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

For most of modern economic history, markets functioned as relatively open systems.

Consumers interacted directly with retailers, service providers, transport operators and businesses within broadly decentralised commercial environments. Supply chains operated largely in the background.

Their role was to move products efficiently from producers to consumers through physical networks of transport, warehousing and distribution. That model is changing rapidly.

Increasingly, South Africans do not access goods, services and commerce directly through traditional markets.

They access them through platforms.

This may appear at first to be merely a technological shift. In reality, it reflects a much deeper transformation in the structure of modern supply chains and economic power.

Platforms are no longer simply digital applications sitting on top of the economy. They are becoming sophisticated systems for coordinating consumption, logistics, fulfilment and economic participation itself.

And beneath these systems sit increasingly powerful supply chain infrastructures.

This is what makes the rise of platforms economically significant.

Most public discussion around platforms focuses on technology, convenience or digital innovation. But the real strategic advantage of platforms lies elsewhere.

It lies in their ability to orchestrate highly integrated logistics systems that connect consumers, suppliers, data, fulfilment networks, and service providers in real time.

The platform economy is therefore not primarily a software economy. It is increasingly a supply chain economy.

Companies such as Uber, Takealot, Mr D and grocery delivery platforms do not simply provide digital marketplaces.

They coordinate movement. They organise access. They manage fulfilment. They optimise routing, inventory visibility, delivery density and response times through sophisticated operational systems.

In effect, they are becoming private infrastructures for economic coordination. This fundamentally changes the nature of markets.

Traditional markets were relatively fragmented.

Businesses competed within shared commercial spaces where consumers exercised broad visibility across products and services. Platforms reorganise this dynamic by centralising visibility, fulfilment and access inside integrated ecosystems.

The important point is that supply chain capability increasingly determines platform power.

The companies gaining influence are not necessarily those with the best products alone.

They are often those capable of building the most responsive logistics systems, the most efficient fulfilment networks and the deepest operational integration between digital interfaces and physical distribution infrastructure.

This represents a profound shift in how economic power is exercised.

Historically, supply chains were viewed largely as support functions within business. Today, they are becoming strategic systems through which markets themselves are organised. The implications extend far beyond retail.

Platforms increasingly shape how consumers access transport, food, entertainment, financial services and even work opportunities. Labour itself is becoming platform-mediated.

Drivers, delivery workers and service providers increasingly participate in economic systems governed through algorithmic logistics coordination rather than traditional organisational structures.

This creates a new form of economic dependence.

Consumers depend on platforms for convenience and access. Businesses depend on platforms for visibility and customer reach.

Workers depend on platforms to generate income. Restaurants, retailers and suppliers increasingly operate inside ecosystems they do not fully control. Supply chains, therefore, begin functioning not merely as systems of movement, but as systems of economic governance.

South Africa presents a particularly important case because the country is entering this transition within conditions of deep inequality, infrastructure instability and uneven digital access.

Platforms often thrive in environments where public systems become unreliable or fragmented. Consumers gravitate toward systems that offer convenience, predictability, and coordination within otherwise inefficient operating environments.

This partly explains the rapid growth of app-based delivery, digital fulfilment and platform-mediated services across South African cities.

But this growth also concentrates infrastructural influence. As platforms expand, they increasingly shape which businesses gain visibility, which suppliers access consumers efficiently and which forms of labour remain economically viable.

The platform no longer merely participates in the market. It begins by structuring the market itself.

This is where the supply chain lens becomes critical.

Modern platforms derive power not only from technology or branding, but from control over integrated fulfilment systems. Warehousing networks, delivery density, routing algorithms, demand forecasting, and operational visibility serve as mechanisms for economic coordination. 

The strategic centre of the economy gradually shifts toward those capable of controlling the flow. This introduces an important societal question.

If platforms increasingly function as privately controlled economic infrastructures, what happens to competition, market openness and economic independence over time?

Historically, infrastructure such as roads, ports, rail systems and public markets operated as shared economic foundations.

Increasingly, however, access to commerce itself becomes mediated through proprietary logistics ecosystems controlled by a relatively small number of powerful platforms.

The long-term implications of this shift remain poorly understood. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Modern supply chains no longer simply support economic activity.

They are increasingly organising the economy itself.

Wesley Niemann is an educator, researcher and consultant in Supply Chain Management and Logistics in the Department of Business Management at the University of Pretoria. His research focuses on supply chain resilience, with a particular interest in how organisations respond to disruption and uncertainty in complex supply chains.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

The Lobito Corridor project, the multibillion-dollar, 1 300km railway development connecting Angola’s Atlantic port of Lobito to the mineral-rich DRC and Zambia, has highlighted the urgent need for South Africa to ramp up its status as a value-added industrial hub.

South Africa’s dominance of exports from Africa’s Copperbelt has eroded dramatically over the years and the Lobito project places further pressure on the country to reassess its role as trade routes shift in southern and central Africa.

According to well-known South African cross-border logistics consultant Kage Barnett, the republic now handles less than 20% of copper exports from these regions. With the Lobito Corridor scheduled for completion by 2030, costs will be about 30-40% cheaper than exporting through South African ports.

70% of the DRC’s exports currently go to China, and 70% of that goes through the Port of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. Some 40% of minerals from Zambia and surrounds is exported through Walvis Bay in Namibia.

However, even these ports will be impacted by the Lobito Corridor as it reduces the traditional route to the sea by two-thirds for some producers, drastically cutting transit times.

The Lobito development has now moved beyond feasibility studies, environmental and social impact assessments, and the establishment of concession agreements, into the procurement phase.

Though the corridor’s potential has been applauded by many African stakeholders, there are areas of concern.

One of the most significant, as pointed out by the Africa Policy Research Institute, is that the corridor may “facilitate ‘modern plundering’ by removing the friction of exporting unprocessed ore”.

The UN Convention on Trade and Development (Unctad) has indicated when a ton of copper ore leaves Zambia, it is worth a few thousand dollars. However, when it is turned into electrical wire it is worth double that.  It can be worth 10 times that when shaped into a transformer.

It is no secret that US investment in the Lobito Corridor is a direct response to China’s dominance in Africa driven mainly through the Belt and Road Initiative, the enormous infrastructure and economic development project that spans across Asia, Europe, and Africa.

Lobito intends to create westward trade flows via the Atlantic, which will help source critical minerals and commodities needed in the production of data centres, power grids, electric vehicles, and microchips in the West.

Professor Charles Wait, an economics professor at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha, pointed out that the “Trump administration is desperately looking for a secure supply of strategic minerals”.

“I’ll be surprised if they are less enthusiastic about this project than Biden was.”

As much as South Africa’s mineral exports from the DRC and Zambia have dropped off, Barnett can see a potential problem for local equipment manufacturers as well as logistics companies in terms of delivering chemicals or heavy earth-moving equipment to these regions.

“Many transporters have contracts for delivering chemicals, vehicles, and materials to the mines. These might shift as well due to cheaper pricing and shorter transit times,” he said.

The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) has previously indicated that South Africa is the DRC's most significant foreign goods and services supplier. In 2023, it contributed over 20% to the nation's total imports.

The main products exported to the DRC are steel structures, machinery parts, cocks and valves for pipes, and parts for boring or sinking machinery.

Zwelinzima Vavi, general-secretary of the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu), said the Lobito Corridor should be a wake-up call to the country’s political leadership, organised labour, Transnet, and domestic industry.

South Africa was already grappling with challenges like collapsing rail infrastructure, high logistics costs, and electricity instability, among other challenges, he said.

Vavi warned that if South Africa failed to industrialise while the continent exported raw critical minerals to the US, EU, and China, Africa risked repeating the colonial pattern where infrastructure corridors existed mainly to extract raw materials for foreign industrial powers.

“The real question is whether Southern Africa will use this infrastructure to industrialise Africa, create decent jobs, and develop regional manufacturing chains, or will it simply accelerate the export of raw minerals while African countries remain dependent and unequal?”

Solly Phetoe, general-secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), called on the South African government to increase the capacity of the country’s ports to process and export finished goods and services to international markets, including “our own continent as part of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement”.

Wait agreed that it was imperative to effectively get the country’s rail and harbour networks up to world standards with “fast and smooth transport links to our neighbours to sell our manufactured and primary products like agricultural produce”.

“We must stop talking about making it easier to do business in South Africa and more aggressively remove obstacles.”

South Africa is deeply committed to Agenda 2063, the continent’s strategic framework that aims to deliver on its goal for inclusive and sustainable development.

As such, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) said South Africa did not believe that the development of other countries undermined its own.

“Having functional corridors, including the Lobito Corridor, work to the advantage of Africa,” it said in response to media queries.

“South Africa’s strategic collaboration with rich critical minerals SADC countries such as the DRC, Zambia and Angola is important in ensuring that the region’s development and economic growth are accelerated.”

The dtic emphasised that investments were flowing into South Africa as much as they were into other countries on the continent.

The government’s Rail and Ports Private Sector Participation Programme, with a total investment of about $20 billion, was attracting global private sector capital investment mainly driven by the government’s rail reforms and “investment-friendly regulatory developments”.

The dtic has been clear in wanting to transition South Africa from a raw material exporter to a value-added industrial hub.

“This we plan to do by prioritising local processing of manganese, platinum group metals (PGMs), vanadium, and chrome to support electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells, and energy storage.”

What is clear is that the development of Lobito Corridor has necessitated that South Africa steps up if it hopes to remain relevant in the shifting regional landscape.

John Harvey is a South African writer who has worked in the news media for more than 20 years.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

For most South Africans, retail is experienced in a single, visible moment: a quick trip to the store, a transaction at the till, a bag of essentials carried home.

Yet what we see in-store is only the tip of a much larger system.

Behind every product on the shelf is a complex, coordinated ecosystem of people working across farms, factories, warehouses, trucks and shop floors to ensure that goods are available, accessible and affordable.

There is another dimension of work that deserves greater attention - the vast, largely unseen network of people who keep the country’s retail system functioning every day. 

This is retail’s ‘hidden economy’ - a system that operates seamlessly in the background yet underpins how our broader economy functions. 

This invisibility has real consequences.

When we focus only on what happens in-store, we risk undervaluing the thousands of workers whose roles are less visible but no less critical.

We also overlook retail’s broader economic function – not just as a point of sale, but as a connector of supply chains, a creator of livelihoods and a driver of participation across multiple sectors.

When we don’t see the system, we underestimate its scale, misunderstand how it works, and undervalue the people within it.

In South Africa, where economic inclusion remains uneven, this matters even more. 

Recent economic data continues to highlight the structural challenges we face persistently high unemployment, particularly among young people, and a growing reliance on informal or survivalist forms of economic activity.

At SPAR, our commitment to people is deliberate. In 2024, we strengthened our approach to fair and responsible remuneration, including adopting a formal fair pay policy which details the Group’s approach towards paying a living wage, fair wage and market-related competitive salaries.

The Group implemented the first phase of its living wage initiative in 2025, to be completed over a two-year period. 

We continue to invest in skills development and career programmes, including leadership, supply chain, and youth employment initiatives like YES and JumpStart, recognising that employment must be supported by clear pathways for growth and mobility.

We are also investing in structured retail development programmes through our Retail Academy, to build a sustainable pipeline of skilled, empowered retailers and fast-track B-BBEE ownership across the network.

This extends across our broader ecosystem, where we work with retailers, industry bodies and SETA-aligned partners to deliver structured training, learnerships and workplace experience.

In 2025, we invested approximately R14 million in supplier development, supporting small-scale producers through our Supplier Development Hub, which has achieved 100% farmer profitability and retention. 

These are not standalone interventions; they are part of a larger effort to build capability, improve livelihoods and strengthen the resilience of the retail system as a whole.

In this context, retail is not just a sector; it is one of the most accessible entry points into the economy.

It facilitates economic participation across a wide network of stakeholders – from small-scale farmers and local suppliers to logistics operators, merchandisers, drivers, independent retailers and store employees. 

What looks like a single interaction is, in reality, the endpoint of a 24-hour economic network, reflecting the coordinated effort of an entire value chain working in sync.

Long before a customer enters a store, farm workers have harvested produce, packhouses have graded it, suppliers have coordinated volumes, distribution centres have moved stock across regions, and logistics teams have ensured delivery to stores.

This system does not pause for weekends or public holidays. It is constant, interdependent and largely invisible. 

At SPAR, this interconnected system is supported by a model that combines independent retail with centralised wholesale and distribution.

SPAR retailers are not simply endpoints in the supply chain; they are critical participants in local economies, responsible for how stores are run, how people are employed and how communities are served – supported by SPAR’s supply chain, standards and food safety frameworks.

Together, this forms part of a broader network that enables goods to move efficiently from producers to communities. It is this balance that helps translate national supply chains into everyday access at a local level. 

It also creates pathways into the formal economy.

Through initiatives such as our Rural Hub programme, we work with small-scale farmers to help them access formal retail markets – an important step in unlocking growth and sustainability for emerging producers. These linkages are essential if South Africa is to build a more inclusive economy. 

Importantly, the resilience of this system cannot be taken for granted. In an environment where supply chain stability has become a national concern – shaped by infrastructure constraints, logistics challenges and rising input costs – the networks that underpin retail are increasingly vital.

They are not just operational systems; they are economic lifelines.

Looking beyond the checkout counter allows us to recognise the full spectrum of people and partnerships that make everyday retail possible – particularly those whose contributions are not always visible but are essential to keeping the system moving. 

Recognising this hidden economy is not simply about acknowledgement; it is about understanding how economic participation happens. Retail is not just a point of sale – it is a system that connects, enables and sustains livelihoods across the economy. 

Some of the most important contributions to South Africa’s economy are not always the most visible.

Reeza Isaacs, CEO: The SPAR Group.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

South Africa’s automotive industry has long stood as one of the country’s significant industrial achievements.

For more than a century, a combination of entrepreneurial daring, committed government support, global integration, skilled labour, and sustained investment has positioned the country as a competitive vehicle assembly hub, with strong export performance and deep linkages into global value chains.

The global automotive landscape has undergone a structural shift.

Supply chains are being reconfigured, geopolitics and mineral access drive production decisions, new manufacturing centres have emerged, and new vehicle brands, particularly from Eastern economies, are entering markets, including South Africa’s at pace and scale.

These developments are reshaping the SA automotive manufacturing sector in ways that were not anticipated when the SA Automotive Masterplan (SAAM35) was designed.

Thinking critically about these shifts is timely given that SAAM35 is prioritised for review before the end of this year.

A fundamental question arises: Can South Africa’s current trajectory enable it to remain a meaningful manufacturing economy, or does it risk drifting into a position where it primarily serves as a market for imported vehicles?

While remaining an important assembly location, there are growing indications that the depth of local manufacturing is under pressure.

The component sector, which underpins long-term industrial capability, is particularly exposed to these dynamics. Over time, the risk is not only that assembly activity disappears, but that a greater proportion of value is imported.

SA must make a deliberate choice - to position itself as a manufacturing hub, rather than a global showroom for vehicles made elsewhere.

This is not an argument against competition.

Competition can strengthen markets and improve efficiencies. However, competition alone does not guarantee industrial development. Without a deliberate focus on component led deepening of the value chain, it can just as easily accelerate the erosion of domestic manufacturing. This would undermine decades of deliberate industrial policy and place more than 100,000 skilled jobs at risk.

The next phase of South Africa’s automotive strategy must move beyond assembly as an anchor of industrial policy and instead focus on building depth, resilience, and capability across the full manufacturing value chain. Localisation must be translated from a percentage ambition to new plant openings, more black industrialists, innovation, and skilled employment at scale.

At the 6th SA Investment Conference, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this year, R5.8bn in automotive component investment was committed to.

Whilst this number is substantive on its own, there is scope to be much higher.

This requires a new kind of alignment. A refreshed automotive compact between government, vehicle assemblers, component manufacturers and labour, grounded in a shared commitment to an onshoring focused reindustrialisation.

Such a compact should be built on four foundational pillars.

First, the domestic market must be repositioned as a strategic lever for industrialisation. While export competitiveness remains essential, the domestic market plays a critical role in supporting scale and stability for local vehicle investment and the supplier base that follows.

Greater attention must be given to how domestic demand can be aligned with localisation objectives, ensuring that growth in vehicle sales translates into growth in local manufacturing.

It is concerning that in 2025 vehicle sales in South Africa recovered to pre-covid levels of just under 597 000 units, almost 16% higher than 2024, yet the country’s manufacturing localisation level is at 38%, nowhere near the 48% milestone expected by SAAM35 around now.

Second, the component sector must be strengthened as the backbone of the industry.

Component manufacturing accounts for 60% of value addition and over 70% of direct employment within the automotive manufacturing value chain.

Industrial sustainability depends not on assembly volumes alone, but on the depth and competitiveness of the supplier base.

This requires targeted support for scale, technology development, stimulating local raw materials and mineral usage, and stronger integration into global production platforms. Not many South Africans know that domestic components have been exported into global electric vehicle plants for several years, even with no battery EV manufactured in South Africa.

Third, new entrant vehicle manufacturers present a dual challenge and an opportunity.

Rather than viewing them solely through a market share lens, there is scope to integrate these into the local industrial ecosystem to support investment, supplier development, and technology transfer. If approached strategically in any new entrant support policy, these firms can contribute to, rather than detract from domestic industrial capability.

Chery, the recently announced Chinese headquartered OEM investor in SA’s landscape spent $1.4bn globally on R&D in 2024, with a particular focus on NEVs, and is planning over 20 overseas R&D centres to enhance localized innovation.

Chery’s investment in South Africa must be tied to the onshoring of NEV components, deepening South Africa’s inclusion in this exciting, forward-looking group of propulsion technologies.

Finally, the aftermarket should play a role as shock-absorber to disruptions in the OEM production environment.

Replacement parts and accessories are less exposed to production cycles and directly connected to the already more than 12million vehicles on South African roads.

Incorporation into industrial policy, protection from dumping and having the strong network of vehicle importers committing to sourcing local parts will unlock productive value from this segment and turn imported vehicles sold into an ongoing industrial dividend rather than a once-off transaction to South Africans.

These priorities are not mutually exclusive.

A strong domestic market supports vehicle investment and supplier scale; a competitive supplier base enhances production performance; and a well-integrated new entrant and aftermarket strategy can accelerate industrial development.

The risk is not that South Africa loses assembly capacity, but that it loses manufacturing depth in the value chain and with it, industrial resilience.

Importantly, the policy frameworks and incentives that have supported the industry to date are not without merit.

They have delivered investment, sustained production, and anchored South Africa within global automotive networks.

However, the structure of the industry has evolved, and policy must evolve with it. The task ahead is not to dismantle existing frameworks, but to recalibrate them and ensure policy design, industry strategy, and stakeholder alignment are directed towards deepening domestic manufacturing capability.

South Africa has, in the past, demonstrated its ability to build globally competitive industrial sectors through coordinated action and long-term commitment.

For those sceptical of deliberate industrialisation strategies, the automotive sector remains one of South Africa’s clearest demonstrations of what coordinated policy and industry alignment can achieve. The question now is whether that success can be geared up, or will it gradually erode.

Renai Moothilal is the CEO of the National Association of Automotive Component and Allied Manufacturers (NAACAM) and a recognised expert in the field of industrial policy and automotive sector development.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

In this article that marks fifty years on from June 16, I posit through the Lehohla Ledger a speculative question about the next six hundred years to complete a century of Southern Africa interaction with 1652 when Van Riebeck landed on the Cape.  

I use the intervening centennial posture of 1976 - 2076 as a pivotal century. 

This millennial-centennial confrontation using the"Lehohla Ledger" framework, is a theoretical macro-historical model that conceptualizes the millennium from 1652 to 2652.

An acknowledgement of the crucial methodological constraint of the Ledger like all predictive analytics especially done over a prolonged period is that it cannot predict future events with certainty but it can expand and defrost the cranial rigor mortis that has afflicted the class of 1976 who handover an arguably rotting carcass to the class of 2026.

While it can identify historical trajectories and suggest potential scenarios based on data from 1652 to the present, any description of the decades leading up to 2076 is speculative, but the rot they are handed over perhaps will keep their sensory nerves alert and sensitize them to the Lenaka la Mohlomi – a Mosotho visionary, philosopher, chief and medicine man whose wisdom on responsible leadership remains legendary .

In this analysis, the Ledger examines the historical data from 1652 through 2026 as established fact, and then extrapolates the implications of the "Soweto Pivot" to model potential trajectories for the remaining 50 years of the century.

Within the 1,000-year arc of the Lehohla Ledger (1652–2652), the century spanning 1976 to 2076 serves as the vital pivot.

The first 324 years (from 1652) were a period of colonial consolidation, resource extraction, and the systematic institutionalization of structural exclusion.

The events of June 16, 1976—the Soweto Student Revolt—acted as a fulcrum, initiating a sequence that broke the momentum of the previous three centuries and catalyzed a process of radical, though incomplete, transformation.

This analysis tracks the intergenerational transmission of responsibility during this critical pivot.

We examine the specific legacy the 1976 Generation bequeathed to the current generation of 2026, and the speculative, yet modeled, trajectory of what the 2026 Generation must cultivate for the generations of 2076, as the Ledger’s pivot century concludes.

1976: The revolt as disruption of the Ledger’s initial trajectory

The Lehohla Ledger models the 1652–1976 period as one dominated by the 'Colonial/Extraction Loop.' In this system, the majority of the population was excluded from both economic value and meaningful political agency.

The Soweto uprising was a radical disruption because it rejected the fundamental premise of this loop: that submission to state power was absolute. Led by youth, the revolt challenged the colonial education system (specifically the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction), identifying it as a mechanism for reinforcing subordination.

The Ledger indicates that 1976 began a irreversible decline in the state's capacity to maintain control through coercion alone. This initial disruption defined the mission of that generation:

The handover: From 1976 to 2026

The generation of 1976 (defined here as those who were youth during the intense struggle period, 1976–1994) achieved their primary historical mandate: the dismantling of the formal structures of the colonial-apartheid state. They destroyed the "Extraction Loop’s" legal and constitutional framework.

What they handed over to the generation of 2026 was formal political sovereignty and constitutional agency. This was not merely the right to vote, but a sophisticated democratic charter designed to reset the Ledger’s trend line.

This legacy is the essential toolkit for the next phase:

• Political Legitimacy: The establishment of a state that derives its authority from the consent of the governed.
• The Constitutional Promise: A vision of a just, equitable, and non-racial society that serves as the blueprint for reconstruction.
• A Culture of Resistance: The proven knowledge that concerted, youth-led collective action can overpower entrenched structural force.

This legacy was potent, but also burden-laden. The 1976 generation destroyed the machinery of the old system but struggled to build a functional replacement economy (the 2026 'Structural Impasse').

2026: The generational responsibility of structural reconstruction

Fifty years on, the generation of 2026 is grappling with the unfinished business of the pivot century.

The data in the Lehohla Ledger (up to 2026) suggests that the formal democracy established after 1994 has stalled. While the political loop has been reset, the economic and structural loops retain the inertial patterns established over the preceding 300 years (extreme inequality, resource dependence, and structural unemployment).

The generation of 2026 views the 1976 generation with immense respect for their courage but frustration with their governance. The defining characteristic of the 2026 context is impatience with the 'Deferred Dividend.' The promise of 1994 has not materialised in tangible economic transformation.

The current mandate: moving from agency to utility

The task of the 2026 generation is to move beyond the exercise of constitutional rights (which they inherited) and toward the creation of structural utility.

The Ledger models this imperative as shifting from an 'Extraction Model' (relying on raw materials and low-skilled labor) to an 'Empowerment and Innovation Model' (leveraging human capital and sustainable technology).

The 2026 generation must break the cycles of systemic dysfunction by focusing on the 'Structural Utility Mandate':

• Decoupling from the Extraction Loop: Actively engineering an economy that is not dependent on unsustainable resource depletion but on innovation and human capability.
• The Inclusivity Mandate: Forcing the formal economic systems to integrate the population that was systematically excluded in the Ledger’s first 300 years (reversing the '1652 Baseline').
• Ecological Sustainability: Recognizing that the pivot century (1976–2076) includes the necessity of environmental transition.

2026 to 2076: extrapolating the trajectory of the pivot century

The Lehohla Ledger cannot predict if the generation of 2026 will succeed. However, by synthesizing the historical context (1652–2026) with the urgent structural needs identified in the 2026 data, the model can speculate on the implications of their actions.

The next 50 years (2026–2076) represent the period where the new trajectories initialized during the pivot must achieve escape velocity from the old historical gravity.

The speculative handover: from 2026 to 2076

If the generation of 2026 fulfills its mandate of structural reconstruction, the Lehohla Ledger extrapolates that they will hand over a fundamentally different societal operating system to the generations of 2076.

The defining characteristic of this projected 2076 society is achieved resilience and realized potential.

• A Decentralized and Integrated Economy: Moving from 20th-century centralized extractivism to highly distributed, knowledge-based, and circular economies that foster innovation at all levels (the 'Structural Shift').
• Achieved Inclusivity (The 'Mohlomi Imperative'): By 2076, the system of structural exclusion (the Ledger’s 1652 anchor) is no longer the defining sociological reality. The model suggests that the realization of individual potential is the primary driver of national utility.
• Planetary Stewardship: The generation of 2076 is handed a society that has successfully navigated the energy and environmental transitions demanded by the 21st century (the 'Sustainability Pivot').

In this projected scenario, the generated 2076 generation is not tasked with fighting a state (as in 1976) or reconstructing a broken economy (as in 2026), but with managing a realized civilization that has broken the cycles of the previous millennia.

The Lehohla Ledger (1652–2652) positions the century (1976–2076) as the pivotal moment in a millennium. 1976 was the generation that provided the Disruption (Sovereignty).

2026 is the generation that must provide the Construction (Structural Utility).

By modeling these trajectories, the Ledger highlights that the generations of 2076 are the intended recipients of The Realized Dividend—a society finally free from the inertial drag of 1652, and capable of charting its own destiny.

The Lehohla Ledger is a data driven spatio-temporal diagnostic infrastructure that interrogates development challenges and permits joint solutions development and implementation systems to resolve. 

Whilst averages are still important the spatio-temporal analysis is superior in that it drills into lower levels of geography and qualifies it as a true instrument for district development models.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.

As the year moves past the first quarter, policy agendas are no longer being set but actively tested, with priorities reaffirmed and budgets beginning to take shape.

Economic growth, fiscal restraint, infrastructure delivery and social stability continue to dominate the conversation with familiar regularity.

Healthcare counts as one of the strongest enablers of all four yet is still too often treated as a standalone portfolio, boxed neatly into a single ministry, debated in isolation and funded in silos.

That approach no longer reflects how healthcare works nor how it must evolve if countries are serious about long-term resilience and productivity.

This, because health equals wealth. 

Healthcare is not just healthcare. It is research, infrastructure, labour, education, digital capability and data governance.

It cuts across multiple departments and budget lines, and it is shaped as much by technology and connectivity as by hospitals and clinics.

When governments operate within rigid, siloed structures, the system struggles to adapt.

Each department may optimise for itself, but the whole becomes less effective.

This challenge is particularly visible when we consider the role of digitalisation in modern healthcare.

In many countries, responsibility for digital infrastructure sits with one ministry, while healthcare delivery is managed by another. Yet the future of healthcare is inseparable from digital tools.

Early diagnostics, AI-assisted screening, predictive analytics and patient data management are no longer optional extras. They are becoming foundational to how modern health systems function and deliver value.

Healthcare generates vast amounts of data.

When health data is integrated and used intelligently, it enables earlier diagnosis, more targeted intervention and more efficient use of scarce healthcare resources.

It allows systems to predict disease, intervene sooner and support patients more effectively. But when digital and health authorities operate in parallel rather than in partnership, these opportunities are missed. The technology exists. The intent exists. Too often, the system itself prevents progress.

In many established economies, deeply entrenched government structures make integration and the breaking down of silos difficult.

Systems are mature, budgets are fixed and linear, and institutional boundaries are hard to cross. Emerging markets, however, are still under construction.

This is good news. Hospitals are still being built. Digital infrastructure is still expanding. Healthcare systems are still growing. This creates a rare opportunity to design differently from the outset.

I have seen what is possible when governments take a more integrated, whole-of-state view of cross-functional pillars like national healthcare.

In parts of Asia, particularly China, closer alignment between infrastructure development, digital strategy and healthcare delivery has enabled new models of care to emerge.

Governments looked at healthcare from a helicopter perspective and asked a simple but powerful question: what should healthcare look like in the future, and how do we align every relevant department to support that vision?

This is a question every government should be asking.

When ministries and departments work together rather than in isolation, outcomes improve. Systems become not only more effective, but more efficient. Budget discussions also change. Investments are evaluated based on their combined impact rather than their departmental cost. The result is better value for the state and better outcomes for citizens.

Chronic disease management is a clear example of why this approach matters. Conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer increasingly require long-term, continuous care rather than episodic hospital visits. Today, much of that care still depends on repeated, resource-intensive, face-to-face interactions. This model is costly for health systems and burdensome for patients, particularly in settings where capacity is already constrained.

Digital tools offer an alternative. Remote monitoring, digital coaching, data-driven treatment adjustments and virtual follow-ups allow patients to be supported both inside and outside the hospital setting. Evidence from pilot programmes

already underway shows that digital care pathways can maintain quality while improving efficiency. The initial investment in diagnostics and treatment remains critical, but ongoing care can increasingly be supported through technology, reducing pressure on facilities and clinicians.

This does not mean removing the human element from healthcare. On the contrary, it allows clinicians to focus their time and expertise where it matters most. Digital support enables care to be delivered in a more controlled, patient-centric way, improving compliance and outcomes. When patients manage their conditions better, they remain active participants in society and the economy for longer. The logic is straightforward.

Other industries have transformed dramatically over the past half-century. Healthcare innovation has advanced at an extraordinary pace, yet the way care is organised and delivered has changed far less. Long queues, fragmented journeys and repetitive processes remain the norm. It is worth asking whether this truly reflects how a modern society should function.

Many healthcare systems are still designed around infrastructure and stakeholders rather than patients. Hospitals remain the centre of gravity, with patients expected to adapt to the system rather than the system adapting to them. In a world where digital tools are already embedded in everyday life, this model feels increasingly outdated.

A whole-of-state approach to healthcare does not require abandoning existing structures overnight. It requires leadership, coordination and a willingness to rethink how portfolios interact. When healthcare, digitalisation, infrastructure and finance are aligned around a shared vision, the benefits extend far beyond the health sector.

Healthcare is not a cost to be managed in isolation. It is an investment that underpins economic participation, social stability and long-term growth.

Governments that recognise this and act accordingly will be better positioned to meet the challenges of the years ahead. In emerging markets especially, where systems are still being shaped, the opportunity to build smarter, more integrated health systems remains firmly within reach.

The policy agendas are being set. The budgets are being shaped. The question is whether we choose to seize that opportunity.

Asgar Rangoonwala, Senior Vice President, Johnson & Johnson EMEA Emerging Markets.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

Just how much should investors worry about high oil prices?

Amid the ongoing Middle East conflict, it is not surprising that investors are focused on energy prices, given these remain the main channel to global financial markets.

Many have been surprised, though, by the uneven impact across different markets. For example, many Asian equities have faced significant volatility, but the pullback in US equities has so far been relatively muted.

While we should not be complacent about downside risks, it is equally important to recognise that many asset classes now offer attractive opportunities and are likely to continue to do so if worst-case scenarios fail to play out.

Why this isn’t a 1970s sequel

The 1970s oil crises involved two major supply shocks – the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian Revolution – which nearly quadrupled oil prices, triggered global stagflation (a debilitating combination of sustained high inflation and stagnant economic growth) and created severe fuel shortages.

Given this historical precedent, one would have thought that the recent Brent crude oil price rise of about 75% since mid-February would have resulted in markets focusing entirely on an upcoming inflation shock, recession risk and a stagflationary world ahead.

However, over the same period, US equities have fallen by less than 5% and the 10-year US government bond yield is below 4.5% – not exactly the growth or inflation shock one would have expected, given the staggering 75% rise in oil prices.

The clue sits in ‘energy intensity’ – the amount of oil or gas needed per unit of GDP growth. Since the 1970s, energy intensity has fallen dramatically.

The World Bank, for instance, estimates that the amount of oil required to generate one unit of global GDP growth fell from 0.12 tonnes of oil equivalent (toe) in 1970 to 0.05 toe in 2022 – about a 58% reduction.

Researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School found that the amount of oil required to generate USD 1,000 of global GDP fell by an average of 1.5 litres each year from 1984 onwards. S&P Global estimates that oil prices would have to rise to the USD 150-200 range to have a macroeconomic impact similar to historical energy shocks over the past 60 years.

The bottom line? Oil prices hovering around USD 100/bbl are high, but not as high as they were for the global economy during historical energy price shocks.

Trust market resilience, but hedge the risks

The purpose of this perspective is not to foster complacency. Rather, it is to remind us that both risks and opportunities lie in front of us. 

We certainly believe it is worthwhile to hedge against risks. Today’s USD 100/bbl oil prices are expected to result in at least a moderate rise in inflation.

However, a significant energy shock would involve either a rise towards levels that had an impact previously, such as USD 150-200/bbl, or would result from prices staying above USD 100/bbl for a prolonged period, pushing the average price higher for the year.

Our preferred hedges include inflation-protected bonds, which directly hedge yields against the US inflation index, and oil-correlated equities, such as energy sector stocks. Gold would also be an attractive hedge against a more stagflationary environment. 

Hunting for value amid uncertainty

Downside risks notwithstanding, our baseline view continues to be that the current energy supply disruption is likely to be relatively short-lived. In this scenario, it would make sense first and foremost to stay invested in well-diversified portfolios, which in themselves offer an attractive entry point for long-term investors. More specifically, we would look for opportunities in asset classes that may post the strongest rebound if the high energy price threat recedes.

Top of our shopping list would be Asian equities, which have fallen significantly over the past month alongside higher oil prices and a stronger US dollar.

This makes sense, given their relatively higher growth and balance-of-payment sensitivity to both oil prices and the USD.

However, an easing of energy supply disruptions and lower oil prices is a scenario in which Asian equities may post the strongest recovery as downside risks are priced out.

Ultimately, the goal isn’t just to survive the oil price spike, but to thrive beyond it. The current oil shock may very well prove to be a pivotal bargain-hunting opportunity this year.

Manpreet Gill is Chief Investment Officer for Africa, Middle East and Europe at StandardChartered’s Wealth Solutions unit.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

A strange inversion is becoming normal in public life.

Citizens still vote, parliaments still sit, regulators still  publish rules.

But increasingly, the decisive questions are being settled elsewhere: in family offices, platform  boardrooms, private capital networks and media ecosystems owned or shaped by people whose economic  reach now rivals that of states.

What looks, at first glance, like a story about wealth is really a story about  governance.

We are running a large-scale political experiment in which private fortunes are not simply  influencing public institutions; they are beginning to compete with them.

The early results are not encouraging.

Oxfam’s January 2026 inequality findings should have landed as more than a Davos headline. According to its  latest report, billionaire wealth rose by $2.5 trillion in 2025 alone, lifting total billionaire wealth to $18.3 trillion. 

That increase, Oxfam notes, would have been enough to end extreme poverty 26 times over.

More striking still,  billionaires are now estimated to be 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens.

That  is not merely inequality of outcome. It is inequality of access to the machinery of rule.

In any healthy system,  wealth can buy comfort, status and influence at the margins. It should not so predictably buy proximity to  sovereignty. 

The United States offers the clearest measurable version of this shift, but not because it is uniquely corrupt.

It  is simply the most visible laboratory.

A New York Times analysis published in March and reported widely afterward, found that just 300 billionaire families accounted for 19% of all reported federal campaign  contributions in the 2024 cycle, roughly $3 billion.

Two decades ago, billionaire money was a rounding error in  federal politics.

Now it is a structural input.

That matters less because of any single election than because it  changes the internal logic of governance: policy formation begins to anticipate donor preferences before the  public ever sees the debate.

Capture no longer needs to be conspiratorial when it can be anticipatory.

This is where the argument usually becomes moralistic and that is a mistake. The problem is not that rich  people exist, nor even that some of them are talented institution-builders. The problem is that plutocratic  leadership confuses operational success with public legitimacy.

Running a company, however brilliantly, is not  the same as governing a society. A firm can narrow its mission, optimise for efficiency, shed labour, acquire  rivals and answer upward to owners.

A state must absorb conflict, protect dissent, manage unequal  constituencies and preserve legitimacy even when trade-offs are painful. The billionaire governance experiment  asks us to believe that private command scales naturally into public stewardship. History suggests otherwise.

The greater danger is generational. Wealth concentration is no longer just about today’s billionaire class. It is  about how advantage becomes dynastic while public institutions grow more brittle.

OECD research published in 2025 shows that younger generations are already finding it harder to achieve homeownership rates  comparable to earlier cohorts at the same age, while intergenerational wealth disparities are widening as older  asset holders benefit disproportionately from long asset booms. In other words, the next phase of inequality will not be driven only by entrepreneurial disruption.

It will be driven by inheritance lock-in. Once that wealth is  paired with political access, media ownership and philanthropic branding, succession becomes a governance  issue, not a private family matter. The heirs need not even govern directly. The infrastructure of influence is  inherited with them.

That institutional drift is already visible in the information sphere. UN Trade and Development warned in 2025  that digital markets are becoming more concentrated, with the top five digital multinationals increasing their  share of total sales among the top 100 digital enterprises from 21% to 48% between 2017 and  2025.

Seven of the world’s ten most valuable companies are now digital giants.

These platforms do not just  distribute information; they set the terms of visibility, organise commercial access, shape political speech and  increasingly control the data architecture on which modern states depend. When ownership concentration in  media, communications and AI infrastructure converges with political financing, the issue is not simply  monopoly. It is whether the state retains enough independent capacity to govern at all.

This helps explain why declining trust is not just a cultural mood but a governance signal. Edelman’s 2026 Trust  Barometer found a 16-point trust gap between high-income and low-income respondents globally, with  developed societies among the most insular and distrustful.

V-Dem’s 2025 Democracy Report, meanwhile,  found that the world now has fewer democracies than autocracies for the first time in over 20 years and that 72% of the global population lives in autocracies.

Those trends are often analysed separately: one as a  crisis of democratic backsliding, the other as social fragmentation. They are increasingly the same story. When  citizens conclude that the state is merely a venue in which concentrated wealth negotiates with itself, public  trust decays before formal democracy does. Institutions can remain intact on paper while capacity and consent  erode underneath them.

For the Global South, this is not an abstract Western pathology to observe from a distance. It is a strategic  warning.

As the January 2026 IMF update projects sub-Saharan Africa to grow by 4.6% this year, many  African states will be told to welcome capital, platforms and billionaire-backed innovation as substitutes for  weak public capacity.

Some of that capital will indeed be productive. But states that outsource too much of their  communications infrastructure, digital payments, cloud systems or public discourse to foreign billionaire-owned  platforms will discover that dependence can arrive wearing the language of efficiency.

UNCTAD is explicit that  weak competition enforcement and limited regulatory capacity leave developing countries especially vulnerable  to exclusion from value creation in the digital economy. The question for African governments is not whether to  regulate. It is whether they will regulate before platform dependency hardens into a new form of external  governance. 

That requires a different standard of leadership from the one now in fashion.

Genuine public leadership is not  empire-building by other means. It requires public-interest discipline, transparent campaign finance, merit based appointments, digital competition policy, enforceable conflict-of-interest rules and succession systems  that protect institutions from family capture, factional capture and billionaire capture alike.

It also requires a  harder truth: states cannot rebuild legitimacy while treating regulatory capacity as expendable and private scale  as inherently virtuous. Rising powers in the Global South have an opportunity here.

They can build rules for 

foreign platforms before those platforms become quasi-sovereign, strengthen antitrust institutions before  concentration becomes irreversible and treat state capacity not as bureaucracy to be bypassed but as the core  infrastructure of democratic survival. 

The real issue is not whether some billionaires mean well. Many probably do.

It is whether societies can afford  to normalise a system in which extraordinary private wealth steadily acquires public function without public  accountability.

That is not modernisation. It is a wager that concentrated capital can stand in for legitimate  institutions.

We are already far enough into the experiment to see the outlines of the bill: weaker trust, thinner  meritocracy, inherited power and states that arrive later and weaker to their own responsibilities. Leadership in  the coming decade will be judged less by how effectively it courts wealth than by whether it can keep wealth  from quietly becoming the constitution.

Nomvula Zeldah Mabuza is a Risk Governance and Compliance Specialist.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

In today’s cost-conscious, hyper-competitive retail landscape, shoppers are making tough trade-offs to stretch their budgets amid rising living costs.

This behaviour is no longer just a response to economic pressure, it is becoming a new way of life. Retailers must therefore adapt strategically to remain relevant and trusted.

With households allocating an ever-larger share of income to essentials, shopping has become less about indulgence and more about necessity.

People are changing where they shop, how often they shop, and what they deem valuable. These shifts reveal deeper, long-lasting changes in consumer expectations and loyalty.

Three themes are shaping the future of retail operations: hyper-personalisation at scale, the power of community-rooted independent retail and the need to rebuild trust through consistent value.

Hyper-Personalisation at Scale

Consumers now expect more than a good product mix.

They want experiences and offerings shaped around their lives, needs, and cultural context. In a diverse market like South Africa, this demands retail models that are agile, responsive, and locally relevant.

At the same time, the rapid expansion of online commerce is reshaping expectations.

South Africa's food retail market is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.1% from 2026 to 2030, reaching $34.66 billion in sales in 2026, with stronger growth seen in online retail delivery.

Digital convenience, personalisation algorithms, and data-driven engagement are no longer niche, they are becoming standard.

SPAR’s independent ownership model enables each store to reflect shoppers’ personalities, tastes and priorities.

From curated assortments to store layouts tailored to local shopping habits, personal relevance becomes a key differentiator. 

We are investing in the digital tools, data insights and operational support that help our retailers deliver increasingly personalised experiences while still holding onto the human touch and neighbourly service that define who we are.

Personalisation is how we bring real value through relevance and customer understanding. It strengthens loyalty, builds trust and ensures that every store feels like your store.

The Rise of Community-Rooted Independent Retail

One of the most powerful trends reshaping the sector is the renewed importance of community connection. Independent retailers thrive here because they are not distant corporations, they are part of the neighbourhood's fabric.

According to Statista, while major chains and global marketplaces still dominate total retail volume, independents are gaining ground in sales growth thanks to faster adaptability and engagement with new consumer preferences.

Shop2Shop indicates that formal independent retail in South Africa has an estimated turnover in the region of R190 billion, highlighting the significant economic footprint of community-based trade alongside larger chains.

Across South Africa, this shows up daily: a retailer sponsoring the local sports team, hosting creative community events, or proudly celebrating local producers and family-owned brands.

These are not marketing tactics, they are proof of belonging.

Further, in the USA it was found that local retailers return 52% of their revenue into the local economy, compared to just 14% from national chains, mainly because they rely more on local labour and services.

In a South African context, this dynamic is even more significant given the country’s structural unemployment rate, the role of small and medium enterprises and the importance of township and rural economies.

Independent retailers, supported by the operational strength of a national brand, can combine real community authenticity with modern retail science. That hybrid advantage will only grow more valuable as consumers increasingly seek trust, familiarity, and meaningful relationships with the places they shop.

Rebuilding Trust Through Value and Consistency

South Africans are among the most discerning shoppers in the world and among the most sceptical.

Years of economic pressure have made households deliberate, cautious and far more selective about where and how they spend.

Trust is not assumed; it is tested at every till point.

This context matters.

Recent data from Statistics South Africa shows that retail sales remained positive year-on-year across several categories through 2025, but the pace of growth has moderated.

 In this environment, shoppers respond when quality is dependable, promotions are credible, and the experience matches the promise.

Trust won’t be won through short-term wins.

It will be earned through disciplined execution: showing up every day, serving communities well and proving that customer needs come first - especially when wallets are stretched.

Retailers that show up consistently will close the trust gap and redefine what value means to shoppers.

Where Retail Goes NextThe future of retail will be defined not by scale alone, but by the ability to deliver three fundamentals with consistency and care:

• Relevance and personalisation — shaped by real community insight
• Operational agility — enabling each store to thrive in its unique context
• Authentic community connection — where retailers are neighbours first

This is the new frontier in South African retail.

The winners will be those who balance national operational strength with local independence and trust.Our journey continues.

With every step, we are committed to ensuring that SPAR remains a brand rooted in people, powered by community and focused on delivering value that truly matters.

Ed von Gericke, National Retail Operations Executive at SPAR Group. 

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BUSINESS REPORT 

The fragrance industry is experiencing a marked rise in the popularity of dupes, driven largely by consumer affordability, high inflation and greater access to alternatives.

This trend is further accelerated by social media marketing and e-commerce, alongside a noticeable shift in perception among younger consumers, who increasingly view dupes as acceptable and legitimate alternatives.

These factors together have contributed to a significant improvement in the quality of smell-alike fragrances.

This upward trend presents a substantial challenge for brand owners, many of whom have invested considerable time, money, and resources into creating, refining, and marketing their fragrances.

For context, the global fragrance dupe market was valued at approximately $2.71 billion by the end of 2024, with forecasts suggesting it could reach $11.75 billion by 2034.

Current issues arise not only from dupe brand holders mimicking the smell of famous brands, but also from how dupe fragrances are marketed.

Modern dupe producers tend to take a cautious approach in their marketing, circumventing legal liability by using phrases like “inspired by”, “smells like X” or “our version of X”.

Many also rely on social media influencers to make direct comparisons on social media platforms, while they distance themselves from any potential legal claims. 

What Is A “Dupe”?

In modern slang, the term “dupe” is shorthand for “duplicate,” and is commonly used to describe a product designed to resemble, imitate, or evoke a more expensive or higher-quality branded product. Ironically, the word originally meant to deceive.

Legal Considerations

A key reasons dupes have become so common in the fragrance industry is the limited intellectual property protection available to perfume brand holders.

While brand holders are well-protected against copies of their packaging or branding, their options are far more limited when it comes to scents themselves.

This means they have fewer legal tools to act against fragrances that mimic their scent or use marketing strategies that clearly draw on the original product while avoiding legal liability.

Copyright

Copyright protects the expression of ideas in material form and extends to creative works such as literary, artistic, and musical works.

However it remains debatable whether this protection can or should extend to scents.

In South Africa, the Copyright Act contains a closed list of protectable categories, and it is uncertain whether any of these categories would include fragrances.

This is due to the inherent nature of scents, which lack a stable, tangible form, making it difficult to argue that they qualify as copyrightable works.

This position is consistent with the French case Lancôme v Modefine, which held that copyright does not protect fragrances because protection is limited to creations that have a tangible form, are identifiable, and possess sufficient distinctive character to allow communication to others.

Patent

A patent is an exclusive right that grants the patentee the ability to prevent others from exploiting the patented invention.

To qualify for patent protection,  an invention must be novel, involve an inventive step, and be capable of industrial application.

For fragrances, protection may be sought for formulations, production methods, or related technologies, provided they meet these requirements.

However, a patent directed at monopolising the scent of a fragrance itself may be challenging in South Africa, on the basis that the invention is not defined by technical features.

Another challenge is that many fragrance houses are reluctant to file patents because doing so requires public disclosure of the formulation.

Once the 20-year term expires, this information becomes publicly accessible, potentially revealing trade secrets that would otherwise remain protected indefinitely.

Furthermore, patents generally do not extend to protect marketing and branding elements, as it specifically protects technical inventions rather than commercial representation.

Trade Marks

This leads us to trade marks, which remain an effective tool for brand owners trying to protect their rights, although they too have limitations.

A trade mark identifies and distinguishes the goods or services of one undertaking from those of another. In South Africa, the Trade Marks Act of 1993 (Trade Marks Act) allows for the registration of non-traditional trade marks such as shapes, colours, sounds, and at least in theory, scents, although this presents practical challenges.

From a trade mark perspective, the position seems relatively clear. If a dupe mimics a registered brand holders trade mark, packaging, branding, or overall get-up to the extent that it creates a likelihood of confusion, the brand holder can institute infringement proceedings based on trade mark infringement as envisioned in section 34(1)(a) and/or 34 (1)(b) of the Trade Marks Act.

The difficulty becomes far more pronounced where the imitation involves the fragrance itself.

While some scent marks have been registered internationally, South Africa has yet to record a successful registration of a scent trade mark.

Notably, the United States once granted a scent mark for “a flowery musk scent” applied to sewing thread, and more recently, India accepted its first smell trade mark for a rose-floral fragrance applied to tyres.

In South Africa, the EU case Sieckmann remains highly influential when considering the registrability of scent marks.

In this case, the court held that, for a sign, including a scent, to qualify as a trade mark, it must be capable of graphical representation, and that representation must be clear, precise, self-contained, easily accessible, intelligible, durable, and objective.

Scent descriptions, chemical formulas, and scent samples all failed to meet this standard. As a result, registering fragrance scents as trade marks remains practically very difficult.

The issue becomes more complex when a dupe producer uses a brand’s reputation in a way that doesn’t cause direct consumer confusion as modern dupes increasingly exploit the reputation of well known brands, a practice the EU confirmed as infringing in L’Oréal v Bellure because it takes unfair advantage of the original brand’s fame. 

The South African Trade Marks Act contains a similar provision in Section 34(1)(c), which protects the selling power and distinctiveness of well-known trade marks.

Recent court decisions, including National Brands Limited v Cape Cookies CC and Akzonobel Coatings International B.V. and Another v Dumax, indicate an increased willingness by the courts to consider the likelihood of an unfair advantage being taken of a well-known trade mark.

These judgments reflect a growing emphasis on safeguarding the substantial investment made by proprietors in developing and maintaining brand goodwill.

Recent Developments

Recently, although unrelated to fragrances, Lululemon successfully secured a trade mark registration for the phrase “LULULEMON DUPE” in the United States for services relating to advertising, marketing and retail.

While much speculation exists about the intention behind this filing and how the company proposes using the trade mark, the filing does show a shift in the company trying to address dupe culture.

In principle, this registration would afford the company the right to act against commercial use of the phrase in paid searches, product listings, and affiliate marketing, addressing the core issue of misuse of metadata and commercial language.

This is provided they can show the likelihood of confusion. Companies such as Aritzia have followed suit, filing applications for “ARITZIA DUPE” in the US and Canada.

Thembokuhle Danca (Associate), with oversight by Julia Hopf (Partner) at Spoor & Fisher.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

Earlier this month, a military correspondent filed a routine dispatch about a missile strike in the Middle East. Nobody was hurt. He moved on to the next story.

Then, according to his published account, the threats started. Users of the prediction market Polymarket had wagered millions on that day’s events.

The journalist’s report that a missile had landed, rather than been intercepted, meant certain bettors stood to lose heavily.

As the Guardian and the Washington Post have since reported, what followed was escalating pressure to change the story: polite emails gave way to social media campaigns, then WhatsApp messages reportedly threatening his family. Polymarket itself condemned the harassment, reportedly banned involved accounts, and said it would share their information with authorities. Police are said to be investigating.

The journalist says he refused to alter his reporting.

But weighing the details of this case, I kept returning to a more basic question: what does it say about us that we have built a multi-billion dollar infrastructure to incentivise something as elementary as telling the truth?

The pattern is not subtle

Polymarket, valued at roughly USD 9 billion and backed by investors including a venture capital firm connected to Donald Trump Jr., styles itself as an epistemic tool: a more honest barometer of sentiment than polls or pundits.

Put money on the line, its proponents argue, and people will reveal what they really think.

The trouble is that the platform’s recent track record tells a different story. According to Snopes, six newly created accounts collectively won $1.2 million from wagers placed hours before US-led military strikes in the Middle East in late February.

A Fortune investigation documented a fresh account netting over $400,000 from bets placed just before the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. US senators have proposed legislation to bar government officials from these platforms.

Israeli authorities have charged individuals for using classified intelligence to place bets. Dutch regulators have ordered Polymarket’s local affiliate to halt operations.

It is worth noting that not everyone raising alarms does so from a position of disinterested concern.

Competing platforms like Kalshi stand to benefit from Polymarket’s reputational troubles.

Lawmakers proposing bans are not immune to political incentive. But the volume and consistency of the evidence is difficult to wave away.

Closer to home

As I’ve previously noted in this column, South Africa’s online behaviour already reveals a society deeply preoccupied with gambling.

According to the National Gambling Board, gross gambling revenue surged to R59.3 billion in the 2023/24 financial year, with betting alone growing over 50 per cent. This is hardly a country that needs further encouragement.

South Africa’s National Gambling Act of 2004 recognises only four legal modes: casinos, bingo, limited payout machines, and wagering through licensed bookmakers.

Platforms like Polymarket, accessible online without geo-blocking, don’t appear to fit neatly into any of these categories. But the question for South African regulators may not be whether new legislation is needed. It may simply be whether existing laws already apply. 

If a platform allows South Africans to stake money on future events for profit, does that constitute gambling under current law? I guess if it walks like a duck…

All of which places me, someone wih a deep personal distate for gambling on moral grounds who is equally wary of restricting personal freedoms, in an awkward position. 

The crowd and the mob

I recently shared my scepticism about prediction markets in an online exchange. I’ve struggled, I said, to see them as anything other than sophisticated casinos dressed up as epistemic tools. It is hard not to see “the crowd” drifting into “the mob.” We know how dangerous the mob is, how easily the crowd can be manipulated—and now, how quickly the crowd can become the mob.

Someone pushed back: so you don’t think it’s the government’s job to protect society from the consequences of people’s worst impulses?

In the first, fundamental instance? No. Discernment is required so we don’t swing to either extreme: doing nothing on one end, and governments attempting to quash even the mere possibility of dysfunction on the other. Free will is an inconvenient sacred trust, one that ought not to be infringed upon carelessly in the name of watertight social peace and order.

The murky middle

There is something worth pausing on here.

The strongest defence of prediction markets is that they make people put money behind their convictions, and in doing so, surface truth more efficiently than traditional institutions. Think about what that concedes, though.

We have engineered an elaborate financial architecture not to create anything new, but to coax out of people something that ought to come freely: honesty. And the best case for it is that it helps markets run efficiently.

What a brittle, transactional notion of truth.

None of this means prediction markets should operate in a vacuum, nor that banning them outright is the answer.

The starting point is less dramatic than either camp might have it: apply the laws we already have, honestly and consistently, and see what remains.

Oversimplification is the enemy. We must grapple.

Andile Masuku is co-founder and executive producer at African Tech Roundup. He serves as executive editor of Future in the Humanities (FITH), powered by the SA–UK Chair in the Digital Humanities at Wits University. Connect and engage with Andile on X (@MasukuAndile) and via LinkedIn.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

Online commerce is no longer new to the South African market, with research from World Wide Worx indicating that ecommerce surpassed R130 billion in 2025 and captured close to 10% of total retail sales. 

Smartphone users are driving a significant portion of that growth, with around 55% of users reporting that they use their phones to shop online.

However, we are still in the early phases of mobile commerce, with a range of innovations reshaping how South African consumers discover, evaluate and buy products and services. Social commerce, artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality are changing how people shop by offering them immersive new experiences and deeper personalisation.

Brands and retailers on the cutting edge are already weaving AI into their e-commerce apps and websites to improve personalisation and convenience for their customers. Pick n Pay’s revamped asap! app, relaunched in 2025, uses AI search that learns a customer’s shopping behaviour to offer smarter product suggestions and streamline the browsing experience.

In the next wave of AI-enabled mobile commerce, we will see AI assistants in retail apps or messaging platforms that can answer your questions about products, suggest alternatives when items are out of stock, and guide you through complex purchases in a natural text-based or voice conversation.

AI is changing how we shop

Generative AI assistants will be able to do more than personalise suggestions based on your shopping history.

They will be able to use info like your browsing behaviour, location, budget and questions you ask to provide suggestions and information relevant to your needs.

Browsing menus, catalogues and forms could be a thing of the past.

For example, if you are shopping for a dinner party, the AI assistant might be able to help you with recipes and a shopping list while you browse.

Or when you are shopping for winter clothing, you could receive personalised styling suggestions, size guidance and outfit combinations rather than a simple list of recommended products.

In time to come, AI agents could even become your own personal shoppers.

They could put goods in your cart, based on your instructions and product availability. Then, the AI could apply loyalty rewards or discounts and select a delivery slot based on your calendar. With your approval, it could complete checkout and payment.

Another trend altering how people shop is the rapid rise of social commerce – which is about buying products and services directly through apps like WhatsApp, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. It makes your life easier by allowing you to buy with a single click from an app you use every day rather than needing to open another site or app.

Today, many of us find products through content in feeds on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts or look for advice and recommendations from friends and family on Facebook. Plus, many of the small businesses and larger companies we interact with use WhatsApp as a service channel.

The rise of social shopping

With social commerce, you can check out in seconds after receiving a WhatsApp promo from a trusted ecommerce business or seeing something interesting on a live stream or short-form video. According to World Wide Worx’s consumer survey, more than a third of South Africans have bought something from WhatsApp, so the trend is already gaining momentum.

Finally, AR is something that brands and smartphone manufacturers have spoken about for years. Now, it has finally evolved beyond a gimmick into a technology that enhances the shopping experience. According to a Deloitte report, 71% of shoppers say AR experiences would make them more likely to buy or shop more often.

AR overlays computer-generated information on a digital display such as a smartphone screen. Your phone camera captures your surroundings so AR apps can place digital images over what you see on the screen. When you’re shopping for expensive items like furniture or premium clothing, this helps you picture how a product will look before you buy it.

Some makeup and fashion brands let customers try products virtually by placing clothes or cosmetics on their own image. With furniture, you can see how a couch or table would look in your living room before making a decision.

Access for all

One of the key factors bringing these experiences to life is the availability of powerful but affordable smartphones. Immersive retail experiences, like AR product visualization, real-time video streaming and on-device generative AI, are smoother and better when running on a device with ample processing power, graphics performance and camera quality.

Today’s mid-range smartphones now include capable AI processing units, stronger GPUs and high-resolution cameras. As these capabilities move down the price curve, richer experiences become accessible to more people. In South Africa, entry-level Android devices priced below R1,500 are rapidly closing the access gap.

We are moving towards a world of better AI, more immersive formats, invisible payments and people who trust mobile as a shopping channel. At TCL, we aim to continue pushing boundaries of what mobile devices can do, while ensuring that the latest innovations reach lower-cost devices as quickly as possible. We believe the real promise of mobile commerce lies in making it accessible to everyone.

Ernst Wittmann, TCL Regional Manager for Southern & East Africa and Global Operator Account Manager for Africa.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

Over the past few years, I have written a weekly column as a way to chronicle the steady march of innovation.

It was, in many ways, a discipline of observation, an attempt to make sense of technological change as it unfolded, one idea at a time, through the permanence of print.

But history has a way of accelerating beyond the formats we use to describe it.

What once felt sufficient, measured reflection, captured in text, now feels incomplete.

The pace of change, the layering of complexity, and the significance of this current technological moment demand a broader lens.

Writing remains essential, but it can no longer carry the full weight of what is happening.

This is a moment that calls for engagement.

Not just commentary, but conversation. Not just analysis, but documentation across multiple forms, print, certainly, but also audio, video, and, perhaps most importantly, direct dialogue. Small, deliberate gatherings where ideas are tested, refined, and understood in real time.

There is something distinct about this period. It is not merely louder than previous waves of innovation. It is deeper. It challenges not only what we build, but how we think about building itself. And it requires a more intentional approach to capturing its meaning.

We have, in some sense, encountered this kind of inflection point before.

In the early days of the internet, companies debated whether they needed a website. It was a legitimate question at the time. But within a decade, the debate vanished. The web had moved from being an optional feature to becoming the underlying foundation of modern business.

Artificial intelligence now occupies a similar position.

It is not arriving as an addition to existing systems. It is quietly redefining what those systems are. This shift was articulated with characteristic clarity by Jeff Bezos during a conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit hosted by The New York Times.

Bezos has long argued that certain technologies are horizontal—they cut across industries, reshaping each of them from within. Electricity did this. The internet did this. And now, artificial intelligence is beginning to do the same.

As he put it, “AI… is a horizontal enabling layer. It can be used to improve everything. It will be in everything.”

The significance of that statement is easy to underestimate.

If AI is truly horizontal, then it cannot be treated as a discrete tool or a set of isolated capabilities. It becomes infrastructure—something embedded so deeply into the fabric of an organization that it changes how decisions are made, how customers are served, and how value is created. It enters quietly, often at the margins, and then, almost suddenly, it is everywhere.

At Amazon, this was not an abstract idea. Artificial intelligence was woven into the company’s operations long before it became a public narrative—powering recommendation engines, optimizing logistics, and ultimately forming the backbone of Amazon Web Services. What emerged was not just operational efficiency, but a system of compounding advantage.

For today’s business leaders, this presents a challenge that is as uncomfortable as it is urgent.

Most organizations are still approaching AI as a vertical initiative. They are experimenting with tools, launching pilot projects, and measuring incremental gains. These are necessary steps. But they are not sufficient. Because they do not address the more fundamental question:

Where is AI absent from the system?

That question reframes AI from a technical deployment to a leadership imperative. It demands a shift from adding capabilities to redesigning the enterprise itself.

If AI has the potential to influence every layer of an organization, then every layer must be reconsidered—customer journeys, cost structures, decision-making processes, even the nature of work. The companies that recognize this are not asking how to use AI. They are asking how to rebuild around it.

This is not simply a matter of speed. It is a matter of coherence.

In many organizations, AI is being introduced in fragments—disconnected tools addressing disconnected problems. The result is a growing complexity that can easily be mistaken for progress. But horizontal technologies do not reward fragmentation. They reward integration. They require systems thinking.

And it is here that a new divide is beginning to emerge.

Not between companies that use AI and those that do not, but between those that integrate it deeply and those that layer it superficially. The former will generate compounding value. The latter will accumulate noise.

History suggests that when a horizontal technology takes hold, it does more than improve existing systems. It renders old models obsolete and gives rise to new ones that, in retrospect, appear inevitable. The organizations that succeed are not simply early adopters. They are those willing to re-architect themselves entirely.

Artificial intelligence is following that trajectory.

The question is no longer whether it will transform your business. That transformation is already underway.

The real question is whether you are treating AI as a feature—or recognizing it for what it has become:A new foundation. In the coming weeks, I will share more about this foundation and how I will be documenting its development within businesses.

Wesley Diphoko is the Editor-In-Chief of FastCompany (SA) magazine.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

I had a long call to Tshilidzi Marwala, the South African Venda intellectual who is the rector of the United Nations University.  You do not get them as visible as that. 

Yet our insidious acts of invisibility condemn us to not only invisibility but to ridicule and abuse.  Phuthuma Nhleko’s book launched two weeks ago titled The Invisible People reminds us of the acts of violence directed at these ourselves “the invisible people”. 

No where does this theme of the invisible conscience resonate with the demise of VBS.  I have met a few notable Venda people, be it business, public service or academia.

Each one of these has had their mother hurt in this VBS scandal. 

A people’s social contract has been raptured.  An African business model IP has been destroyed and now it is available to vultures, who has licence to abuse it. 

What moral restraint would they have when fifty years of their mothers’ effort has been stolen and destroyed by their own sons.

The only indigenous tower of African success in the entire world of finance in South Africa.  We tore it down with impunity and collapsed any hope for democracy. 

According to Lehohla Ledger democracy has collapsed in 66 % of the South African population. 

Even in the possible false wealth lock consisting of 34%, it is in the hands of thieves and warlords.  Therefore the question arises, six months to local government elections “whiter democracy South Africa” as we infamously inter the mortal bones of the broken spirit of VBS.

As the physical remains of VBS Mutual Bank are auctioned off this March 2026—most notably the sprawling Rivonia headquarters that once stood as a monument to a hollowed-out prosperity—we are forced to confront more than just the winding down of a failed financial institution.

We are performing an autopsy on a systemic collapse of ethics, a divergence of capital from conscience that has left a permanent scar on the "census mesh" of South Africa’s most vulnerable regions.

To understand the gravity of the VBS disappearance, one must look beyond the liquidator’s balance sheets and toward the "Successor Ledgers" of Southern African philosophy, specifically the timeless laws of Morena Mohlomi. Mohlomi, the 18th-century sage and mentor to King Moshoeshoe I, taught that the true medicine for a village is a "good heart" (pelo e ntle).

He argued that a leader’s wealth is only validated by the wealth of his subjects. By this metric, the VBS saga is not merely a "Great Bank Heist"; it is a profound "epistemicide" of the ethical standards that should ground our democracy.

The Metadata of Looting

In my analysis, I often refer to the 2752 instruments—the crucial pillars of thought and measurement that authenticate the essence of our progress.

 When we deploy these instruments to analyze the VBS fallout, the metadata is damning.

The 2018 Motau Report provided the initial diagnostic, but the long-term "Successor Ledgers" are found in the 2011 and 2022 Census results for districts like Vhembe, Greater Giyani, and Fetakgomo Tubatse.

The statistics at placenames found within these wards tell a story of stagnation. While the national narrative often speaks of "incremental progress," the census mesh in VBS-impacted municipalities reveals a "service delivery void."

In Vhembe, for instance, the loss of R270 million in unrecovered municipal funds correlates directly with the failure to expand piped water infrastructure at the rate required by population growth.

The money meant to transform a "placename" into a thriving community was instead diverted to satisfy the "vulture culture" of a predatory elite.

Mohlomi’s Mirror

If we hold the VBS actors up to "Mohlomi’s Mirror," the reflection is unrecognizable. Mohlomi traveled the length and breadth of this subcontinent teaching that "the law knows no one as a poor man." He established the Mafisa system, where wealth was lent to the destitute to foster independence.

VBS did the inverse: it took the Mafisa of the poor—the burial society savings, the stokvel nets, and the municipal grants—and funneled them into luxury vehicles and Mediterranean holidays for a few.

Mohlomi’s primary law was Khotso (Peace). But peace, in the Mohlomi sense, is impossible without socio-economic harmony. When R2 billion disappears from the public purse, the resulting "high-density heat" of poverty causes the "rainbow" of our 1994 covenant to fade like vapor.

We see this in the 33% unemployment rate and the fact that only 15% of the black workforce is classified as "skilled"—a regression that is accelerated when the very institutions meant to empower the black middle class are hollowed out from within.

The Winding Down of Accountability

The liquidator, Anoosh Rooplal, has done a commendable job in recovering approximately 26 cents in the rand. But as the Lehohla Ledger reminds us, financial recovery is not social restoration. The auctioning of the Rivonia campus may close the books for the creditors, but it does not fix the dry taps in Thohoyandou or the unpaved roads in Mahikeng.

The "Successor Sages" of our era—the auditors, the municipal managers, and the political leaders—failed to heed the warning that when the "salt" (the integrity of our institutions) becomes tasteless, it is no longer good for anything except to be trampled underfoot. The VBS collapse was enabled by a "me-me politics" that ignored the technical metadata of risk in favor of the immediate gratification of greed.

A Call for a Sacred National Effort

As we look toward the future, South Africa needs more than just forensic reports; it needs a "sacred national effort" to rebuild the link between leadership and the "good heart." We must return to the "Architects' Toolkit" and ensure that our macroeconomic policies are fit for purpose and shielded from the corrupt hands that would borrow from international lenders only to settle debts with the pensions of the poor.

The winding down of VBS should serve as the ultimate "explanatory note" in our national ledger. It proves that without the "inner guide" that Mohlomi spoke of, even the most sophisticated financial instruments will fail.

The census mesh of 2022 has already recorded the damage. The question for 2026 and beyond is whether we have the political will to ensure that the next generation of "Successor Ledgers" records a story of restoration rather than further disappearance.

The law of Mohlomi is clear: "Rule by love, for a leader is a person through his people."

Until our balance sheets reflect that humanity, the shadow of VBS will continue to hang low over our democracy.  No one even the 34% wealth lock of the cynical will be spared when the warlords gamble with democracy. 

Just watch Zondo, watch Madlanga – the circus of criminality reveals its depth and the precipice at which we dance. If looting our mothers is the only way the invisible people can be visible.  Nhleko’s book says spare us that moment.  Economy which is what the Venda women did brought about that visibility.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

2026 marks the 30th anniversary of South Africa’s Constitution.  It is a moment to be proud of, to remember the decades of struggles and countless sacrifices of millions, and to appreciate how far we still have to go.

Workers and the labour movement played a leading role in the liberation struggle and the drafting of the Constitution, from the 1973 Durban workers’ strike reviving the trade union movement to the 1987 mineworkers’ strike bringing the economy to a standstill and helping force the apartheid regime to the negotiations table.

Whilst the nation celebrates our Constitution, we must not forget its emphasis on socioeconomic and workers’ rights.  The Constitution speaks not only to democracy and transformation in society, but also in the workplace. 

Workers have made massive strides since the dark days of apartheid, but too many workers still see their most fundamental rights violated at work.

One of the major challenges inhibiting the full realisation of workers’ constitutional rights are our dire socioeconomic challenges, from 41.1% unemployment to entrenched poverty and inequality. 

These are made worse by the economic crises in many states across the region sparking a flood of migration to South Africa.  This desperation is exploited by unscrupulous employers knowing such workers will not demand their labour rights out of fear of dismissal.

Today workers’ rights to form trade unions to defend their rights and to collective bargaining are enshrined in the Constitution and the Labour Relations Act. 

These play a key role in resolving workers’ grievances and empowering workers to improve their working conditions. 

Both are key to boosting economic productivity.  The CCMA and Labour Courts have been established to enforce workers’ protections.

Yet many workers are dismissed if they join a trade union.  As the nature of work evolves, so too must labour laws and hence temporary work is now limited to three months after which workers are considered permanent. 

Cosatu has secured agreement at Nedlac on further legislative amendments recognising such vulnerable workers as uber drivers, actors, artists and musicians as employees so they too can exercise their constitutional rights.

The Basic Conditions of Employment outlines workers’ rights, from minimum to maximum working hours, to paid maternity and parental leave, overtime and public holiday pay.  These basic rights were non-existent for millions of Black South Africans before 1994. 

As our democracy matures, so has Cosatu been able to enhance these rights from increasing maternity benefits to introducing parental leave for fathers.  

These are important gains, but many workers are forced to work more than the legally permitted number of hours or made to work on public holidays without compensation.

In 2019 Cosatu with the support of the African National Congress led government, secured the National Minimum Wage, a key call of the Freedom Charter.

This has boosted 6 million farm, domestic, construction, hospitality, transport, security, cleaning and other vulnerable and often unorganised workers’ wages.  It has put money in workers’ pockets thus stimulating economic growth.  

However, we have witnessed many employers exploit workers’ desperation and pay them less than the Minimum Wage.

The Unemployment Insurance and Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Funds provide important protection for workers who’ve lost their jobs or suffered from a workplace injury or disease.  Important legislative amendments have been made to extend protections and cover to domestic and other workers, from maternity leave for mothers who’ve experienced a third trimester miscarriage or still born birth to workers’ whose workplace illnesses only appear sometime later, e.g. asbestos poisoning for mineworkers or workers experiencing PTSD. 

Tragically many workers struggle to access this relief when in need, are forced to queue for days at Labour Centres or find out that their employers pickpocketed their payments.

The Occupational Health and Safety Acts, plus its counterpart for the mining industry, have compelled employers to ensure the safety of their staff at work.  

In the mining industry we have seen a dramatic fall in workplace deaths from one a day before 1994 to less than one a week today.  This is still too high, but important progress and the result of workers’ relentless struggles in the mining industry and other sectors. But we cannot rest when a police officer is killed every ten days.

Pre-1994, Black workers were confined to menial low paid jobs.  Today employers are required to invest in the skills and career paths of their employees and to report on progress towards ensuring their workplaces reflect South Africa’s diversity.  

This has seen the creation of a non-racial public service whilst the private sector lags with over 60% of senior managers being White and mostly men and where women are often paid less than their male counterparts for the same work.

Government has ratified the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 190 on eliminating violence and harassment at the workplace.  Much remains to be done to make this a reality for women workers, where few have not experienced such violations.

In 2025 the Financial Sector Conduct Authority found that more than 15 000 employers defaulted and often looted workers’ pension funds, denying workers interest they should have accrued and condemning them to retire in poverty.  Such theft needs to be treated by law enforcement as the crimes they are.

South Africa must be proud of our progressive labour laws and the strides workers have made since 1994.  But for far too many workers, especially the vulnerable, these remain a mirage.

We are pleased that Cosatu has been able to secure agreement with government to increase the number of labour inspectors from 2 300 with 10 000 permanent and 20 000 contract labour inspectors.  This will be a massive boost to tackling employers who abuse workers and send a clear message that complying with our labour laws is non-negotiable.

We must do more to ensure that all workers are treated with the dignity they are afforded under the Constitution.  If the economy is to reach its full potential, then employers must recognise that their greatest asset is their employees.

Zingiswa Losi is the president of Cosatu.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

South African consumers got some welcome news last month. The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group's Household Affordability Index showed the average food basket dropped to R5,383.81 in February, down R17.63 from January.

Modest, but real.

What the number does not answer is the question that matters more: what actually determines the price of food?

The year-on-year picture is less comfortable. Food basket costs are still R70.59 higher than February 2025, a 1,3% increase.

CPI food inflation is running at 4,4%, ahead of headline inflation at 3,5%.

For households already stretched, food is outpacing everything else. The monthly dip is welcome. The underlying problem has not moved.

The PMBEJD data makes that pressure concrete.

A worker on the National Minimum Wage earning R4,606.40 in February, supporting a family of four, has R1,151.60 per person per month.

That is below the National Lower-Bound Poverty Line of R1,415. The household food basket at R5,383.81 is already beyond reach on a single minimum wage income. More telling is the gap between what families actually buy and what they should eat for basic nutrition. That gap is R1,076.02 every month.

The food manufacturing sector should sit with that number.

As a company that works directly with food producers across the region on processing and packaging systems, Tetra Pak sees where those costs are built and where they can be reduced.

Efficiency is a pricing decision

By the time a product reaches the shelf, its price is already set. Energy consumption, production waste, spoilage rates and logistics have all taken their cut. When those costs run high, margins shrink. When margins shrink, products either get more expensive or disappear.

When inefficiency adds cost at the production level, that cost moves. It works through the supply chain and lands in the household budget. The family buying maize meal or cooking oil at a township spaza shop is not insulated from what happens on a factory floor hundreds of kilometres away.

Efficient thermal processing cuts energy use. Aseptic packaging extends shelf life without refrigeration, reducing cold chain dependency and the spoilage losses that come with it. Reduced material waste across the production line adds up to real cost savings over time. At Tetra Pak, this is the standard we hold ourselves to in every system we build for food producers across the region. None of it is visible to the consumer. All of it influences what they pay.

The cold chain problem

A product that travels without refrigeration costs less to move, spoils less in transit and reaches more points of sale.

The savings accumulate at every stage and show up, eventually, in the price the consumer pays.

In South Africa, where distribution infrastructure is uneven and energy costs are punishing, that matters more than most manufacturers acknowledge.

Removing cold chain requirements from even a handful of product categories reduces cost and risk across the entire supply chain, not just at one point in it. In a market where butternut dropped 12% in a single month and onions climbed 9%, that consistency is worth more than any short-term price movement.

Where the real work starts

Currency pressure, energy costs and input volatility are beyond any single manufacturer's control. Structural inefficiency is not. Manufacturers that invest in processing technology, waste reduction and shelf life optimisation build a cost base that absorbs pressure rather than passing it on.

Every month, the food basket numbers land and families adjust accordingly. The food manufacturing sector has more influence over those numbers than most people realise. That influence is not exercised in pricing meetings. It is exercised on the factory floor, long before the product reaches the shelf.

Affordability is an engineering problem as much as it is an economic one. The industry has the tools. Using them is a choice.

Khoury is Managing Director of Tetra Pak Southern Africa, a global leader in food processing and packaging solutions.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

This weekend, Johannesburg hosts a defining moment: the arrival of the LIV Golf Johannesburg tournament on African soil for the first time.

It is tempting to view this as just another sporting event.

That would be a mistake.

What we are witnessing is not an event. It is a strategic lever—one that sits at the intersection of nation branding, economic growth, and long-term value creation. At a time when South Africa is searching for new growth pathways, global events are not optional. They are essential.

Yes, the immediate economic impact matters. International events drive tourism, fill hotels, stimulate local businesses, and generate employment across multiple sectors.

They inject much-needed revenue into the economy at a time when growth is under pressure.

But the real value lies beyond the balance sheet. Global events are brand accelerators. When South Africa hosts a world-class event, it is not merely accommodating visitors—it is broadcasting a message to the world. Millions of viewers are not just watching golf; they are experiencing South Africa. They are forming perceptions about our capability, our infrastructure, our hospitality, and our potential.

In a competitive global economy, perception shapes reality. Countries, like companies, compete for investment, talent, and tourism. And in that competition, brand matters. Events like LIV Golf compress years of marketing into a single weekend.

This is not theoretical. It is a model that has already been proven at scale. The 1984 Summer Olympics fundamentally changed how the world thinks about hosting global events. Prior to 1984, the Olympics had become synonymous with financial overreach and post-event debt. Cities built expensive infrastructure with little long-term use, often leaving taxpayers to carry the burden.

Los Angeles rewrote the playbook. Instead of overbuilding, the city leveraged existing infrastructure. Instead of relying on public funding, it mobilised private capital. It pioneered modern sponsorship models and maximised broadcast revenues.

The result was historic: a surplus of approximately $200 million—the first profitable Olympic Games of the modern era. But the real legacy was not just financial. It was philosophical. Los Angeles proved that global events can be commercially viable, strategically aligned, and legacy-driven. It shifted the narrative from cost to investment. That lesson is profoundly relevant for South Africa. The opportunity is not simply to host events—but to design platforms.

South African Tourism has already positioned LIV Golf as more than a tournament. It is a gateway to showcase the country’s broader offering—from world-class golf courses to safari experiences, cultural richness, and natural beauty. Importantly, it targets a high-value segment: golf tourists, who typically spend significantly more than the average traveller. This is ecosystem thinking.

A visitor who arrives for a global event does not just attend and leave. They explore. They spend. They return. And, perhaps most importantly, they tell the story. This is how momentum is built. The impact extends across the entire value chain: airlines, hospitality, transport, retail, and small businesses all benefit. For a country grappling with unemployment, particularly among the youth, this is not insignificant. It is a practical pathway to inclusive economic participation.

Yet the most powerful return on investment remains intangible. Belief. When a nation successfully hosts a global event, it demonstrates competence at scale. It builds trust in its ability to deliver. It creates a sense of pride among its citizens. It shifts the internal narrative from limitation to possibility. This is not soft value. It is strategic capital.

South Africa experienced this during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Beyond the infrastructure and tourism boost, the tournament redefined how South Africans—and the world—saw the country. It was a moment of unity, confidence, and global relevance.

As a result, not  only did South Africa earn the highest Net Promoter Score of all World Cups, a resounding 92% NPS from the visitors (which still stands as the  best ever to date), but Major Infrastructure Upgrades showcased South Africa’s engineering prowess, visitors experienced Zero Major Crime in 31 Days, Leisure Tourism went up 31% year-on-year (and Business Tourism by 47% for the City of Cape Town), Business Confidence was rated highest since 1995, and we co-created 500,000 New Jobs Every Year from 2004 to 2010, a total of 3 million plus as all stakeholders were working towards the common goal – and the Exchange Rate strengthened to R7/$. 

That is the power of a well-executed event.

The LIV Golf tournament represents the next chapter. Crucially, it is not a once-off moment, but part of a multi-year commitment. This creates the foundation for sustained impact rather than a fleeting spike.

And this is where strategic intent becomes critical. If South Africa approaches global events as isolated opportunities, the returns will remain limited. But if it treats them as part of a coordinated national strategy—aligned with tourism, investment promotion, skills development, and enterprise growth—the upside becomes exponential.

This is how leading nations think. They do not bid for events. They build ecosystems around them. Johannesburg this weekend is more than a host city. It is a signal to the world that South Africa is open, capable, and ready to compete on a global stage.

But it is also a signal to ourselves. Because ultimately, the true value of global events lies not only in how they shape global perception—but in how they shape national belief. And belief, when properly designed, becomes a country’s most powerful asset.

Dr Nik Eberl is the founder and executive chair: The Future of Jobs Summit™ (Official T20 Side Event). He is also the author of Nation of Champions: How South Africa won the World Cup of Destination Branding.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

Media headlines warning of possible fuel hikes of R4 for petrol and R7 for diesel per litre in two weeks should sound alarm bells across the nation and the highest offices of government and Treasury.

These hikes resulting from the latest Middle East war and the spike in international oil prices should surprise none, least of those responsible for society’s well-being.

With the Persian Gulf supplying 20% of international oil supplies, things will get much worse, unless the war is brought to an immediate end.

It will be the working class who will pay the price for the war, be it villagers in Lebanon or schoolgirls in Iran. 

It will be the working class in South Africa and across the world, from the United States to Iran, who will be handed the bill with skyrocketing petrol prices, galloping inflation and repo rate hikes.  

This is a blow workers and society across South Africa can ill afford.

The economy has been battling to grow beyond 1% over the past decade with projections that we may only reach 2% in 2028. 

Such hopes will now be shot out of the water, let alone reaching the 3% plus growth needed to begin substantially reducing our national ticking time bomb, our 41.1% unemployment rate.

South Africa has only just begun to emerge from the previous fall out due to the war in Ukraine and the subsequent spike in international oil prices, pushing our inflation rate up to a high of 7.8% and followed by 475 basis point hikes to the repo rate by the Reserve Bank, both suffocating economic growth and efforts to reduce unemployment.

Yet another fall out from geo-political anarchy is something South Africa’s weak economic growth and high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality cannot absorb.

Whilst we can only pray that sanity prevails on the global stage and the war swiftly ends, including the realisation of the two-state solution, and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination; government must move swiftly to cushion the nation from the dark economic clouds rapidly gathering.

First is to ensure with fuel suppliers that we have sufficient supplies in stock, and if needed that measures to ration them are developed. 

Other countries will be doing exactly this, and we don’t want to be found wanting in the event of international shortages.

As was done during 2022, Treasury needs to provide temporary fuel tax relief to commuters and the economy to help mitigate the impact of the R4 and R7 a litre hikes. 

This will have an impact upon the fiscus, but if left unmitigated, the blow it will inflict upon working and middle-class families and the economy will be far greater.

In the long term a comprehensive review of the fuel taxes that consume a third of the fuel price regime is needed to reduce the costs of transport and lower inflation.

We need to accelerate the roll out of electric buses, trains, cars, motorcycles and bicycles.  Ultimately ending our dependence upon imported fuel will help protect the nation from the inevitable global turmoil and oil price shocks. 

Converting our domestic motor manufacturing industry will help ensure its survival and open up space for its dramatic growth to meet domestic and international demand for electric vehicles.

Engagements need to take place with Eskom on measures to reduce the price of electricity in the short and long term. 

Electricity tariff hikes have been the other major cause of domestic inflation and burden to consumers and albatross around the economy. 

Creative solutions need to be found to stem the immediate spike in inflation, including drastically ramping up efforts to move all consumers to prepaid billing and tackling municipal debt and thus ending Eskom’s addiction to far above inflation tariff hikes.

Efforts to boost Transnet’s performance, including easing its debt burden, must be sped up to help shield food from inflation and thus protect workers’ ability to feed their families.

Similar support must be given to Metro Rail as it reopens lines and overhauls its infrastructure, including signalling.  A fully operational Metro Rail provides 10 million urban commuters with a cheap and fast means to get to work, schools etc.

Fragile and jobs intensive sectors of the economy will need help.  Such relief for consumers and businesses will be needed in the form of loan payments rescheduling by banks, easier access to capital and a stimulus package mobilising resources from the fiscus, developmental finance institutions and the private sector. 

This must be the moment when the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s Temporary Employment Relief Scheme is finally fixed to assist embattled companies and prevent retrenchments.

The Presidential Employment Stimulus needs to be expanded to provide a pathway to the job market for millions of unemployed by providing them with the skills and experience needed to find permanent work.

Government needs to prepare to provide inflationary adjustments for social grants, including the SRD Grant, as these provide a life long for 27 million of our most impoverished compatriots.  Their grants are so low that they cannot absorb a spike in inflation.

Cabinet needs to be seized with the urgency of this pending hammer blow to the economy.  This is not something that can be done at government’s normal glacier speed.  Supplementary Appropriation and Revenue Bills need to be drafted and tabled at Parliament as a matter of the highest urgency over the next few weeks.

Key to ensuring that the fiscus can fund supplementary allocations, is to give the South African Revenue Service additional resources to ramp up efforts to improve tax compliance, in particular customs enforcement.  It needs to be given a target to improve tax compliance to 70% by 2027 and 75% by 2029 if the state is to have the resources necessary to respond to our many pressing needs.

COSATU will be seeking urgent engagements on this national emergency at Nedlac to ensure a comprehensive package of interventions is put in place to protect workers, society, the state and the economy.

COSATU President Zingiswa Losi.

BUSINESS REPORT 

It is true that Africans got born into this world, live their live and finally depart without a trace. 

It is the scandal of invisibility. 

Through the Africa Symposium for Statistical Development (ASSD) that I chaired for eleven years with an unwavering support from Trevor Manuel then minister of Finance and later in the presidency, we fought this scandal of invisibility through statistics.

The record on census taking and making Africa discoverable to itself reached record highs in the 2010 Round of Censuses. 

Asia envied the African Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) movement that enjoined the statistical offices, ministries of health and home affairs.  It was the height of our success.

But my father quoting Lord Kevin “the heights by great men reached and kept were not by sudden flight, but they, whilst their companions slept scaffolded throughout the night.

Yes heights reached but not kept – that is what stalks Africa today as the programme has been captured by the likes of ID4Africa.  It is these heights that Phuthuma Nhleko is calling us to reach but also keep.    

The launch of Phuthuma Nhleko’s The Invisible People: Identity, Economy and Geopolitics was a gathering of the "arrived"—the upper echelons of the South African middle class.

Yet, the message delivered was a jarring disruption to that comfort. Nhleko, a man whose career has been defined by the heights of the JSE and MTN, did not speak as an outlier.

Instead, he performed what Amilcar Cabral termed a "class suicide," declaring: "I am them and they are me."

He acknowledged that whether one sits in the boardroom of the Stock Exchange or on a stoep in a depleted township, the global geopolitical lens renders the African effectively invisible.

This is not a mere philosophical crisis; it is an impending demographic collision. By 2050, Africa will represent a quarter of the world’s population. If the current trajectory of "intentional ignorance" continues, we are headed toward a world where 25% of humanity is composed of "invisibles"—a continent of people whose labor, identity, and assets are extracted but never truly counted.

The scars of extractive economics

For over a century, the global North has viewed Africa through the lens of extractive economics.

This model leaves behind literal and metaphorical "holes in the ground." We see the classical Big Hole of Kimberley—a specific place of vanished wealth—and its human counterpart in the depleted streets of Galeshewe.

We see the ghost towns of Thabong and Welkom, where the pulse of the economy has flatlined.

The equation is as brutal as it is consistent: Diamonds flow to London, while misery settles in Kimberley.

Gold flows to New York, while poverty anchors in Matlosane.

Nhleko has boldly defined which side of the fence he is on. He has chosen to stand with the "invisible" because he recognizes that without a radical shift in structural analysis, the "arrived" middle class is merely a temporary passenger on a sinking ship.

Enter the Lehohla Ledger: from theory to practice

Nhleko addresses the critique Marx levelled at Feuerbach: that philosophers have only interpreted the world, while the point is to change it.

The Lehohla Ledger will certainly offer to join Nhleko on this journey as the practical instrument of that change.

The Ledger is the foundational diagnostic framework required to turn the "weapon of theory" into a wheel of action.  An answer to the illusive district development model politically exhaled breathlessly without results, just like the triple challenge for almost a decade to date. 

The Lehohla Ledger answered that we must reject the last twenty years of stagnation and the sedative of the five-year planning cycle.

A country without scenarios is a country walking blindly into the 2050 abyss. The Ledger provides the census mesh—the empirical bedrock—to ensure that no African citizen remains a statistical ghost.

The Mesh and the 2752 instruments

To make the invisible visible, we must master the "statistics of the ward." The Lehohla Ledger utilizes 2752 specific instruments—validated metadata tools—to analyze the density of the population. While extractive industries measure what is taken out, the Ledger measures what remains.

By tracing Enumeration Areas (EAs) across the 1996, 2001, 2011, and 2022 Censuses of South Africa, we can document the specific changes in places like Galeshewe and Thabong.

We aggregate these contiguous EAs to create a high-density mesh that authenticates the essence of the African experience. This is not proxy data generated in Washington or Brussels; this is Data Sovereignty. It is the only way to ensure that by 2050, the 25% are not just a "population" but a documented, agentic economic force.

International Comparisons Programme Africa and the Successor Ledgers

The journey toward 2050 requires a "Successor Ledger" for the entire continent. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) cannot be a "hollow declaration." It must be powered by the International Comparison Program (ICP) Africa.

The Ledger utilizes ICP Africa to bridge the gap between the gold in New York and the reality in Matlosane. By standardizing Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs), we reveal the true size of the African economy. We strip away the colonial exchange rates that keep our purchasing power hidden. This is the technical realization of Cabral’s "return to the source." It allows the "invisible people" to see their own value in the mirror of the Ledger.

The Wheel of Action

Nhleko’s book is a call to arms for the African intellect. He has rejected the comfort of his class to highlight the geopolitical erasure of his people. The Lehohla Ledger provides the lampstand for this mission. We must deploy the 2752 instruments to build robust scenarios that predict the "ghost town" effect before it happens. We must move with a "timeous Ledger" that is ready for the wheel of policy the moment a crisis—or an opportunity—emerges.

By 2050, the 25% will either be the engine of the world or its greatest tragedy. To honour the spirit of Cabral and the courage of Nhleko, we must choose to count. We must choose to see. We must choose the Ledger so that we can not only reach these heights but we must keep them.  Nhleko at the pinnacle of the JSE is saying I have seen the promised land and I have tasted its fruits but without you fellow Africans the fruits are bitter, and I will not count because I can only count when the 2,5 billion of us count. This is the Botho Morena Mohlomi spoke about at the beginning of the 18th Century when he inducted Morena Moshoeshoe to be the King of the Basotho nation.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.

BUSINESS REPORT 

South Africa faces a literacy crisis that threatens the very foundation of its future economy. According to the latest national assessments, 81% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning.

That statistic has been quoted in conferences, policy documents and strategy papers for years. It has been debated in boardrooms and parliamentary committees. It has been analysed by academics and development economists.

But last Friday, in a classroom in Soweto, we were reminded that solving the problem may begin with something far simpler. Miss South Africa, Qhawekazi Mazaleni, walked into Nkone Maruping Primary School in Braamfischer and read an isiXhosa children’s book to a group of learners. Not for a photo opportunity. For a reading session.

Mazaleni read from her children’s book Amasela Amdaka, encouraging pupils to embrace reading in their mother tongue as the foundation for learning, confidence and cultural identity. As a speech therapist who specialises in autism, she understands something many education debates overlook: language is the first building block of comprehension.

Before mathematics. Before science. Before history. Children must first learn to process language. This insight lies at the heart of one of the most important yet underappreciated debates in South African education: the role of mother-tongue literacy.

For decades, international research has consistently shown that children learn to read and understand concepts more effectively when they start in the language they speak at home. Once comprehension is established, transitioning into additional languages becomes easier.

Yet South Africa’s education system often pushes learners into English-dominant instruction before they have mastered the basics of reading in their own languages. The result is predictable.

Children memorise words but struggle to interpret meaning. They can pronounce sentences but cannot explain them. They move through grades without building the cognitive scaffolding required for higher learning. By the time they reach Grade 4, the gap has widened into a crisis.

Mazaleni’s visit offered a powerful reminder that literacy is not simply about textbooks and syllabi. It is about how children experience language. The visit also coincided with the school’s Diversity Celebration Day. Mazaleni used the moment to encourage learners to view diversity “not as a difference to be feared, but as a strength that enriches their school, communities and the nation as a whole”.

That message carries lessons far beyond the classroom. Having coached leaders across five continents, I have learned that the best leaders do not merely tolerate diversity. They leverage it. In business, diversity drives innovation. In teams, it strengthens decision-making. In societies, it builds resilience.

Mazaleni was teaching that lesson to Grade 4 learners long before the workplace will demand it from them. But what made the moment particularly compelling was how it reflected systems thinking in action.

In South Africa we often attempt to fix complex problems by addressing symptoms rather than causes. We debate declining education outcomes, rising unemployment and poor productivity as if they exist in isolation.

In reality, they are deeply connected. Low literacy leads to weak educational outcomes. Weak education feeds into youth unemployment. Youth unemployment erodes social cohesion and economic growth. The chain begins with how children learn to read.

Consider the example of Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus. When he rebuilt the national rugby team, he did not simply focus on selecting better players. He redesigned the entire system that develops and supports them.

From scouting structures to team culture, from preparation to performance analysis, he built a machine capable of producing sustained excellence. The results are well documented.

Mazaleni’s classroom visit may appear modest by comparison, but the underlying philosophy is remarkably similar. She was not merely encouraging children to read. She was reinforcing the cognitive and cultural foundations that make reading meaningful.

Literacy combined with values-driven leadership. Language linked to identity. Education connected to social cohesion and mutual respect. These are the ingredients of long-term transformation. The scene in Braamfischer captured what that transformation can look like at a human level.

Learners gathered around Miss South Africa, eager to participate in a reading experience that celebrated both language and diversity. High fives, laughter, autographed books. For many of those children, it may have been the first time a national figure read to them in their own language.

Moments like that matter more than we often realise. They shape how young people see themselves. They influence how they relate to learning. They remind them that their language, their identity and their future belong in the same story.

Which raises an uncomfortable but necessary question for the rest of us. What would change in South Africa if every leader with a public platform spent just one Friday a year in a classroom?

What if CEOs, entrepreneurs, athletes and public officials regularly showed up to read to children in their mother tongue? What if we moved beyond debating literacy statistics and started engaging directly with the learners behind them?

The 81% literacy crisis is often presented as a policy problem. In reality, it is also a leadership challenge. Because transformation rarely begins with legislation alone. It begins when individuals decide to act where they can make a difference.

Last Friday in Braamfischer, Qhawekazi Mazaleni offered a simple demonstration of that principle. Fixing South Africa’s literacy crisis does not always start with policy papers. Sometimes it starts with a book, a classroom, and the willingness to show up. 

Dr Nik Eberl is the founder and executive chair: The Future of Jobs Summit™ (Official T20 Side Event). He is also the author of Nation of Champions: How South Africa won the World Cup of Destination Branding.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa stands at a fundamental moment in its adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). Too often, public debate focuses on fears of job losses or dramatic headlines about automation sweeping away work. However, the deeper and more important question is whether South African businesses, governments, and educational institutions will choose to use AI to educate and upskill the workforce before widespread disruption occurs.

Framed this way, AI becomes a tool to strengthen people’s capabilities rather than render them jobless.Across South Africa, workers are both optimistic and anxious about AI, with nearly 70% of professionals especially administrative staff, call centre agents, data capturers, and retail workers, fearing job displacement, and many believing that around 45% of current tasks could be automated.

At the same time, demand for AI skills is rising sharply, with AI-related roles growing over 350% since 2019, particularly in technology, finance, marketing, and data-driven industries. Many employees are already using AI tools to enhance research, content creation, customer engagement, and data analysis, showing that the workforce is not only concerned about disruption but also engaging with AI to boost productivity and innovation.

The real challenge is to ensure that this adoption leads to learning and empowerment rather than displacement. Instead of automating workers out of jobs, South Africa must focus on educating workers about AI and equipping them with relevant skills before disruption happens. If approached intentionally, AI can upgrade workers’ capabilities and help them stay competitive in a rapidly changing economy.

A clear example of this shift is emerging in agriculture with UNDP Programme for Agri Tech and Aqua Tech demonstrated to the smallholder farmers to see if they are feasible for their everyday farming, where AI is being integrated not as a replacement for farmers but as a learning partner. In this initiative, South African farmers will see the new innovations in climate‑smart agriculture, and learn to use digital systems to monitor livestock, implement precision irrigation, and interpret climate data for better planting decisions. These technologies also guide farmers on soil health, water usage, disease detection, livestock monitoring, and even predictive tools that anticipate drought or market shifts, effectively turning smart systems into teachers that deliver actionable insights and strengthen human decision‑making.

This educational approach can and should guide other sectors as AI expands into offices, factories, and service industries across the country. Rather than adopting AI as a silent replacement mechanism, organisations should use AI as an educational partner. Intelligent systems can identify individual skill gaps, recommend tailored learning modules, provide real-time feedback, and support continuous improvement and adaptation. In finance, AI can train staff to interpret complex data strategically; in manufacturing, it can help technicians detect faults early and plan maintenance more efficiently; and in customer service, AI tools can guide employees toward more effective communication and problem-solving. The emphasis must be on using AI to teach and empower rather than to replace.

As South Africa embraces AI, the defining choice is clear: will the country use this technology to build skills and opportunities for its people, or will it let automation deepen inequality and job insecurity?. With targeted investment in education, collaboration across sectors, and an intentional approach to workforce development, AI can become a force that strengthens human potential, not diminishes it.

Tsakani Nkombyane, Programme Officer at 22 On Sloane.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Product development is notoriously time consuming and expensive. It requires research, testing, iteration and often multiple failed attempts before something works. For small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with limited capital, that trial-and-error cycle can be risky. While AI does not eliminate risk, it significantly reduces the cost and time involved in refining ideas.

The key is understanding where AI adds practical value, and where you’re better off taking an old-school approach. Below are five high-impact ways that SMEs can use AI to strengthen their product development processes.

1 Customer insight

Most SMEs are sitting on a mountain of valuable but underused data – from customer reviews, support queries and sales records to website analytics and social media engagement. AI-powered tools can analyse this information at scale, identifying patterns that would take weeks or even months to detect manually.

This includes recurring complaints, feature requests, pricing sensitivities and regional differences in buying behaviour. Instead of relying on internal assumptions and anecdotal feedback, business owners can prioritise product improvements based on data-driven evidence. In a diverse and price-sensitive market like South Africa, this provides a clearer, more objective understanding of customer needs.

2 Validation before capital investment

One of the biggest risks in product development is committing resources to an idea that has not been properly tested. Fortunately, AI can support rapid concept validation.

SMEs can use AI to refine product descriptions, simulate different pricing scenarios or generate multiple value propositions for testing in targeted digital campaigns. Engagement data and real-time feedback analysis can then indicate which concepts resonate with customers. This reduces the likelihood of launching products based purely on instinct.

3 Design optimisation

Instead of lengthy manual analysis between iterations and prototypes, businesses can quickly assess performance data and refine their offering.

For digital products, AI can analyse user journeys to identify friction points, while for physical goods, modelling tools can optimise design specifications, packaging dimensions and even material usage. Faster iteration means lower development costs and quicker time to market.

4 Demand forecasting

Accurately predicting demand is so important because overproduction ties up capital, while underproduction can lead to missed revenue and frustrated customers. AI-driven forecasting and planning tools analyse historical sales, seasonal patterns and market trends to predict likely demand more accurately.

For SMEs with typically tight cash flow, improved forecasting supports better inventory management and more disciplined working capital allocation.

5 Personalisation

Personalisation increases perceived value without necessarily increasing production costs. It also strengthens customer loyalty, which is critical for businesses looking to scale sustainably. With AI, SMEs are able to offer a level of personalisation that was previously only accessible to large corporates. This may include recommending complementary products or adapting service features to specific customer segments.

It’s important to remember, however, that AI is not a substitute for judgement. Algorithms can detect patterns, but they do not understand context in the way experienced entrepreneurs do. Especially in South Africa, where market dynamics are shaped by income disparities and cultural nuance, human insight remains essential when interpreting AI-generated outputs.

When used strategically, AI can allow SME owners to test more ideas, fail faster at lower cost and refine products with greater confidence. However, its value lies not in the volume of tools adopted, but in the clarity of the problem being solved. SMEs should begin with a clearly defined product objective, integrate AI selectively into existing processes, and continuously measure impact against commercial outcomes.

Ultimately, the strongest results will come from striking a deliberate balance between AI-driven insight and entrepreneurial instinct, ensuring that data informs decisions without replacing human judgement.

Jeremy Lang, Managing Director at Business Partners Limited

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

A massive industrial revolution and economic transformation in modern times is currently taking place globally and in South Africa as we transition towards a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy. The question we ask: What will government, large corporations, development finance organisations, and industry associations do to ensure our country has a just and equitable transition.

International Women's Day (IWD) 2026 which we marked on Sunday March 8 featured the twin complementary themes: "Give to Gain" - focusing on investment, collaboration, and solidarity and the United Nations theme "Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls” focusing on overcoming legal and social barriers to equality.

At the heels of IWD is the Seventieth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW 70), which is the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality, the rights, and the empowerment of women take place at United Nations from 9 to 19 March 2026. The purpose of the gathering and IWD observations remains the pursuit of justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and addressing structural barriers.

Globally and here at home, there is a growing recognition that inclusive economic development and climate action are inextricably linked. Therefore, making these platforms an opportunity to consider this relationship between gender equality, economic development, and climate ambition, as we drive carbon neutral development and inclusive economic development.

Engender the Energy Transition for optimal outcomes

Women are essential drivers of a just energy transition, shifting from being disproportionately affected by energy poverty to becoming key innovators, leaders, and consumers in the green economy. Ensuring their active participation in policymaking, training, and leadership is crucial to creating an inclusive, sustainable, and equitable energy system.

This realisation is especially crucial for South Africa due to the severe structural disparities in employment, income, and economic opportunity in addition to the urgent need to address the impacts of climate change. To ensure a just transition, it is crucial to consider who participates and who benefits from the transition to a low carbon future. The country's energy system, industrial landscape, labour markets, and investment flows will all be drastically changed by this shift. If the energy transition is to just, it is important that we not replicate historical injustices.

Gender outcomes must be treated as a fundamental investment requirement in the green transition by large corporations, development finance organisations, and industry associations.

Through targeted financing and blended finance instruments that open up capital for female entrepreneurs, development finance institutions can further facilitate women’s participation.

Therefore, women together with other marginalised groups must be placed at the centre of South Africa’s just transition, as they are not only often disproportionately affected by climate and economic shocks, but also because their participation as workers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders will be essential to building an inclusive and resilient green economy. 

Investment in inclusive economic growth and resilient communities

The green economy offers business investment opportunities that go beyond electricity generation. This may include opportunities in project development, grid and storage infrastructure, legal and financial services, construction, operations and maintenance, and environmental and social management are all components of renewable energy value chains.

Beyond energy, women-led businesses in a variety of industries can benefit from opportunities in water-efficient irrigation systems, agro-processing, and climate-risk advisory services that can all be increased by climate-smart agriculture. Women farmers and agri-entrepreneurs can be key players in creating more resilient food systems when they have access to land, markets, technology, and funding.

Similarly, circular economy industries, such as waste beneficiation, repair, reuse, and recycling are locally based and labour-intensive where women-owned businesses can prosper. These sectors support more sustainable patterns of production and consumption in addition to generating jobs. These are only some opportunities that the transition presents for women to take advantage off.

Therefore, ensuring that women have a meaningful role in creating and reaping the benefits of the green economy is more than just a question of representation; rather, it is investment in more inclusive economic growth and resilient communities.

Cementing the building blocks of a redistributive just transition The Just Transition Framework as approved by Cabinet, three years ago recognises that the coal belt requires targeted investment to diversify its economy and to create new opportunities for workers and local businesses.

This entails ensuring programmes for economic development, industrial policy, and climate policy actively promote the expansion of women-led businesses in developing green industries. Improving access to financing through development finance organisations, blended finance tools, and enterprise development programmes that particularly assist women entrepreneurs flourishing in the green economy.

As we move forward in our decarbonisation path, women must be positioned to take advantage of this economic opportunity of the energy transition.

Zimasa Vazi, Senior Manager, Stakeholder Relations, Presidential Climate Commission

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa cannot industrialise without reliable electricity. Yet for decades the country has struggled with energy shortages that have constrained economic growth and undermined investor confidence. It is time that we face the facts. If we are serious about rebuilding our economy, nuclear energy must form part of the cure.

The government’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) already proposes adding 5.2 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity by 2039. I believe this goal is not only achievable but essential if the nation is to secure long-term energy stability and industrial growth.

South Africa stands at an energy crossroads. When we look back one day, we must be able to say we chose the right route. That is why we have a joint responsibility to support the IRP.

Before we continue, I want to put the figure of 5.2 GW in real terms. What does it mean? The country has about 18 million households, and 5.2 GW is enough to power more than four million homes, or a city the size of Johannesburg. This is a critical need. Let us get working on it.

What I propose is a twin-track nuclear development strategy designed not only to stabilise the country’s electricity supply but also to drive industrialisation, skills development and long-term energy sovereignty.

Nuclear power currently contributes roughly 4% of national electricity generation, primarily through the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station.

A twin-track nuclear strategy

The first track focuses on large Generation III+ pressurised water reactors located along the country’s coastline. More than 85% of the proposed capacity would be built at two established nuclear sites: Duynefontein, near Koeberg in the Western Cape, and Thyspunt in the Eastern Cape.

Developing these coastal sites offers several advantages. Duynefontein can leverage existing nuclear infrastructure and regulatory experience, while Thyspunt could stimulate a new industrial corridor in the Eastern Cape, a province that has long sought large-scale economic anchors.

The second track focuses on small modular reactors (SMRs) deployed inland. These reactors would account for roughly 15% of the new capacity and would primarily be located at retiring coal power stations in Mpumalanga.

The concept is known as “coal-to-nuclear” repurposing. Sites such as Camden and Hendrina already have transmission infrastructure and skilled workforces. By installing SMRs at these locations, the country could save up to 30% on grid infrastructure costs while protecting jobs in communities historically dependent on coal.

In a water-scarce country, the technology choice is also strategic. The proposal emphasises non-water-cooled high-temperature gas reactors, similar to the technology previously explored under South Africa’s Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) programme. These reactors would require significantly less water than traditional designs.

A five-year launch roadmap

I propose a five-year rollout plan to move the programme from concept to construction.

In the first year, government would launch a request for proposals from international vendors, revive the PBMR programme from its current “care and maintenance” status, and begin rebuilding the national nuclear skills pipeline.

The revival of South Africa’s Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) programme should also be understood in the correct context. Lifting the PBMR out of “care and maintenance” and transferring it to the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (NEXA) would allow local scientists and engineers to resume research and development on this uniquely South African technology. However, the PBMR will not form part of the proposed 5.2 GW nuclear deployment, as the technology would first need to progress through a demonstration phase before it can be commercialised.

For the inland component of the nuclear expansion programme, preference would instead be given to high-temperature gas-cooled reactor designs that are already operating or are close to commercial maturity. Examples include China’s HTR-PM reactor, which is already producing electricity in Shandong Province, and the X-energy design in the United States. The long-term objective of reviving the PBMR programme is to eventually develop a locally owned reactor technology that South Africa could deploy and potentially export, particularly for applications such as desalination, hydrogen production and industrial process heat in Africa and the Middle East. If successfully demonstrated, this technology could position South Africa as a developer and exporter of advanced nuclear solutions tailored to the needs of emerging economies.

Year two would focus on vendor selection, licensing processes and environmental impact assessments, particularly for the Thyspunt site.

By year three, the programme aims to reach contract negotiations and financial close, followed by the first concrete pour at Duynefontein in year four.

The fifth year would see the commissioning of local fuel production at Pelindaba, alongside the start of heavy manufacturing for long-lead nuclear components.

After the first five years, construction would continue at Duynefontein, taking into account a typical 60-month reactor build period. This would allow the first unit to be completed and begin producing electricity around 2036, in line with the Integrated Resource Plan. In parallel, development at Thyspunt in the Eastern Cape would have gathered momentum, with licensing and construction progressing so that both units there could come online by around 2039. By sequencing the programme in this way, electricity generated from the first reactors at Duynefontein could begin generating revenue 18 to 24 months before the Thyspunt units are completed, helping to support financing for the later stages of the programme.

Strategic global partnerships

Another cornerstone of the plan is a multi-vendor international partnership model.

Large coastal reactors could involve collaboration with global nuclear suppliers such as France’s EDF, Russia’s Rosatom, South Korea’s KEPCO or Chinese nuclear firms, each offering different strengths in financing, speed of construction and technological maturity.

SMR development could involve partnerships with the United States or China, particularly for advanced gas-cooled reactor technologies suitable for inland coal sites.

The strategy positions the nation as a “middle power” capable of cooperating with both BRICS and G7 partners, avoiding geopolitical alignment with any single bloc while securing the best technology and financing options.

Financing the programme

Given the scale of nuclear infrastructure investment, the proposal emphasises hybrid financing models rather than relying solely on government borrowing. Potential mechanisms include export credit agency loans from vendor nations, financing through the BRICS New Development Bank, and the use of green taxonomy frameworks to attract private institutional investors seeking low-carbon infrastructure projects.

Building a domestic nuclear industry

Beyond electricity generation, we must aim to rebuild a complete nuclear industrial ecosystem.

This includes restoring elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, expanding domestic manufacturing capacity for reactor components, and developing a long-term human capital pipeline for engineers, welders and specialised technicians.

I propose an 85% localisation target for civil works, maintenance and related supply chain activities, ensuring that nuclear investment drives significant domestic economic activity and builds a strong local industrial base.

It is also essential that we position nuclear technology as a catalyst for broader industrial applications. These include the continued production of medical radioisotopes, the use of high-temperature reactors for industrial heat in sectors such as steel and cement, and the generation of clean hydrogen for the emerging hydrogen economy.

A nuclear programme rooted in peaceful development

The country’s nuclear ambitions are framed within its longstanding commitment to peaceful nuclear use. It remains the only state to have voluntarily dismantled its nuclear weapons programme and is a key signatory to the Pelindaba Treaty, which establishes Africa as a nuclear-weapon-free zone. My proposed expansion, therefore, is positioned as a model of civilian nuclear development aimed at economic growth, energy security and technological advancement.

We can win the war against poverty, and we can win it using the peaceful atom.

Professor Bismark Tyobeka is the principal and vice-chancellor of the North-West University (NWU), former CEO of the National Nuclear Regulator, and has recently been appointed both a member and chairperson of the Ministerial Expert Panel on Nuclear. 

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa’s economic debate often treats structural reform and energy transition as separate policy tracks. One sits within discussions about the business environment and growth policy, the other within electricity reform and climate commitments.

In practice the two are closely linked. A modern energy system requires sustained investment, and investment depends on a business environment where companies can operate, expand and compete.

Two recent reports illustrate this connection. The International Monetary Fund’s report “Structural Reforms to Bolster South Africa’s Business Environment” examines regulatory barriers constraining growth. The Barclays paper “Transition Realism: Financing Energy Systems That Work” examines the economic realities shaping global energy transitions. Read together, they suggest that economic reform and energy reform depend on the same institutional foundations.

South Africa’s growth slowdown over the past decade is well documented. Economic growth has averaged below 1 percent since the global financial crisis. Real income per person has fallen back to levels seen nearly two decades ago, while unemployment remains among the highest globally. The IMF study focuses on the regulatory environment facing businesses. South Africa’s product- market regulations rank among the most restrictive across comparable emerging economies and OECD countries. Administrative complexity, licensing procedures and fragmented authority create barriers to investment and expansion.

Company level data illustrates the effect. The World Bank Enterprise Survey shows that South African businesses spend a large share of senior management time dealing with permits and licences. This administrative burden has increased significantly since the late 2000s and now ranks among the highest in the global data set. Companies whose management teams devote more time to regulatory compliance tend to grow more slowly, create fewer jobs and exhibit lower productivity. Smaller businesses carry the heaviest cost.

In companies with fewer than twenty employees the productivity penalty associated with regulatory complexity is roughly double that observed in larger companies. South Africa’s licensing framework explains part of this burden. Authority is divided across national, provincial and municipal spheres of government, each with its own capability challenges, separate procedures and approval systems.

Entrepreneurs often require multiple approvals from different institutions before they can begin operating.The result is a fragmented regulatory landscape. Licensing rules differ between municipalities, administrative capacity varies and businesses frequently submit the same information to different authorities because no unified system exists for permit tracking. These conditions discourage formal business creation and limit expansion.

Competition barriers reinforce the problem. Several sectors remain highly concentrated, allowing established companies to maintain strong positions while entry for new competitors remains difficult. Network industries such as electricity and logistics illustrate this pattern clearly. The IMF estimates that reducing half of South Africa’s regulatory gap relative to emerging-market peers could increase real output by around 2 percent over the medium term.

Measures such as a national licensing framework, digital permitting systems and clearer regulatory coordination would reduce duplication and improve investment conditions. These institutional reforms matter directly for energy policy because the energy transition depends on the same conditions.

The Barclays Transition Realism report examines the practical realities shaping global energy systems. Much of the international debate has focused on climate targets and timelines. The operational challenge lies in financing and building energy systems capable of delivering reliable and affordable power during the transition. Historical evidence shows that energy transitions occur through accumulation rather than replacement. New energy sources enter the system while existing ones continue operating for decades.

Renewable energy is expanding rapidly, yet it is largely being added to the global energy mix rather than replacing fossil fuels in the short to medium term. Infrastructure now plays a decisive role. Renewable generation costs have fallen sharply, yet transmission networks, grid integration and system balancing increasingly determine how quickly new capacity can be deployed. Investment is shifting toward enabling infrastructure such as transmission networks and storage systems.

Energy transitions also differ across regions. Countries follow distinct pathways shaped by resources, industrial structures and geopolitical priorities. Renewable energy will expand further, yet fossil fuels, nuclear energy and existing molecule based fuels remain part of the global energy system.

For South Africa the link between structural reform and transition realism is clear. Expanding electricity infrastructure, attracting private capital and developing new supply chains require institutions capable of supporting large-scale investment. Structural reform and energy transition therefore converge around a practical question: whether SouthAfrica can create a business environment where companies invest, infrastructure expands and energy systems evolve with the scale and speed the economy requires.

The structural obstructions that make it difficult to do business in South Africa combined with competition barriers, allow established companies to maintain strong positions while entry for new competitors remains challenging. South Africa needs to combine structural reforms and transition realism to enable a pragmatic energy future. Combining these two would also go a long way to close the trust deficit between government and business by assisting with institutional behaviour that holds steady under pressure.

Thomas Garner holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Pretoria and an MBA from the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Thomas is self-employed focusing on energy, energy related critical minerals, water and communities. He is a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering and a Management Committee member of the South African Independent Power Producers Association.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa has introduced numerous initiatives aimed at expanding economic inclusion and accelerating the growth of black-owned small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs). On paper, these commitments signal strong intent to support entrepreneurship. In practice, however, the township entrepreneur whether a small business owner in Soweto, a mechanic in Tembisa, or a social enterprise founder in Khayelitsha still faces significant barriers to accessing meaningful support.

The core problem is that the systems designed to connect entrepreneurs to resources remain fragmented, complex and often misaligned with the realities of informal and early-stage businesses.

SMMEs are widely recognised as a cornerstone of South Africa’s economic growth strategy. Estimates indicate there are between 2.6 million and 3 million small and micro enterprises in the country, employing roughly 11 million to 13 million people and contributing between one-third and 40% of national GDP.

The sector also dominates numerically, accounting for about 91% of formal businesses. These figures explain why policymakers view SMMEs as the primary engine for job creation. The National Development Plan projects that small businesses could generate up to 90% of the country’s 11 million new jobs by 2030. With official unemployment exceeding 32% on the narrow definition, the stakes could not be higher.

Yet the structure of the sector complicates policy delivery. FinScope MSME Survey South Africa 2024 data suggests that roughly two-thirds of SMMEs function outside the formal economy, with millions of micro-enterprises lacking registration, tax compliance or formal financial records - while millions operate entirely in cash-based informal markets. This reality shapes the effectiveness of support initiatives, because most funding programmes are designed for formally compliant businesses.

The International Finance Corporation previously estimated South Africa’s unmet SMME financing need at about $30 billion, with formal institutions covering barely half that demand. Smaller loan requests face the greatest difficulty. Nearly half of funding applications are for amounts below R250 000, yet these modest requests are the most likely to be declined, even though they could have the greatest impact on survivalist businesses.

Over the past decade, South Africa has built a credible network of incubators, accelerators, university innovation hubs and corporate enterprise supplier development (ESD) programmes. These initiatives nurture early-stage entrepreneurs and have produced measurable successes, including the formalisation of township businesses and improvements in compliance and operational capability.

However, the ecosystem operates largely in silos. Incubators are not consistently linked to funding institutions. Corporate procurement pipelines often function separately from grassroots enterprise development. Enterprise databases are fragmented, forcing entrepreneurs to repeatedly submit the same documentation to different funders.

Without coordinated referral mechanisms and shared data systems, promising businesses struggle to transition from incubation to scale. The pipeline exists, but it is not integrated.

Support programmes have delivered tangible micro-level gains. Yet growth is typically incremental rather than exponential. Once businesses move beyond the startup phase, they encounter a new set of challenges: governance, cash-flow management, hiring, regulatory compliance and labour obligations designed for larger firms. For enterprises operating on thin margins, a single disruption can erase years of progress.

Market access remains one of the most significant constraints. Without reliable buyers or integration into supply chains, even well-funded businesses remain vulnerable. Access to procurement opportunities -particularly from large corporates and the public sector - often determines whether a business can scale.

Businesses that combine commercial activity with social impact face an additional layer of difficulty. South Africa lacks a clear legal framework recognising social enterprises as a distinct category. As a result, these organisations must operate under commercial regulations while pursuing public-interest objectives, without access to blended finance instruments tailored to their hybrid nature.

They often do not qualify for traditional loans because of lower profit margins, nor for grants because they generate revenue. This funding gap limits the growth of ventures that could address pressing social challenges while creating jobs.

Evidence from practitioners suggests that ecosystem-based support models outperform once-off interventions. Long-term mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs significantly improves survival rates. Funding linked to technical assistance, governance oversight and milestone-based disbursement tends to produce better outcomes than stand-alone grants.

Standardised due-diligence frameworks could also reduce friction. A shared national SMME database would streamline verification processes and improve matching between businesses, funders and procurement opportunities.

Most importantly, market access must be integrated into support programmes. Capital alone does not guarantee sustainability - predictable revenue streams do. South Africa’s townships are rich with entrepreneurial activity, resilience and innovation.

What remains missing is a coordinated system capable of connecting funding, mentorship, market access and regulatory support into a seamless pathway from startup to scale. Until that gap is closed, support will continue to appear abundant in policy frameworks yet distant from the entrepreneurs it is meant to empower. If alignment can be achieved, however, township enterprises will not merely survive - they will become the engines of inclusive growth that South Africa urgently needs.

Jason Bygate – Founder: Capacitate Social Solutions

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

In the boardroom, we often speak of digital transformation as a goal to be reached. But in the era of exponential Artificial Intelligence, the reality is far more demanding. We are currently trapped in what I call the Red Queen’s Race: a structural crisis where the velocity of agentic AI and cloud architecture is simply outstripping our national capacity to deliver skilled talent.

As Alice was told in Wonderland, it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place. For South Africa, staying in place is no longer an option; we are either accelerating our human capital or facing an active solvency threat to our digital future. We are either accelerating our human capital or facing an active solvency threat to our digital future.

The paradox of readiness

South Africa currently holds a position of prestige as a regional leader, ranking 72nd globally in the 2024 Government AI Readiness Index. Yet, this badge of honor is tarnished by a self-imposed bottleneck: a profound technology skills deficit.

South Africa faces an unambiguous and immediate threat to its economic growth due to a crippling shortage of 20,000 to 70,000 qualified IT professionals. This vacuum is actively stalling projects and stifling innovation, with a staggering 90% of South African businesses reporting its impact. The inevitable and detrimental outcome is a "net loss" for the local ecosystem, marked by the off-shoring of vital development and an unsustainable reliance on foreign recruitment.

Beyond AI tourism

We must move beyond what I term AI Tourism. This refers to the tendency for organisations, particularly SMMEs, to dabble with tools without implementing AI as a repeatable, revenue-generating capability.

The stakes are existential. Generative AI is not merely "changing" jobs; it is rewriting the competency matrix for the entire workforce.

Global employers overwhelmingly anticipate that AI and information processing technologies will transform their businesses, with 86% expecting this change, according to a recent Boston Consulting Group report. South African companies share and even surpass this sense of urgency, with 90% of surveyed employers in the country expecting AI and related technologies to drive business transformation by 2030.

Considering that up to 5.7 million jobs in South Africa (35% of all jobs) are vulnerable to automation over the next seven years, a radical acceleration in human-machine collaboration is the only viable defense against a looming employment crisis.

According to research by McKinsey & Company, generative AI offers Africa an estimated $100 billion in annual economic value. To realise our share, we cannot afford to be spectators.

The Strategic Roadmap: Show Me, Don’t Tell Me

To bridge the significant tech skills gap in South Africa, we require decisive, operational execution rather than theoretical debate. My "Show Me, Don't Tell Me" philosophy mandates three critical and immediate shifts in strategy.

Firstly, we must mandate industry-academia symbiosis. This requires a fundamental shift from purely theoretical models to robust Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) and hyper-targeted short skills programs. The current system is demonstrably failing, with two-thirds of HR professionals believing higher education institutions are not providing the practical experience demanded by the ICT sector.

Secondly, it is crucial to operationalise AI adoption, especially for SMEs. Initiatives like the Artificial Intelligence Entrepreneurial Institute of South Africa (AIEISA) are vital. We must move SMEs beyond mere curiosity about AI to structured, measurable adoption that directly drives core business outcomes.

Finally, we must urgently dismantle archaic visa frameworks. By leveraging the Trusted Employer Scheme (TES), we can attract top-tier global professionals. These experts are essential not merely as labour, but for the localised skills transfer and mentorship necessary to rapidly build and strengthen our domestic talent pipeline.

The Bottom Line

The future is not about AI taking jobs; it is about people who leverage AI displacing those who do not. South Africa possesses a young, intrinsically digital-native population that can be transformed into a globally competitive workforce.

However, if we fail to urgently operationalise a strategy to close this gap, we will remain spectators in the global digital economy. The race is on. It is time to stop running in place and start leading.

Rowen Pillai, CEO of LeanTechnovations & AIEISA

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

In the history of technological disruption, the most consequential changes often begin quietly—with a corporate memo, a strategic pivot, or a decision that seems administrative at first glance. Such moments rarely announce themselves as turning points. Yet, in retrospect, they often reveal the contours of an industry’s future.

The South African film sector may now be standing at one of those moments.

Two developments—seemingly unrelated—have emerged from opposite sides of the global streaming landscape. The first involves the French media giant Canal+ and its decision to close down Showmax. The second concerns Netflix and its unexpected decision to acquire an artificial-intelligence startup founded by Ben Affleck.

Individually, each decision reflects a corporate strategy. Taken together, they reveal something deeper about the evolution of the film industry.

When Canal+ explained the reasoning behind the Showmax shutdown, the language was characteristically corporate but revealing. The company noted that “this evolution is also consistent with the ambition of MultiChoice, a Canal+ Company, to deploy its in-house large-scale streaming platform capable of meeting the expectations of African and international consumers.”

Translated into simpler terms, the problem was not merely content. It was technology.

Showmax had struggled with losses, but Canal+ also identified technological inefficiencies within the platform. Rather than continue refining the existing infrastructure, the company decided to replace it—deploying its own streaming technology as the backbone of a new service designed for scale.

This is a familiar pattern in the modern media economy: when technology becomes the bottleneck, ownership of the platform becomes the strategic advantage.

Yet Canal+ is hardly alone in recognising that the future of streaming will be shaped as much by software as by storytelling.

Netflix demonstrated this shift in dramatic fashion. At a moment when industry observers expected the company to pursue large content acquisitions—such as its previously rumored interest in Warner Bros.— Netflix instead moved in a different direction. It chose to invest in technology, acquiring an AI-focused startup associated with Ben Affleck.

At first glance, the move seemed unusual. Affleck is best known as an actor and filmmaker, not a technology entrepreneur. But the origins of the company illuminate the logic behind Netflix’s decision.

In 2022, Affleck began exploring how artificial intelligence could address some of filmmaking’s most persistent logistical challenges. Film production, after all, is a complex orchestration of schedules, locations, lighting conditions, budgets, and creative decisions. The startup he launched sought to build software tools specifically for that ecosystem—from managing intricate production logistics to streamlining visual workflows.

Across the industry, studios are experimenting with similar technologies. Artificial intelligence is now being used to assist with visual effects enhancement, script analysis, location planning, and automated editing support. Some tools can even simulate how lighting will interact with digital environments before cameras begin rolling.

What once required weeks of experimentation on set can now be modeled in software.

In effect, artificial intelligence is beginning to touch nearly every stage of the creative pipeline—from story development and production planning to editing and audience analytics. As streaming platforms compete to produce vast quantities of content for a global audience, technologies that accelerate production may become not merely useful, but essential.

It is important to note what this technological shift is—and what it is not.

For the moment, the film industry is not embracing AI primarily to replace actors. Instead, the technology is being deployed behind the scenes to improve processes, reduce costs, and increase efficiency. The goal is competitive advantage.

There are experiments involving synthetic actors and digital replicas, but these remain peripheral. The real transformation is happening in the invisible layers of production—the scheduling systems, editing tools, and simulation platforms that shape how films are made long before audiences see them.

And this is where the implications become particularly significant for the South African film ecosystem.

The most immediate impact of these developments will likely be felt not by actors or directors, but by the network of supporting companies that orbit the industry—production service providers, logistics coordinators, post-production specialists, and technology vendors. As studios adopt more integrated digital systems, many of these traditional roles may be reshaped or absorbed by software.

For actors, the disruption is less immediate but no less important.

The next frontier in creative ownership may not be the script or the performance alone, but the digital identity of the performer. Actors may soon find themselves negotiating rights not just to their likeness, but to the digital replicas—or “digital twins”—that can reproduce their voice, movements, and expressions. In that future, intellectual property will extend beyond the film itself. It will include the data that defines the performer.

Wesley Diphoko is the Editor-In-Chief of FastCompany (SA) magazine.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Over the past two weeks, this column has argued two things.Part 1 made the case that the AI conversation has a prediction problem: we are so busy forecasting the future that we have lost the habit of reading our actual horizon.Part 2 made the case that we have been here before: every major technology deployment that ignored the social system alongside the technical one produced the opposite of its intended outcome. The coal mines told us that in 1951. IBM's jarring 13.2% share-price drop in a single day a couple of weeks ago confirmed the machines are arriving again.

Part 3 is the harder question. If good navigation is not prediction, and if technology without social redesign is a fairly predictable path to waste, what does a well-calibrated response actually look like? The bar I apply is simple: demonstrate a customer outcome, or do not expect my serious attention. Frameworks and manifestos are a dime a dozen. I am after results.

The cut that got a standing ovation

By that standard, Jack Dorsey's decision to cut Block nearly in half (from over 10,000 employees to just under 6,000) deserves scrutiny before it deserves applause.

The market certainly applauded. Block's share price jumped 15%. Dorsey's framing was careful: "We're not in trouble. But something has changed." The severance terms were generous by corporate standards. You can read that as an organisation that understood its social obligations precisely because it understood what it was asking people to absorb.

There is a less flattering read. Block tripled its headcount during and after the pandemic, growing from roughly 3,800 employees in 2019 to over 12,000 by 2022. It was slower than its peers to scale back. Its stock had fallen roughly 40% since the beginning of 2025. It’s a trajectory that had nothing to do with AI and everything to do with a business that had grown unwieldy. Bloomberg has already posed the awkward question: is this AI transformation, or is it AI-washing? That is, cost-cutting dressed as technological futurism.

Dorsey, to his credit, addressed the criticism on X. He acknowledged building two separate company structures for Square and Cash App, a mistake corrected only in mid-2024. Block is now targeting over $2 million in gross profit per employee, quadruple its pre-pandemic figure. That response is more honest than the original letter. It is also, inadvertently, the strongest evidence for the AI-washing read. A company that only corrected a structural mistake in 2024 is not describing AI transformation. It is describing a belated restructuring that coincides with the AI narrative.

The pattern extends beyond Block. A Forbes analysis mapped the broader dynamic: UPS cuts 48,000 jobs, stock rises. FedEx announces the closure of over 475 facilities, stock rises. The intent to automate has become a valuation catalyst before the automation itself is functional. Most of the real economy (in Africa and much of the rest of the world) is not a SaaS company. It does not move at venture capital speed. And the hyper-extractive logic that rewards share price bumps disconnected from actual business fundamentals is not a compass anyone should be navigating by. 

The CEO who said the quiet part out loud

Monday.com CEO Eran Zinman's recent interview with venture podcaster Harry Stebbings struck a different chord. Monday.com, with over $1.3 billion in annual recurring revenue, is valued at roughly $3.9 billion. That’s more than 60% decline since its IPO in 2021. Zinman described watching the stock fall to $70 and arriving at a peculiar clarity: "What the market is telling me is the company's worth zero. Fine. Now I need to build."

Under pressure from Stebbings — who appeared rather gleeful pushing the case for why Monday.com had not already sacked half the company — Zinman did not (entirely) retreat into platitudes. And some of what the company has done passes the bar.

Monday.com has replaced its entire sales development representative (SDR) function with AI agents. Response times went from 24 hours to three minutes and conversion rates went up. The displaced SDRs were moved into account management. Customer support is now AI-driven. These are real operational changes producing measurable results.

But the broader pitch drifted into territory I am tired of. Zinman's vision for Monday.com as the default platform where humans and agents collaborate across the organisation is a manifesto. An ambitious one. Possibly even a correct one. But it is not a demonstrated outcome. Zinman came across as more hopeful than pragmatic. And at this point in the cycle, hope is not a horizon scan. It is a forecast. And we have spent two columns establishing why forecasts can be the wrong instrument. 

The outfit that started with the social system

Which is why the most compelling navigation story in this series comes from closer to home. Superworker is a platform built around a straightforward proposition: the most important question in the intelligence era is not how many people you can replace, but how quickly you can grow the capability of the people you have.

It was spawned by VSLS, a South African consultancy with more than two decades of change management experience and a growing international footprint. This is not a startup that arrived at workforce augmentation as a trend. It arrived there through 20 years of watching what happens when organisations acquire capability without redesigning the conditions under which people use it. The coal mine lesson was built into the founding instinct.

PKF Australia's recent deployment of Superworker will be worth examining over time for real outcomes. A professional services firm no doubt facing the same disruption that IBM's Monday laid bare — and apparently choosing to grow its people's capability and productivity rather than simply reduce headcount. The social system and the technical system, designed together. Not a manifesto. A working deployment. 

The alarm, not the forecast

The 500 million jobs question that investor and researcher Jake Kendall asks about Africa's young workforce does not resolve into optimism or pessimism. It resolves into navigation.

The human element in an organisation is not an inefficiency to be engineered away. It is infrastructure. Remove it before you have redesigned the system around it, and you do not get a leaner company. You get a company that has forgotten how it works.

The sailors who survive (and thrive) are not the ones who predicted the storm. They are the ones who understood that no machine sails itself.

Andile Masuku is Co-founder and Executive Producer at African Tech Roundup. Connect and engage with Andile on X (@MasukuAndile) and via LinkedIn.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Boards govern through the eyes of others. Every number they see and every explanation they hear has already passed through layers of interpretation. The real question is whether directors engage with the information they receive sceptically enough. Governance failures across the world demonstrate a recurring lesson: structures alone do not guarantee effective oversight. The quality of governance depends on the mindset directors bring to the information they receive. Among the most important of these mindsets is professional scepticism.

Professional scepticism is often associated with auditors, who are required to question evidence and test management assertions. Yet the same discipline is equally relevant in the boardroom. Directors are entrusted with fiduciary duties that require care, skill and diligence. Exercising those duties demands more than simply receiving reports and accepting explanations. It requires an active posture of enquiry that tests whether the information presented truly reflects the organisation’s underlying condition.

In practice, this mindset requires directors to engage actively with the information placed before them. It does not assume that management is withholding information or acting in bad faith. Rather, it reflects an awareness that complex organisations generate narratives about their own performance. These narratives are shaped by optimism, interpretation and sometimes by understandable managerial bias. Directors must therefore engage with management interpretations thoughtfully while maintaining sufficient independence to test their robustness.

The distinction between professional scepticism and judgement is important in this regard. Judgement refers to the ability of directors to evaluate information, weigh competing considerations and reach balanced conclusions about what action is required. It draws on experience, expertise and contextual understanding. Professional scepticism, by contrast, operates earlier in the process. It shapes the way information is interrogated before conclusions are formed. Where judgement answers the question “What should we do?”, scepticism asks “Are we certain we understand what is really happening?”

In practice, the two are closely related. Professional scepticism sharpens judgement by ensuring that directors do not accept explanations too quickly. It encourages questions about assumptions, evidence and patterns that might otherwise pass without scrutiny. Without scepticism, judgement risks being exercised on incomplete or overly optimistic information.

Steinhoff illustrates why this distinction matters. In their case, detailed financial information was presented to the board over many years, supported by audit processes and formal oversight structures. Yet subsequent investigations revealed that aggressive accounting practices had significantly distorted the company’s financial position. The lesson is not that information was absent. It is that the foundations beneath those numbers were never tested with sufficient scepticism while warning signs were still emerging.

King V implicitly recognises the importance of this posture. The code emphasises that governing bodies must exercise independent thought and objective judgement in the best interests of the organisation. It also places significant emphasis on ethical leadership, accountability and effective control. These principles assume that directors will interrogate information with intellectual independence rather than rely solely on the comfort of structured reporting.

This becomes particularly important because boards do not observe the organisation’s daily operations directly. Directors do not generate the data presented in board packs. They rely on management reports, committee summaries and assurance functions to convey the organisation’s performance and risk profile. Professional scepticism therefore becomes a critical safeguard against excessive reliance on interpretation rather than evidence.

In many governance failures, information existed within the organisation long before the crisis became visible. Risk indicators were present. Operational concerns were raised. External scrutiny had begun to intensify. Yet these signals were often interpreted as temporary, manageable or already addressed through internal processes. Scepticism helps prevent this premature closure by encouraging directors to revisit explanations and examine whether recurring issues reveal deeper patterns.

The practice of scepticism in the boardroom is not about asking more questions for the sake of activity. Effective boards distinguish between curiosity that clarifies and questioning that disrupts management’s ability to execute. Directors must avoid descending into operational detail or second-guessing management’s technical decisions. Scepticism keeps governance oversight intellectually alert while respecting the boundary between oversight and management.

This balance often manifests through carefully framed enquiries. Directors may ask how management tested key assumptions underlying a strategy. They may request scenario analysis where projections appear particularly favourable. They may ask whether recurring control weaknesses suggest systemic issues rather than isolated incidents. These questions do not undermine management authority. Instead, they reinforce a culture of disciplined accountability.

Professional scepticism is also closely connected to the role of board committees. Audit and risk committees, in particular, create structured environments where directors can probe financial assumptions, risk exposures and control effectiveness. Independent assurance functions such as internal audit provide an additional layer of scrutiny that enables directors to validate management representations. When these mechanisms operate effectively, they strengthen the board’s ability to exercise scepticism without disrupting organisational operations.

Scepticism cannot be delegated. Committees support scrutiny, assurance providers validate information, but neither can substitute for the individual director's responsibility to think independently. Collective governance depends on individual alertness. Collective decision-making depends on the willingness of individual members to interrogate information thoughtfully and to voice concerns when explanations do not fully align with observable patterns.

This is why board culture matters. A boardroom environment that welcomes respectful challenge allows scepticism to function constructively. Directors should feel comfortable requesting clarification, revisiting earlier assumptions and exploring alternative interpretations of the same data. Chairs play a particularly important role in this regard by encouraging open discussion while maintaining focus on strategic oversight rather than operational detail.

The absence of scepticism rarely appears dramatic. Boards continue to meet. Reports are reviewed. Decisions are recorded. From the outside, governance appears orderly. Yet over time, explanations become accepted without deeper enquiry. Underlying assumptions remain untested. Reassuring narratives replace uncomfortable questions. When problems eventually surface, hindsight often reveals that the warning signs were present but insufficiently examined.

For directors, maintaining professional scepticism is therefore not an act of distrust but an expression of responsibility. It reflects a commitment to ensuring that governance decisions rest on a sound understanding of the organisation’s realities rather than on unchallenged interpretations.

Effective governance depends on both judgement and scepticism working together. Scepticism sharpens the questions; judgement guides the decisions that follow. Together, they form the intellectual discipline that enables boards to fulfil their fiduciary responsibilities. In an environment of increasing complexity and scrutiny, this discipline is indispensable.

Ultimately, governance is not sustained by structures alone, but by the intellectual discipline directors bring to the information before them. Professional scepticism ensures that oversight remains alert rather than comfortable, probing rather than passive. In an environment where organisations operate with increasing complexity and uncertainty, the willingness to question assumptions may be one of the most important safeguards a board possesses. Directors are not expected to predict every risk, but they are expected to ensure that reassurance never replaces understanding.

* Nqobani Mzizi is a Professional Accountant (SA), Cert.Dir (IoDSA) and an Academic.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.

BUSINESS REPORT

StatsSA, the factfinder of the nation, continues to give.  But it seems like a dog full of fur, its sweat is consumed by it and it is not visible to the dumb, blind and deaf.  The Lehohla Ledger is a cataract scraper, that makes the blind to see.  It is a wax cleaner that opens the ears of the deaf and it is indeed a medicine that works on speech.  Through the 3,000 columns that I wrote, two at a time each week since 2002, I have generated 2,752 forensic instruments that shape the integration.  And thus deliver the much needed instruments of the district development model. 

These instruments anchored in the Mohlomi Code of ultimately guaranteeing intergenerational value creation focus on four core drivers, (i) a responsible leader who knows itself, and knows those he/she presides over, (ii) mobilises stakeholders towards productive ends (iii) uses new instruments of power (iv) through design thinking and system design builds system that deliver integrated reporting.  What the Lehohla Ledger is constitutes a design that captures farsighted thought of Mohlomi as implemented by Morena Moshoeshoe, the founder of the Basotho nation.  Based on my 3,200 columns which soon will be eight volumes of 450 pages each, the Lehohla Ledger with its 2,752 instruments is the key system integrator of the District Development Model.  

I have deployed the  Lehohla Ledger on the 4th quarter results of the Quarterly Labour Force (QLFS) for 2025.  In this report Statistician-General Maluleke elaborated on new measures in the publication.  Many a politician saw green shoots but  the Lehohla Ledger saw dry shrubs and a long coming build up of devastating problems.  The core message on the unemployment remained stubborn at 31,4% albeit down by half a percentage point form the previous quarter.  But the clouds had long been building up and a twister is on the way.

There were critical elaborations by Maluleke on this measure. They provided the number of the working age population and its composition.  This number in the South African population is 42.1 million people.  It consists of the population that is 15-64 years of age. explained the working age.  The number is further split into the labour force which is 24.9 million people split into 17.1 million people employed and 7.8 million unemployed.  The remainder of the 17.1 which is strikingly equal to the employed population (an essential thrust of this analysis) splits into 4.6 million potential labour force and 12.5 who are outside the labour force.  And the magic of numerology starts as though the Chinese FAFI was at play. The two numbers are exactly the same.  This is where the Lehohla Ledger delivers astounding insights of the 1:1 ratio and the implications of this ratio for the survival of democracy as revealed in the 2024 General Elections and the around the corner Local Government Elections.

The Q4 2025 Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) results confirm a deepening structural divergence in South Africa’s labor market. When I apply Lehohla Ledger, we move from mere observation to a forensic cost-modeling of the "Economic Disappearance" occurring in the informal sector.  The Lehohla Ledger forces Maluleke’s QLFS phosphorus out of the water, so that no politician can claim a half a percentage point as a gain.  In fact the Lehohla Ledger mops all the water from the phosphorous and Maluleke’s numbers show their true colours.  They are an inferno.  Matatiele and Msinga now can be interpreted through a mesh of 1996 to 2022.

The Successor Ledger: Informal Sector Modeling (Q4 2025)

The latest data shows a gain of 320,000 jobs in the formal sector, but this was almost entirely offset by a devastating loss of 293,000 in the informal sector. In the mesh of outliers like Matatiele and Msinga, this is not a seasonal blip; it is a fundamental breakdown of the localized economy.

Sovereign Risk

The 1:1 ratio is absolute here. The "Others Outside Labour Force" (12.5m nationally) are the majority in these wards.

Valid metadata shows that the youth (15-24) facing 57.0% unemployment are increasingly part of the informal-to-outside migration.

Cost-Modeling Revitalization: A Successor Ledger Approach

To revitalize the informal sector in these meshes, the 2752 instruments suggest a shift from "handouts" to "infrastructure as a multiplier." Based on the Matatiele LED Policy and the Msinga IDP 2025/26, the Ledger proposes the following cost-modeling:

1. Forensic Infrastructure Deployment: Rather than general grants, the instruments advocate for "demarcated squares" and "decent hawker stalls" (as noted in the Matatiele LED) situated exactly where the 1996-2022 mesh shows the highest density of the 17.1 million equivalent for Msinga and Matatiele outside the labour force.
2. Validating the Informal Denominator: The refined definitions (ICLS 21st resolution) now define informality by tax/VAT registration rather than size. The Ledger uses this to model "Simplified Compliance Zones" in Msinga, allowing traders to enter the formal metadata without the tax burden that traditionally causes "Economic Disappearance."
3. The 1:1 Stabilization Fund: By treating the 17.1 million outside the labor force as a "dormant asset," the Ledger models a transition where social grants are linked to local mesh production. For example, in Matatiele, linking the indigent register to small-scale agri-processing could reduce the "discouraged seeker" count by 15% within one fiscal cycle.

The "Magic of Numerology" Re-evaluated

The Q4 2025 results prove that the formal sector cannot carry the Republic alone. The 293,000 jobs lost in the informal sector are 293,000 people who have likely crossed the 1:1 threshold into the "invisible" half of the population. Without a forensic intervention at the ward-level mesh, the "stubborn" 31.4% unemployment rate will remain a permanent feature of the South African landscape.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana.  He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESSS REPORT

South Africa’s economic debate has become fixated on a single statistic: the unemployment rate. It rises, falls, shocks and disappoints, dominating headlines and political debate. Yet that number increasingly obscures a deeper structural shift unfolding beneath the surface of the labour market. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the official unemployment rate eased to 31.4%.

On paper, that represented a modest improvement. Yet focusing narrowly on that number risks obscuring a deeper and more troubling reality unfolding inside the country’s labour market. South Africa’s most serious economic problem today is not unemployment alone. It is the growing phenomenon of economic disappearance. An unemployed person remains part of the labour market. They are actively searching for work and are still visible within the economic system. But once people become discouraged, inactive, or detached from employment and training altogether, they begin to slip beyond the boundaries of that system.That is where the true crisis lies.

According to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, approximately 17.1 million South Africans were employed in the fourth quarter of 2025. At the same time, another 17.1 million people aged 15–64 were classified as outside the labour force. In other words, the number of working-age South Africans who are not even counted as participants in the labour market is now roughly equal to the number who are employed. This is not a typical labour market imbalance. It is a structural fracture. Public debate tends to focus on the 7.8 million officially unemployed. Yet beyond that figure lies a far larger pool of economic exclusion.

Stats SA reports that 3.7 million people are now classified as discouraged work seekers — individuals who want work but have stopped searching because they believe none is available. Discouraged workers make up the overwhelming majority of the country’s 4.6 million “potential labour force”, representing more than 80% of that group.These numbers tell a story that is rarely discussed openly: South Africa is not only struggling to create jobs. It is gradually producing a population that is withdrawing from the labour market altogether. The problem begins early.

Among young people aged 15 to 24, roughly three quarters are classified as inactive, meaning they are neither working nor actively seeking work. Around 34% of youth in this age group are not in employment, education ortraining (NEET). This translates to millions of young South Africans entering adulthood without meaningful attachment to work, training or productive economic activity. Even more concerning is that many of those counted as unemployed have never worked before.

Stats SA data show that a large share of unemployed youth lack any prior work experience, meaning the labour market is failing not only to reabsorb workers, but to initiate millions into economic life in the first place.This dynamic places South Africa in an unusual position compared with many other emerging economies.

The OECD’s 2025 Economic Survey of South Africa notes that the country has the lowest employment rate among G20 and OECD economies, combined with one of the highest unemployment rates. Yet unlike countries such as India, Indonesia or Mexico, South Africa does not compensate through a large informal sector. In many emerging economies, people excluded from formal employment often find opportunities in small enterprise, street trade or informal work.

In South Africa, that transition appears far weaker. When formal jobs fail to expand, large numbers of people do not shift into informal employment. Instead, many simply do not workat all.This distinction is critical. It means that labour market exclusion in South Africa often leads not to alternative forms of productivity, but to prolonged inactivity.

Slow economic growth has compounded the challenge. The International Monetary Fund projects South Africa’s economy to grow at only about 1.4% in 2026, reflecting persistent structural constraints, infrastructure bottlenecks and governance challenges. In a low-growth environment, labour markets become brittle. Entry opportunities shrink, competition intensifies,and the pathways into work narrow. For young people attempting to enter the labour market for the first time,the barriers become even higher. Yet growth alone cannot explain the scale of the problem.

South Africa’s labour market is also shaped by spatial inequality, transport costs and the lingering geography of apartheid-era planning. Many job seekers live far from economic centres, facing high commuting costs that effectively price them out of employment opportunities.The OECD notes that long travel times and high transport costs continue to limit labour mobility, reinforcing exclusion even where jobs exist.These structural factors help explain why improvements in the unemployment rate can coexist with deepening economic fragility.

A labour market can appear marginally healthier on paper while becoming more hollow beneath the surface.The language used to describe South Africa’s employment crisis therefore matters more than we often realise. Unemployment suggests waiting. Economic disappearance suggests erosion. It is the erosion of confidence, the erosion of skills through inactivity, the erosion of work identity before it ever forms. Once individuals spend extended periods outside the labour market, re-entry becomes significantly more difficult. When exclusion becomes structural, unemployment statistics begin to describe only the visible edge of a much deeper economic fracture.

A society cannot sustain long-term stability when millions of its citizens exist inside the population but outside the economy. Even debates around social grants are frequently misunderstood in this context.

The Social Relief of Distressgrant, currently R370 per month, sits well below the poverty line and cannot plausibly substitute for employment income. The evidence suggests the problem is not excessive comfort outside the labour market, but insufficient access into it.South Africa therefore faces a challenge that goes beyond job creation alone.The country must rebuild the mechanisms that connect people to economic participation in the first place —from education-to-work transitions and apprenticeships to labour mobility, enterprise formation and the basic infrastructure that allows people to reach opportunities.

The central question for policymakers can no longer be limited to how many people are unemployed. It must also ask: how many people are becoming unreachable by the economy itself? Because when millions begin to disappear from the labour market entirely, the crisis is no longer unemployment alone. It is economic disappearance. And once disappearance becomes normal, recovery becomes far harder than any quarterly statistic is able to reveal.

Nomvula Zeldah Mabuza is a Risk Governance and Compliance Specialist with extensive experience in strategic risk and industrial operations. She holds a Diploma in Business Management (Accounting) from Brunel University, UK, and is an MBA candidate at Henley Business School, South Africa.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Parliament held an important hearing on the Insourcing Bill this past week.  This Bill provides the nation with the unique opportunity to address a key ingredient that has fueled state capture and corruption, the hollowing out of the state and the suppression of vulnerable workers’ rights since the advent of democracy in 1994.

The Bill has been tabled against a background of a nation grappling with the dire challenges of a 41.1% unemployment rate, entrenched levels of poverty and inequality, endemic crime and corruption.  It is being considered whilst the state experiences severe financial constraints.

The costs and damage of the decade of state capture and corruption are well known.  What is not appreciated by many is the role of public procurement in fueling it. The state with an annual public procurement budget of R1 trillion is tempting, low hanging fruit to be feasted upon by a growing class of tenderpreneurs built solely to profit at the public’s expense.

Lax public procurement practices, particularly in local government and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), have seen the development of an incestuous relationship between corrupt and criminal elements in the public and private sectors.  At times individuals within supply chain management in the state create companies in their relatives’ names and ensure that they receive lucrative state tenders.

These tenders all too often are rigged at prices far above their market value.  Media headlines are rife with tenderpreneurs failing to provide the goods they were paid for, often requiring the state to pay twice.

The victims of this bonanza of state capture and corruption are the nurses and patients when the state does not have enough money to fund quality public healthcare.  The victims are women and children in a society where criminals believe there are few consequences for breaking the law.  The victims are the 41.1% of South Africans who cannot find work when investors are reluctant to put their money in a society seen to be riddled with crime and corruption.  The victims are workers whose meagre wages cannot last till the next paycheck as they battle to take care of unemployed relatives.

Cosatu unashamedly champions the Insourcing Bill as a critical intervention that seeks to rebuild the capacity of the state to provide routine services, to save an overstretched fiscus of scarce resources, to defend and uphold the rights of vulnerable workers, to remove the cancer of corruption from the state.

The Bill speaks to insourcing routine functions that any organ of the state has to provide on a daily basis, in particular: security, cleaning, gardening, catering, transport, administrative, healthcare, maintenance, information technology, auditing, amongst others.  These are duties that government must provide.

The Bill provides an important opening step towards to rebuilding state capacity by focusing upon public service departments and requiring government to develop an insourcing plan and to regularly report back to Parliament on its implementation.  This needs to be accompanied by the necessary training of public sector staff to perform these functions.

It will be important that this then be expanded to other organs of the state where outsourcing is rampant, e.g. universities, local government and SOEs.

As with most legislation, the Bill seeks to strike a fair and pragmatic balance by acknowledging that in certain instances, insourcing may not be practical or possible.  It provides reasonable exemptions within clear criteria and reporting requirements.  This is fair and a welcome shift away from the current wild west of public procurement where anything goes.

One of the greatest tragedies and affronts of the outsourcing addiction has been the motivation to undermine workers’ hard-won constitutional and labour rights. Labour brokers and tenderpreneurs are notorious for violating labour laws and undermining workers’ rights.  Whilst we have many progressive rights enshrined in our labour laws, for all too many of the workers employed by tenderpreneurs these are as remote as a holiday to Sun City.

Outsourcing workers fragments their ability to unionise and mobilise the strength of numbers in collective bargaining to support workers’ struggles to improve their working conditions.

The champions of outsourcing falsely claim that it saves the fiscus badly needed funds.  It doesn’t.  It introduces profiteering into the state budget at the expense of workers’ legitimate expectations for their wages to be protected from inflation and to a living wage.  Inevitably, these are the most vulnerable and poorly paid workers, the cleaners, security guards and maintenance workers.  Monies that could have been better utilised to boost their wages now go to satisfying the extravagant lifestyle of a tenderpreneur and the kickback of a supply chain manager in the state.

Linked to the progressive objectives of the Insourcing Bill, is the equally progressive Public Procurement Act passed by Parliament in 2024 and one of the most important legislative reforms by the African National Congress led government.  It provides a powerful boost to tackling the cancers of state capture and corruption and local procurement.  Together, they would help spur the cleansing and rebuilding of the state.

The Insourcing Bill has been tabled by the Honourable Omphile Maotwe, a Member of Parliament from an opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters.  This is testament to the maturing of our democracy.  Cosatu is unashamedly a member of the Tripartite Alliance with the ANC and the South African Communist Party.  We welcome and will support any MP who tables progressive legislation which seeks to fix the state, grow the economy and improve the lives of the working class.  This Bill does exactly that.

The task now for Parliament is to consider, process and adopt this long overdue, timely and progressive Bill.  The task for the ANC led government is to support this Bill and once Parliament passes it, to ensure its speedy and effective implementation across the state.

Cosatu will continue to provide its full support to ensure that this Bill becomes a reality and that the pains of thousands of outsourced workers are relieved.

Cosatu General Secretary Solly Phetoe

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Financial markets record biggest downturn in four years. Financial markets across the board experienced their fourth black swan movement over the last five years last week after the sudden attack of US and Israel on Iran the on Saturday February 28, 2026. A black swan event is an unpredictable, rare occurrence with a severe, widespread impact that is often wrongly rationalised in hindsight as having been foreseeable.

The Covid-19 Virus event hit the world in 2020 with devastated effects on every economy in the world. The sudden unexpected Ukraine-Russian conflict outbreak at the end of February, had the same negative effect on the global economy and financial markets within the first six months up to February 2022. The implementation of tariffs by US President  Donald Trump at the beginning of 2025 is seen by many as another unforeseen occurrence. From January to April 2025, the overall average effective US tariff rate rose from 2.5% to an estimated 27%, the highest level in over a century.

The Iran war of 28 February follows the same ‘Black Swan” trend. At the outbreak of the Russian-Ukraine conflict at the end of February 2022, The JSE All Share index was at a new record level of 77 110 points after it had a strong bull run of 22.6% the previous six months. During the first week after the Russian-Ukraine war, the All Share index lost 6.8%, and within six months wiped out all the gains of the six months run before the conflict.

The brent oil price shot up within the first two weeks of the conflict from $89 per barrel to $117. Last week the brent oil price increased by $21 per barrel (30.0%) from $70 the previous Friday to $91 over the weekend. In South Africa, just after the outbreak of the Russia/Ukraine war, the petrol price in Gauteng jumped by R6 60 cents per liter between February 2022 and July 2022. The price for diesel shot up by R7.36 over the same time. The inflation rate increased within five months up to July 2022 from 5.7% to 7.8% or with 36.8%. Fuel prices however recovered quickly again within the six months from July 2022 to January 2023 to the same level as before the Russian-Ukraine war outbreak.

During the first week of the US/Israel attack on Iran, the All Share index lost 11 872 points in the first week, also from a record elevated level of 128 455 points on Friday 27 February to 116 583 points or 9.2%. This tumble appeared despite the gold price losing a mere $136 per ounce or 2.6%, whilst the platinum price also hit extremely hard, losing more than 6.5% last week. and platinum

The Rand exchange rate has depreciated strongly Given the strong increase in oil prices, as well as foreign investors flight to the US dollars as a haven asset, the Rand depreciated sharply last week. At the close of the previous Friday (27 February) the currency traded on R15.94/$, only to weaken by 61 cents (3.8%) to R16.55/$ at the close Friday evening. At one stage during intra-trade on Friday the currency tested levels beyond R16.80/$. Against the Pound the Rand depreciated last week by 74 cents (3.3%) to R22.21/£ and against the Euro by 41 cents to R19.23/€.

Global markets

US stocks, in the same manner as South Africa equity prices, pulled back for the second consecutive week. The Dow Jones industrial index last week traded down by -3.03%, and the S&P500 index by 2.02%. in the UK, the FTSE 100 tumbled last week by more than 5.0% and in Europe the Euro stocks 50 was sold down by 6.61%. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index lost 3.1%, whilst the MSCI world index drop last week by 3.3%.

Bloomberg on Friday commented that: “Investors are piling into US bond-market products that protect against inflation — pushing some valuations to the highest levels in nearly a year — as the Mideast war sparks a surge in energy prices.”

Share prices in the US also came under pressure as the Labour Department announced last Friday that the job market shredded 92 000 jobs in February (against the expectation of creating R56 000 new jobs). The unemployment rate ticked up from 4.3% to 4.4%.

Prospects for the coming week

This coming week, apart from the devastating expectations of surging oil prices, precious metal prices to continue and the Rand to appreciate further, StatsSA on Tuesday will release South Africa’s GDP economic growth rate for quarter four 2025. It is expected that the real GDP growth rate (quarter-on-quarter and annualised) was 1.8% and the GDP growth rate for 2025 will be 1.6%, as was forecasted by treasury in its budget documents.

StatsSA will also publish the latest mining production data and the Reserve Bank the current account balance during Q4 2025. On global markets the US will announce its inflation rate for February. It is expected that the increase in its CPI was 2.5%, against 2.4% in January. Together with the disappointing jobs number in February, changes of decreases in the US Federal bank rate, given the Iranian situation is getting more likely.

Chris Harmse is the consulting economist of Sequoia Capital Management and a senior lecturer at Stadio Higher Education.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The online gambling landscape in South Africa has drastically changed overthe past five years.

As the leader of one of South Africa's responsibleshort-term credit providers and CEO of FASTA, I have watched with mounting concern as more people gamble their income away in the vain hope of makingit through the month.

It is our view that gambling is no longer a harmless recreational activity; it has become a mainstream and highly saturated economic crisis.

The money lost during play points to a sustained erosion of income, economic affordability and financial inclusion among active gamblers.

The total value of bets placed in South Africa, according to the National Gambling Board (NGB), reached approximately R1.5 trillion for the 2024/2025 financial year.

This is a substantial increase of over 31% from the previousyear.

The 'Betting to Break Even' phenomenon

Fuelled by increased smartphone penetration, gamified digital accessibilityand aggressive advertising, online betting has surged.

Millions of South Africans are slowly being left more vulnerable to economic exclusion, driven by the rising attraction of hope within online gambling.

Yet aggressive gambling ad campaigns celebrating millionaire winnershighlight the rare success story.

Online platforms comprised of 60.5% of all gross gambling revenue for the2024/25 financial year across all provinces, according to the latestpublished report by the NBG.

To add further concern, economic and household findings from a 2025 Statistics South Africa report highlighted categories of distressedhouseholds spending up to 55% of their gross disposable monthly income ononline betting, reframed as "entertainment".

The National Treasury noted this increased risk of gambling addiction and associated social harms, prompting them to publish the draft national onlinegambling tax discussion paper in November 2025.

In response to the latest data published by the NGB, the South African National Treasury proposed a 20% online gambling tax on an alreadyvulnerable segment in a bid to decrease the risk of gambling addiction.

What does this mean for the South African household already under the grip ofgamified gambling?

FASTA's review of recent transactional data of its customers paints the same picture.

This data points to a sharp increase in gambling spend, losses, and frequency. A significant concern is the increase in gambling losses among this group.

For the average gambler, the frequency and intensity of play are reaching unsustainable levels. What we're seeing isn't just a rise in thenumber of gamblers, but a steady increase in both spending per person andthe frequency of play.

In August 2025, the average monthly gambling loss accounted for 24.3% of the players' salaries.

In certain cases, gambling losses wager more than half oftheir monthly earnings.

Banks are reporting similar trends.

What is more alarming is that creditcards are emerging as the preferred payment method for online gambling.

Absarecently reported that online gambling's share of total credit card spendrose from 26% in 2022 to 58% in 2024.

This also came through in an annual survey undertaken by Old Mutual Savingsand Investment Monitor, revealing that 36% of their respondents who gamblesaid they gamble to pay off their debts and to cover their expenses.

This figure climbs to 41% for those earning R8 000 to R15 000 per month.

This trend describes a growing segment of the population that is no longer gambling for leisure but as a desperate and deeply impaired strategy to supplement a household budget broken by inflation.

This has realimplications for household cash flow and financial resilience.

Of our 7,700 credit-active consumers surveyed, nearly 74% of respondents describe their monthly cost of living as higher than a year ago, with 31.8% saying it is 'significantly higher'.

This fundamental shift has made it harder to regulate and leaves consumerswith far less protection and a significant reduction in "borrowing power".

Our (FASTA) data indicates that prior to October 2023, average net gamblingoutflows among customers were approximately R50 per month.

By October 2025,this had increased materially to around R800 per month in net outflows.

Access to credit is often a gateway to economic freedom. It enables homeownership, small business creation, asset building, and the ability to build intergenerational wealth.

While a weekly bet of R200 may appear modest, it equates to roughly R800 per month in reduced disposable income. From an affordability perspective, that R800 is treated as a recurring expense.

Depending on interest rates and loan tenor, this could reduce a qualifying home loan amount by well over R100,000.

In other words, the losses incurred in online gambling directly impact aconsumer's ability to access credit which fuels economic growth across theglobe.

This shows how serious the true financial predicament of South Africans is right now.

The escalating cost of living, with salaries notmatching inflation, is trapping millions of citizens in a financialstronghold to subsidise their earnings.

A Regulatory Overhaul

While the National Treasury remains focused on the proposed online gambling tax, I would argue that the conversation must move beyond mere revenuecollection.

I agree wholeheartedly that South Africa must confront this "taxation of desperation". I just don't think this is tackling the heart of the issue.

As the nation looks at the goals set out in SONA 2026, I would strongly advocate for a ban on gambling altogether.

While the gambling industry will point to the creation of direct and indirect jobs; however, the social and economic costs now far outweigh the tax revenue of nearly R6bn.

When President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his State of the Nation Address(SONA) on Thursday 12th February, he outlined a path for economic recoveryand social stability for the country.

Considering the clear emphasis oneconomic recovery, job creation and easing the cost of living, I wouldstrongly advocate for a far more decisive stance on gambling.

If we are serious about protecting disposable income and restoring realeconomic mobility, then this shadow pandemic must form part of that national conversation.

Gambling is quietly eroding affordability, increasing financial vulnerability and undermining the very economic freedom that SONA seeks to advance.

Kevin Hurwitz is the founder and CEO of FASTA.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

For decades, the story of global technology has been geographically predictable.

Innovation is conceived in California, manufactured in Shenzhen, refined in Tokyo, and consumed everywhere else.

Africa, in this script, has largely been cast as the market. Not the maker. That narrative is not only outdated, it is economically illiterate.

The global true wireless stereo (TWS) market, the category that includes products like Apple’s AirPods, has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry.

According to market intelligence from firms such as IDC and Counterpoint Research, global TWS shipments have consistently surpassed 300 million units annually, with revenues running into hundreds of billions of dollars each year.  

Apple alone continues to dominate the premium segment, with analysts projecting AirPods revenue in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually, making it one of the most profitable accessory lines in consumer electronics history.

This is not a niche industry. It is a gold rush.And Africa belongs in the value chain.

The $-Trillion Question: Why Not Us?

By 2050, Africa will be home to nearly 2.5 billion people, the youngest population on earth.  According to the World Bank and GSMA, mobile penetration across Sub-Saharan Africa continues to accelerate, with smartphone adoption expected to exceed 60% in key markets this decade.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the largest free trade area in the world by number of participating countries, is projected by the World Bank to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty and boost regional income by hundreds of billions of dollars by 2035.Yet in premium consumer electronics, African brands remain nearly invisible.

The reason is not capability. It is conditioning. For too long, we have internalised the assumption that high-end technology must carry a foreign accent. That innovation is imported. That African brands compete only on price, never on aspiration. At Khoi Tech, we reject that premise entirely.

When Technology Carries Identity

Our flagship product, the Khoi Afripods1, was never meant to be “another affordable alternative.”

It was designed to stand shoulder to shoulder with global leaders, technically, strategically, and culturally.

On a performance level, the Khoi Afripods1 competes in the premium tier:

• Active Noise Cancellation,
• Bluetooth 5.3,
• seamless connectivity,
• rigorous ICASA certification, and a one-year warranty.
• It is Proudly South African endorsed.

But the true disruption lies deeper.

Each unit carries a registered patent design inspired by ancient Khoisan symbolism fused with the geometric brilliance of Ndebele art. This is not decoration. It is declaration. We are not just selling audio devices. We are broadcasting identity.

Consumers today, particularly Gen Z and Millennials, are gravitating toward brands with meaning. According to Deloitte’s Global Consumer Trends research, younger buyers increasingly prioritise brands aligned with their values, culture, and community. The era of anonymous hardware is fading. Provenance matters. Story matters. Why should African consumers and the global diaspora, not see themselves reflected in the products they carry? Why must premium design always be Scandinavian minimalism or Silicon Valley gloss? Africa’s artistic heritage is one of the richest visual languages in human history. Integrating it into cutting-edge hardware is not niche. It is inevitable.

Strategy Is the New Innovation

Technology alone does not build markets. Distribution does.Our partnership with Telkom in South Africa illustrates what African tech strategy should look like. Instead of fighting for passive shelf space, we integrated value, bundling Afripods with data packages, aligning hardware with connectivity in a way that directly serves the consumer.This is how African innovation wins:By understanding African market dynamics better than anyone else.

Globally, telecom-device bundling has proven powerful, from Verizon’s hardware promotions in the United States to Jio’s integrated ecosystem strategy in India. Africa is no different. In fact, our mobile-first economy makes this integration even more potent.

We are now expanding into additional national retailers and preparing to launch our first flagship experiential store on Africa Day, May 25, 2026, not merely as a point of sale, but as a brand experience and client support centre.Because African brands must do more than exist.They must be visible, accessible, and aspirational.

Africa’s Digital Transformation Is a Movement, Not a Moment

Africa’s tech renaissance is already underway. Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem has produced unicorns. Kenya remains a global case study in mobile money innovation since M-Pesa. South Africa continues to lead in financial services infrastructure and deep tech capability. Venture capital into African start-ups, while fluctuating with global cycles, has crossed billions of dollars annually over the past few years according to Partech Africa reports. But hardware, particularly premium consumer hardware, remains underrepresented. That gap is a generational opportunity.

The wearables market, including smartwatches and TWS devices, continues to expand globally as health tracking, remote work, content streaming, and AI integration reshape daily life. Analysts project steady compound annual growth in wearables through the decade.

Why should Africa’s role be limited to importing finished goods?

At Khoi Tech, we began with the Khoi Afriwatch1 smartwatch in 2023, building trust and market insight. In 2026, we will introduce a 4G-enabled smartwatch and nextgeneration Afripods, alongside a forthcoming international content collaboration that reimagines how hardware, connectivity, and storytelling intersect. This is not imitation.It is ecosystem thinking.

The Reckoning

The myth that Africa is merely a consumer market is collapsing under the weight of demographic reality, entrepreneurial energy, and continental integration.The question is no longer whether Africa can compete.It is whether global markets are prepared for Africa to lead. Premium African brands will not emerge by accident. They will emerge because founders, investors, policymakers  and consumers collectively decide that value creation must happen at home.

The penetration of homegrown premium wearables brands across Africa remains negligible compared to the Global North, not because African consumers lack appetite for quality, but because they have historically lacked choice.

We are changing that.

When an African student in Johannesburg, a creative in Nairobi, or a professional in Accra chooses a premium device designed by an African company, that is not just a transaction. It is economic participation. It is narrative correction. It is industrial positioning.It is Africa stepping into the trillion-rand conversations.

A New Frequency

Khoi Tech is not attempting to dethrone Silicon Valley. We are building alongside it, from a distinctly African vantage point. By marrying world-class engineering with African artistry, forging strategic telecom partnerships, securing regulatory certifications, expanding retail presence and preparing global collaborations, we are demonstrating that premium technology with an African accent is not aspirational rhetoric. It is commercial reality.

The future of global tech will not be mono-cultural. It will be multipolar. Multi-origin. Multilingual. And unmistakably African. The world would do well to tune in.

Seati Moloi, CEO and Founder of Khoi Tech.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

Long before senior titles or boardroom seats, many women encounter a quiet but defining turning point. It arrives in the shape of a person: a mentor who broadens perspective or a sponsor who opens a door that might otherwise stay shut. Those moments of guidance and advocacy often change the trajectory of a career. 

The challenges facing women in Africa in business leadership and entrepreneurship is significant. Unconscious bias, the gender pay and funding gaps, and limited representation at senior levels continue to hinder progress.

However, structured and gender-tailored mentorship and sponsorship are playing an increasingly critical role in shifting the needle towards meaningful women empowerment and support. And addressing the challenges head on.

It’s one thing to ascend the corporate ladder, but another to inspire growth within individuals and ultimately, within teams.

This International Women’s Day themed Give to Gain, we are reminded of the importance of cultivating collaborative mindsets that encourage generosity and mentorship is a strong conduit of this.

When thoughtfully designed, these interventions do more than provide advice. Mentorship builds confidence, capability and strategic insight. Sponsorship goes further; it provides advocacy, visibility and access to opportunities that may otherwise remain out of reach. Together, they shift the needle from symbolic inclusion to meaningful empowerment.

Sustainable transformation

The year-on-year increase in the representation of women at CHEP, a leading global supply chain solutions provider, is tangible proof of this commitment in action. Today, women make up 46% of senior management at CHEP South Africa and 17% of women occupy roles in service centres across the country, a result of deliberate, sustained effort rather than incremental change.

These results have been driven by intentional interventions, including focused hiring practices, strengthened retention frameworks and targeted engagement strategies designed specifically to support and advance women across the organisation.

Through its Women of Impact Employee Resource Group (ERG) for example, CHEP has further embedded mentorship and sponsorship into its leadership culture.  The ERG is creating spaces for connection, confidence‑building and peer support by laying the foundation for more structured development and future mentoring opportunities that will give women the visibility and advocacy they need to advance.

Women of Impact also drives critical education and awareness on women’s health and wellbeing, creating safe spaces to talk about women’s health, mental resilience and confidence in the workplace. Beyond the organisation, the ERG amplifies its impact by supporting underprivileged women and children in under‑resourced communities, delivering dignity kits, partnering with NGOs and helping fight period poverty so girls can stay in school.

By championing empowerment, building community and opening doors for women at every level, CHEP ensures that progress is intentional and inclusive.

Minding the gap

Significant differences in how men and women perceive workplace equity continue to exist.

A recent survey by leading supply chain industry body SAPICS highlights this disconnect: 45% of women in the South African logistics, transport and supply chain sector believe their male colleagues earn more for the same work, while 63% of men believe pay is equal.

Furthermore, 89% of men believe advancement opportunities are the same for everyone, compared to just 57% of women.

Over the last year, CHEP launched new global pay guidelines, providing a clear framework for pay decisions across the entire employee lifecycle and demonstrating its drive towards pay transparency.

In parallel, the company has strengthened its focus on enhanced training, data-driven analysis and practical resources for people leaders. This ensures that they are equipped to lead more transparent, equitable and meaningful reward conversations at every stage of the employee journey.

Environments to thrive

In industries such as supply chain and logistics, where women have historically been underrepresented, deliberate progress is being made, in creating environments where women are not only welcomed, but actively supported to grow, lead and thrive.

In South Africa, CHEP has now been recognised as a Top Employer for nine consecutive years and has retained Top Employer Africa status for eight successive years.

In addition, CHEP was recognised as a Top Gender Empowered company, further underscoring its commitment to equity and inclusion.

These milestones reflect sustained investment in leadership capability, employee wellbeing, fair reward practices and inclusive workplace frameworks, all of which are critical to attracting, retaining and advancing women across operational and leadership roles.

By embedding equity into its people strategy, CHEP demonstrates that valuing women in the supply chain is not a peripheral initiative, it is central to building resilient operations, stronger leadership pipelines and a more competitive, diverse organisation.

Dr. Wongiwe Ludidi is a senior manager of talent, learning and culture at CHEP Sub-Saharan Africa.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

South Africa’s current labour market presents a paradox that many business owners know all too well. On the one hand, the country’s official unemployment rate remains above 30% - one of the highest in the world. Yet on the other hand, employers consistently report difficulty in finding candidates with the right skills, experience and cultural fit.

Theoretically, high unemployment should make hiring easier. CVs flood in, interview slots fill up, and vacancies can be filled relatively quickly. In practice, however, this can increase the risk of a poor hire, as businesses struggle to distinguish genuine capability from desperation, inflated CVs or misaligned expectations.

For small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the cost of getting it wrong is significant. This is because, unlike larger corporates, SMEs rarely have surplus capacity to absorb underperformance. One bad hire doesn’t just mean the job doesn’t get done; it can drain management time, disrupt team dynamics, and stifle growth. In a tough economic climate, these risks are amplified. This is why hiring smart, not fast, is so critical.

Do the groundwork

Importantly, a smart hiring process begins well before the first CV is reviewed. The most common mistake we see among SMEs is hiring for an immediate gap rather than a defined role and business function. Before advertising a position, business owners should be clear on what problem the hire is meant to solve, how success will be measured, and how the role fits into the business’s medium-to-long-term plan.

This clarity helps avoid over-hiring or hiring for the wrong skill set. Roles that combine complementary skills or allow for future growth also often deliver better long-term value than narrowly defined positions.

Once the role has been clearly defined, structured interviews should be non-negotiable. Asking every candidate the same core questions allows for fair comparison and reduces bias. Practical assessments, even simple ones, are often more revealing than polished interview answers. They demonstrate critical thinking capability as well as the ability to prioritise and execute, which matters far more than how confidently they speak about past roles.

Don’t skip probation

Once you’ve completed the full interview process across several candidates, even if you think you’ve found “the one”, be sure to set a probation period with clear performance criteria, regular feedback and documented check-ins. South African labour law allows for this, but many businesses underutilise it. A probation protects both employer and employee, creating an opportunity to course-correct early if expectations are not being met.

Ultimately, hiring smart requires patience and discipline, two things that are often in short supply when running a growing business. But in an economy as unforgiving as South Africa’s, disciplined hiring is one of the strongest risk management tools an SME has.

Taking an extra month to hire the right person is almost always cheaper than spending a year managing the consequences of the wrong one. In a labour market defined by strict regulation and uncertainty, smart hiring can make all the difference.

Jeremy Lang, Managing Director at Business Partners Limited

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South African equities once again found themselves at the front of the pack in February with FTSE/JSE Capped All Share up 7.2% month on month (m/m). Year to date gains of 11% placed the JSE among the top-performing major markets globally, trailing only Japan and Brazil’s stock markets both up 17% year to date. Over one year, when measured in US dollar terms, the JSE up 82% is the best-performing major stock exchange, rising almost four times faster than global stocks over that period with the MSCI World up 22%. The measurement in US dollar terms is flattered by a 17% appreciation in the local currency against the greenback over the past year, including a boost of 1.3% in February.

Precious metal shares were once again a key driver of returns for the month, contributing 60% of February’s JSE index returns with strong commodity price gains with gold and platinum both  up 8% m/m driving share price performance with gold miners up 16% m/m and platinum miners up 12% m/m. The precious metals price strength belied a volatile underlying trend, with the gold price dropping 14% from its late January high of $5,420/oz in just a week at the start of February before rallying 13% to $5,300/oz at month-end.

The biggest detractors from the JSE’s February performance were investment conglomerates Naspers down 11% m/m and Prosus down 12% m/m as the pair more than doubled their year to date share price declines. Their largest investment, Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent, down 15% m/m, was a key source of pain as China’s tech companies experienced their worst monthly performance in over two years.

Amongst the companies geared to the domestic economy, banks up 8% m/m and insurers up 7% m/m performed well. Nedbank, up 19% m/m, was the standout performer amongst the banks, rallying as management’s guidance on the company’s earnings per share range post the Ecobank disposal was comfortably ahead of expectations. Discovery, up 11% m/m, led the insurers with their management referring to robust results and strong overall performance, with Discovery Bank turning profitable. Struggling food retailers Pick n Pay, down 19% m/m and SPAR, down 21% m/m both delivered disappointing trading updates in February as signs of a turnaround prove elusive for the pair.

On the macro front, Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana’s latest South African Budget was generally well received, with the country set to continue a path of fiscal consolidation without major tax increases, thanks in large part to a commodity-driven tax windfall and improved revenue collection. South Africa’s budget deficit is expected to narrow, and debt is likely to peak soon. The South African government’s 10-year borrowing rate remained around its 10-year lows of 8% per annum.

Emerging market (EM) shares extended their year to date lead over their developed market (DM) peers into double digits  with the MSCI EM up 5.5% m/m and up 15% in the year to date. The EM outperformance was driven by commodity-producing countries such as Brazil up 4.1% m/m and South Africa up 7.2% m/m. It came despite a struggling Chinese tech cohort (Tencent, Alibaba, Meituan and Baidu down 15%, 16%, 17% and 19% m/m, respectively). Baidu reported revenue declines for the third consecutive quarter while intense competition amongst the Chinese internet retailers appears to be eroding profitability, with rumours of higher VAT for online transactions further souring sentiment towards the sector.

Peter Little, Fund Management, Anchor Capital

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa’s electricity reform has reached a stage where institutional design matters more than legislative intent. The amended Electricity Regulation Act sets out a competitive, multi-market structure anchored by an independent transmission system operator and a wholesale electricity market.

The question is no longer what the framework should look like. The question is whether it is being implemented with precision and speed. The National Business Initiative’s South African Wholesale Electricity Market (SAWEM) report places the wholesale platform at the centre of this reform phase. It argues that a functioning market is the mechanism through which price discovery, capital mobilisation and more efficient dispatch will occur.

Krutham’s Policy to Power report complements this view by identifying the institutional steps required to translate statute into operation, along with the bottlenecks slowing progress. Under the current model, Eskom remains the dominant buyer and dispatcher of electricity. Risk is concentrated, price signals are muted and entry for new generation depends on administrative allocation rather than market clearing.

A competitive wholesale market changes those incentives. Generators compete on cost. Dispatch reflects marginal economics rather than legacy asset position. Buyers gain access to multiple suppliers. The system operator coordinates flows across the grid based on transparent rules. For municipalities, this transition reshapes a long-standing revenue model. Many local governments purchase bulk electricity from Eskom at regulated tariffs and resell it at a markup. Electricity surpluses fund other municipal services.

A wholesale market expands procurement options and may reduce input costs where competitive generation is available. It also introduces price volatility and requires new competencies in forecasting, hedging and contract management. Municipal finance systems built around predictable bulk tariffs will need adjustment. Customer behaviour adds further pressure. Large users are already installing embedded generation or negotiating alternative supply arrangements. A wholesale platform accelerates this shift. Municipalities dependent on electricity margins will need fiscal reforms, tariff redesign and improved collection discipline to remain solvent. Distribution reform, therefore, becomes part of electricity reform.

Krutham’s report outlines ten concrete actions that define the execution pathway. A Cabinet-endorsed reform roadmap is the starting point. Clear milestones, defined responsibilities and direct political oversight reduce the risk of institutional drift.

Finalisation of the Electricity Pricing Policy is essential. Cost-reflective and unbundled tariffs support fair competition and provide the basis for bankable bilateral contracts. Regulatory capacity requires strengthening. A multi-market system increases the volume and complexity of licensing, tariff approvals and compliance oversight. Delays translate into financing risk. Eskom’s future structure must be clarified. The financial and operational separation of generation, transmission and system operation needs defined timelines and a credible capital plan. Ambiguity in asset ownership or balance sheet allocation affects investor confidence.Transmission expansion is central. New generation capacity cannot connect without grid reinforcement. Accelerating the transmission development plan determines whether reform unlocks real supply additions.Distribution reform addresses municipal debt, technical losses and maintenance backlogs.

Around 40% of the grid sits within municipal control. Financial instability at this layer constrains wheeling and undermines service reliability. Trading rules should be completed and the market platform must become operational. Settlement systems, balancing mechanisms and dispute resolution procedures provide the infrastructure of trust within a competitive market. Wheeling frameworks and digital data systems require harmonisation. Manual processes and inconsistent access protocols deter participation and increase transaction costs.

The launch of SAWEM as a functioning platform marks the transition from policy to market. Transparent price formation and risk allocation underpin affordability and security of supply. Regional electricity trade can deepen liquidity and improve resilience through cross-border exchanges. Krutham identifies five obstacles slowing this programme.

The absence of a binding, time-bound roadmap leaves coordination dispersed across institutions. Functional separation within Eskom proceeds unevenly, particularly in grid access and market operations. Regulatory uncertainty and limited capacity slow approvals. Municipal financial distress restricts distribution reform and wheeling expansion. Transmission rollout remains slower than required for the volume of projects seeking connection.These constraints explain why reform feels incremental despite legislative change.

The wholesale electricity market serves as the organising centre of the next reform phase. It aligns generation competition, grid access, tariff reform and distribution restructuring within a single operational framework. Municipalities move from passive resellers to active market participants. Investors evaluate projects based on transparent market rules rather than administrative allocation. Progress depends on disciplined execution. Transmission build schedules must align with project pipelines. Regulatory decisions require predictable timelines.

Municipal fiscal reform must accompany expanded market access. Institutional independence of the system operator needs to be visible in governance structures and daily operations.The architecture is defined. Implementation now determines whether South Africa secures a more competitive, reliable and financially sustainable electricity system.

Thomas Garner holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Pretoria and an MBA from the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Thomas is self-employed focusing on energy, energy related critical minerals, water and communities. He is a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering and a Management Committee member of the South African Independent Power Producers Association.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Last week’s budget delivered encouraging signals for business confidence and infrastructure investment. While not addressing every challenge we face, it demonstrated continued fiscal discipline and improving infrastructure spending that should help unlock the private sector investment South Africa desperately needs.

The fiscal position is clearly on an improving trajectory. The government is on track to deliver a primary surplus for the third consecutive year, meaning revenue exceeds non-interest spending. The debt-to-GDP ratio is stabilising and beginning to decline. Tax collection performance remains strong, with SA Revenue Service exceeding revenue targets. This matters. It is what enabled the S&P credit upgrade, what drives lower borrowing costs, and what gives investors confidence that South Africa won’t face a fiscal crisis. The macroeconomic stability this creates is the foundation for everything else.

I found myself reflecting on how this and many other signals in the budget – debt stabilisation, strong tax collection, advances in financial sector regulation, improved performance of state-owned enterprises – all show how the quality of leadership in the public sector is translating into tangible progress. We cannot forget the perilous state we were in less than a decade ago, when our institutions were crumbling before our eyes, when debt was spiralling and tax collection collapsing. This budget shows continued decisive movement in putting that behind us and empowering the right people to get on with the job of running the state well. It is all about keeping people accountable for delivering, and we must credit the state for the improvements it has made, even while recognising how much more there is to be done.

Against this backdrop, the infrastructure spending outlook showed welcome improvement. The three-year medium-term expenditure framework projects over R1tn in public infrastructure investment, with approximately R340bn allocated for the current fiscal year. More significantly, Treasury expects this year to show the first increase in infrastructure spending in several years, reversing a decade of decline that saw public sector investment fall from nearly 10% of GDP to below 5%. About 40% of the projected spending should come through state-owned enterprises, particularly Eskom and Transnet, whose improved financial performance now enables infrastructure investment rather than requiring bailouts.

Treasury rightly emphasises that the priority is not spending for its own sake, but ensuring money goes to growth-enhancing infrastructure with proper value for money and quality controls. This focus on execution over volume is exactly right. We’ve seen too many half-built hospitals and incomplete road projects due to poor planning and contract management. What matters is whether this R1tn translates into functional ports, reliable rail networks, adequate water infrastructure, and maintained municipal services, the basics businesses need to operate and expand.

The early indicators are cautiously positive. BLSA’s member survey in the BLSA Reform Tracker found that almost two-thirds are optimistic about the impact of reforms over the next 12 months, with three-quarters specifically crediting electricity reforms for improving the business environment. This confidence translates into investment appetite. When major employers and investors see government delivering on infrastructure commitments – ending load shedding, concessioning ports, opening rail to private operators – they become willing to commit capital to expansion.

Infrastructure South Africa will host its next major conference at the end of March, bringing public and private sectors together to identify investment opportunities and partnership models. While one can question the direct impact these conferences have on project delivery, they serve an important function. Seeing government and the private sector on the same stage, making commitments to infrastructure projects, signals alignment and creates momentum. The conference must be organised to surface concrete partnership opportunities and move projects from concept to implementation, not just showcase plans. If structured properly, it can help identify where private capital can accelerate delivery and where public-private partnerships make sense.

The virtuous cycle we’re trying to trigger of fiscal credibility leading to improved confidence leading to increased investment leading to higher growth, depends on sustained infrastructure delivery. The target of 30% of GDP invested in infrastructure remains distant and has been stuck below 15% since Covid. But consistent progress matters more than unrealistic targets. If the public sector can demonstrate reliable execution on the R340bn allocated this year, if SOEs can deliver on their infrastructure mandates, if municipalities can show improvement in maintenance and basic service delivery, private sector investment will follow. This year could be the one where the trend turns decisively.

However, important gaps remain in the budget’s approach to protecting the industrial base that generates much of the employment and tax revenue underpinning fiscal sustainability. The budget offered no strategy to address deindustrialisation from cheap imports, devastating automotive manufacturing and other sectors. Treasury mentioned efforts with SARS to tackle illicit cigarettes, but provided no specific targets or resourcing details. There was also limited follow-through on the President’s State of the Nation instruction to unbundle Eskom’s transmission assets into the independent transmission system operator. Treasury could have clarified the next steps toward the financial framework for the new entity to raise capital for grid expansion.

These omissions matter because manufacturing capacity and infrastructure are interconnected. Reliable electricity and efficient logistics enable manufacturing competitiveness, whilst healthy manufacturers generate the tax revenue and economic activity that justify infrastructure investment. The budget addressed one side of this equation well but left the other largely untouched.

On the whole, this budget continued progress in the right direction. Fiscal discipline is being maintained, infrastructure spending is beginning to recover, and the foundations for improved business confidence are solidifying. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and his team deserve credit for sustaining the institutional recovery from the state capture era.

The test now is implementation. Budget allocations mean nothing without effective project execution, proper contract management, and value for money. Business stands ready to partner where private capital and expertise can accelerate delivery. The March Infrastructure South Africa conference provides one mechanism for this partnership. BLSA will continue to monitor progress through our Reform Tracker and engage directly with government on removing obstacles to infrastructure investment. If 2026 can be the turning point year where public and private infrastructure investment both accelerate, we’ll move meaningfully closer to the sustained growth needed to tackle unemployment. The budget provides reason for cautious optimism that this is achievable.

Busiswe Mavuso is the chief executive of Business Leadership South Africa.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The 2026 Mining Indaba provided a good platform and brought together governments, investors, industry leaders, and civil society from across Africa and beyond. As a premier mining investment platform, it focused on partnerships, sustainable development, and the optimal beneficiation of critical minerals.

In 2024, mining in South Africa contributed 6.1% of nominal GDP in a R4.6 trillion economy, generated a quarter of export earnings, attracted 17% of private sector investment and employed 475,000 people. Yet performance has softened. Gross value added grew by only 0.3%, constrained by subdued commodity prices, logistics bottlenecks, rising operating costs and weak global growth.

Mining has acknowledged that it need to move faster  from just “digging , shipping and dumping”  - Key focus areas of the Indaba included: Africa’s critical minerals —including cobalt, lithium, manganese, and platinum group metals — are central to the global energy transition, yet they also carry the risk of fuelling new conflicts and irresponsible mining practices if not governed effectively.

Sustainability must, therefore, be at the core of the sector’s evolution, with robust environmental, social, and governance standards driving a just transition while simultaneously increasing output and improving development outcomes.

Innovation and technology, particularly artificial intelligence, green-energy solutions, and digitalisation, are modernising mining operations, however, there remains insufficient scrutiny of the employment implications as the sector mechanises and digitises, potentially displacing workers.

At the same time, there was a strong imperative to support downstream industries such as automotive, renewable energy, aerospace, and manufacturing to accelerate local beneficiation and industrialisation, thereby advancing economic growth across African economies. Central to all of this is meaningful community and indigenous inclusion to ensure equitable benefit-sharing, preserving cultural heritage, and respecting indigenous knowledge systems and traditional institutions of leadership and engagement.

At this moment, the mining sector sits at the intersection of three converging forces: climate urgency, geopolitical realignment, and rising global demand for critical minerals. Against this backdrop, the Indaba’s theme “Stronger together: Progress through partnerships” signals that collaboration will be essential if mining is to thrive in a low-carbon, inclusive, and globally competitive future.

Mining has moved from the periphery of climate debates to the core, supplying the minerals required for electrification, energy storage and green hydrogen while remaining a significant source of environmental and social risk.

The sector supports hundreds of thousands of additional livelihoods through extensive upstream and downstream value chains and remains a primary economic anchor in mining-dependent regions where alternative employment opportunities are limited.

Mining also plays a critical fiscal role, contributing to tax revenues and foreign exchange earnings that underpin South Africa’s macroeconomic stability and public service delivery. The sector therefore remains indispensable to South Africa’s economy — but increasingly exposed to structural, operational and market risks.

Climate alignment is accelerating this exposure. Global capital is becoming more selective, with high-emissions assets facing heightened scrutiny while demand for platinum group metals, manganese, vanadium, and copper rising sharply. South Africa’s geological endowment is strong, but competitiveness will depend less on mineral abundance than on policy certainty, infrastructure readiness, and social licence from communities to operate.

Industry and government recognise this, hence the Minerals Council South Africa supports the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 and a Just Energy Transition, focusing on reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions through renewable energy while arguing for a pragmatic, near-term role for coal to safeguard energy security. The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources similarly emphasises decarbonisation at a pace that preserves jobs, investment, and economic stability.

It is in this context that the Presidential Climate Commission is uniquely positioned to guide South Africa’s decarbonisation pathway across sectors — including mining — in a manner that is evidence-based, inclusive and country-specific.  In mining, it means supporting a managed transition from coal, advancing responsible production of critical minerals, and ensuring that decarbonisation is accompanied by localisation, beneficiation, and skills development.

Our position is that mining has a future in South Africa, but only if it is future fit. That requires credible transition plans for coal regions, transparent management of closure and rehabilitation liabilities, and alignment between climate policy, industrial development, and fiscal planning. A just transition is a governance challenge that demands coordination, foresight, and accountability.

In a world defined by geopolitical uncertainty and climate urgency, South Africa cannot afford an unmanaged decline — where emissions fall, but so do jobs, investment, and trust. Nor can it rely on mineral endowment alone to secure prosperity.

The dust has settled in Cape Town, and Mining Indaba 2026 will be measured on whether the mooted partnerships deliver alignment: between capital and climate goals, policy and implementation, and short-term pressures and long-term resilience. In a fractured and fragile global economy, South Africa’s ability to manage this balance will shape not only its mining sector, but its place in the low-carbon world.

The task ahead is to convert climate responsibility into economic opportunity, and geological wealth into inclusive growth.

Dorah Modise, Executive Director at the Presidential Climate Commission.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

For decades, energy sat firmly within a company’s operations department. It was a cost to be managed, a utility bill to be paid, and a technical issue for engineers to resolve. Today, that model no longer holds.

South Africa’s energy market is in the midst of structural reform, with market-based energy instruments having introduced a level of complexity that extends well beyond facilities management. Energy decisions now carry balance-sheet implications, audit considerations and regulatory consequences. Yet many corporate governance structures still view energy merely as a cost, assuming a reliable supply from Eskom, rather than recognising it as a strategic opportunity or potential business risk. Companies should move towards considering energy from diverse technologies as a strategic asset, leveraging partnerships to create value.

Energy procurement evolves into capital allocation

The rise of long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) has fundamentally altered how companies procure electricity. These agreements are sophisticated financial instruments with implications for credit risk, pricing structures, hedging strategies and long-term liabilities. Across the energy landscape, longstanding programmes like the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) have shown how government-enabled private generation, backed by PPAs, adds vital capacity and investment signals into the system.

Boards must now interrogate questions that previously sat outside energy discussions: How are PPA commitments reflected in financial statements? What is the counterparty risk exposure? How do fixed versus indexed pricing structures affect long-term competitiveness?

Similarly, battery storage is no longer merely a resilience measure. Through arbitrage - charging during low-tariff periods and discharging in peak pricing windows – storage systems can materially influence cost structures and cash flow. But these benefits depend on governance oversight, performance monitoring and risk management at a strategic level.

Market liberalisation and wheeling arrangements are rewriting the rules

South Africa’s wholesale electricity market reforms have unlocked new forms of energy trade and access that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Draft operational rules for the South African Wholesale Electricity Market (SAWEM) are progressing toward implementation, signalling a move away from Eskom’s single-buyer model to a competitive market structure.

This broader reform creates the conditions for more sophisticated wheeling arrangements, where power generated in one location can be consumed by commercial and industrial users elsewhere, and for traders to compete on price and flexibility. In practical terms, wheeling links corporates and suppliers directly, creating opportunities for more efficient energy flows and strategic optimisation.

For boards and audit committees, this increased complexity is a governance challenge. Cost reconciliation across entities becomes intricate when generation, wheeling charges, grid access fees and supply costs intersect. Without robust oversight, discrepancies can emerge between contracted supply, actual consumption and billed charges, generating exposure in financial statements and audit reviews.

Audit and compliance exposure in a rapidly evolving market

As the energy market evolves, so too does compliance risk. PPAs may embed derivative structures. Wheeling agreements require strict adherence to evolving regulatory frameworks. Carbon reporting and energy disclosure requirements continue to tighten. Each of these has implications for audit and governance.

Energy decisions now influence financial disclosures, ESG reporting and long-term capital planning. Without board-level visibility, organisations risk underestimating the exposure created by increasingly complex energy arrangements.

In parallel, national policy reform, including the planned unbundling of Eskom’s transmission assets into an independent state-owned entity, is aimed at attracting private investment and modernising grid infrastructure, which could unlock significant new energy trading and investment opportunities.

The big strategic shift for governance

Many businesses have embraced new energy solutions but retained legacy governance models designed for a single-supplier utility environment. That disconnect is becoming increasingly risky.

Effective governance in today’s energy market requires clear accountability across operations, finance and executive leadership, with structured reporting to boards on energy risk, performance and contractual exposure. It demands data transparency that enables accurate reconciliation and audit readiness. And it calls for deliberate alignment between energy procurement decisions and long-term capital strategy.

Energy is no longer simply about keeping the lights on. It’s about managing financial exposure, protecting margins, safeguarding compliance, delivering on sustainability commitments and positioning the organisation competitively in a market that is structurally transforming.

Manie de Waal, CEO of Energy Partners

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Last week, I made the case that the AI moment has a prediction problem: we are so busy forecasting the end state that we have stopped reading our actual horizon. That piece is here. This week, history offers a humbling parallel. 

History has a note on that

In the years following the Second World War, British coal mining underwent what its administrators considered a straightforward modernisation. The industry had been nationalised. New mechanised longwall systems replaced the old manual methods. Output would increase. Efficiency would improve. The logic was solid.

What actually happened is now a foundational case study in why airtight logic so often produces leaky results.

What the miners knew that the managers didn't

Researchers from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, sent to observe the transition, found something the administrators had not accounted for. 

As it happens, I’m indebted to management consultant Bruce Msimanga for resurfacing this case study over a recent family lunch with the casual authority of someone who has clearly spent many years thinking about how organisations actually work.

The old shortwall method, for all its inefficiency, had organised miners into small, self-managing composite teams. Each team controlled its own pace, its own division of labour, its own social logic. The new longwall system fragmented those teams across three shifts, replaced the informal bonds with formal job classifications, and handed coordination to management rather than leaving it with the miners themselves.

Productivity did not improve. Absenteeism rose. Militancy rose. While the technology worked exactly as designed, the system around it collapsed.

The Tavistock researchers coined a term for what had gone wrong: sociotechnical failure. The organisation had optimised one system, the technical one, while dismantling the other. In practice, the two were inseparable. Improving one while neglecting the other produced the opposite of the intended outcome.

This was 1951. On a Monday morning in February 2026, a version of the same story unfolded in financial markets.

13.2% down in one morning

When Anthropic announced that Claude Code can automate the exploration and analysis phases of COBOL modernisation, compressing what once took years of consultant-led engagement into quarters of AI-enabled work, IBM's share price dropped 13.2%, its steepest single-day decline since October 2000. 

The reaction was rational. COBOL is not a legacy curiosity. It runs the core systems of global banking, insurance and government, including the banking and insurance infrastructure of African enterprises that have been running mainframe operations for decades. Modernising a COBOL system once required armies of consultants spending years mapping workflows. Claude Code automates the exploration and analysis phases. Teams can modernise in quarters instead of years.

But the coal mine story suggests that the arrival of a more capable machine is rarely the conclusion of the matter. Rather, it’s the beginning of a deeper question: what happens to the system around it?

Permission to change

One instructive counterpoint comes from Shopify. Pragmatic Engineer newsletter writer Gergely Orosz recently revealed that Farhan Tawer, Shopify's head of engineering, distributed AI coding licences to every team with no cost limit and waited to see what happened. Apparently, most teams barely used them. One team's token consumption stood out. Tawer looked closer. There was an intern on that team.

The intern, given a two-week task, finished it in a day. It wasn’t so much exceptional brilliance at play, than the fact that there was no legacy workflow to defend. No professional identity built around a particular method. The intern just used the tool. When the rest of the team noticed, something interesting happened. They did not feel threatened. They felt curious. The intern posed no existential threat, so they started learning from the youngster instead of resisting disruption.

Tawer's response was to hire an intern for every single Shopify team. The aim wasn’t to replace senior engineers, mind. It was to give every team a non-threatening catalyst for the same curiosity. The social system didn’t have to be dismantled. It just had to be given (permissionless) room to change.

Still buying machinery

Many an organisation is doing the 2026 equivalent of longwall mechanisation: deploying technically sophisticated AI capability into social systems that have not been redesigned to receive it, measuring the absence of productivity gains as a technology problem, and responding by buying more technology. I reckon the Tavistock researchers would recognise the pattern in under five minutes.

IBM’s Monday wasn’t (necessarily) a verdict on a company’s future. It was, however, a sobering signal. The COBOL modernisation wave is real. But so is the question of what happens to the organisations, and the people inside them, who encounter it without seeking to answer the social system question first.

That question, it turns out, is quietly being answered by at least one company on my radar. And it began closer to home than most might expect.

Andile Masuku is Co-founder and Executive Producer at African Tech Roundup. Connect and engage with Andile on X (@MasukuAndile) and via LinkedIn.

This is the second of a three-part series. Part 3, What Good Navigation Looks Like, publishes next Tuesday.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Across much of the world, digital transformation has been a slow and staged journey.  Enterprises moved cautiously from on-premises servers to virtualisation and, only later, to the cloud. Africa’s path, however, is proving to be very different. With fewer investments in outdated infrastructure, businesses are bypassing these interim steps altogether. What was once considered a disadvantage – limited legacy IT – has now become the very reason many African enterprises are adopting modern architectures faster than their global peers. This strategic shift is not just a leapfrogging of traditional stages, but a significant transformation that is reshaping the global digital landscape. Africa's unique digital transformation journey is not a late start, but a strategic advantage that inspires optimism about the continent's potential in the global digital economy.

Why “starting late” can mean starting strong

This absence of entrenched infrastructure removes the burden of costly migrations. Instead of modernising outdated systems, many African organisations can build fresh on cloud-native platforms, embracing containerisation, microservices, and automation from day one. In effect, they are leapfrogging decades of technological evolution. The result is not merely cost savings, but a chance to create lean, agile systems designed for today’s digital economy rather than yesterdays.

Fintech start-ups, logistics innovators, and e-commerce platforms provide compelling examples. By beginning directly in the cloud, they can scale rapidly during periods of high demand, launch new services in weeks rather than months, and rival global competitors without being held back by monolithic systems or physical data centres. This momentum naturally brings us to the next advantage: agility.

Agility as the new competitive advantage

Agility is no longer a luxury; it is a survival strategy. African cloud-native enterprises can iterate faster, deploy updates in real time, and respond to market shifts almost immediately. This is especially vital in regions where customer expectations are rising rapidly, and businesses must differentiate through both speed and reliability.

Equally important, cloud-native architectures enhance resilience. Instead of a single point of failure, workloads are distributed across environments, keeping systems online even under stress. For African businesses operating in highly competitive and often volatile markets, this combination of speed and stability provides a decisive edge. Yet agility and resilience require expertise, which introduces another critical factor in this transformation: the role of external IT partners.

The role of IT providers in this journey

Cloud-native technologies are powerful but complex. From orchestrating Kubernetes clusters to embedding security across distributed systems, the skills required are often beyond what in-house teams can develop quickly. This is where third-party IT providers step in, playing a crucial role in accelerating Africa's digital transformation. Their role is not just to provide technical support, but to bring hard-won experience, proven frameworks, and tested deployment strategies that accelerate adoption while reducing risk. Their expertise is a crucial factor in this transformation, highlighting the value of collaboration in the digital journey and reassuring the audience about the continent's progress.

Their value extends beyond technical implementation. Misconfigured cloud environments are among the leading causes of security breaches globally, and African enterprises cannot afford these missteps. Providers draw on lessons learned across multiple industries, ensuring businesses avoid costly errors and adhere to international best practices. With expert guidance, enterprises can focus on innovation while knowing their foundations are secure.

Scaling with confidence in a high-growth market

Once these foundations are in place, enterprises can turn to one of the most significant advantages of cloud-native models: scalability. African businesses often operate in high-growth markets where demand can surge suddenly. Whether onboarding thousands of new users daily or expanding into neighbouring regions, seamless scalability is essential. However, rapid scaling can also pose challenges in resource management and system stability, where the expertise of third-party providers becomes crucial.

Here again, third-party providers play a central role. They help design architectures that grow in step with the business, ensuring resources are never wasted yet always sufficient to meet demand. This balance between efficiency and growth positions enterprises to expand confidently, knowing their infrastructure will not hinder their growth. Naturally, this growth must rest on a foundation of trust, which brings security to the fore.

Security: the non-negotiable foundation

No digital transformation can succeed without security. As African enterprises collect, process, and store growing volumes of customer data, protecting this information becomes paramount. Yet cloud-native security is complex, requiring continuous monitoring, identity management, and proactive threat detection across distributed environments.

Third-party providers embed “security by design” into these systems. This concept ensures that security is not an afterthought but a fundamental part of the system’s architecture and operation. Instead of bolting on protection as an afterthought, they ensure compliance and resilience are baked in from the start. For enterprises in finance, healthcare, or government, this assurance is what enables innovation to move forward without hesitation. And as secure, scalable, and agile foundations are laid, the conversation inevitably shifts to what this means for the future.

Necessity breeds innovation – the future of African IT

The leapfrogging of legacy IT is more than just a tactical shortcut; it is shaping the future of Africa's digital economy. By moving directly into cloud-native architectures, enterprises are not only catching up but, in some cases, outpacing global peers. They are demonstrating that technological progress need not be linear; it can be exponential when constraints are turned into opportunities. The future of African IT, therefore, is not just about catching up, but about leading the way in digital innovation and transformation. This potential for Africa to lead in digital innovation is not just a possibility, but a reality that should excite and inspire the audience about the continent's future.

Third-party providers will continue to play a crucial role in this journey. Their role is not simply technical but strategic: enabling African enterprises to focus on their core missions while ensuring that their digital infrastructure is robust, scalable, and future-ready. This collaboration will define the pace and sustainability of Africa’s rise as a digital powerhouse.

Sarthak Rohal, Senior Vice President at In2IT Technologies

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

It is now an open secret that some leading technology companies do business with the US military. Initially, Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI were united in opposing the military use of their AI tools. But later, something changed.

According to a US tech magazine, OpenAI quietly rescinded its ban on using AI for “military and warfare” purposes, and soon after it was reported to be working on “a number of projects” with the Pentagon. In November — during the same week that Donald Trump was re-elected US president — Meta announced that the United States and select allies would be able to use its Llama model for defence purposes. A few days later, Anthropic said it too would allow its models to be used by the military and confirmed a partnership with defence firm Palantir. As the year ended, OpenAI announced its own partnership with defence start-up Anduril. Later, even Google revised its AI principles to permit the development and use of weapons and technologies that could potentially cause harm. Within a single year, concerns about the existential risks of AI appeared to fade, and the military use of AI became increasingly normalised.

More recently, however, one US tech company — Anthropic — has reportedly clashed with the US government over how its technology should be used. The Pentagon allegedly demanded that Anthropic remove two major safety guardrails from Claude, the only frontier AI model currently deployed in classified Department of Defense operations. The company was reportedly given an ultimatum: comply with the Pentagon’s terms, be designated a “supply chain risk,” or be compelled to provide the technology under the Defense Production Act. It was later declared a supply chain risk. A day after the ban, Reuters reported that Anthropic’s AI technology had been used when the US carried out attacks on Iran in 2026.

Reuters said it could not determine precisely how the tools were used in the war effort. However, the agency reported that Anthropic’s AI had been deployed across the intelligence community and armed services, and that it was among the first peer AI companies to handle classified information through a cloud supply arrangement with Amazon.

In June 2025, the US Army established “Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps,” a specialised unit recruiting senior Silicon Valley executives as part-time Army Reserve lieutenant colonels. The initiative was designed to modernise military technology by incorporating private-sector expertise in AI and software without requiring traditional basic training. The initial cohort reportedly included Andrew Bosworth (CTO of Meta), Shyam Sankar (CTO of Palantir), Kevin Weil (CPO of OpenAI), and Bob McGrew (former research officer at OpenAI).

In December 2025, it was announced that the Department of Defense had selected Google’s Gemini AI model to power the military’s internal AI platform, known as GenAI.mil. More recently, Pete Hegseth said the US military would begin integrating Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, into Pentagon networks.

Workers at technology companies have also spoken out about what they describe as pressure from government authorities. More than 100 Google employees reportedly signed a petition calling on the company to “refuse to comply” with certain Pentagon uses of artificial intelligence in military operations. Employees at Amazon, Google and Microsoft urged their leadership, in a separate open letter, to “hold the line” against expanded military deployment of AI tools. Technologists across Silicon Valley have also expressed concerns that AI should not be used for purposes such as mass surveillance of Americans.

Silicon Valley has, in some cases, rallied behind Anthropic in its dispute with President Trump and the Pentagon regarding the military use of its technology.

These developments raise a serious dilemma for consumers — both governments and individuals — who rely on products developed by companies whose technologies may also be used in warfare or in ways that could violate human rights. Many users adopted these products long before companies formalised partnerships with the US military. Now that the landscape has shifted, some consumers face difficult questions. Should they continue using products built by companies that also develop technologies for war? How can international users be assured that their data will not be used in ways that compromise their security?

The current moment calls for careful reflection and difficult decisions about how societies, governments and individuals should respond.

Wesley Diphoko is the Editor-in-Chief of FastCompany (SA) magazine.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The 2026/27 Budget has now been tabled for Parliament’s consideration and adoption. 

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) like millions of workers had been keenly awaiting it, more so given the many dire challenges facing the working class and the economy.

Workers had been hopeful given the many progressive commitments made by President Cyril Ramaphosa during the State of the Nation Address (SONA) two weeks earlier.

To say workers are disappointed with a Budget that walks back many of SONA’s progressive commitments would be an understatement. 

Cosatu had hoped to see a Budget anchored upon society’s deep seated socio-economic challenges, in particular a 41.1% unemployment rate and an economy languishing at 1% over the past decade.  Instead, the Budget forecasts 1.8% growth over the next three years, nowhere near the 3% plus needed to see unemployment substantially fall.

The fundamental flaw with Treasury’s approach is that it assumes the economy will somehow recover from its decade-long slump and grow on its own.  This is a dangerous path to take when four out of ten South Africans cannot find work.  One need look no further than the July 2021 violence in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal for the dangers and much larger costs for ignoring our deep underlying socioeconomic faultlines.

The second flaw is that Treasury continues to believe that cutting budgets will enable frontline public and municipal services to deliver the quality services that the working class and the economy depend upon. 

Both of these approaches have been pursued dogmatically by Treasury with little to show for it, unless one thinks a 41.1% unemployment rate is something to celebrate.

Politically it is extremely concerning that government does not speak with one voice.  SONA gives a raft of important commitments only to see them watered down or abandoned in the Budget weeks later.

To be fair there are important aspects of the Budget that Cosatu fought for, these include rolling out Grade R to 300 000 learners, the building of 7 provincial hospitals and R1.07 trillion allocated to investments in electricity, rail, ports, roads, water and airports’ infrastructure over the next three years.  The latter will create thousands of jobs in the construction phase, and more in the economy.  However given the many challenges facing society and the economy, these are not enough.

The government has previously stated to Parliament that the days of austerity and budget cuts are over, and investments will be made to rebuild frontline public and municipal services.  Yet no Department sees above inflation real boosts in allocation.  With the exception of the Border Management Authority, Home Affairs as well as doctors for Health, no allocations have been provided to hire additional staff and help ease the pressures on frontline services overwhelmed by high vacancy rates.

The Budget correctly highlighted the dire state of more than 60% of our municipalities.  It provides important interventions to stablise and rebuild local government, including R57 billion to improve the ability of metros to deliver basic services and collect payments due, amending the Municipal Finance Management Act to enable timely interventions when municipalities struggle, and the enlisting of Eskom and Sanral to help capacitate municipalities to provide electricity and maintain roads.  Whilst these are badly needed, they will take time.  Something that many municipalities no longer have.

The recovery of Eskom, Transnet, Metro Rail and the South African Airways have provided invaluable relief to workers and the economy.  Over R577 billion has been allocated to investments in state-owned enterprises’ infrastructure over the next three years. 

Yet two important interventions are missing.  First is support for Eskom to plug its still massive financial losses with R20 billion lost annually to municipal debt (soon to pass R100 billion), and wasteful expenditure, corruption, cable theft and vandalism.  These are urgently needed to end Eskom’s dependence upon above inflation tariff hikes suffocating industrial sectors and costing thousands of jobs.

Turnaround plans are needed for Denel, the SABC, Post Office and Postbank.  The Budget offered nothing new for them.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the Budget is the absence of any new allocations to boost the fight against the cancer of crime and corruption, despite SONA’s commitments.  Without additional police in communities, detectives pursuing dockets, prosecutors securing convictions and judges presiding over trials; then what exactly will government do differently to produce different results?  Speeches will not win this war.

The need to stimulate growth, in particular making capital available for SMMEs, industrial and export sectors are accepted by everyone, yet the Budget provides for a 10% cut in funding for the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition and a meagre R3 billion for small business development as compared to R4 billion for politicians’ bodyguards!

The SRD Grant has provided a lifeline for 8 million destitute recipients.  Yet once again Treasury refused to provide an increase to protect their R370 from being eroded by inflation.  In fact, Treasury has refused to provide it any inflationary adjustment for five out of the six years it’s been in existence.  But the very same Members of Parliament were militant in demanding that their R1 million and in the case of Ministers, R2.5 million plus salaries receive an inflationary increase over December!  Hypocrisy?

To add salt to the wound, the 10,000 permanent labour inspectors highlighted in SONA and further confirmed by the Department of Employment and Labour are not provided for in the Budget!  These would provide a massive boost to protecting workers from some of the most abusive labour practices. 

The government needs to speak with one voice and to honour the commitments it makes to society. 

It needs to grasp that the economy requires the state to provide certain services if it is to grow at the pace needed to tackle unemployment, poverty and inequality.  Similarly, society should no longer be expected to tolerate high levels of crime.

It is time politicians appreciate that society expects and deserves better and that its patience is not limitless.

Cosatu President Zingiswa Losi

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Food security is usually discussed as if it were a neutral destination. More production. More efficiency. More resilience. The language suggests a single, objective outcome that can be optimised through better technology and policy. Yet this framing obscures a more consequential reality. Food security is not a fixed state. It is the product of design choices about which systems are built, which risks are prioritised, and who is allowed to remain economically visible within them.

By 2026, food systems across the world are no longer optimised for the same definition of security. That divergence matters because it is reshaping not only how food is produced, but who remains able to produce it under stress.The architecture of agriculture is shifting quietly but decisively. Control is moving away from land and labour towards a layered stack of genetics, intellectual property, data, finance, and risk management. This is not a story of conspiracy. It is a story of incentives.

When incentives change, systems reorganise around them. One signal of this shift is concentration. In commercial seeds and agrochemicals, consolidation has narrowed the field of dominant actors shaping what is grown, which inputs are treated as standard, and what becomes financeable at scale.

Global estimates suggest the top four firms control over 60% of the agrochemical market and more than half of the commercial seed market. These figures do not, on their own, prove harm. They do show how quickly a single operating logic can become embedded through standards, pricing, and risk models.The central question is therefore not whether modern agricultural technology can increase yields. It clearly can. The harder question is whether the systems through which that technology is deployed strengthen long-term food security or quietly trade resilience for dependency, particularly in regions already exposed to economic and climatic volatility.

Historically, agriculture was governed by land, water, and labour. Productivity gains were slow and ecologically bounded. Today, the most consequential layer of agriculture is no longer the field itself, but the operating system that sits above it. Seeds are no longer merely inputs. They are governed assets, embedded with intellectual property protections, compliance conditions, and traceability requirements.

Global plant variety applications continue to rise, with close to 29,000 filed worldwide in 2023 alone. The logic is commercial rather than coercive. Standardisation reduces uncertainty. Bundling simplifies risk. For lenders and insurers in a climate-volatile environment, predictability has value. Over time, however, this architecture produces lock-in.

Exiting one component of the system often means losing access to others. Farmers are not simply choosing what to plant. They are choosing whether to remain legible to the financial and insurance frameworks that determine who is bankable and insurable.This is how control shifts without confrontation. Not through ownership of land, but through ownership of standards. None of this negates the benefits of modern agricultural science.

Advances in breeding and gene-editing have raised yields and improved drought tolerance. Centralised input systems can stabilise supply chains. For food importing countries facing climate stress, these gains matter.The difficulty arises when innovation becomes inseparable from exclusion. As systems grow more technologically dense, participation increasingly depends on alignment with proprietary platforms and their data and compliance requirements. Those operating outside these platforms face higher costs of credit, insurance, and market access, not because they are inefficient, but because they are incompatible with prevailing risk models. What emerges is a quiet hierarchy.

At the top are actors who can absorb licensing costs and compliance overheads. Below them are farmers who remain productive but increasingly constrained. At the margins are those pushed out not by failure, but by design. Food security, in this context, is no longer only about calories produced. It is about who remains economically visible.

Earlier work on famine and entitlements showed that hunger often reflects access and standing rather than absolute scarcity. In 2026, that logic is encoded technically: who remains legible to systems that price risk and allocate credit. Finance is the most overlooked driver of this shift.

Climate volatility does not only damage crops. It raises the cost of farming. Insured losses from weather-related “secondary perils” have increased sharply since the early 2000s, prompting tighter insurance conditions and more aggressive risk pricing. Agriculture sits directly in that exposure zone.

Less visible is how finance encodes time. Credit cycles and insurance renewals operate on short horizons. Soil restoration, biodiversity recovery, and local adaptation do not. When financial systems demand predictability faster than ecosystems can recover, they systematically favour what can be standardised quickly, even when that erodes long-term durability.These dynamics rarely appear in public debate because they resemble efficiency, not control. Yet once financial rails enforce agricultural norms, policy debates about land reform, productivity, and inclusion operate downstream of forces that are powerful precisely because they are less visible.

Africa is where these assumptions are most clearly stress-tested. Much of the continent’s agriculture evolved outside formal intellectual property regimes not by ideology, but necessity. Evidence consistently shows that over 80% of seed used by smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa comes from informal systems. This is not romanticism. It is an operating reality.

Smallholder systems underpin food availability across the region. If the dominant agricultural operating system increasingly requires high compliance density, stable connectivity, and recurring licensing costs to remain financeable, food security shifts from a production challenge to a participation challenge.

As global models built around standardisation expand into African markets, they encounter systems optimised for flexibility rather than uniformity. The resulting friction is often framed as underdevelopment. In practice, it is a design mismatch. In the short term, the risks are practical: rising costs, reduced optionality, informal systems marginalised without replacement.

In the long term, the risks are strategic: narrowed genetic diversity, weakened local adaptation, and decision-making migrating away from ecologies towards distant financial and technical centres. This does not imply rejecting innovation. It implies something more demanding: stress-testing imported models against local realities rather than assuming universality.

South Africa sits at a particularly sharp inflection point. Food affordability is a lived constraint. In the lowest income households, food accounts for over 30% of total expenditure, meaning even small shocks transmit quickly into nutrition, schooling, and household stability. Land access alone does not guarantee resilience if the biological and financial operating systems governing land use remain misaligned with local ecological conditions.

A system can expand hectares and still shrink durability. Transformation that focuses on ownership while ignoring system design risks becoming procedural rather than structural.There is a credible counter argument. Consolidation can accelerate innovation. Standardisation can reduce costs. Fragmentation can trap farmers in low-productivity cycles. These risks are real and cannot be dismissed.The trade-off, however, is not between innovation and tradition. It is between optimisation for short-term output and optimisation for long-term resilience. Between systems that perform best under stable assumptions and systems that absorb shock without collapse.This trade-off is rarely explicit, yet it increasingly determines who eats affordably, who farms sustainably, and who remains economically legible when conditions change.

Food security is not only a supply problem. It is a governance problem. It reflects what systems are designed to protect and what they are willing to sacrifice quietly .As agriculture becomes more entangled with finance, data, and intellectual property, the danger is not that food becomes scarce, but that resilience becomes invisible until it is gone. By the time dependency reveals itself, reversal is costly. Security is not neutral. It is designed. And the design choices being made now will determine whether food systems remain adaptive or become brittle when stability can no longer be assumed.That is the real question of food security in 2026. Not how much we can produce, but under what conditions we remain able to feed ourselves when the assumptions behind our systems no longer hold.

Nomvula Zeldah Mabuza is a Risk Governance and Compliance Specialist with extensive experience in strategic risk and industrial operations. She holds a Diploma in Business Management (Accounting) from Brunel University, UK, and is an MBA candidate at Henley Business School, South Africa.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Soccer and former soccer stars have a great deal to offer in a country marked by extreme social disenfranchisement. Drawing from a conversation with Malombo Leshaba — in which Johnny Masegela and Vuma Mfeka also featured — revealed just how powerful that contribution can be.

Last week, my session with Malombo Leshaba, the erstwhile soccer star and former Kaizer Chiefs player, was an engaging encounter focused on the current challenges facing South Africa and the question of how we solve them. We covered a wide range of subjects, with soccer at the centre of the discussion.

Little did I know that among the people I greeted at the Southern Sun Hotel was someone I would meet again a week later. He reminded me of that earlier encounter, when I took a metered taxi home after attending an Ethics Seminar hosted by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) at the Southern Sun Hotel in Pretoria at the beginning of February. When he mentioned it, I replayed the moment in my mind and realised that the maestro I would later have a late-afternoon lunch with had been among the three people I had casually greeted that day. At the time, it was simply an innocent greeting.

Our discussion turned to the evolution of soccer in South Africa, particularly the establishment and rise of Kaizer Chiefs as a living illustration of leadership. In my reading of South African history, few ventures match the conception of Kaizer Chiefs as a social, business and economic idea. While the club has struggled recently — including a heavy defeat to Stellenbosch and a 3–0 loss in the Soweto derby over the weekend — one cannot diminish the legacy built by the octogenarian Kaizer Motaung.

From his days as a player at Orlando Pirates to becoming the founder of a brand admired not only in South Africa but globally, Motaung’s achievement is extraordinary. Awed by this unparalleled accomplishment and struggling to fully comprehend it, I listened as Malombo unlocked what may be the most potent explanation behind Motaung’s success.

As a social scientist and researcher, I have come to appreciate the concept of a self-liquidating catalytic role — a force that enables generational value creation long after its initial spark. This, to me, is what Malombo revealed about Motaung: a clear path toward creating lasting value for generations to come. What is fascinating is that such leadership costs nothing but the courage to ask the right questions.

Malombo recounted how Kaizer Motaung and the late Chippa Moloi once visited his school in Mamelodi. The presence of these soccer maestros filled the school with excitement; learners beamed at the mere sight of them, let alone the opportunity to hear them speak. For Malombo, the visit was life-changing.

After brief greetings, Motaung invited questions. When Malombo raised his hand, a classmate pulled it down and asked skeptically, “What are you going to ask?” The class watched the minor scuffle with curiosity and disbelief. Then came the defining moment.

Malombo asked: “Ntate Kaizer, what makes you play soccer so well?” The class erupted in laughter. Motaung calmed them, but he did not make things easier for Malombo — he responded with a question: “Why do you ask me that?”

Malombo replied, “Because I want to be like you.”

The laughter intensified. “You, Malombo, be like Kaizer? You must be out of your mind,” came the teasing remarks. Again, Motaung restored order and offered his answer.

“There are three Ds that I practise,” he said: “Dedication, Determination and Discipline. These have worked for me. But there is an ultimate letter you must pursue — the letter R, which stands for Respect. Nothing works without respect.”

For many in the room, the verdict on Malombo was already sealed. They could not see in him the makings of another Kaizer Motaung. The three Ds and the R did not seem to align with their perception of him. Even at home, his mother echoed the scepticism of his classmates. But his father, after listening carefully, concluded that perhaps — just perhaps — his son could indeed follow in Motaung’s footsteps.

Three years later, Malombo did not merely dream of becoming like Motaung — he donned the gold and black of Kaizer Chiefs and mesmerised audiences.

As I listened to Malombo, I shared our “Soccer for Stats” initiative at Statistics South Africa, led by Johnny “Black Sunday” Masegela, the former Orlando Pirates player. I also recounted a story about Vuma Mfeka, former goalkeeper of Zulu Royals.

Mfeka was once a borrowed goalkeeper from Ngoye who played for Rovers, a National University of Lesotho league club. As treasurer of both the SRC and Rovers, I would arrange flights for him to Bloemfontein on Fridays and fetch him for the journey to Roma, only for him to fly back on Sundays — all for the love of soccer.

Today, Vuma Mfeka is a life coach to boys growing up without fathers. Malombo has embraced a similar mission. I shared their contact details, and Malombo reached out to both of them.

These soccer players understand, in practical terms, what it takes to help fix South Africa. Motaung’s words continue to loom large in the mission Malombo has carved out for himself.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished alumnus of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The National budget that was delivered by Finance Minister Godongwana last Wednesday enhanced the current bullish movement in share and bond prices on the JSE, whilst the Rand continue to appreciate. The Minister indicated that fiscal policy is now based on a sound strategy towards:

• Maintain macroeconomic stability, with the inflation rate set on a lower trajectory and targets, the primary budget surplus will increase to over 2.0% of GDP and debt levels and debt servicing costs to come down.
• Implement structural reforms, where public private partnerships will play a bigger role.
• Invest in growth-enhancing infrastructure, by awarding more money to road, water, and municipal capital expenditure programs.
• Build state capacity in the judiciary, police, defense, and education.

Financial markets reacted positively to the Budget in terms of no major tax increases, the adjusted personal income tax brackets, and rebates fully in line with inflation and aggressive measures to enhance savings and investment in the economy.

The All Share index on the JSE reached new records on all three consecutive days on Wednesday reaching a new highest value of 128 456 points on Friday. The index gained 3.7% over the last seven trading days and closed the month of February 2.7% higher and 9.2% up since the beginning of the year.

Share prices were supported by a renewed rally in precious metal prices. The gold price shot up last week by $127, or 2.5%, closing on $5 233 per ounce. The platinum price took a big tumble of $782 per ounce from $2 773 to $1 991 (28%) during the last week of January 2026. The precious metal recovered strongly last week and ended Friday on $2 369, gaining 8.8% over the last seven trading days. The precious metals index also recovered from all losses during the last week of January 2026, gaining 15.0% in February to a new record level last Friday of 184 332 points.

The Rand remains strong

The Rand exchange rate appreciated strongly against the mayor currencies during February as it closed strongly last Friday. Against the US dollar the currency strengthened by 15 cents last week and closed Friday at R15.90/$. This is 23 cents stronger than at the beginning of the month. Against the Pound the Rand strengthened by 20 cents last week and by 64 cents in February and traded on Friday at R21.44/£, against R22.08/£. Against the Euro the Rand appreciated by 12 cents last week and is now stronger by 33 cents during February at R18.79/€.

Global markets

US stocks pulled back on Friday and punished companies that could be made losers by the artificial-intelligence revolution. A surprisingly discouraging update on inflation also hurt the market. US wholesale price inflation shot up to 2.9% last month, much higher than the 1.6% that economist expected market. The number was so much worse than expected that it could persuade the Federal Reserve to hold off longer on its cuts to interest rates.

London's FTSE 100 climbed to a record high on Friday, boosted by heavyweight miners and defensive stocks while Barclays slumped on concerns over its exposure to collapsed UK lender Market Financial Solutions. European shares edged higher on Friday, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 closing 0.11% higher at 633.85 points after touching a fresh intraday record of 636.16 points in morning trade.

Prospects for the coming week

This coming week, apart from expectations of higher precious metal prices to continue and the Rand to appreciate further, StatsSA will release South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) economic growth rate for quarter four 2025. It is expected that the real GDP growth rate (quarter-on-quarter and annualised) was 1.8% and the GDP growth rate for 2025 will be 1.6%, as was forecast by Treasury in its Budget documents.

Financial markets await the release of the US non-farm payrolls for February 2026 this coming Friday. Last month the US economy created 130 more jobs. It is expected that it will add only 60,000 more in February. And that the unemployment rate may have increased from 4.3% to 4.4%, increasing the possibility that the Federal Reserve may lower interest rates sooner. On Friday, the US will also announce its latest retail numbers. It is expected that retailers sold less (-0.2%) in January 2026. This also will be negative for US equity markets and the US dollar.

Chris Harmse is the consulting economist of Sequoia Capital Management and a senior lecturer at Stadio Higher Education.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

When Tongaat Hulett announced restructuring that could cost as many as 40,000 jobs, it was not merely a corporate failure. It was a structural alarm. In a country where official unemployment exceeds 30% — and youth unemployment remains persistently above 50% — the loss of tens of thousands of jobs is more than an economic shock. It exposes a deeper question:

At the same time, artificial intelligence is accelerating labour market disruption faster than policymakers anticipated. The convergence of industrial decline and technological automation is reshaping employment at unprecedented speed.

AI Is Compressing White-Collar Employment

Across boardrooms and professional services firms, artificial intelligence is already performing tasks once reserved for highly trained white-collar workers.

AI systems are:

• Drafting contracts
• Analysing financial models
• Producing legal research
• Generating marketing strategies
• Writing software code
• Creating technical documentation

Global research shows that automation disproportionately affects routine cognitive roles — administrative tasks, entry-level analysis, and repeatable knowledge functions. The productivity gains are real.

But productivity gains often reduce workforce requirements. Fewer people are needed to produce the same output. This is the structural shift South Africa must confront. If job creation depends primarily on expanding office-based employment — while AI increases efficiency — unemployment will remain entrenched.

The future of mass employment is no longer concentrated in white-collar expansion. It is shifting toward technical infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, energy systems, and skilled trades — sectors that remain resistant to automation.

The Global Demand Signal: Skilled Labour Is Scarce

Look at Germany. Germany’s industrial competitiveness relies on its dual vocational training system, which produces highly skilled artisans — electricians, welders, machinists, robotics technicians, and industrial maintenance professionals.

Yet Germany currently faces severe labour shortages in these trades, with estimates suggesting shortages running into hundreds of thousands of skilled workers. Its factories cannot expand without technical labour. Its infrastructure cannot scale without hands-on expertise.

This shortage is not unique to Germany. Across Europe and parts of Asia, ageing populations are shrinking domestic workforces while infrastructure renewal and technological upgrades accelerate demand.

These economies need skilled labour. That global demand represents opportunity for South Africa. South Africa has youth. What it lacks is alignment between training systems and global industrial demand. The opportunity is to convert technical training into an exportable national capability.

The Hard Reality: AI Will Not Absorb Millions of Unemployed Youth

South Africa cannot compete with global AI leaders in automation innovation. It cannot rely on government expansion to absorb labour indefinitely. It cannot assume that expanding university enrolment will automatically create jobs.

Even if digital sectors grow, AI will increase productivity — meaning fewer workers may be required to achieve higher output. The structural gap remains: employment growth must outpace automation-driven efficiency. If policy continues prioritising traditional academic pathways while neglecting technical capability, unemployment will deepen. This is not ideological — it is mathematical.

Where the Next Jobs Will Actually Be Created

1 Renewable Energy & Infrastructure Expansion

The global energy transition is accelerating. Solar installations, wind farms, battery storage systems, grid upgrades, and transmission expansion require massive labour deployment. These projects require:

• Electricians
• Technicians
• Installation crews
• Maintenance specialists
• Engineering support teams
• Project managers

These roles cannot be replaced by AI. They require physical execution and sustained infrastructure management. South Africa has natural advantages — abundant solar resources and industrial capacity — to position itself as a renewable manufacturing and service hub for Africa. The job creation potential is immediate and scalable.

2 Advanced Manufacturing & Artisan Export

Instead of relying solely on domestic job absorption, South Africa can build internationally certified artisan academies aligned with global standards. Imagine exporting certified teams of:

• Welders
• CNC machinists
• Industrial electricians
• Construction specialists
• Heavy machinery technicians

These professionals could support infrastructure projects across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. This model mirrors how India scaled software exports — but applied to technical trades. It converts skills training into foreign currency inflows and employment expansion.

3 AI-Augmented Digital Services

Digital employment will not disappear — but it will evolve. The highest growth opportunities will lie in roles that manage, integrate, and supervise AI systems rather than compete against them. These include:

• Cybersecurity implementation
• AI system integration
• Data governance and verification
• Advanced analytics oversight
• Technical platform deployment

Workers who combine technical knowledge with industry understanding will command premium value. Education reform must prioritise hybrid skills development.

4 Agro-Industrial Value Chain Expansion

The decline of commodity-heavy firms such as Tongaat Hulett highlights vulnerability to raw-production dependence. The solution is value addition. Higher employment multipliers exist in:

• Food processing
• Bio-based manufacturing
• Agricultural technology
• Export packaging
• Logistics optimisation

Moving agriculture up the value chain creates far more jobs than exporting raw commodities. Industrial policy must incentivise processing capacity — not just production volume.

Policy Imperatives

If South Africa wants to convert disruption into opportunity, urgent reforms are required:

• Elevate Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) to parity with universities
• Embed apprenticeship systems directly into industry funding structures
• Establish international certification recognition agreements
• Incentivise companies that train and export skilled labour

Most importantly — shift cultural perception. Technical careers must be framed as strategic national assets. Prestige must attach to productivity.

Conclusion: A Defining Moment

The collapse of legacy industries signals transition — not terminal decline. Artificial intelligence is compressing white-collar employment. Global markets are demanding skilled technical labour. South Africa stands at the intersection of labour surplus and global shortage.

The next jobs will not come from defending outdated structures. They will come from building capabilities the world urgently needs. If policymakers, business leaders, and educational institutions align now — South Africa can transform workforce disruption into competitive advantage. If we delay — automation will outpace adaptation.

Dr Nik Eberl is the founder and executive chair: The Future of Jobs Summit™ (Official T20 Side Event). He is also the author of Nation of Champions: How South Africa won the World Cup of Destination Branding.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa’s informal economy is often described as invisible, but its impact is anything but.

From spaza shops to street-side food vendors, the informal sector employs up to 42% of our workforce and contributes as much as 6% of GDP, according to recent estimates.

Valued at between R750 billion and R1 trillion, the township and informal economy have become a quiet giant, keeping millions fed, employed, and connected.

And yet, it remains one of the most precarious sectors of our economy.

Traders navigate red tape, displacement, lack of infrastructure, unsafe conditions, and limited access to finance.

Nearly 60% of informal workers earn below R3 500 per month, often without access to credit, insurance, or even basic storage facilities. For too long, informal traders have been seen as survivalists rather than entrepreneurs, despite many building businesses that have sustained families and communities for decades.

If we want to redesign the future of South African cities, we must start by redesigning how we support our informal traders.

In Cape Town’s Bellville CBD, the metro’s second-largest economic hub, more than 200 permitted informal food traders line the streets around the bustling transport interchange.

Many of these traders have operated for over 20 years, with more than 150  serving nutritious, affordable meals to over 50 thousand daily commuters. There are also close to 1000 unpermitted traders, working to put food on the table, all part of the city’s economic heartbeat.

Yet their reality is fraught with challenges.

Traders often work in makeshift, weather-beaten structures that are neither hygienic nor secure. They face displacement by law enforcement for non-compliance with strict bylaws, and the daily costs of assembling, dismantling, and transporting stock eat into already slim margins.

This is where Bellville is stepping forward as a living laboratory for innovation. The Greater Tygerberg Partnership (GTP), together with the South African Urban Food and Farming Trust (SAUFFT), AfriFOODlinks, and design collaborators, is piloting co-designed trading prototypes, new mobile and stationary structures built to be safe, hygienic, functional, and compliant.

These prototypes go beyond physical design.

They are about dignity, opportunity, and urban renewal. By designing weatherproof, lockable, and mobile units, we can reduce the daily burden of setup and transport. They integrate with municipal water and waste systems, addressing public health concerns while allowing traders to operate in clean, sustainable environments.

By reducing conflict with law enforcement and ensuring compliance with food safety standards, these structures allow traders to focus on what they do best: running businesses that feed the city.

Most importantly, we must recognise informal traders as entrepreneurs. Many traders have been in business for over a decade, responding to market demand and contributing to a symbiotic relationship with commuters and surrounding formal businesses. With the right infrastructure, they can thrive as legitimate business operators and not merely survive on the margins.

Informal Trade as a Driver of Urban Renewal

The truth is that supporting informal traders is not charity, and the informal economy is often not well understood. It is sound urban and economic policy. The informal sector is the fifth-largest employment provider in Cape Town and a critical contributor to the national economy. By investing in its infrastructure, cities strengthen their resilience, improve food security, and promote inclusive growth.

There is a renewed effort to better understand the informal sector, with deeper work under way to identify the needs of informal traders and develop environments and infrastructure that support their growth. The CoCT Executive Mayor Geordin Hill‑Lewis, supports the informal economy and often stresses credibility, legality, and opportunity, framing informal activity as something to be integrated into the city’s growth rather than suppressed.

The Bellville initiative shows that urban regeneration and informal trade are complementary as opposed to opposing forces. By providing fit-for-purpose structures, we enable informal markets to coexist with transport hubs, formal retail, and public spaces in a way that is safe, efficient, and mutually beneficial.

Whether in a small township market or a bustling inner-city CBD, the challenges traders face are strikingly similar, based on the GTP informal traders 2019 survey: weather proofing, storage, hygiene, ablution, security, parking and compliance. Models like this offer a replicable solution that could be adapted for Durban, Johannesburg, or even cities elsewhere on the continent.

At a national level, South Africa is already moving towards simplifying regulation, integrating digital payments, and supporting SMMEs through innovative financing. By coupling these policy shifts with practical, community-driven design solutions, we can unlock the full potential of the informal economy.

The informal sector is not a problem to be managed but an opportunity to be embraced. By reimagining trading spaces, we acknowledge the crucial role informal traders play in our economy and our daily lives. We give them dignity, security, and opportunity.

Bellville may be the starting point, but the vision is bigger, for a South Africa where informal traders are seen as entrepreneurs, where cities are designed to include rather than exclude, and where the informal economy is recognised not as an afterthought, but as a cornerstone of sustainable urban development.

The question is not whether we can afford to invest in informal traders. The question is whether we can afford not to.

Warren Hewitt, CEO at GTP.

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BUSINESS REPORT 

Unpacking Budget 2026, debt stabilisation is projected as expected this year, and gross debt is expected to peak at 78.9%of gross domestic product (GDP) in the current tax year, then drop below 75%/GDP in five years’ time as expected. Revenue lifted by R29bn, withdrawing the R20bn tax proposal for 2026/27l, and the rand was little changed at R15.88/USD.

There are no proposals for tax increases over the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework period (MTEF) either, of 2026/27 to 2028/29, save the counterbalancing effect of a R1bn rise in the carbon fuel levy but a R1bn inflation drop in the general fuel levy. This is as revenue was adjusted upwards in the MTEF as well, now running at a growth rate of between 5.0% y/y to 6.0% y/y per year, all main budget figures. The revenue overrun in 2026/27 with this year’s (2025/26) is close to R55bn resulting in tax relief (for bracket creep) as expected for 2026/27.

For this year, 2025/26, which is near complete, debt service costs are revised lower, by about R6bn, the general fuel levy stayed unchanged and less than R1bn increase in public sector costs, adding to the positive outcome overall.  South Africa runs a primary balance surplus over the forecast period, indicative of fiscal sustainability improving. The budget deficit is projected to fall from -4.5%/GDP this year, to -3.1% of GDP by 2028/29.

Credit ratings upgrades are expected from S&P (currently BB) in the next 18 months and by Fitch (BB-) and Moody's (BB equivalent) over three years if debt/GDP nears 75% as economic growth accelerates to 3.0% y/y by 2030/31. A fiscal anchor would help achieve fiscal consolidation and credit rating upgrades, and will be proposed in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement later this year.

Instituting a credible fiscal anchor is key to improving the governance of state finances, which have also been eroded by the pressure of state capture. Reducing the debt (and deficit) to GDP ratios is key for strengthening the bond market..

South Africa runs a primary balance surplus over the forecast period, indicative of fiscal sustainability improving. The budget deficit is projected to fall from -4.5%/GDP this year, to -3.1% of GDP by 2028/29.

The government lifted its growth forecast for 2025, to 1.4% y/y from 1.2% y/y to 1.6% y/y this year from 1.5% y/y, with 2028 unchanged. It lowered its inflation forecast this year to 3.4% y/y from 3.2% y/y, 2027 and 2028 unchanged at 3.3% y/y and 3.2% y/y. This has had the impact of reducing the nominal GDP outcome and the Budget notes “(t)he higher debt peak is attributed to weaker nominal GDP growth and increased borrowing in 2025/26”.

For the usual increase in sin taxes “(e)xcise duties on alcoholic beverages and tobacco products increase in line with inflation”. “Effective 1 April 2026, the compulsory VAT registration threshold increases to R2.3 million”.

While a good budget from a financial market perspective, the outcome was largely factored in for the rand, although the JSE gained, with revenue benefiting from windfalls from the jump in precious metals prices and agricultural production

Annabel Bishop is Investec's chief economist.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

This year’s Budget did not arrive with fireworks.

There were no headline tax shocks, no emergency levies, no dramatic restructuring of the tax system. And yet, in its restraint, the 2026/27 Budget may prove more significant than many of its louder predecessors.

For the first time in several years, government has stepped back from signalling new tax increases.

The proposed R20 billion tax hike has been withdrawn. Personal income tax brackets and rebates have been adjusted in line with inflation, offering genuine relief from fiscal drag. Medical tax credits have been nudged upward.

Corporate income tax remains at 27%. VAT remains at 15%. Capital gains tax and dividend withholding tax are unchanged.

In a country where tax debates have often been shaped by pressure and urgency, the absence of new burdens is itself a deliberate choice.

From a practitioner’s perspective, this is a stabilisation Budget. It reflects an understanding that households are stretched, businesses are cautious, and investor confidence remains fragile. The state appears to recognise that predictability, at this juncture, may be more valuable than revenue ambition.

That said, fiscal consolidation has not been abandoned. The deficit is projected to narrow over the medium term. A primary surplus is expected to be sustained. Public debt is forecast to stabilise at just under 80% of GDP before gradually declining. Debt-service costs, which have consumed an ever-larger portion of revenue in recent years, are expected to ease slightly as financial conditions improve.

These projections are not exuberant. Growth is expected to rise only modestly toward 2% over the next few years. Inflation is assumed to remain contained. In other words, the macroeconomic path is steady rather than transformative. The Budget reads less like a bold economic reset and more like a careful attempt to rebuild credibility.

Where the more subtle shift emerges is in the approach to revenue. The state is signalling that it does not intend to rely on new tax rates to close the fiscal gap. Instead, the emphasis is on administrative capacity: compliance, enforcement, digitisation, payroll verification and expenditure discipline. Revenue growth is expected to come from better collection, not higher statutory burdens.

For taxpayers and businesses, this changes the conversation. The risk is no longer primarily legislative. It is operational. Documentation, governance, and compliance systems matter more than ever. The margin for error will narrow, even if the headline rates remain stable.

On the expenditure side, the composition of spending deserves attention. While overall expenditure continues to rise in nominal terms, capital allocations are projected to grow faster than public sector compensation. That suggests an attempt — long overdue — to prioritise infrastructure and network industries. Energy, logistics and transport remain binding constraints on growth. Without improvement in these sectors, fiscal discipline alone will not deliver prosperity.

The social wage continues to dominate non-interest expenditure, reflecting South Africa’s enduring commitment to redistribution. But redistribution now sits within a more disciplined fiscal framework. There is less room for expansion without consequence.

The central question, then, is not whether the numbers balance on paper. It is whether execution follows intention. Stabilising debt is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Capital expenditure must translate into functioning infrastructure. Reform commitments must move beyond policy statements. Municipal governance, state-owned enterprise reform and service delivery will determine whether this period of consolidation becomes a platform for growth or merely a holding pattern.

This Budget does not attempt to be revolutionary. It seeks to be credible. It offers a pause in tax escalation, a signal of restraint, and an opportunity to rebuild trust in fiscal management.

South Africa has bought itself time. Whether that time is used productively will define the next chapter.

Willem J Oberholzer CEO of Fyncor Group CA(SA), M Com(Tax), Chartered Tax Advisor.

PERSONAL FINANCE 

As Parliament opens and the national budget is presented, public debate inevitably focuses on the headline issues: large infrastructure programmes, rail and port performance, market access, and other macroeconomic levers. These are undeniably important to South Africa’s growth prospects. But their sheer scale also creates the impression that only grand, multi-billion-rand interventions can make a difference.

In reality, some of the most effective economic reforms are not the largest or most expensive. They are often the practical, well-designed systems that once worked, delivered measurable results, and were later abandoned.

A case in point is waste tyre management. As recently as eight years ago, the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA) operated a functional national waste tyre programme. Between 2013 and 2017, it created more than 3,000 jobs and supported the establishment of 226 small and medium enterprises, all at zero cost to the State. It demonstrated how environmental management, job creation, and enterprise development could be aligned.

In 2017, REDISA was unlawfully removed, a finding confirmed by the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2019. Yet, it was never reinstated. Responsibility instead shifted to the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment’s Waste Management Bureau. The Bureau has for eight years consistently failed to meet its tyre diversion targets. In the past few months, the Bureau has gone to tender to establish a million square metres of waste tyre depot space – enough to store over a million tonnes of waste tyres – and to sell off some R100 million worth of tyre recycling equipment that it bought but could not put to use. This is not management, it is controlled dumping. The consequences have been stark: job losses, dangerously overcrowded depots that pose real fire risks, discarded tyres contaminating groundwater, along with widespread illegal burning that releases toxic fumes

Behind these failures lies a deeper problem: economic exclusion. Micro-collectors, transporters, and small recyclers — once the backbone of a functioning system — have been pushed out. Many now struggle to earn a living. These workers seldom feature in budget speeches or policy statements, yet they are essential to keeping communities clean, families fed and local economies active.

This neglect is economically short-sighted. Research indicates that effective management of just 13 waste streams could raise South Africa’s GDP growth by up to 1.5 percentage points. The REDISA model offered a practical proof of concept for a broader circular economy. It showed that environmental policy, if properly designed and implemented, can be a growth strategy.

The scale of the opportunity is significant. South Africa discards approximately 70,000 tyres every day. These represent a continuous stream of recoverable resources that are currently being lost.

At present, an environmental levy of R2.30 per kilogram is collected on tyre sales, generating cumulatively more than R5 billion since 2017. Yet less than half of this revenue is spent on waste tyre management — the very purpose for which it is raised. This undermines both public trust and policy effectiveness. The levy ring-fencing should be enforced and applied as an investment in sustainable economic infrastructure. Sound fiscal governance depends on credible, traceable use of public funds.

Equally concerning is the quality of information guiding decision-making. The Waste Management Bureau’s data is outdated, inconsistent, and riddled with definitional errors. These documents are publicly available and reveal a system operating without reliable evidence. That is troubling, particularly given that the same framework governs hazardous waste streams, including medical and radioactive waste.

Policy made in the absence of accurate data is policy made blindly. The good news is that government does not need to address these challenges alone. International experience shows that well-regulated private sector participation strengthens public institutions by bringing operational expertise, innovation, and accountability. Ultimately, expecting the state to manage South Africa’s waste crisis in isolation is neither realistic nor efficient.

Good economic governance also requires longer planning horizons. Short-term budgeting and annual adjustments discourage private investment and undermine partnership formation. Circular economy infrastructure takes time to develop and requires stable, multi-year commitments. While this demands upfront discipline, the cost of inaction — lost jobs, environmental damage, and public health risks — is far higher.

South Africa’s economic recovery will not be driven by megaprojects alone. It will also depend on restoring and scaling interventions that have already proven their value.

Reinstating effective, smaller-scale systems such as REDISA is not about nostalgia. It is about evidence-based policy. It is about recognising that growth is built from the ground up, through functioning institutions, empowered entrepreneurs, and credible governance.

If policymakers are serious about inclusive growth, sustainability, and fiscal responsibility, they should start by fixing what once worked.

Dr Chris Crozier, Executive Committee Member, Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA).

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa’s automotive sector remains a critical anchor of employment, exports and industrial capability, yet it is under growing pressure from both domestic structural constraints and rapid global technological change. As value chains shift towards net-zero production and New Energy Vehicles (NEVs), the country faces a dual imperative: protecting existing jobs while positioning the sector for inclusive, low-carbon growth. This must be done in a manner that addresses long-standing inequalities related to race, gender, geography and economic access, while maintaining competitiveness and affordability.

The proposal by the International Trade Administration Commission to raise import tariffs on vehicles from China and India from 25% to as high as 50% reflects a defensive industrial policy response to a surge in lower-cost imports. Higher tariffs could provide short-term relief for local assemblers and serve as leverage to encourage foreign original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to invest in domestic production rather than exporting fully built-up vehicles. This is particularly significant given the role of vehicle assembly in sustaining regional economies and extensive value chains.

However, tariffs alone do not resolve South Africa’s structural competitiveness challenges. Persistent constraints that include policy uncertainty, energy reliability and affordability, logistics bottlenecks, distance from major markets and limited export integration. These challenges continue to undermine the sector’s global positioning. At the same time, the country faces a severe affordability crisis. New vehicle prices remain far beyond the reach of most households and small businesses, making lower-cost imports an important entry point into mobility. A sharp tariff increase would likely raise prices further, slow fleet renewal and push consumers towards the second-hand market, with limited benefit for domestic manufacturing in the medium term.

Higher tariffs risk increasing the cost of already expensive electric vehicles, delaying market readiness and exacerbating transition risks for the sector. Both industrialisation and affordability are non-negotiable in a just transition; policy choices must therefore balance job protection, consumer access and long-term decarbonisation pathways. Short-term trade measures cannot substitute for a clear, sequenced strategy to strengthen local assembly, deepen component manufacturing and enable the shift to low- and zero-emission vehicles.

In 2024, the Asian region accounted for over half of global vehicle production and sales, with China dominating electric vehicle manufacturing and exports. As a member of BRICS and a participant in multiple trade and investment partnerships, South Africa has an opportunity to leverage these relationships to attract investment across automotive, mining and renewable-energy value chains. The strategic objective should be localisation of key technologies — particularly batteries and components — alongside phased commitments by foreign OEMs to establish domestic production capacity.

The South African Automotive Masterplan (SAAM) 2035 provides a coherent framework for this transition, targeting 1% of global production, 60% local content, local employment growth and accelerated NEV adoption. These goals are consistent with the Just Transition Framework’s emphasis on inclusive, low-carbon industrialisation. Yet progress on NEVs remains limited: only a small share of such vehicles sold locally are domestically produced, and component localisation is still nascent. Without decisive action, the global shift to electric mobility could erode South Africa’s automotive base rather than transform it.

The European Union’s decision to relax its 2035 internal combustion engine targets creates short-term export space for locally produced Internal Combustion Engin (ICE) and hybrid vehicles. While this offers breathing room, it also risks delaying domestic investment in NEV innovation and undermining long-term emissions commitments. South Africa must therefore use this window strategically by maintaining current export flows while accelerating the regulatory, infrastructure and investment frameworks required for electrification.

Industrial policy must also extend beyond the factory floor. Greater utilisation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could expand regional markets for vehicles and components, supporting economies of scale and deeper intra-African value chains. At the same time, localisation strategies should be linked to broader economic diversification, skills development and small-enterprise participation to ensure that the benefits of the transition are widely shared.

Crucially, vehicle technology alone will not deliver a just and climate-compatible transport system. Electrification must be complemented by spatial planning that reduces travel distances, significant improvements in public transport quality and accessibility, a shift of passengers and freight from road to rail, and support for shared and low-carbon mobility. These interventions are essential to lowering emissions, reducing costs and improving mobility outcomes, particularly for low-income households.

The upcoming update of the Green Transport Strategy, undertaken in partnership with the Department of Transport, will be a key policy signal in this regard. It will outline scenarios and pathways for aligning the transport sector with South Africa’s net-zero trajectory, as reflected in the Nationally Determined Contribution. By integrating industrial, trade, infrastructure and social considerations, it can provide the long-term certainty required for investment while ensuring that the transition supports workers, communities and consumers.

In this context, tariff measures should be viewed as one instrument within a broader, coordinated strategy. The priority must be to address structural constraints, enable localisation, expand regional markets and accelerate the shift to low-carbon mobility in a manner that is socially inclusive and economically viable. A just transition for the automotive sector depends not only on protecting existing capacity, but on actively building the industries, skills and systems that will sustain competitiveness in a decarbonising global economy.

Simphiwe Ngwena, Senior Manager: Mitigation at the Presidential Climate Commission.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

One shudders in disbelief at efforts to scrap black economic empowerment (BEE). If truth be told, BEE never started the full journey but they now say it must be scrapped. This begs the question: Are blacks the children of a lesser God”.

In May 1998 the Black Business Council (BBC) urgently appointed then former ANC secretary general and now president, Cyril Ramaphosa, to chair a BEE Commission as acceptance and implementation of BEE were erratic. From this BBC intervention, and further toing and froing, the Department of Trade and Industry, now Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) ultimately came with Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment legislation in 2003.

There is no doubt that there has been some action and major achievements but the ultimate barometer is poverty, unemployment and inequality (PUI). To add to this is the sustainability of black firms, more so small one. Here are the facts.

According to Stats SA 23.2 million live below R1,415 per person per month. Talk in the townships, villages and informal settlements is that in some families adults take turns eating so that the children have something. Ai, and to add to this, in some instances take their school feeding packs home so the family eats.

Inequality continues to be a huge problem and ours is the highest in the world with the gini-coefficient at .63 to .67 and with 10% of population owning 80% of total wealth. Worse still, inequality within the black community, estimated at close to .6, is on the gallop. The latest unemployment figures, released last Monday, show that  unemployment is at a staggering 31.4%. Over 12 million South Africans are jobless.

Finally, in terms of black small business survival; more than 80% collapse in their first five years. To add to this 1,3 million of black small businesses have turnovers, not profits, of R18000 per annum. The Black Industrialists Programme, ostensibly the BEE flagship, is running aground as officials in government and the development finance institutions have difficulty funding businesses with no track record. This results in companies owned by the non-indigenous, virtual fronts, getting support. Fancy, this  from people who themselves had no profiles when appointed to these positions.

The PUI miseries and small business unsustainability above show that not only is economic growth urgent, but it must be mainly driven by the enterprise and supplier development (ESD) leg of BEE.  Integrity also has to be a crucial and compulsory element. It is hoped an expected announcement by Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) Minister Parks Tau on BEE will address the above.

For the record, the reconstruction of the economy and its activities to serve the common good is not new. Hence, a study by academics Guerrero, Liñán and Cáceres-Carrasco in developed and developing economies and released in 2021 gives examples of how countries have come with specific interventions to stimulate economic activity in specific localities or population groups. Thus, BEE is not something unusual and in our case it deals with a specific problem that must be corrected for the benefit and betterment of the whole country, not blacks only.

What is also problematic is focus on two issues; corruption and  so-called “enrichment of the few”. Let us first deal with one, corruption. The focus on corruption is justifiable and it must thus be outrightly condemned.  It has reached preposterous levels and the perpetrators simply close their eyes to the suffering and, instead, revel in their latest vehicles, big houses and whiskies. What happened to Ubuntu?

But, let us not restrict it to blacks only as it is a cancer involving black and white and is eating the soul of our country. Unfortunately, the government is not dealing with it with the warranted determination, ruthlessness and urgency.

On the broader scene and also to bring in the aspect of enrichment; with the wisdom of hindsight it is clear that our approach to BEE was not premised on long term economic growth with the betterment of the black community and society in general at the centre. It was a quick fix approach and did not factor in realities such as the embeddedness of capital and human frailties and desires. Ours was a university student mass meeting attitude, which unfortunately still persists.

On the “enrichment of the few” narrative, companies are going to empower in way that will further their interests and those of shareholders. It is natural; the Catholic Church does not appoint a protestant to edit its newspaper. For effective implementation of BEE the ball is in government’s court, that is Tau and his colleagues.

Numerous reports on BEE show that implementation is, at best, a by the way and at times apologetic. Since 1995 the development of implementation of BEE was a small section in the then dti and not the foundational pillar of the department as the driver of South Africa’s economy. After all, it was the black majority that was elbowed out of the economy. The Land Acts (1913 and 1936) and Apartheid legislation elbowing blacks out of economic participation are not a figment of the imagination.

As an example of lacklustre implementation, nobody can justify why the departments of agriculture nationally and provincially rightly create the emerging farmers programme but do not link it to the school feeding scheme in which the providers of food to schools must source from these emerging farmers, and it is a condition of the contract.  

Furthermore, the ESD leg which should be compulsory across the economy is the least or worst implemented. Yet, as the Sanlam Gauge reports, it is the most important. China wiped out 95% of its poverty through mass entrepreneurship as a World Bank report shows. The report lauds the Chinese Government’s singleness of purpose to wipe out poverty.

Our country’s future hinges on the aggressive implementation of BEE with the sole purposes of wiping out poverty and unemployment and integrating blacks into the economy. Greater focus must be at the lower levels but without abandoning the commanding heights. It is painful to see thousands of our youth clean cars at parking lots for a livelihood. Are these black youths indeed children of a lesser God.

Dr Thami Mazwai is chairman of Mtiya Dynamics, an ESD company.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Debate has been ongoing for years on South Africa’s offshore oil and gas potential. And during this time, South Africa has missed out on billions of rand per year in potential Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from offshore oil and gas projects. This is not for a lack of opportunity. Complex regulatory processes extending decision-making timelines and misconceptions amongst civil society come at an immense opportunity cost. Exploration capital is highly mobile and countries’ competitivity will impact companies’ decisions and direct where global investment will flow. Effective and timely coordination is in the national interest and 2026 is a make-or-break year.

The opportunity cost of uncertainty 

An economic analysis performed in 2025 by FTI Consulting and commissioned by the EnerGeo Alliance shows that offshore oil and gas development could materially strengthen South Africa’s economy and energy security.

The Orange Basin is a perfect example of the significance of the opportunity because it straddles the maritime border between Namibia and South Africa. Namibia’s approach illustrates how regulatory certainty and clear timelines can accelerate investment decisions. Around 25 exploration and appraisal wells were drilled since 2022. Namibia’s successful exploration operations resulting into commercial discoveries validate the potential for South Africa.

Drilling operations require engineering, fabrication, maintenance and repair services. With Saldanha Bay strategically located, South Africa stands to benefit immensely from providing these support services to operations in both countries. But to do so requires policy certainty, permitting ensured within reasonable timelines and coordinated execution. South Africa has yet to fully realise the scale of this opportunity.

The offshore petroleum industry is ready to invest in both the Orange and Outeniqua Basins. So far, the potential reward has outweighed the opportunity cost of uninvested capital. But as new exploration opportunities are found in other parts of the world, the window to participate meaningfully in this opportunity is narrowing.

Government faces the important task of balancing economic development, environmental protection and social cohesion. With collaboration and clarity, these objectives can be achieved.

Energy uncertainty remains a national concern

Economic growth isn’t the only factor at play: energy security is another consideration. According to FTI Consulting analysis of Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources and SA Revenue Service import data, more than 80% of South Africa’s oil and gas is imported. Due to domestic refinery closures, South Africa’s refined fuel imports more than doubled since 2019.

Governments prioritise their domestic fuel supply during times of political uncertainty, leading to export restrictions. Refinery-to-market shipping routes like the Suez Canal and Red Sea are also prone to disruption by geopolitical shocks. Domestic offshore oil and gas production could reduce import dependence and this risk significantly. 

The solution requires coordinated policy execution.

The 2025 Energeo Alliance commissioned report states the Luiperd and Brulpadda operations in the Outeniqua Basin could improve South Africa’s energy security and contribute up to R25 billion per year to the balance of payments by replacing imported oil and refined products. This is a balanced and pragmatic energy transition that maintains reliability today while building toward lower-carbon solutions tomorrow. 

FTI Consulting estimates that Luiperd alone could contribute R8.6bn annually in direct and indirect taxes and royalties. Based on employment modelling, these projects will create up to 20,000 direct, indirect and induced job opportunities, acting as a critical enabler to the South African economy. 

Offshore oil and gas projects typically trigger long-life infrastructure developments. These stand to benefit a host of other industries, partly because they require permanent logistics bases. South Africa will benefit from investments in port and marine infrastructure, gas and oil pipelines, gas processing and treatment facilities, power generation and grid integration, refining, fuels and petrochemical infrastructure and industrial manufacturing facilities. These are just the investments that will directly support operations.

Successful development of these assets depends on clear, predictable and well-coordinated regulatory processes. Oil and gas exploration is a project of national interest that requires coordinated decision-making and greater certainty around timelines. 

2026 is the moment of truth

Job creation, infrastructure development, energy security, renewables and the resulting GDP growth is within our grasp. With political government coordination, these projects can become a source of growth, hope and dignity for countless South Africans.

Niall Kramer, spokesperson for the Offshore Petroleum Association of South Africa (OPASA.)

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa’s energy debate is increasingly shaped by a tension that sits beneath every technical or commercial discussion. It is not only about tariffs, transmission ownership, localisation targets or coal plant retirements. It is about trust.

The recent barrage around the Transmission System Operator has exposed how fragile that trust remains. On one side are reformers arguing that structural separation of transmission is essential to unlock investment and restore credibility. On the other are voices cautioning against over reach, warning that attempts to neutralise bad actors can produce collateral damage. Both positions contain truth.

What sits underneath them is a trust deficit that still defines the operating environment. It is tempting to argue that state capture is behind us. Operational improvements at Eskom have been real. Generation performance has stabilised. Diesel use has fallen sharply. Crisis conditions have eased. Legislative reform has advanced. The President has intervened to clarify that transmission ownership must sit in an independent state-owned entity. These are not trivial steps.Yet it would be naïve to believe that institutional culture resets itself simply because policy has been amended.

State capture was not a single episode. It was a governance pattern. It entrenched networks of influence across procurement systems, municipal structures, regulatory processes and corporate leadership. The Zondo Commission documented this at scale. The institutional memory of that period does not evaporate in one electoral cycle.The result is a structural suspicion that now attaches to every major reform initiative.

When Eskom proposes life extension for ageing coal stations, critics assume hidden motives. When localisation rules are  amended, investors question whether they will be enforced consistently. When transmission reform shifts direction, stakeholders read political interference. Even when improvements are genuine, the default reaction is doubt.This reaction is not irrational. South Africa has repeatedly drafted credible reform policy only to see implementation diluted. In the renewable energy programme, stop-start procurement cycles and political intervention undermined manufacturing investment. In transmission reform, ring-fencing without full separation blurred accountability. In municipal governance, debt accumulation continued despite regulatory oversight. Each episode reinforced the perception that reform can be neutered from within.

Trust shocks of this magnitude alter behaviour. Investors demand higher returns to compensate for uncertainty. Civil society groups scrutinise every policy detail. Industry lobby groups push aggressively to shape outcomes in their favour. Public debate hardens. The system becomes slower because every actora ssumes that someone, somewhere, is acting in bad faith. Goodwill is insufficient in such an environment. Public statements about integrity do not restore confidence.

Trust returns through repeated, observable evidence. Transmission assets must actually transfer to the new entity. Connection queues must be published and adhered to. Procurement outcomes must withstand scrutiny. Coal retirements must proceed on schedule where economics demand it. Local content rules must align with industrial capability and be enforced consistently. Reformers often argue that constant questioning slows progress. That frustration is understandable.

Implementation is difficult even under stable conditions. But the questioning itself is part of the repair process. In a system that has experienced institutional capture, scrutiny is not sabotage. It is a safeguard.This does not mean that every reform initiative is compromised. Nor does it imply that current leadership operates in bad faith. Operational recovery at Eskom has demonstrated that performance can improve.Transmission ownership clarification by the Presidency signals political will to correct earlier contradictions. These are necessary steps.They are not sufficient.

South Africa’s energy system now operates in a post-capture reality. Incentives remain misaligned where monopoly structures persist. Implementation risk remains where governance overlaps blur accountability. Lobby groups continue to test the boundaries of reform. The task is not to declare the crisis over. The task is to institutionalise reform in ways that make back sliding difficult.This is where structural design matters. Independent transmission governance reduces discretion.Transparent market rules limit rent-seeking. Competitive procurement constrains manipulation.

Separation of roles clarifies accountability. These are not ideological preferences. They are guardrails.The trust deficit will not close through optimism. It will close through evidence. If grid expansion accelerates under an independent TSO, confidence will follow. If water infrastructure stabilises underdirect intervention and consequence management, confidence will follow. If tariff adjustments reflectgenuine cost discipline rather than protection of legacy inefficiencies, confidence will follow.

South Africa has entered a phase where the quality of implementation will determine the credibility of reform. The system no longer needs crisis declarations. It needs institutional behaviour that holds steady under pressure.

Thomas Garner holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Pretoria and an MBA from the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Thomas is self-employed focusing on energy, energy related critical minerals, water and communities. He is a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering and a Management Committee member of the South African Independent Power Producers Association.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

For years, businesses have wrestled with the notion that sustainability comes at a premium. Going green was often seen as a noble goal, but one that carried additional expenses. Today, this thinking is being turned on its head. Sustainable IT practices, ranging from energy-efficient data centres to smarter use of cloud resources, are proving that companies can reduce their carbon footprint and operating costs simultaneously. The real challenge is less about whether this is possible and more about how organisations can effectively adopt these practices effectively. The financial benefits of these practices are significant, offering a promising outlook for businesses.

The rising cost of energy-hungry IT

Modern enterprises are powered by technology. From sprawling data centres to constant connectivity, IT underpins nearly every business function. Yet, this reliance comes at a cost: energy bills. Globally, data centres consume approximately 1–2% of all electricity produced, and demand is expected to grow as AI, automation, and digital transformation continue. For businesses footing these energy bills, the financial burden is significant. At the same time, the environmental consequences are undeniable. Reducing energy consumption is no longer just a sustainability checkbox; it’s a financial imperative.

Efficiency is the new currency

The most immediate way to cut both costs and emissions is by making IT more efficient. Energy-efficient servers, cooling systems, and storage solutions can significantly reduce power consumption. For example, virtualisation reduces the need for physical hardware, allowing one machine to handle multiple workloads. This not only saves space but also trims down energy use. Similarly, modern cooling technologies that rely on ambient air or liquid cooling are replacing outdated air conditioning systems, cutting both electricity use and long-term costs. The result is a leaner, greener infrastructure that pays for itself over time.

Cloud optimisation: more than just migration

Moving to the cloud has long been touted as a sustainability move, but the real benefits come when cloud use is optimised. Simply lifting and shifting workloads into the cloud may not deliver significant energy or cost savings. However, re-architecting applications for cloud-native environments can. Auto-scaling ensures that businesses only pay for resources when they are needed, while shutting down idle workloads prevents unnecessary energy consumption. The cloud also allows access to shared infrastructure, which spreads the environmental impact across multiple users and maximises efficiency. Done right, cloud optimisation is a prime example of how sustainability and cost-effectiveness align.

Smarter resource management: doing more with less

Beyond infrastructure, businesses need to consider how they manage IT resources on a day-to-day basis. This is where smarter policies come into play. Encouraging remote collaboration tools, extending hardware lifecycles through proper maintenance, and recycling end-of-life equipment all contribute to both savings and sustainability. For instance, extending the lifespan of laptops and servers by even one year reduces the energy and materials required for manufacturing replacements. Meanwhile, implementing strict governance over IT resource usage ensures that departments avoid costly redundancies. These practices may seem insignificant in isolation, but their cumulative impact is substantial.

The strategic role of third-party IT providers

Not every business has the internal expertise to overhaul IT operations sustainably, and this is where third-party IT providers can play a crucial role. Managed service providers, for example, bring specialised knowledge in areas such as cloud architecture, data centre design, and IT lifecycle management. They can help organisations identify inefficiencies that may not be obvious internally and implement greener solutions that are also cost-effective. Crucially, they can track and report both financial and environmental metrics, enabling businesses to demonstrate progress toward sustainability goals without losing sight of the bottom line.

Balancing savings and sustainability

The temptation for many organisations is to focus solely on cost reduction, but sustainability requires a broader view. The real value of green IT lies in striking a balance between financial gains and long-term environmental benefits. By adopting a holistic strategy that combines efficient infrastructure, optimised cloud use, and responsible resource management, businesses can achieve both. And in an era where customers and investors increasingly scrutinise environmental impact, these dual gains also translate into reputational capital. Green IT isn’t just about saving money or saving the planet; it’s about ensuring long-term business resilience.

A future where cost and carbon align

The good news is that the trade-off between costs and sustainability is becoming less pronounced. Advances in technology mean that greener solutions are often also the most efficient ones. For organisations willing to rethink their IT strategies, sustainability and profitability can, and should, go hand in hand. The businesses that recognise this sooner rather than later will not only save on energy bills but also position themselves as leaders in the global shift toward a greener digital economy. The alignment of sustainability and profitability presents a significant business opportunity for those who are ready to embrace it.

Amritesh Anand, Vice President & MD – Technology Services Group at In2IT Technologies

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has strongly reinforced the message that business has been consistently conveying: South Africa’s structural reform programme has the potential to deliver meaningful economic growth – as long as the country maintains the pace of reform implementation.

In its recent Article IV consultation, the IMF said the economy stands to gain up to 9% in real output over the medium term, though this is not its baseline and consensus forecasts for 2028 remain at only 1.8% growth.

It is important not to raise expectations; BLSA re-emphasises that the economic benefits of the reforms will take a long time to kick in fully, a message that is important to convey to the public, particularly in the context of widespread frustration over the lack of job opportunities for the country’s youth. But it is also important to emphasise that the structural reform programme does have the potential to deliver the kind of economic growth that will make a meaningful difference to unemployment and raise standards of living, particularly when the municipal-level reforms start to kick in.

The country is already experiencing numerous benefits delivered by reforms, including the lack of loadshedding and exporters being able to deliver higher volumes of cargo due to rail and port improvements. Aligned with that is the fiscal consolidation story of the past three years that has been hard-won. It took painful decisions and real discipline to reach the point where, for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, public debt will not grow as a share of GDP.

The results are improved credit ratings, grey-list removal and a strong stock market performance, although geopolitical and trade tensions are major contributors too. But the lower bond yields the country is enjoying can provide real, immediate benefits, not only to government borrowing costs, but also to businesses: cheaper funding is available. BLSA welcomes the fact that President Ramaphosa focused on this in his SONA speech.

The Budget on Wednesday, we hope, will build on these gains. It should provide strong support where needed to drive and accelerate reforms, while on the fiscal front, it should build on its trajectory. Last year there was a primary budget surplus of R68.5bn, debt-service costs came in R4.8bn below the Budget estimate and revenue exceeded expectations by R19.3bn. These were significant achievements in a low-growth environment.

What we want to see from Minister Godongwana is confirmation that the fiscal framework holds, that the expenditure reviews he launched – which identified R37.5bn in potential savings – will translate into real changes in the 2026 MTEF cycle, and that underperforming programmes are indeed being closed, as he promised.

We also want to see follow-through on the R7.5bn additional allocation to SARS, which the minister said could generate between R20bn and R50bn in additional annual revenue, including through targeting illicit trade in tobacco and other sectors. Business Against Crime South Africa has been working closely with government on this, and it remains a priority.

Equally important, the Budget should send a clear signal on state-owned enterprises: there must be no further bailouts. The fiscus cannot continue absorbing the losses of underperforming SOEs. A dispassionate assessment of each entity’s return on investment – using proven tools to measure social impact where relevant – is long overdue, and some tough decisions must follow.

The water and sanitation crisis remains a critical problem and government has recently been highlighting the urgency of the situation. The R156bn allocated to water infrastructure is significant, but analysis suggests it falls well short of what is required to fix the country’s deteriorating water systems. We encourage government to be honest about the gap and to actively develop mechanisms – including private sector participation – to close it.

On infrastructure, there are encouraging developments to build on. The R15bn infrastructure bond announced in the MTBPS was successfully launched, with funds feeding the Budget Facility for Infrastructure. The Budget could provide strong direction by allocating the balance to areas with the biggest impact. The public works programme has long been cited as a vehicle for youth employment, and with the infrastructure investment focus now more tangible, there is a genuine opportunity to connect the two – to create real, skills-building employment.

Business would like the Budget to send an unambiguous signal that the era of tax increases is behind us. National Treasury has previously floated the idea of reducing the corporate tax rate from 27%, and while fiscal constraints make that premature right now, it is the right long-term direction. Getting our tax competitiveness right – for both businesses and consumers – is as important to the investment climate as reliable power and efficient logistics. If we stay on the current fiscal path, the space for tax relief will open. The Budget should articulate that vision.

Finally, BLSA will watch closely what is allocated to health infrastructure. We expect clarity following last week’s announcement that the National Health Insurance implementation would be placed on hold pending the outcome of the Constitutional Court ruling.

South Africa is in a better position today than it has been for a long time. The Budget must reflect that progress – and set out credibly how we build on it. This time last year we endured three iterations of the Budget and narrowly escaped a hike of two percentage points in the VAT rate. By sticking to its fiscal discipline and pushing harder on the reform programme, government can set the foundations for a future cut in the VAT rate and other taxes – which would serve as another powerful trigger for economic growth.

Busiswe Mavuso is the CEO of Business Leadership South Africa

** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

There is a question that always comes up when people learn someone sails alone across oceans: how do you sleep?

The answer, offered recently by solo sailor Noa Hopper navigating between Lisbon and Tenerife, is instructive well beyond the sea. Turns out you don’t get eight hours. You don’t get the recommended rest. Instead, what you get is a new rhythm, calibrated not to your preferences but to your actual circumstances.

In a busy shipping lane, Hopper sleeps on deck in twenty-minute bursts. In open ocean, where he has not seen another vessel for three days, he allows himself forty minutes below. The interval isn’t arbitrary. It’s calculated from a simple fact: his visible horizon is 8 miles (12.87 kilometres).

At ten knots, he reaches that horizon in roughly an hour. But if another vessel is doing the same speed toward him on a direct collision course, both ships become visible to each other only twenty to thirty minutes before impact. So twenty minutes it is. Not a prediction. A calibration.

While tracking the volume of AI disruption commentary flooding my feeds over recent months, I’ve been looking for ways to make sense of all the data, insights and speculation swirling about me in what often leaves me feeling like I have my mouth attached to the end of a firehose on full blast. For the most part, the issue isn’t so much that the commentary is wrong, but it is almost uniformly doing the wrong thing. It's trying to predict. Almost never calibrating. 

A fortnight that tells the whole story

Consider what a single fortnight produced. In New Delhi, Reliance Industries Limited chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani took the stage at the India AI Impact Summit to announce that Reliance Jio, India's largest mobile network operator, having connected India to the internet era, would now connect it to the intelligence era, backed by a commitment of roughly $110 billion over seven years to build sovereign AI infrastructure from the ground up. He framed it explicitly as a template for the Global South. "India cannot afford to rent intelligence," he said.

Days earlier in Kigali, Anthropic formalised a partnership with Rwanda's government and ALX to deploy an AI learning companion to hundreds of thousands of learners across Africa — one of the continent's most substantive AI public-private education initiatives to date. 

Two Global South nations. Two very different scales of ambition. Both operating from the same basic conviction: that the intelligence era is not something that will happen to them, but something they intend to shape. 

When the cheerleaders start doing the maths

Meanwhile, on the All-In podcast, American media maven, internet entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis described running Claude-based AI agents at roughly USD 300 per day in token costs per agent — an annualised cost of USD 100,000. Calacanis’ Canadian-American co-host, venture capitalist and entrepreneur Chamath Palihapitiya concluded that organisations needed AI to be at least twice as productive as an equivalent employee to justify the economics.

US businessman and television personality Mark Cuban did the maths publicly and put the required productivity ratio at closer to 2.16 to one. These chaps are not cheerleaders for human employment. They’re the same voices who have spent years insisting that AI will hollow out services-sector work entirely and annihilate Software as a Service (SaaS) business models that have been all the rage in Silicon Valley. The fact that their own calculations give them pause is worth noting.

Separately, a speculative macro scenario published by independent investment research firm Citrini Research last week imagined a June 2028 global economy in which white-collar employment has collapsed, private credit markets have seized up around defaulting software company debt, and mortgage delinquencies are rising in area codes dominated by tech and finance workers. It was written with impressive analytical discipline and clearly labelled as speculative. It was also shared, discussed, and absorbed as though it were either inevitable or entirely possible, depending on one's priors.

I reckon both responses miss the point. The scenario is not a forecast. It is a visible horizon calculation. That is, someone doing the maths of what happens if every assumption currently holding the system together fails simultaneously, in a particular sequence. It’s worth grappling with, sure, but not worth treating as prophecy.

Three kinds of blindness

The AI disruption conversation is almost entirely populated by three kinds of people. Those staring at the six-hour horizon, producing scenarios so elaborate and internally consistent that they acquire the texture of inevitability. Those refusing to look up at all, dismissing the entire discourse as hype and returning to business as usual. And those who have simply thrown themselves at the wave — not because they have calculated the odds, but because everyone around them appears to be paddling and the fear of missing the boat outweighs any discernment about what they are actually boarding. The breathless adopters. The AI à la OpenClaw maximalists. The ones whose AI strategy begins and ends with a licence key, an announcement to the all-hands and a press release.

All three are navigating blind. Only one of them knows it.

I should be transparent: my own read of where things are heading is not an especially comforting one. But that is precisely the point. This isn’t about pessimism versus optimism. It’s about the quality of attention and level of stewardship we bring to what is actually in front of us.

The sailor does not spend his twenty-minute alarm intervals trying to forecast where every vessel in the Atlantic will be in six hours. He wakes up, scans his actual horizon, checks his Automatic Identification System (AIS) display for live boat locations, notes what is genuinely close, and adjusts his heading if necessary. Then he goes back to sleep.

What is scarce, and what I find myself genuinely hungry for, is more of us engaging that twenty-minute interval ritual. The discipline to ask not what the world will look like when the AI revolution is complete, but what is actually visible from where I am standing right now, and what adjustment that warrants.That’s a trickier question than it sounds. It is also, as we will see next week, one that history has already answered (badly) at least once before.

Andile Masuku is Co-founder and Executive Producer at African Tech Roundup. Connect and engage with Andile on X (@MasukuAndile) and via LinkedIn.

This is the first of a three-part series. Part 2 entitled, What British coal mines teach us about AI adoption, publishes next Tuesday.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

When Mark Zuckerberg walked into the courtroom to testify about social media addiction, the scene had the familiar choreography of modern accountability: cameras flashing, security in formation, the CEO in measured stride. But it was the sunglasses that caught my eye and the judges attention.

They were not merely dark lenses shielding against glare. They were Meta Ray-Bans, the product of a collaboration between Meta and EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban. On the surface, they looked like a classic design icon. Beneath the frame, they housed cameras, microphones, speakers—I’m told in future they will have  artificial intelligence capabilities.

Zuckerberg had come to answer questions about the psychological impact of social media on young people. Instead, his entourage found themselves scolded for wearing a device that could quietly record the proceedings. Judge Caroline Cool warned that any recordings made inside the courtroom must be disposed of or the consequences would follow.

It was a small but revealing moment. The courtroom was not reacting to a social network. It was reacting to a new interface.

A few years ago, Meta began experimenting with embedding technology into eyewear. The logic was subtle but profound: glasses are worn, not held. They sit at the point where perception meets interpretation. Unlike a phone, which must be lifted and unlocked, glasses are already in position—watching the world as you do.

At first, the Meta Ray-Bans seemed modest: the ability to take photos, record short videos, play audio. But the trajectory is clear. Future iterations are expected to incorporate facial recognition and more advanced contextual analysis. In other words, they will not simply capture what you see; they will attempt to understand it.

This is the rise of Visual Artificial Intelligence, systems that interpret and generate visual information by combining computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, and generative models. Traditional AI reads and listens. Visual AI sees.

The implications extend well beyond novelty. Eyewear may soon become the primary interface for artificial intelligence. It is always with you. It observes your environment. It can learn patterns in your movements and interactions. Over time, it can provide contextual information based on what it perceives—names of people, histories of buildings, instructions for tasks.

If used ethically, the applications are compelling. A police officer might identify a suspect more efficiently. A surgeon could receive real-time guidance during a procedure. A mechanic might see overlay instructions aligned precisely with engine components. These are not distant fantasies; they are extensions of capabilities already demonstrated in prototypes.

But the courtroom incident underscores a deeper question: what happens when every glance has the potential to be recorded, analyzed, and stored?

A blinking indicator light on the frame is a start, but it is not a safeguard. Consent becomes ambiguous when recording devices are indistinguishable from ordinary glasses. Public manners must evolve. So must regulation. The issue is no longer simply photography; it is persistent, automated interpretation of human environments.

And the momentum is accelerating. According to market research firm Circana, sales of smart glasses nearly tripled in 2025 compared to the year before. Meta has reportedly sold millions of pairs since the product’s launch, with sales climbing sharply last year. Google has unveiled Android XR glasses. Apple is widely reported to be developing its own version and may launch in March 2026. Samsung is expected to follow later this year. Even OpenAI has signaled interest in hardware pathways.

We may be entering a new era of consumer technology—one in which intelligence is no longer confined to devices we hold, but woven into objects we wear.

The instinctive reaction may mirror that of Judge Cool: to reject it, to demand it be turned off, to treat it as an intrusion. But dismissal is rarely a durable response to technological change. The printing press, the camera, the smartphone—all were greeted with suspicion before becoming normalised.

The difference this time is intimacy. When technology moves to the face, it moves closer to identity. It becomes less tool and more extension.

The moment in the courtroom may, in retrospect, seem symbolic. A technology leader being questioned about the consequences of one digital platform appears accompanied by people wearing the prototype of another. The challenge now is not merely to regulate these devices after they proliferate. It is to think carefully—before they become ubiquitous—about the norms and safeguards that will govern their use.

Because when machines begin to see alongside us, the question is not simply what they can capture. It is what they will come to know. Getting them may require an ethical license to use them responsibly.

Wesley Diphoko is a Technology Analyst and the Editor-In-Chief of FastCompany (SA) magazine.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa’s water crisis is increasingly narrated through a sequence of alarming numbers. The Department of Water and Sanitation’s 2023 Blue Drop reporting shows that 46 % of water supply systems had poor or bad microbiological compliance, a sharp regression from 5 % in 2014. The R400 billion municipal repair backlog is cited as the scale of rehabilitation required across the 105 worst-performing municipalities, excluding metros and bulk systems. In Gauteng, residents have repeatedly been warned that disruption does not end when maintenance ends, because stabilising reservoir-fed networks can stretch into days before pressure normalises.

These facts are serious, but they are also incomplete if they are treated as a purely technical failure. Infrastructure collapse is not only a service delivery problem; it is an allocation event. When supply becomes unreliable and monitoring becomes uneven, water does not simply vanish. It flows towards those who can secure it, store it, price it, or contract it. Failure redistributes power long before any policy is debated.

That is where the “shadow agenda” sits. Not in a claim of coordinated sabotage, but in incentives and opacity that normalise scarcity. When transparency weakens and oversight becomes inconsistent, scarcity becomes governable only for those with leverage, while everyone else experiences it as unpredictability and exposure. The State’s own assessments underline how quickly drinking water risk and waste water risk become the same risk. Blue Drop results confirm regression in potable water compliance. Green Drop reporting highlights wastewater treatment works operating at high or critical risk, meaning contamination cycles through river systems and downstream abstraction points. Once rivers become the conveyor belt of municipal failure, the boundary between treatment works and taps collapses.

Then consider losses. The Water Research Commission and related analyses continue to cite non-revenue water at roughly 47 %, meaning close to half of treated water generates no revenue because it is lost through leaks, theft, metering failures, or billing collapse. This is not merely waste. It is a governance signal: water exists physically, but institutions cannot reliably convert it into service, financial sustainability, and accountability. In such conditions, the most valuable commodity is not water itself. It is information about water. Information decides where pressure drops first, which reservoirs recover slowly, where contamination spikes,and which areas are restored last. It determines tanker prioritisation, enforcement of restrictions, and who quietly maintains uninterrupted bulk arrangements. Scarcity is, therefore, not only hydrological. It is informational.In a deeply unequal society, informational scarcity becomes lived scarcity, and lived scarcity produces markets for resilience.

When systems fail, scarcity becomes a market, whether acknowledged or not. Recovery lags following bulk interruptions show how volatility becomes stratified. Households with boreholes, storage tanks, or private supply adapt. Households without buffers absorb the shock as lost income, disrupted schooling, and higher health risk. Scale this nationally across uneven municipalities and volatility hardens into structure. “Temporary” outages become permanent exposure for some, while others purchase insulation from failure. The question is no longer only how to repair infrastructure. It is how to prevent breakdown from becoming the default allocator of access.

The new accelerant is digital infrastructure, and its water demand is not abstract. The AI economy is being built on hyperscale data centres that operate continuously and generate intense heat loads. A UK government review referencing International Energy Agency estimates indicates that the data centre sector consumes over 560 billion litres of water annually, with projections rising to as much as 1.2 trillion litres by 2030 as AI workloads intensify. Bloomberg reporting on the same trajectory underscores the driver: facilities are becoming larger, denser, and more cooling-intensive as chip density rises.

Corporate disclosures reinforce the direction of travel. Microsoft has reported a significant rise in water consumption in the years coinciding with accelerated cloud and AI expansion. Google has reported multi-billion-gallon water use across operations, with the bulk attributed to data centre activity and cooling. Cooling is physics, not ideology. Evaporative systems remove heat efficiently because water absorbs energy during phase change. But the policy implication is blunt.

Water consumed in a catchment is not available to households and ecosystems in that catchment. “Water-positive” pledges may balance globally while stress deepens locally.This is why imported solutions require caution. What works in the West does not transplant cleanly, and the evidence is mixed even there. Privatisation debates often assume regulatory strength, household affordability, and enforcement capacity that South Africa does not uniformly possess. In water governance, those assumptions determine whether reform improves reliability or entrenches exclusion.

Even in the United Kingdom, where regulation is comparatively robust, the privatised water sector has faced sustained controversy over leakage, pollution incidents, debt levels, and dividend extraction. Regulators such as Ofwat report improvements in certain performance metrics over time, including leakage reductions, which complicates simplistic claims. The lesson is not that private involvement is inherently corrupting. The lesson is that ownership structure does not produce accountability. Oversight discipline does. Investment discipline does. Transparent reporting does.

Global municipalisation trends, including high-profile returns to public control such as Paris, reinforce a related truth: when monopoly services collide with weak trust and contested pricing, governance models get renegotiated. South Africa’s constitutional context makes legitimacy even more central, because water is not simply a service. It is a right.

The African stress test shows what resilience looks like when necessity forces discipline. Windhoek has operated direct potable reuse for decades, and the upgraded Goreangab plant produces roughly 21 million litres per day under strict monitoring and long-term public legitimacy. Cape Town’s planned Faure New Water Scheme aims to add 70 to 100 million litres per day through advanced reuse by 2030 or 2031, framed as a resilience intervention grounded in governance design, technical redundancy, and multi-barrier safety. These examples do not imply easy replication. They demonstrate that resilience is operational, not rhetorical.

A credible counter-view deserves serious engagement. South Africa’s water failures can be explained by municipal skills shortages, revenue erosion, vandalism, delayed maintenance, and fiscal constraint. The infrastructure backlog reflects accumulated underinvestment rather than deliberate orchestration. This is credible.

Yet the counter-view is incomplete if it stops there. Even absent intent, weak systems generate predictable opportunities for capture. Emergency procurement cycles, tanker economies, contracting churn, selective restoration patterns, and pressure to outsource before oversight improves all thrive in volatile environments. Scarcity becomes structurally advantageous to organised actors and structurally costly to households without buffers. That is what makes the “shadow agenda” real in practice. Not a hidden cabal, but an environment where failure becomes profitable and visibility becomes optional.

The harder implication is that funding alone will not resolve this. Without visibility, new capital can deepen distortion rather than repair it. Without enforceable monitoring, new infrastructure can become new extraction points. Without clear allocation rules, high-value users, including digital infrastructure, can crowd out household security while debate remains stuck in the language of “mismanagement”.South Africa does not need ideological purity. It needs governance maturity. Water data must become a public asset. Private participation, where used, must preserve public allocation sovereignty and embed affordability safeguards. High-demand users must disclose hydrological impact at catchment level, with mitigation commitments tied to local conditions rather than global pledges.

The trade-off is now visible. South Africa is being asked to carry the weight of a digital future while struggling to guarantee the basic resource that makes life possible. If scarcity becomes normalised, it becomes leverage. If visibility strengthens, scarcity becomes governable.

The real question is not whether the next headline will be worse than the last. It will.

The question is whether South Africa will build the restraint, transparency, and institutional discipline required to ensure that water remains a right in practice, not a privilege secured through insulation from systemic failure.

Nomvula Zeldah Mabuza is a Risk Governance and Compliance Specialist with extensive experience in strategic risk and industrial operations. She holds a Diploma in Business Management (Accounting) from Brunel University, UK, and is an MBA candidate at Henley Business School, South Africa.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Despite the decision by US President Trump to “invade” Iran by deploying “massive armada" to the region, that have left for Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, building up geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, South African financial markets gained on these uncertainties. The decision by the US Supreme Court to put a roadblock to Trump’s global tariffs with the court ruling on Friday that the tariffs imposed by Trump are illegal, also boosted domestic market sentiment to the good.  Trump had imposed a 30% tariff on South Africa.

Lower unemployment during quarter four 2025 of 3.4% (31.9% in quarter three), adding 44,000 new jobs and the inflation rate decreasing to 3.5% in January (3.6% in December 2025), also contributed to a stronger Rand, precious metal prices and equity prices on the JSE.  On Friday afternoon, just after the news of the US Supreme Court judgement against Trump’s tariff policies, the gold price leaped by more than $100 to $5 109 to the dollar at the close of US markets. Bullion ended the week $68 higher and went up by 5.7% over the last month.

The Rand last Thursday, traded at one stage at nearly R16.20/$, up by 25 cents from R15.95/$ at the close of the previous Friday. The currency strengthened quickly again on Friday afternoon on the Trump tariff “embargo” to close on R16.03/$. Against the Pound the Rand appreciated by 16 cents last week to R21.61/£. This is the strongest level over the last three years. Against the Euro, the Rand traded flat last week, gaining only 3 cents to R18.89/€ on Friday. This has been the strongest level since December 2024.

Equity prices rallied

Share prices on the JSE continued to recover last week, after the speculative sales at the end of January, that led to the All Share index losing more than 5 000 points on Friday January, 30 2026. The index gained 2 438 or 2.02% last week. As a result of recovering Gold, Platinum and Palladium prices last week, the JSE Precious Metals and Mining index increased by 2.3%.  On the JSE equity board, Mid-caps are up by 5.0% since the beginning of the year. The Financials index improved by more than 9.0% since the beginning of 2026, as well as the Resource 10 index shooting up by 11.0% for the year-to-date.

Will President Trump back down on the court order?

World financial markets await in anticipation on how the reaction of President Trump on the high court decision will affect global equity, prices, bond rates and exchange rates this coming week. The President already indicated that he will not back off on his tariff policies due to the high court decision. The BBC over the weekend reports that the President reacted aggressively by announcing that the court's was "deeply disappointing". He said that the justices who joined the majority opinion should be "absolutely ashamed" and lacked the courage to "do the right thing".

The President then announced that he would impose a temporary 10% global tariff under the Trade Act of 1974, a different law from the one that the court said did not grant him tariff authority. It is not clear if this tariff replaces all existing tariffs, including the current 30% tariffs on South African exports.

Prospects for the coming week

This coming all eyes will be on the South African National budget that will be delivered by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana on Wednesday. The Minister will seem to have less of a daunting task than last year, with some manoeuvring ground that was not available for him during previous years after the Covid 19 pandemic.

• The economy is expected to have grown in 2025/6 at 1.8%. This is more than the expected forecast of 1.6% envisaged in last year’s budget.
• Global economy is expected to grow at 3.3% in 2026 and is higher than was expected during the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBS) in November 2025.
• Increases in gross tax revenue for 2025/26 may be much higher that is projected R19.7 billion envisaged in the MTBS due to the sharp increase in precious metal prices during the latter part of the fiscal year. Latest estimates show that an ongoing commodity rally could boost the government’s tax intake by R20 billion per annum over the next two years.
• South Africa’s gold and foreign reserves recorded a new record high of $79,85 billion in December 2025. In 2024/25, the government withdrew R150 billion from the South African Reserve Bank’s R500bn Gold and Foreign Exchange Contingency Reserve Account (GFECRA) to reduce borrowing and its debt-service costs. The current windfall in the growing gold reserves can be used again to help in increasing taxes and to reduce borrowing and debt services cost further.

Against these manoeuvring room of government, the crucial questions that the budget will deal with are:

• How will government reduce debt service cost that remains the biggest cost item on the budget.?
• Government remains committed to the balanced fiscal strategy. The consolidated budget deficit is expected to narrow to 3.4 per cent of GDP in 2026/27 and 3.2% by 2027/28. Is the government still on track?
• A primary budget surplus of 0.8% of GDP is expected for 2025/26 year. Will this continue this year and even move higher above 1.0%?
• It was envisaged last year that the government is adamant to bring down the national debt from 77.4% of GDP in 2025/26 to 75.9% in 2026/27 and 75.1% in 2027/28. Is that also still on track?

It is expected that no changes to the three main budget income items namely Company Taxes, Personal Income tax and Value added tax will be introduced.

Chris Harmse is the consulting economist of Sequoia Capital Management and a senior lecturer at Stadio Higher Education.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The history of South African innovation is often an "Ischemic Registry"—a series of blockages where the mechanical marrow of black brilliance is siphoned off by those with the proximity to capital and the audacity of administrative erasure.

The recent assertions surrounding Alan Knott-Craig Junior and the origin of Mxit are not merely "Numerical Errors"; they are a "Psychotic Conduct" of legacy-building that mirrors the "Please Call Me" fiction peddled by his father.

As a Sentinel of the Numerical Truth, I must perform a forensic audit of this claim just as I did on the 96 million that Knott-Craig claimed. The "Instructional Soul" of Mxit does not belong to the Knott-Craig lineage. It belongs to the "Sovereign Mesh" created by Eldrid Jordaan.

The Primary Extraction: Eldrid Jordaan and the Birth of the Mesh

The facts are clear. Eldrid Jordaan, the son of a trade unionist—a man born from the "Standard of 1936" school of struggle—engineered the "Biotic Pulse" of mobile social networking in Africa. Long before the vortex of global social media consumed the landscape, Jordaan created a tool that allowed the distribution of funds during Covid-19.  The equivalent of the "13 Villages of Pella ya Matlhako" to communicate for the cost of a sovereign tickey.

Jordaan paid a heavy "Metabolic Price." As his platform scaled, the "Empire of Averages"—embodied by Meta and Facebook—performed a "Clinical Blockade." They recognized that his "Sovereign Mesh" threatened their global monopoly. Like the "Vultures" at the riverbank, they closed him out. To see his instructional soul now being claimed as a "Stolen Idea"  is a "Rupture of Logic" that the African Ledger cannot accept.

Jordaan took Meta to the South African courts and won.  What remains is an award of costs and damages.  But in his book David against Goliath Jordaan says big tech prints money, fining whatever billions or millions they will afford it.  The best medicine is regulating them out.  Take away the licence.  That is the only medicine that will achieve purpose in the AI space.

The 96 Million Delusion: The Schizophrenia of Imagined Numbers

Knott-Craig Junior’s "Administrative Dust" extends beyond the theft of innovation into the "Vortex of Demographic Hallucination." His claim that the South African population should be 96 million is a "Psychotic Comparison" devoid of "First Grade" evidence. It is a "Round-About" answer to a complex "Spatial Mesh."

As the architect of the 62 million baseline, I know that numbers are not "Imagined Instances" like Star’s lift from Leabua Jonathan. A population count is a "Physical Enumeration" of the "Biotic Pulse" of a nation. To suggest a figure of 96 million without a "Mechanical Marrow" of data is to engage in Witchcraft over Statecraft. It is a water mark on a Rondavel wall being presented as a forensic photo. It is the moreover of English words—a gloss that hides a numerical vacuum.

The Knott-Craig "Signature" is an "Ornithological Specimen" of identical plumage. The father claimed the "Please Call Me" idea, a "Hollow Mesh" that was eventually dismantled in the highest courts of the land. Now, the son attempts a sovereign incursion into the history of Mxit.

This is the schizophrenia of privilege. It is the unearned custard that my mother rebuked me for. They believe that by adding river water to the history, they can augment the soup of their legacy. But the taste is in the eating. We must protect the registry of Eldrid Jordaan from this administrative siphon.

The Sentinel’s Verdict

We will not allow the mechanical marrow of our innovators to be thinned by the vultures of stolen ideas. The "Standard of 1936" teaches us that every node must be counted correctly. Eldrid Jordaan is the founder. The 62 million is the truth. 

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana.  He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) alongside millions keenly awaits the Budget and Medium-Term Expenditure Framework due to be tabled at Parliament this week.

The challenges facing the working class and society are dire, in spite of important areas of green shoots.

The Budget must be grounded upon the lived realities of workers, the unemployed and the economy.  The government needs to avoid the temptation to treat the Budget as a question of balancing the books.  It must provide meaningful relief to workers and the poor and give hope to society that South Africa is turning the corner for the better.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) highlighted the pain felt by millions from our dangerously high 41.1% unemployment rate, to weak 1% economic growth, to embattled public and municipal services. 

Whilst SONA outlined government’s plans, the Budget needs to match these with the funds if they are to materialise.  Government needs to appreciate that society’s patience is not limitless, and in many instances, it is rapidly evaporating.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana correctly called for an end to austerity budgets in his 2025 Budget speech(es) to Parliament.  2026 needs to see a decisive break with the decade plus cycle of reckless budget cuts that have brought many public and municipal services to the brink of collapse.

It is easy with countless negative headlines to lose sight of the progress we have seen under President Ramaphosa and African National Congress led administrations, not withstanding the many burning fires.

The overcoming of loadshedding has been a massive victory but we are not out of danger as electricity has become unaffordable for millions of working-class families and the economy, resulting in thousands of job losses in smelters and industrial sectors.  Reducing the price of electricity has to be one of government’s most urgent priorities. 

This requires moving all consumers to prepaid billing, tackling the ever-rising municipal debt (currently R100 billion and growing by R20 billion annually), corruption, cable theft and other acts of criminality, and supporting Eskom’s expansion into clean energy.

Efforts to modernise Transnet and Metro Rail must be accelerated.  A return to full capacity by our rail network and ports will unlock thousands of mining, manufacturing and agricultural jobs plus important revenue for the state.  Transnet needs assistance to reduce its debt burden and upgrade infrastructure.  The mining rights application system must be finalised.

Special attention is needed to rebuild Denel, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the Post Office and Postbank.  These once well-run institutions can be fixed but they require competent leadership and support.

If the state is to fulfill its constitutional, transformational and developmental mandates, then a fundamental break with failed neo-liberal policies and austerity budgets is essential to rebuilding public and municipal services.  Yes, in some instances, government must digitise to enable the working class to access public services 24/7 but this on its own is not enough.

Frontline public services require doctors, nurses, paramedics, police and correctional officers, teachers, military and other skilled personnel.  To retain these highly sought after professionals, not only must they be paid a living but a competitive wage.  If the state is to provide the quality services that society and the economy depend upon, then it needs to appoint competent management, fill frontline vacancies, recruit critical skills, remove corrupt and criminal elements and invest in its infrastructure.   

The turnaround at Eskom, Transnet, South African Airways and the South African Revenue Service (Sars) followed this path, and they are delivering the results.  This must be replicated at other embattled state institutions.

Whilst SONA committed to finalising the White Paper on Local Government and a new municipal funding model, many municipalities cannot wait for these.  70% of our municipalities are in financial trouble, many fail to provide basic services, leading to companies closing and retrenching workers and more than a dozen routinely fail to pay their staff salaries and third-party deductions.

Drastic interventions are needed including deploying competent and qualified managers, auditors to route endemic supply chain corruption and the enlistment of Treasury, GTAC, Eskom, Sanral and the Department of Water and Sanitation to rebuild local government capacity to deliver basic services and collect rates.

2026 must see the finalising of the Public Procurement Act’s regulations and its rolling out across the state.  This will be an invaluable boost to locally produced goods and the war against state capture and corruption.

Whilst appreciating the decrease in various serious crimes over the past quarter, no sober person will believe that we are winning the war against crime.  Violent crime is rife, particularly in working class communities.  Corruption has become normalised.  Prosecution and conviction rates are depressingly low. 

The Budget must provide the Police, Hawks, Prosecuting Authority, Judiciary and the National Defence Force with the personnel, skills, resources and infrastructure they require to win this war.  This is not a matter we can continue to compromise upon. 

To kickstart the economy and reach the 3% plus growth rate needed to create decent jobs, a bold industrial stimulus package is needed.  The Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES) must be expanded to accommodate at least 1 million participants by April and 2 million by November.  The SRD Grant must be accessible to all unemployed persons, raised to the Food Poverty Line and its participants included in skills and employment opportunities where possible.

We expect the Budget to honour SONA’s announcement of an additional 10 000 labour inspectors in addition to the 20 000 intern inspectors employed through the PES.

These high impact interventions require funding, and this must be sought by providing SARS the resources to raise tax compliance from 67% to 75% by 2029 and thus generating an additional R200 billion in monies owed to the state.  Tax loopholes exploited by the rich must be closed and relief to the working and middle classes provided.

We need a Budget that will fix the state, stimulate growth, create jobs, provide relief for the poor and inspire hope across the nation.

Cosatu General Secretary Solly Phetoe

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Whether your window to the world is a daily news show or a daily newspaper, you don’t need to be a political analyst or soothsayer to recognise that this is not America’s finest hour. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumours of America’s death are greatly exaggerated.

When I served as the US Ambassador to Tanzania, I often said that the virtue of democracy is not that it guarantees great leaders, but that it guarantees the ability to remove bad ones. Democracy reflects human imperfection. Voters do not always choose wisely, and no system of government is immune to poor outcomes every now and then.

For those who point to Donald Trump’s return to office as proof that America’s day is done, that conclusion is understandable. Elections, however, are rarely about perfection. As I heard a politician once say, “elections are not about me versus the Almighty; this election is about me against the alternative.” Trump won because enough Americans believed, rightly or wrongly, that he offered the better alternative on election day. That does not mean the system is broken. It simply means the voters blew it.

Trump 2.0 has undeniably shocked the system. Yet history reminds us that shock has often preceded recalibration. Across administrations, the United States has stumbled, corrected, and moved forward. Some leaders steadied the system, others strained it, but even mistakes often produced unintended progress. That capacity for self-correction is what has sustained American democracy.

This is why the current moment feels so unsettling. Not because America has never faltered, but because its faltering is so visible and the consequences are so widely felt.

America will stabilise. Polls suggest change is coming, and experience suggests a course correction generally follows such disruptions. We see some of these corrections beginning to take shape right now.

Where policies push beyond constitutional bounds, public officials and private citizens are turning to the courts, and in many instances succeeding. Civic response is also visible on the streets. The tragic murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis stirred outrage that drew citizens into the open, even in the depths of winter, with people standing together in temperatures approaching minus twenty degrees Celsius to make their voices heard. Acts like these, some quiet and all resolute, remind us that public participation is not confined to elections alone and mobilization of every sort can result in change.

The prospect of change is also taking shape through renewed political engagement, with a new generation of candidates stepping forward to contest seats and bring different perspectives to Congress, in the short term and a new resident in The White House in the near term.

As disconcerting as this past year has been, the upside is that it offers is an opportunity to ask different questions about what comes next.

Democracy, or more precisely democratic values, have not only taken a hit in the United States, but globally as well. Restoring confidence in democratic institutions is not America’s task alone. Democratic societies must work together to re-establish cooperation instead of confrontation as the norm in biliteral or multilateral engagement. More mature democracies need to help emerging democracies translate accountability into tangible improvements in daily life.

This matters deeply for Africa.

Countries such as Tanzania, Ghana, Mauritius, Namibia, and Zambia, as well as other young democracies signal the possibility of a more hopeful future, not just for those countries but for world at large. A world in which democracy flourishes is better for everyone. The evidence is in. Over time, where democracy has flourished, institutions have strengthened, lives have improved. Progress has not been uniform, but it has been real. For democracy to continue to deepen its roots in Africa, existing democratic countries are going to have to continue to demonstrate that democracy, literally, provides a dividend. How the West engages Africa can have an impact. The current green energy revolution provides an opportunity for the West to re-calibrate its relationship with Africa and provide traction for Africa’s future development.

Africa’s role in this energy transition, its centrality to supply chains and future growth, places it firmly within the architecture of the world to come. Its resources, markets, and demographics give it agency in shaping that future, not merely reacting to it.

This is shared work. It extends before American and the rest of the West. Asian powers also have a role to play in supporting stability and prosperity beyond their borders. Engagement grounded in mutual interest strengthens and stabilizes the world as a whole.

Recent events have prompted Europe to reassess its responsibilities and dependencies. That reassessment is healthy. Regions that invest in their own resilience contribute to global balance.

America’s influence over the past century has been substantial. The dollar, global institutions, education, and democratic norms have provided structure and opportunity far beyond its borders. These did not endure by accident.

That influence is being tested, not erased.

I do not believe America’s sun has set. I believe it is navigating a difficult passage. If the world responds with steadiness rather than alarm, and if emerging democracies step forward with confidence and clarity, something constructive can emerge from the present uncertainty.

If America’s better instincts assert themselves, and if others use this moment to strengthen their own foundations, the years ahead can still deliver progress worth the effort.

Charles R Stith, a former US ambassador to Tanzania, is non-executive chair of the Johannesburg-based African Presidential Leadership Centre and executive chairman of the Pula Group.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The application to place Tongaat Hulett into provisional liquidation has crystallised a reality many in the sector have feared for some time: the financial distress of a cornerstone miller now threatens to cascade through the entire sugar value chain.

Tongaat is not a peripheral player. It operates critical milling assets and South Africa’s only stand alone white sugar refinery supplying the food, retail and beverage industry, and its three mills serve approximately 18,000 growers — the majority of the country’s 28,100 sugarcane farmers. It directly employs several thousand people in KwaZulu-Natal and sources cane from more than 18,000 sugarcane growers, of which the vast majority are small-scale growers. This value chain is estimated to sustain about 40,000 direct and indirect jobs and are therefore an anchor in their rural communities.

SA Canegrowers represents 27,000 small-scale growers and 1,100 large-scale growers. Behind each of those growers are workers, families and small businesses whose economic security is tied to the stability of this sector. When a mill falters, it is not just a balance sheet that is affected — it is an entire network of rural activity.

If milling operations are disrupted or grower payments stall, the consequences move rapidly beyond the farm gate. Growers cannot finance fertiliser, wages or replanting without certainty of payment.

Sugarcane is a multi-year crop; once land exits production, it does not return easily. From painful experience with other mill closures, if a mill stops producing and stands empty, even for one season, the underlying assets and materials of the mill is vandalised and stripped, effectively permanently closing that mill. Should growers and mills exit the industry around Tongaat Hulett serviced areas, it will devastate areas where sugar is the primary economic anchor.

In parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, there is no substitute industry waiting in the wings. Sugar underpins local retail, logistics, agricultural services and municipal revenue. When cane income contracts, rural economies contract with it. Should sugarcane production stop in Tongaat Hulett areas, the reality is that entire sections of KwaZulu-Natal's rural landscape will be pushed into social and economic distress.

This is the first, immediate crisis: the spectre of Tongaat Hulett’s unfunded liquidation – potentially within weeks – is intrinsically tied to thousands of rural jobs.

The second crisis is the surge in imported sugar that has steadily eroded domestic market share. Industry data shows that imports reached approximately 163,000 tonnes up to December — a 155% increase on the prior year. This has displaced locally grown sugar and forced surplus South African production onto volatile export markets at a loss. Those losses translate into lower recoverable value prices for growers and tighter margins across the sector.

For rural communities, import displacement is not an abstract trade statistic. When locally produced sugar is replaced on supermarket shelves, revenue that should circulate through KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga flows offshore instead. Lower grower returns mean deferred maintenance, fewer seasonal workers, job losses, scaled-back community investment and reduced spending in local businesses. Over time, this weakens the resilience of districts already grappling with high unemployment and limited economic diversification.

The third crisis - and one entirely within domestic policy control - remains the Health Promotion Levy.

Eight years after its introduction, the levy continues to suppress demand for locally produced sugar. In its first year alone, Nedlac found that 16,000 jobs were lost and R2 billion in revenue was removed from the industry. Those losses are felt in rural communities where each job supports extended families and informal economic networks.

In the current environment, the levy compounds the strain. Beverage manufacturers under cost pressure increasingly turn to cheaper imported sugar to defend margins, further eroding domestic cane demand at a time when milling stability and import competition are already under severe pressure.

Tongaat Hulett’s liquidation further might mean that insufficient white sugar is produced in South Africa – further turning food and beverage manufacturers to overseas suppliers. This not only undermines local growers, it puts South Africa’s economy squarely at the mercy of international inflationary pressures.

Whilst the immediate, and very real consequence of these three crises will be felt by South Africans who are on the verge of losing their livelihoods, there is a longer-term risk to South Africa as well.  Sugarcane is not only a source of refined sugar; it is a feedstock for diversification into bioethanol, sustainable aviation fuel, renewable electricity from bagasse and other green industrial applications.

The development of a rural bio-economy — one that aligns with South Africa’s green industrial ambitions — depends on a stable and viable cane-growing base. If canegrowers are permanently pushed out of business due to the immediate crises, future opportunities at job creation and economic growth that have grown from the sector disappear before they can take root.

SA Canegrowers has consistently engaged government on the need for coherent, coordinated intervention to protect this strategic sector. This is not a call for special treatment; it is a call for recognition that sugar anchors entire rural regions. Protecting growers protects jobs, communities and long-term industrial potential.

SA Canegrowers is calling on government, especially the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition to enact measures that will ensure a viable, long-term sector that protects rural jobs and livelihoods – by urgently enacting fair import tariff pricing, funding support to keep the mills open, and a policy environment that enables green industrialisation. The Treasury can assist the local industry by scrapping the Health Promotion Levy, or sugar tax, which has cost jobs and livelihoods but has had no impact on health outcomes. Or course there are many parties beyond the government in this arena, but consistent, enabling government policies are the starting point for a healthy sector, which supports more than a million livelihoods and is the economic backbone of large parts of rural KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga.

Higgins Mdluli, chairman of SA Canegrowers

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

For years, conversations in South African agriculture, and indeed corporate South Africa, have centred on the deep racial inequalities that define the sector and the economy and rightly so. Yet the latest labour statistics remind us that transformation is far from complete. Beneath the dominant transformation narrative sits a persistent, long-overlooked imbalance: the gender disparities that continue to influence labour dynamics, limit economic participation and constrain the sector and economy’s full potential. While women make up a significant share of the overall labour pool, they remain underrepresented across most sectors, including agriculture, a reality that undermines the objectives of the Employment Equity Amendment Act 4 of 2022, which sets five-year gender targets for multiple sectors. Ignoring this gap is no longer an option; it is time that this conversation is brought to the forefront.

The South African agricultural sector is a critical engine of the economy, its direct contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) is approximately of 3%. When we consider agro processing, it makes up to 14% of the GDP. The agricultural sector remains one of the significant employers in the country, with 920 thousand in the third quarter of 2025 which makes up approximately 5% of the total labour force in the country.

As Wandile Sihlobo notes in A Country of Two Agricultures, South Africa still operates within a dualistic system: a well-developed, largely white commercial farming sector and a struggling, predominantly black smallholder segment. In addressing the transformation agenda, the focus should not be solely on race; gender equality must also be prioritised. Labour force data from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) indicates that women make approximately 30% of the total agricultural workforce. Although there has been an increase in women employment within the sector, representation at managerial levels remains limited. The Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) 2024/25 annual report revealed that women in top management positions in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector accounted for a little over 20% (3.0% of which were African women).

The inclusion of women in agriculture is critical for several reasons. Women often serve as primary caregivers, contributing significantly to household food security. They act as catalysts for change and empowerment within their communities, particularly in rural areas where employment opportunities are scarce. Furthermore, women play a vital role as custodians of natural resources, frequently utilizing indigenous production methods that support sustainability.

South Africa needs more producers, more innovation, more inclusive value chains and yet continues to underutilise half its agricultural population. This labour imbalance is not just a social issue; it is an economic one. When women do not fully participate in the sector, South Africa loses out on skills, productivity and innovation. It is important to recognize that the sector is undergoing some shifts, i.e modernisation, agritech expansion, climate-resilient farming techniques, etc, that require new skills. Women, especially the younger generation entering agricultural studies, represent a valuable talent pipeline.

Yet many struggle to find pathways into meaningful employment, intrapreneurship (within companies/agribusinesses) or entrepreneurship due to various barriers that have remained stubbornly unchanged for decades. These include limited access to professional networks, inadequate land ownership (women farm unit ownership was 20% in 2024), unequal transfer of skills, limited access to finance and inefficient implementation of policies that prioritize women such as the National Policy Framework for Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality (NPF-WEGE), which continues to face budgetary constraints and poor gender mainstreaming within government departments. In a way, it can be argued that the underrepresentation of women in boardrooms is filtering through to all lower levels of organisations, including farming and agribusiness entities.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s reports from 2011 and 2023, highlighted that closing the gender gap in agriculture could deliver substantial benefits for both the sector and society. The Organization noted that if women had equal access to resources as men, agricultural output in developing countries could rise by up to 4%. This is an opportunity cost, which underscores the point that the challenge is not primarily about skill, but about equitable access to resources.

The struggle for transformation in South African agriculture must be understood as a dual imperative: addressing racial inequality while simultaneously dismantling persistent gender barriers. Ignoring the latter is not only an injustice to the many women who are the backbone of the sector, particularly informal rural agriculture, but it is also a fundamental constraint on the country's economic potential. By targeting investment, policy and infrastructure towards women economic empowerment, South Africa can further enhance food security, rural prosperity and genuine transformation.

The country’s agricultural sector is at a crossroads with climate change, global market volatility and food security challenges demanding innovation and resilience. Excluding a significant part of the population from meaningful participation is not just unjust, it is economically unsustainable. Gender equality in agriculture is not a luxury; it is a strategic necessity for growth, competitiveness and social stability. Transformation in South African agriculture cannot be considered complete until gender disparities are addressed with the same urgency as racial inequalities. The evidence is clear: empowering women farmers boosts productivity, strengthens food systems and drives inclusive economic growth. The question is no longer whether we can afford to close the gender gap, the real question is whether we can afford not to.

Andisa Mpembe is a graduate in PIC’s Research & Innovation Division

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

In South Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, market access is often framed as the ultimate breakthrough. Founders speak about getting onto retail shelves, securing a distributor, or landing a major buyer as if these milestones mark the beginning of scale. Yet from where I sit at 22 On Sloane, working closely with Startups navigating funding readiness, mentorship cycles, and expansion pipelines, market access is rarely the core challenge. More often than not, it simply exposes a deeper issue which is operational maturity.

Over the past year, reviewing mentorship reports, export readiness assessments, and investor engagement tracking, a consistent pattern has emerged. Founders do not struggle because they lack ambition or product-market potential. They struggle because their internal systems are not designed to carry growth.

When a business moves from selling directly to customers to supplying multiple retail outlets, complexity increases immediately. Inventory forecasting becomes less forgiving. Cash flow cycles lengthen. Quality control must be standardised across batches. Documentation must withstand scrutiny from buyers, banks, and sometimes international regulators. What was once manageable through founder oversight alone suddenly requires structure, delegation and process discipline.

We have seen instances where demand accelerated faster than backend systems could handle. I have witnessed founders who managed to secure the ideal client persona, only to realise months down the line that their production team is unable to fulfil orders at the pace of the client’s demand. What began as a win slowly turned into a crisis . Orders were secured, but delivery timelines slipped. Retail placements were achieved, but production consistency faltered. In other cases, investor conversations progressed, but due diligence revealed weak financial records and undocumented processes. In these moments, market access did not fail the business. The absence of structure did.

The narrative that visibility equals viability is one of the most persistent myths in the startup space. Exposure creates opportunity, but it also amplifies weakness. Without documented standard operating procedures, clear financial reporting rhythms, and basic governance structures, scale becomes strain. Founder dependency becomes a bottleneck. Decision-making slows. Teams operate reactively rather than strategically.

Our export readiness work provides a clear illustration. Several companies may demonstrate strong product quality and clear demand signals. However, progression into structured export programmes depends on far more than product appeal. Traceability systems, compliance documentation, production planning and financing models become decisive factors. In one recent pipeline, only one company advanced fully into the programme. The differentiator was not marketing strength. It was operational depth and documentation discipline.

The same pattern applies to funding access. Investors often speak about risk mitigation. What they are assessing, beyond the pitch deck, is whether a business can absorb capital responsibly. Financial controls, reporting clarity and governance frameworks signal credibility. Capital flows more readily to enterprises that demonstrate internal coherence. Contracts follow competence. Growth follows structure.

This is where the shift from hustle to infrastructure becomes critical. Hustle is often necessary in the early stages of a venture. It builds resilience and customer traction. But hustle alone does not build longevity. Systems do. The transition requires founders to separate ownership from management thinking, to formalise roles before crisis demands it, and to build data visibility before investors request it. It requires moving from informal coordination to structured performance management.

At ecosystem level, this reshapes how support must be designed. Inspiration and networking events have their place, but they are insufficient. If we want South African Startups to compete regionally and globally, we must invest in strengthening their internal architecture. That means mentorship that interrogates governance, platforms that track engagement and performance over time, and structured pathways that prepare businesses not only to enter markets but to remain competitive within them.

Market access, then, is not a door waiting to be opened. It is a stress test. It reveals whether the business beneath the brand has the discipline to endure scale and the systems to protect its growth.

If we continue to treat market access as the breakthrough, we will keep mistaking exposure for progress. The real measure of ecosystem strength is not how many startups enter the market, but how many remain competitive within it three to five years later. Until we prioritise operational infrastructure with the same urgency we give to visibility, we will continue to celebrate entry while overlooking endurance.

 Ruth Maposa, Programme Analyst at 22 On Sloane.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The National Planning Commission, established in 2010 as South Africa’s statutory body for long-term national development planning, stated: “In a society with deep social and economic divisions, neither social nor economic transformation is possible without a capable and developmental state.”

Successful developmental states such as Japan, Singapore and South Korea demonstrate how a clear development mandate, supported by enabling institutional architecture, long-term vision, policy continuity and the capacity to implement across government, can drive economic success.

What would a developmental institutional culture look like in South Africa? And what would it take to bring a profoundly divided population, shaped by years of deliberate public policy, into full and meaningful participation in the economy?

Post offices were historically designed around universal service obligations (USO), regulatory requirements that ensure access to essential services. The recent South African Post Office SOC Ltd Amendment Act, 2024 aligns with the National Planning Commission’s vision, redefining SAPO’s role from a traditional postal service to a cornerstone of South Africa’s socio-economic infrastructure, positioning it as a key enabler of digital inclusion, e-commerce and integrated government service delivery. Despite this, the institution’s unique potential has frequently been overlooked in public debate.

SAPO remains a critical pillar of financial inclusion, with the ability to provide low-income earners with access to financial services and lower barriers to entry for those historically excluded. With its 657 branches and access to over 130,000 km of fibre network, the Post Office can connect underserved communities, offer internet access, and serve as a public touchpoint for government services. As custodian of the national address database, it also supports e-commerce growth and connectivity for rural households.

Yet the institution is hampered by outdated systems, insufficient capital and operational inefficiencies. Mail processing, logistics and IT infrastructure urgently need upgrading, as outlined in the Business Rescue Plan. The current status of the entity prevents SAPO from fulfilling its mandate and leveraging its vast network to drive inclusion and economic integration. Without digitisation, modernisation and investment, these capabilities remain untapped, and critical services risk collapse.

Privatising, hollowing out or shutting down the Post Office would deepen inequality, raise costs for remote communities and reduce the state’s presence where it is often the only point of contact.

It still astounds me that so little informed and considered thought has been given to the potential of the South African Post Office in meeting our developmental agenda and implementing the recent South African Post Office SOC Ltd Amendment Act, 2024.

It is further deeply concerning that an institution caught between a rapidly changing industry and a lack of focus and clarity in the governance of state-owned enterprises is now in crisis — meaning that SAPO is a victim, and the South African public, especially the economically disenfranchised, bears the brunt of poor implementation and execution.

The Post Office has been built up over 230 years, making it a unique national asset with the sum of its parts rendering it irreplaceable and non-replicable. We stand at a critical juncture. We risk losing a key piece of national infrastructure and, with it, a real chance to include more citizens in the digital economy and position the country for inclusive growth.

The widespread amplification of uninformed commentary, alongside the deliberate dismissal of this entity’s potential value across the political spectrum and in public discourse, is profoundly irresponsible.

Dr  Kameshnee Naidoo is visiting adjunct professor at the Southern Centre for Inequality at Wits University. She was global programme advisor at the United Nations capital development fund. She provided input to the SAPO business rescue team on social infrastructure, for policy execution.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

According to recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 20% of Australian businesses fail in their first year after opening. Failure rates in South Africa are nearly double that, with 40% of new ventures failing within the first year.

The truth is that South Africa’s business landscape magnifies many first-year risks. The operating environment is more volatile, resource-constrained, and structurally complex than most developed markets. Those first twelve months of running a business are also typically the most unforgiving, as you make decisions with imperfect information, test assumptions in real time, and constantly question what you thought you knew.

Often, cash flow strain is the biggest early pressure point. Many entrepreneurs underestimate how long it takes for revenue to reach targeted levels. In South Africa, payment delays tend to be longer, consumer spending is more cautious, and suppliers often require upfront or early payment from new businesses. Even with a strong offering, it can take time for customers’ trust to translate into recurring revenue.

Customer acquisition can also be an uphill battle. Many first-time entrepreneurs assume that customers will immediately understand what they offer, but the market rarely behaves that neatly. What you think you are selling and what customers value are often two different things. Listening carefully to customers is key to refining your value proposition before you build expensive campaigns or processes around the wrong assumptions.

Another reality is operational disruption. While load shedding has eased, there are still countless external factors that impact service delivery, manufacturing schedules, stock management, and turnaround times. These issues tend to reveal themselves quickly in a new business, so it’s critical to build flexibility into processes: alternative suppliers, backup systems, simple workflows, and clear contingency plans.

The first year is also when you establish your business’s competitive identity. You may not have the biggest advertising budget or the most sophisticated systems, but you can still compete on responsiveness, service quality, and consistency. Small businesses often win early customers by being accessible, personal, and adaptable. Building that reputation early lays the foundation for longevity because customers remember the businesses that exceed expectations when they most need it.

Importantly, beating the odds requires disciplined experimentation. Your business plan may offer initial direction, but the day-to-day reality will involve reacting to variables you didn’t anticipate. Rather than seeing this as failure, it should be viewed as a normal, healthy part of establishing a business.

There’s also a tendency to delay tough decisions because the business feels too new to justify major changes. But the first year is the best time to correct course. If a strategy, product, or partnership isn’t working, address it early before the costs compound. Persistence is essential, but persistence without adaptation is a common cause of early-stage failure.

While the statistics may look daunting, it’s important to remember that thousands of South African entrepreneurs do beat the odds each year. They do so not by avoiding challenges but by facing them head on and responding to them quickly. The first year will test you on every level, but if you approach it with discipline, flexibility, and a willingness to learn fast, the odds will certainly be stacked in your favour.

Jeremy Lang, Managing Director at Business Partners Limited

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

As we stay the course in the pursuit to a low-carbon, sustainable economy, our moral and competitiveness compass remain “the just transition”, only through which we can ensure that the shift is fair, mitigating negative job impacts while fostering decent work and social protection for affected workers and communities. A just transition aims to balance decarbonization with employment, particularly in high-emission sectors like coal mining, by prioritizing job creation, skill retraining, and economic diversification.

Underpinned by our global and domestic development goals, South Africa’s just transition can appropriately be defined as a national project to build a more inclusive, resilient, and dignified economy. Rooted in the Just Transition Framework, it recognises that climate action designed deliberately can create opportunities. By prioritising people centred decision making through distributive, procedural and restorative justice a just transition that strengthens livelihoods, deepens democracy, and forges economic renewal can be achieved.

In practice the just transition is currently unfolding and doing so unevenly and with murky rules for all within society.   Coal plants are closing, climate shocks are intensifying, global markets are shifting, and workers and communities are being asked to absorb the costs of change without adequate protection or predictability.

Through Practice – We must live the rules we make

South Africa does not lack good commitments and good intentions, what is missing in the process are binding tools and standards that can translate broad principles into practice. 

 South Africa has strong constitutional, legal and policy foundations for a just transition. The Just Transition Framework, the Climate Change Act, Labour Relations Act (LRA), skills policies, and sectoral master plans are all signals of intent. But intent alone does not protect workers facing retrenchment, communities confronting economic decline, or new workers entering new sectors, with insecure new jobs.

 As the recent legal and policy review prepared for the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) makes clear the challenge is implementation—particularly ensuring distributive and procedural justice in the face of large-scale economic change.

The scale of the risk is stark. 100,000 coal miners, tens of thousands of workers in energy-intensive industries, and over a million workers in petroleum-based transport could be affected by mitigation policies and global decarbonisation trends. Climate impacts threaten livelihoods in agriculture and tourism, sectors dominated by low-paid, insecure, and often informal work. These risks are geographically concentrated, complex and politically sensitive. Left unmanaged, they will deepen unemployment, inequality and erode social stability and trust.

Previous economic transitions in mining, manufacturing, telecommunications, and agriculture produced job losses without adequate mitigation. The just transition differs only in one crucial respect: it is partly policy-driven and therefore carries a duty of care. When the state shifts the development path to meet climate goals and respond to global trends, it must also deliberately manage the consequences.

 This is where a Code of Good Practice becomes essential, and not alien in South African labour law, and as they were central in managing the democratic transition in the workplace—guiding fair dismissal, collective bargaining, employment equity, and HIV/AIDS responses.

Courts recognise them as repositories of agreed norms and values, giving them moral authority and, in some cases, legal weight. A Just Transition Code of Good Practice can serve a similar function: providing certainty, consistency, and legitimacy in a period of profound change.

Crucially, such a Code would not impose a one-size-fits-all solution as there are a number of sectors impacted by the transition. The legal review emphasises that the precise content of just transition interventions cannot be predetermined. What can be set out are minimum expectations: early warning, meaningful engagement, inclusive planning, and a package of support measures tailored to specific contexts. Although not part of South Africa’s decarbonisation plan but was decommissioned due to the end of its economic life, the experience of the Komati power station closure shows what happens when there is late engagement, limited regional integration, fragmented responsibility, and deep community frustration.

 We need to dispel anxiety in times of uncertainty and rapid change.

A Code can help avoid repeating these mistakes by embedding procedural justice at the level of the workplace. It can clarify who must be engaged, when, and on what basis; how and when information should be shared; and how workers and communities can engage on an equal footing. It can reinforce social dialogue as a governance tool, not a box-ticking exercise.

Equally important, a Just Transition Code of Good Practice can guide distributive justice. The review maps a wide range of interventions already available in South Africa—public employment services, skills development, income support, social protection, enterprise development, and occupational health measures. What is lacking is coherence. A Code can knit these instruments together, signalling how severance, retraining, unemployment insurance, relocation support, and job placement should work as a package rather than in piecemeal manner.

International experience strengthens this case. Countries that have managed transitions well—such as Spain, Germany, and Canada—did so through negotiated frameworks that combined income support, skills pathways, regional development, and ongoing social dialogue. These frameworks did not eliminate conflict, but they reduced uncertainty and built social acceptance. The International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Just Transition Guidelines point in the same direction: co-ordination, anticipation and inclusion are not optional extras; they are preconditions for success.

Some may argue that a Code risks slowing down the transition or burdening employers. The opposite is more likely true. Predictable processes and standards reduce conflict, litigation, and resistance. Employers benefit from clearer expectations; workers benefit from transparency; and government benefits from legitimacy. As the review notes, transitions that are perceived as unfair or chaotic ultimately undermine climate goals themselves.

Lebogang Mulaisi, Executive Manager: Research and Policy at the Presidential Climate Commission.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The global logistics industry, from forklift fleets to transport refrigeration units, treats electrification as a sustainability project, but that mistake is costing it money, resilience, and competitive advantage. This is particularly important in markets like South Africa, where energy volatility and cost pressure are already baked into operations. Emissions reduction is important, but when electrification is framed primarily as an ESG exercise, its operational and commercial value is consistently underestimated. The real shift is not from diesel to batteries, but from blind energy consumption to intelligent, data-driven energy management.

In reality, modern Lithium-Ion (li-ion) systems deliver far more than an affirming ESG line. They improve uptime, charging is cheaper than running diesel, vehicles are quieter and, crucially, built-in telematics deliver data that can transform how operations are managed across the business.

Deep-Dive Data

Improvements in telematics and analytics now allow customers to analyse performance across their entire fleet. This makes it possible to deploy battery-powered units more effectively and better understand the clear uptime advantages of li-ion, compared to diesel. That same data also reveals whether investment in faster charging infrastructure could deliver other benefits, like significant increases in uptime and overall performance.

More data helps operators understand how their energy systems interact with their operations ecosystem – and how their fleet can operate more efficiently, as a whole. This can mean looking at whether their TRU and material handling batteries should be charged at different times, which should be charged faster or slower (both to help avoid energy peaking), whether they need as many batteries as they have, or if having more, lower-capacity batteries rather than fewer, higher-capacity batteries would positively influence uptime.

The impact of this data extends beyond batteries into fleet management itself. In some cases, having an additional charged battery available can reduce downtime enough to allow fleets to be downsized or vehicles to be deployed more efficiently. In practice, this means energy decisions can be made strategically rather than reactively — based on real usage patterns, operational priorities, and cost impact.

More data helps deliver better after-sales service, as qualitative telematics pick up impending issues before the customer does, allowing technicians to be dispatched with a clear understanding of the issue and attempt to resolve it before it causes downtime.

Battery Systems are a Long-Term ROI Resource

A li-ion battery system looks ‘expensive’ up-front, but our data shows that 100% return on investment (ROI) is possible in between one-and-a-half and four years. In the real world, we have batteries which were installed in forklifts in 2018, which are still running with no measurable degradation after eight years of heavy use. In some instances, those original batteries have been fitted to new forklifts, having outlived the vehicles they powered.

Assessments show that these systems appear capable of operating effectively for at least 15 years for at least 15 years before they start showing any signs of a decline in capacity – in which instance they can be redeployed for other long-term purposes, not simply discarded or written off.

Electrification Ticks Regulatory & Common Sense Boxes

The logistics industry operates on tight margins, which makes efficiency, cost control and operational flexibility non-negotiable. There’s also rising regulatory pressure, with regulations coming in for traditionally unregulated emissions (especially TRUs). Noise pollution concerns are rising, global retailers and cold-chain leaders are demanding cleaner operations from suppliers and energy reliability and diesel price volatility are pushing South African fleet operators to rethink resilience.

Electrification is increasingly central to how operators are managing these pressures, particularly since one of the largest variables in the logistics cost base comes from the fluctuating price of diesel. With electricity prices in South Africa not shifting month-to-month, electrification gives businesses more accurate forecasting opportunities, which comes with myriad benefits.

Global Leadership opportunity for SA

The operators who will lead the next decade of logistics will not be those who simply replace diesel with batteries. They will be the ones who rethink how energy is generated, stored, deployed and optimised across their operations. South Africa has an opportunity to be the global heart of knowledge and production for this revolution – and it’s an opportunity we cannot afford to miss. Electrification is the entry point - intelligence is the advantage

Clint Bemont, CEO & Founder: maxwell+spark

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Recent statements from organised business, civil society and parts of government reflect a shared frustration: South Africa’s public institutions are not implementing reform or delivering infrastructure fast enough.The consequences are visible in stalled projects, constrained growth and declining public trust.

In the 2026 State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa made it clear that the period of crisis management must give way to decisive execution. The message was direct. Policy reform is no longer enough. Delivery must follow. Energy reform sits at the centre of this test. Transmission capacity has become the main constraint on adding lower-cost electricity supply. Grid access remains uncertain. Connection timelines stretch.

Governance arrangements still create doubt about neutrality and fairness. Investors read this uncertainty as risk. Developers price it into projects. Consumers ultimately pay for it.The President’s directive that the Transmission System Operator should own and control transmission assets marks an important moment.

Earlier proposals from the Minister of Electricity and Energy would have retained these assets within Eskom Holdings. Clarifying that transmission must sit in an independent, state-owned entity realigns governance with the objectives of electricity market reform. It signals that structural separation should not be a future aspiration but is a prerequisite for credible reform.

Ownership matters because control over the grid determines who connects, when they connect and at what cost. The grid is the backbone of market access. If connection decisions are slow or opaque, new generation cannot compete on equal terms. Cheaper supply then remains theoretical. A standalone transmission entity with clear accountability and ring-fenced governance reduces this risk and lowers the cost of capital across the system.

The same urgency appears in the President’s intervention in water infrastructure. Persistent outages, treatment failures and municipal incapacity have eroded confidence in local government. The establishment of a National Water Crisis Committee, chaired by the President, is intended to coordinate intervention and enforce accountability. Where municipalities fail to meet their obligations, constitutionalpowers will be used. The instruction to public servants is unambiguous. Service delivery is a legal duty,not a discretionary ambition.

Electricity reform now stands in a similar phase. South Africa spent years managing the acute crisis of load-shedding. Emergency procurement and operational stabilisation were necessary responses. Those measures bought time. That time must now be used to complete structural reform.

Operational recovery at Eskom, including improved plant performance and reduced diesel reliance, deserves recognition. It has eased pressure on the system. Yet operational improvement does not substitute for institutional reform. The risk is complacency. When immediate crisis subsides, structural weaknesses are easier to postpone.Transmission expansion has lagged behind planning targets. Private capital remains available, but it requires predictable rules and firm timelines. Reform legislation already envisages open access, competitive markets and an independent system operator.

The task is implementation. Institutional incentives explain much of the delay. Dominant incumbents rarely design reforms that diminish their own control. Even where leadership is constructive, the underlying structure favours caution and continuity. Stability and internal control are rational objectives within a monopoly framework. They are not sufficient objectives in a reforming market.

President Ramaphosa’s address challenges this inertia. Public servants are instructed to execute policy, not reinterpret it. That standard applies equally to energy and water. Transmission reform must proceed according to the intent of the Electricity Regulation Act. Water infrastructure must meet statutory service standards. Accountability mechanisms must function.The credibility of the broader economic reform programme depends on delivery in these network industries.

Competitive electricity markets cannot operate without independent grid governance. Industrial growth cannot proceed without reliable water supply. Investors respond to evidence, not statements. Clear timelines, published connection queues, transparent procurement and consequences for non-performance will demonstrate seriousness.South Africa has reached a point where policy direction is largely settled. The debate now centres on execution. The President has signalled that underperformance will no longer be tolerated as an administrative inconvenience. That signal must translate into measurable progress.

The phrase “no more excuses” is more than rhetoric. It describes a transition from aspiration to accountability. Structural reform has been legislated. Institutional design has been clarified. The remaining question is whether public institutions will implement the mandate they have been given.

If execution follows direction, transmission capacity will expand, grid access will stabilise and water systems will improve. Confidence will strengthen because outcomes will be visible. If execution stalls, the cost will be borne by households and firms that depend on reliable infrastructure.The era of policy declaration has run its course. The era of delivery has begun.

Thomas Garner holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Pretoria and an MBA from the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Thomas is self-employed focusing on energy, energy related critical minerals, water and communities. He is a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering and a Management Committee member of the South African Independent Power Producers Association.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

As the dust settles from Thursday night’s State of the Nation Address (Sona), attention must turn to the rapid implementation of what President Cyril Ramaphosa announced and to addressing what was left unsaid.

There was much to welcome, as BLSA noted in our release after the speech. Most important was the clarity the president brought to the future of our electricity transmission system. The independent Transmission System Operator will own and operate transmission assets and run the electricity market. This resolves the policy confusion that emerged in mid-December when the Minister of Electricity and Energy published an unbundling strategy proposing that transmission assets remain with Eskom rather than transfer to the TSO. The dedicated task team that the President will establish under Necom provides the right mechanism to manage the complex transition and ensure there are no missteps. BLSA looks forward to supporting that process where we can. The end result will be a resilient electricity system that drives the investment urgently needed in grid expansion and future generation capacity.

This resolution demonstrates the value of direct engagement. After we flagged concerns in January, Minister Kgosientsho Ramakgopa met with me within a day. His director-general followed up the following week with substantive discussions. I am grateful to Minister Ramakgopa and the President for taking our concerns seriously and moving quickly to provide clarity. The uncertainty that emerged in December was affecting investor confidence. Thursday’s announcement removes that cloud.

The Sona also outlined ambitious steps on water infrastructure and criminal justice capacity to tackle organised crime. These are critical priorities that deserve support and scrutiny as implementation begins.

But it would be remiss not to address what was missing. The biggest omission was any strategy to tackle the rapid deindustrialisation we are facing. We need a decisive response to the destruction of manufacturing capacity that took decades to build and remains key to employment creation.

The scale of the crisis is stark. In the automotive sector, tyre manufacturers Bridgestone closed its Port Elizabeth plant in 2020, and Goodyear announced the closure of its Kariega tyre plant last year. Component manufacturers producing safety belts, airbags and other critical parts have scaled back or closed: 13 closures in the past two years according to Naacam, with more expected. Nissan is selling its Rosslyn plant. Volkswagen has warned of uncertainty over jobs at its Kariega facility. Beyond the automotive sector, British American Tobacco South Africa announced it will close its Heidelberg plant by the end of 2026, following the destruction of the legitimate market by illicit cigarettes.

The common thread is competition from low-cost imports, including from China, that undercut local manufacturers. Chinese vehicle models alone now account for 22% of imports. Yet the Sona offered no plan to address this.

The government must act urgently. Finalise the new energy vehicle policy to enable manufacturers to transition to electric and hybrid production for export markets. Deploy anti-dumping measures where imports, some argue, are being sold below cost. Review tariff structures to protect local manufacturing whilst avoiding damage to local assemblers. Intensify enforcement against illicit trade destroying legitimate businesses. We cannot afford to wait for more factory closures to force action. That day is coming if government doesn’t work with industry right now.

The President did briefly reference strengthening capacity for trade negotiations and expanding missions abroad to drive economic policy. This is necessary, but let’s be clear about the challenge. South Africa maintains an extensive diplomatic network – one of the largest for a country our size – but the problem is effectiveness, not scale. Too many ambassadorial posts have been treated as rewards for loyal or difficult cadres rather than positions requiring serious economic and trade expertise. Many missions in substantial economies have been left without ambassadors or high commissioners for extended periods. Being South Africa’s chief representative in a country must carry the weight it deserves.

A serious professionalisation effort is needed. Our diplomats must be equipped to advance South Africa’s economic interests, identify market opportunities, and negotiate agreements that serve our industrialisation agenda. This requires a partnership with business. BLSA stands ready to help identify priority markets, connect South African exporters with potential customers, and provide input on trade negotiations. We’ve seen in countries like Vietnam and South Korea how business-government collaboration on trade delivers results.

International economic relations have never been as important as now. With the United States disrupting established trading relationships, South Africa must diversify export markets and build partnerships on our own terms. Every trade agreement must be evaluated against clear criteria: does it support industrialisation? Does it create quality employment? Does it build export capacity? Our manufacturing industries must be on a path to becoming globally competitive champions through export-led growth, not permanently sheltered from competition. And our international agreements must be laser-focused on what matters – our economy and the jobs it can create and support.

The electricity reform clarity shows what a focused government-business partnership achieves when both sides commit to solving problems. We resolved policy confusion in weeks through direct engagement. We must apply that same urgency to manufacturing. The automotive crisis, the illicit economy destroying legitimate businesses, and the need for effective trade diplomacy all demand immediate action. The Sona delivered progress on electricity. Now we need a matching commitment to protecting and building industrial capacity – because without manufacturing, we cannot achieve the employment-creating growth South Africa desperately needs.

Busiswe Mavuso is the CEO of Business Leadership South Africa. 

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Somewhere in your organisation right now, someone is signing up for an artificial intelligence (AI) tool. Maybe it's a marketing manager experimenting with content generation. Perhaps it's a developer integrating an AI coding assistant. It could be a finance team exploring automated reporting.  They're not being reckless. They're being resourceful. They've found something that makes their work faster, easier, and better. They've connected it to your systems, granted it access to your data, and moved on with their day.

What they probably haven't done is tell IT. And what IT almost certainly hasn't done is bring that tool, and its associated identities, into your governance framework.  This is shadow AI. And it's creating an identity crisis that most organisations don't yet realise they have.  The adoption curve no one planned for AI adoption across South African enterprises has accelerated dramatically.

According to a January 2025 white paper by the World Economic Forum and the University of Oxford's Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre, much of current AI deployment is explorative or experimental, with organisations using smaller, use-case-based approaches that emphasise ideation and rapid implementation.  The problem isn't the experimentation itself. Innovation requires freedom to explore.

The problem is what happens next: experiments become embedded within live business operations without the rigorous risk assessment, system testing, and governance oversight that formal deployments would demand.  Every AI tool that connects to your environment creates new identities.

Application programming interface (API) keys that authenticate requests. Service accounts that access databases. Tokens that maintain persistent connections. These non-human identities multiply quickly, often without appearing on any register or falling under any governance policy.  In organisations where non-human identities already outnumber human users by 10:1 or more, shadow AI further accelerates this imbalance, entirely outside your security team's visibility.  

The governance gap 

Traditional identity and access management was designed with a clear process in mind. Someone requests access, the request is evaluated, access is granted or denied, and the decision is logged. When circumstances change, access is reviewed and adjusted.  Shadow AI bypasses this entirely. There's no request because nobody thinks to make one. There's no evaluation because the tool seems harmless. There's no logging because the connection happens outside sanctioned channels. When the employee who set it up moves to a different role or leaves the company, the AI tool and its identities remain – orphaned, unmonitored, and potentially vulnerable.

 The World Economic Forum report highlights this risk directly: a lack of formal rollout programmes decreases transparency, which weakens management processes and leadership oversight. Lax software management amplifies the problem as AI gets introduced through unsanctioned browsers, plugins, and open-source tools that developers adopt without review.  What starts with individual productivity becomes organisational exposure.  The questions you cannot answer Here's a practical test. Can your organisation answer these questions with confidence?  

• How many AI tools are currently connected to your systems? 
• Which of these were formally approved and which arrived through informal adoption? 
• What data can these tools access? 
• What identities were created to enable these connections? 
• Who owns these identities? 
• When were the credentials last rotated? What happens to these connections when the employee who created them leaves? 

In our work with South African enterprises, we find that most cannot answer even half of these questions. The gap here is infrastructure-related. The tools and processes designed to manage human workforce identities simply weren't built for the sprawling population of machine identities that AI adoption creates.  Visibility before control Addressing shadow AI requires starting with what you can control: visibility. You cannot govern what you cannot see, and you cannot see what you're not looking for. 

Discovery is the essential first step. Automated scanning that identifies AI integrations across your environment, both the authorised and the unauthorised alike. Many shadow AI deployments exist simply because there was no clear process for formal adoption. Making that process visible and accessible reduces the incentive to work around it.  Inventory follows discovery. Every AI tool, every associated identity, mapped to a human owner and a business purpose. This creates accountability. When someone's name is attached to an integration, the conversation about governance becomes natural rather than adversarial.  Policy must evolve to match reality.

Comprehensive guidelines covering how AI can be used within the organisation, how new tools are vetted before implementation, and how the identities these tools create are managed throughout their lifecycle ensure that innovation doesn't create unintended risk.  

The workforce dimension

There's a human element here, too. Employees adopt shadow AI because they see value in it. Blocking that adoption entirely pushes the behaviour further underground. The more effective approach combines enablement with governance.  This means ensuring IT administrators are educated and skilled enough to evaluate and manage AI tools. It means creating clear pathways for employees to request new tools, with response times that don't drive them toward unofficial alternatives. It means recognising that AI adoption is inevitable and positioning your identity framework to accommodate it rather than resist it.  The organisations getting this right treat shadow AI as a signal, not just a threat. They understand where and why employees want  AI solutions.

These insights can inform strategic AI adoption that delivers the productivity benefits while maintaining security and governance.  The window is closing Shadow AI is a current reality that grows more complex with each passing week. Every new tool adopted without oversight, every API key created without governance, and every service account that exists outside your identity framework accumulate into risks that become harder to address the longer they're ignored.  

The good news is that the principles for managing this challenge already exist. Discovery, inventory, ownership, lifecycle management, continuous monitoring are the same fundamentals that apply to any identity population. What's required is to extend their reach to encompass the AI tools already operating in your environment.  The AI your team adopted last week has its own identity. The question is whether you'll manage it proactively or discover it during an incident investigation.

Reghardt Van Der Rijst, Practice Lead: Identity, Altron Security

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

In late November 2022, Elon Musk met with Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, following a public dispute where Musk claimed Apple had threatened to remove Twitter (now X) from the App Store.

The meeting was described by Musk as a "good conversation" that resolved a "misunderstanding" regarding the app's potential removal. 

No matter how powerful you can be in tech, as long as you have an App you need to answer to Google or Apple for your existence. One person who knows very well about the power of these platforms is the founder of UpScrolled, Issam Hijazi, after his app was recently,  February 14,  2026, temporarily removed from the Play Store. The UpScrolled app has been reinstated and it’s not clear why it was removed.

These incidents highlight the need for reflection about the two stores. Both of them are controlled by private companies from the same country. Everyone who needs to exist on the most used mobile phones has to abide by their rules. Huawei,  a Chinese tech giant was once a major victim of these platforms to an extent that they had to build their own store, the App Gallery. The challenge is that this store is not widely used by users of mobile devices. The Huawei experience serves as an important example of what needs to be done to address the current monopoly of the two major stores. 

It is extremely unfair that they get to dictate who can or cannot play in the digital space. It is not ideal that an environment that hosts the worlds mobile ecosystem relies on other companies. 

Digital Stores such as App and Play stores should be neutral and managed by neutral bodies.

Digital Stores need to be managed in the same way that domain names are managed by an organisation such as ICANN. The domain registry entity was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit partnership of people from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet's unique identifiers.

ICANN doesn't control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn't deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet's naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. ICANN's role is to oversee the huge and complex interconnected network of unique identifiers that allow computers on the Internet to find one another.This is commonly termed "universal resolvability" and means that wherever you are on the network – and hence the world – that you receive the same predictable results when you access the network. Without this, you could end up with an Internet that worked entirely differently depending on your location on the globe.

ICANN is made up of a number of different groups, each of which represent a different interest on the Internet and all of which contribute to any final decisions that ICANN's makes. There are three "supporting organisations" that represent: The organisations that deal with IP addresses, the organisations that deal with domain names and the the managers of country code top-level domains. Then there are four "advisory committees" that provide ICANN with advice and recommendations.

These represent: Governments and international treaty organisations, root server operators, those concerned with the Internet's security and the "at large" community, meaning average Internet users. And finally, there is a Technical Liaison Group, which works with the organisations that devise the basic protocols for Internet technologies. ICANN's final decisions are made by a Board of Directors.

The Board is made up of 20 members: 16 of which are Board members and four of which are non-voting liaisons. The majority of the voting members (eight of them) are chosen by an independent Nominating Committee and the remainder are nominated members from supporting organisations. ICANN then has a President and CEO who is also a Board member and who directs the work of ICANN staff, who are based across the globe and help co-ordinate, manage and finally implement all the different discussions and decisions made by the supporting organisations and advisory committees. An ICANN Ombudsman acts as an independent reviewer of the work of the ICANN staff and Board.

Digital stores such as App and Play need a similar governance structure if we are to see fairness in the digital space.

Wesley Diphoko is a Technology Analyst and  the Editor-In-Chief of FastCompany (SA) magazine.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL. 

BUSINESS REPORT

This week's column hijacker, Adam Wakefield, is a radio journalism major turned reporter turned consultant turned marketer turned comms strategist, who co-founded and co-hosted the Elite Rugby Banter podcast before, as he puts it, life got in the way. 

When I shared some Western podcast consumption data with Wakefield, it triggered the reflections below.

In major African podcast markets, and across the continent more broadly, radio remains the most democratised medium, and the audio podcast, arguably the most malleable digital media show format despite the hype around video growth.

I learned this the hard way. After experimenting with producing African Tech Roundup Podcast as a video pod (alas, you might never actually see the stuff, except in short-form snippets on social), I found that video made an already challenging workflow ten times harder while delivering precious little upside. Booking and hosting guests became more tenuous. The chemistry shifted: guests are more candid when they can nearly forget they are being recorded. 

Our listeners tune in for insight depth and singular sensemaking, and video added near-nothing to that. And so, African Tech Roundup will remain audio-first, at least in the short to medium term. 

A recent Podcast Business Journal Q&A with Brad Mielke, managing editor and host of the ABC News's formidable Start Here in the US (over 2,000 episodes and counting), reinforced my conviction.

Mielke described how audio-only production lets him book top-drawer contributors calling in from pajamas and closets, no set, no lighting, no excuses. If someone in Antarctica wants to contribute, they can. Video would eliminate that access entirely. I reckon the lesson is disarmingly simple: the voices carry the value; everything else is collateral.

Adam Wakefield’s insights, in his words:

How we use and apply language heavily influences its impact. Eighty years ago, George Orwell published an essay titled Politics and the English Language in which he complained that public English was full of bad habits spread by imitation. One wonders what Orwell would think of the current state of podcasting, a word whose context has transformed beyond recognition over the past decade.

Podcasting's official history began in 2001 when Dave Winer and Adam Curry figured out how to wrap audio files into RSS feeds. The 25 years since have seen a technological revolution that Gen Z finds rather status quo, while Millennials like me and older still remember life before the internet.

Radio, the granddaddy of podcasts, fought with outdoor, TV, and print for market dominance. Those with the largest pulpit wielded influence on audiences that were far more trusting. Today, taste has become individualised, with media consumers able to pick and choose what they want to read, hear, or watch.

Video podcasts are nothing more than glorified chatshows

As a broad and at times cynical observer of media, I have watched the podcast format bifurcate from its audio-only, homage-to-radio roots into the simultaneous world of audio and video. Today, The Joe Rogan Experience is a touchstone of Western media. Yet when it launched in 2009, video podcasts - defined as an audio podcast that happened to be filmed during recording - were still in their infancy.

Over time, the format's ability for a subject to project their voice without intermediaries has been recognised by savvy media operators, businesspeople, and sportspersons as a vital pillar of their brands. It is a direct communication channel to an audience, leveraged for influence, commerce, or otherwise.

As someone who consumes a fair amount of sports media, ex-international rugby players with their own video podcasts abound.I find much of this content (hosts inevitably inviting other ex-players on to reminisce) boring and stale, with strong whiffs of South Park’s memberberries. But when a large audience cannot wait for the latest anecdote about Player X going out the night before a Test match, should we be surprised?

In the broad light of day, the state of video podcasting illustrates how the medium has remained the message. TV has always demanded obedience and consumption. The wave of video podcasts is nothing more than a glorified extension of the chatshow format: a group of people sitting around on a set, talking about subjects their audience expects, playing to type or crowd depending on the day's conversation.

Audio stands alone, both immovable and entirely flexible

Amid this turmoil, the humble audio podcast continues to soldier on. US audience research by Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights highlights how podcast listeners consume both audio and video (92%), with 17% choosing audio only versus 8% that opt for video-only podcasts.

The research suggests video podcasts will continue to grow, with YouTube's importance stark. Yet an anecdote in the summary highlights how video podcasts are frequently minimised to just be listened to.

If a video podcast is minimised, does reverse Darwinism kick in and just make it an audio podcast, the one true format for the puritans? I would love to reach for a Schrodinger's cat metaphor, with video podcasts being neither alive nor dead the moment they are minimised. 

But what is clearer is that the flexibility of audio remains its greatest strength. You can do many things while listening to a podcast; watching a video podcast demands the full attention of the viewer, a cap on growth in a medium groaning under the weight of the attention economy.

As a last missive, should we do away with the term "video podcast" altogether? Is it really a podcast if the only quality separating it from a chatshow is the presence of visible microphones and a lackadaisical approach to set design?

As McLuhan argued, the content of media binds the audience to its character. Audio is fundamentally different from video, promoting and rewarding different behaviours. 

As greater societal awareness develops around media overexposure, with the spectre of AI-generated content looming, that distinction makes audio stand apart. Its purity and lack of dynamism as a format is its greatest strength and weakness as a medium of consumption.

There is room for all formats in the unitary mess that is the modern media environment. Yet to suggest video podcasts should be classed in the same category as their audio forerunners misses how their respective mediums of expression have evolved and failed to do so at the same time. 

The last 25 years has seen a podcast evolution so circular that we are almost back to where we started. Video remains video, and audio will forever remain audio.

Andile Masuku is Co-founder and Executive Producer at African Tech Roundup. Connect and engage with Andile on X (@MasukuAndile) and via LinkedIn.

Adam Wakefield is a media professional at heart who has worked across journalism, consulting, marketing, and communications in a range of sectors since the late 2000s. Adam holds a deep interest in all things media and is a major believer in the influence and power of complex systems.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

As of February 2026, the data identifies a terminal Metabolic Divergence between the High-Heat Foundries of the south and the Systemic Hypoxia of the northern and central vortexes.The following audit compares these nodes based on their ability to avoid the 30% Trap and maintain their infrastructure joints.

2026 Municipal Performance Audit

The Forensic Diagnostic Uses the Moran’s I Scatterplot, which shows that the best performers reside in the High-High quadrant, where success is contagious. The worst performers are trapped in the Low-Low Vortex, where failure in one ward drags down the entire neighbouring mesh.The primary cause of the divergence is the 30% Trap.

While Cape Town and Midvaal protect their Physical Chassis with a dedicated maintenance shield, the worst performers allow an "Administrative Inhale" of over 55%, siphoning the capital intended for the pipes and transformers.

The Diagnostic: The Administrative Sump of ten worst municipalities

The primary cause of collapse across these selected ten nodes—which include Emfuleni, Mangaung, Lekwa, Ditsobotla, and Kopanong—is the breach of the 30% Trap. In these "Vulture Vortexes" the "Administrative Inhale" (salaries and overhead) often consumes over 55% of the operating budget. This siphons the capital intended for the Maintenance Shield, leaving less than 2% for the physical joints of the city.The Rupture: Infrastructure and Fiscal HypoxiaIn municipalities like Msunduzi, Ethekwini (peripheral wards), and Mogalakwena, the Ledger identifies a Structural Rupture in water and electricity meshes.

 Non-Revenue Water: Leaks and theft account for up to 45% enthalpy loss.

 Debt Siphon: Massive arrears to Eskom and Rand Water function as a  "Thermal Barrier" preventing any new investment from warming the local economy. These municipalities are no longer in "service delivery failure" they are in Institutional Isolation. The "Instructional Soul" of local government has been replaced by patronage siphons.

The Foundries: High-Heat Mastery

At the pinnacle of performance, Cape Town functions as the "Master Class" of municipal metabolism. It maintains a high-heat infrastructure exhale, fundamentally secured by a 10% Maintenance Shield that protects its physical chassis from decay. Similarly, Midvaal represents "Sovereign Mastery" as the regional shield; with over ten consecutive clean audits, it has successfully purged the administrative hypoxia that chokes its neighbors.

In the coastal mesh, Mossel Bay acts as "The Torch"  exhibiting optimal flow by lashing green energy initiatives directly into the utility mesh. This is complemented by Overstrand, which serves as "The Perimeter" through asset mastery, ensuring high-heat resource management and water joint security. Completing the top-tier foundry is George, a high-velocity joint that maintains robust transport enthalpy through a relentless focus on road maintenance and logistics.

The Vortexes: Systemic Rupture

Conversely, the audit identifies a state of terminal collapse in the "Vulture Vortexes" Emfuleni represents the most severe "Terminal Rupture" where an Administrative Sump inhaling over 50% of the budget has induced chronic sewage and water hypoxia. In Mangaung, the mesh suffers from systemic hypoxia; with only a 3% maintenance spend, the peripheral wards are trapped in a self-reinforcing loop of decay. We elaborate on Mangaung on its own. Further into the rupture, Lekwa exhibits infrastructure hypoxia characterised by snapped electrical joints and the massive siphoning of energy enthalpy. Ditsobotla has fallen into a "Policy Vacuum" representing a total administrative collapse with zero instructional soulremaining to guide the mesh. Finally, Kopanong exists as "The Void" a state of total metabolic failure defined by an inability to even meet salary obligations or maintain the most basic physical chassis of the town.

The Lehohla Ledger takes a closer look at Mangaung. Mangaung—the "Place of Cheetah"—is no longer running. It is stalking the ruins of its own infrastructure. The 2024/2025 Integrated Development Plan (IDP) reads like a clinical report for a patient already in intensive care, yet the proposed cure is more of the same "administrative inhale" that induced the sickness in the first place.

The Diagnostic: Systemic Hypoxia

Using the Moran’s I Scatterplot, the Ledger identifies a profound Spatial Rupture withinthe Mangaung mesh.

The core of Bloemfontein acts as a High-Low Siphon; it inhales massive capital for administrative salaries but fails to "exhale" maintenance enthalpy to its neighbours. Consequently, the peripheral nodes of Botshabelo and Thaba Nchu have fallen into the Low-Low Vortex—a state where infrastructure failure (water outages, road disintegration) is contagious and self-reinforcing.

The 30% Trap: A Fiscal Rupture

The most damning audit in this IDP is the Resource Rupture. In any healthy municipal foundry, the maintenance shield should be 8–10% of the budget. In Mangaung, the "Administrative Sump" (salaries and overhead) inhales nearly 48% of the operating budget, while asset maintenance has been throttled to a mere 3%. This is the 30% Trap in its most lethal form. When you spend nearly half your revenue on the people sitting in the building and less than 5% on the pipes and transformers they are meant to manage, the "Joints"of the city will snap. And they have snapped.

The Lehohla Ledger has an inhale, diagnostic and exhale. These three components are connected by the Instrumental Enthalpy. It is the "Firmer Ground" of official statistics, comprising nearly 3,000 data anchored columns I wrote over the 24 years across the socio-economic and demographic spectrum. Into this inhale is the 130,000 Mesh (The Diagnostic) which is the Spatial Logic where we apply the Lens of Wisdom of these 3,000 columns on these nodes. The tools create an exhale which requires a strike capability (the Vanguard) without which the columns and the mesh can be reduced to a map of a tragedy.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The equity and capital markets traded flat last week for the second week in a row. The price for gold and platinum recovered through the week, with the gold price breaking again through the $5 000 per ounce last week with the Rand improving.

The State of the Nation (Sona) on Thursday had no serious effect on markets on Friday. The All Share index contracted on Friday sharply with 1 630 marks or 1.3% and ended the week gaining only 0.4% to close at 120 584 points. After the Sona speech on Thursday the Rand opened Friday morning with 9 cents weaker against the US dollar, 11 cents against the Euro at R19.06/ € and with 6 cents against the pound at R21.80/£.

Financial markets and traders are looking out what the national budget will entail, as well at the news around the US inflation rate and unemployment rate that were published. The strong recovering in the gold price to $5 044 on Friday, from $4 964 /$ the previous Friday and the price of platinum to $2 077 from $2 003 on Friday, had strengthened the Rand on Friday.

Rand continues it strong rally

Despite speculation against emerging market currencies and an even stronger dollar against the Pound and the Euro, the Rand continues to move stronger against the Dollar, Pound, and Euro. The currency had gained 10 cents against the US last week, trading lower than R16/$ (R15.95/ $) on Friday evening, and is now 18 cents stronger for the month and 55 cents (3.8%) stronger than its opening value of R16.50/$ at the beginning of the year.

Although one can argue that it is rather the US dollar that moved weaker against most other currencies, the Rand improved by 5 cents to R18.92/ € last week, is stronger by 20 cents for the month and 53 cents (2.9%) down than the R19.45/€ at the beginning of the year. Against the Pound the currency appreciated by 5 cents to R21.78/£ last week, improved by 16 cents for the month and strengthened by 44 cents (2.6%) from the beginning of the year (R22.32/£).

The stronger Rand contributes towards softening an increase in fuel prices at the beginning of March due to the strong rally in the oil price. By Thursday, the price of petrol was over-recovered (meaning a drop in March) by 7 cents per litre and the diesel price was under-recovered (meaning an increase in March) by 42 cents per litre. The fuel price may however increase further in March or April if the Minister of Finance hikes the fuel level during its budget speech on 25 February.

US non-farm jobs and inflation rate data

US total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 130,000 in January, and the unemployment rate came down from 4.4% in December to 4.3 %, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last Wednesday. This reading followed the 48,000 (revised from 50,000) increase recorded in December and came above the market expectation of 70,000. Annual wage inflation, as measured by the change in the Average Hourly Earnings, held steady at 3.7%, compared to the market expectation of 3.6%. The annual inflation rate in the US slowed to 2.4% in January 2026, its lowest level since May, down from 2.7% in each of the previous two months and below forecasts of 2.5%.

Both these indicators improved towards the Federal Reserve targets of 4.0% for unemployment and 2.0% for the inflation rate. The Fed, therefore, is expected not to decrease its Bank rate soon, although the new appointed chair Kevin Warsh has an unusual mandate to achieve something that has rarely been seen outside of wartime: an economic growth rate of 15%.

"We should be at 15%," US President Donald Trump said in an interview with FOX Business aired Monday. “If he does the job that he is capable, we can grow at 15%. I think more than that." Warsh, therefore, may affect bigger and more rate cuts soon.

Prospects for the coming week

This coming Tuesday the release by StatsSA of South Africa’s unemployment rate for Q4 (year-on-year) will be of importance, especially on the back of the president's Sona of last week. It is expected that the unemployment had increase from 31.9% in quarter three to 32.3% in quarter four. StatsSA will also announce the inflation rate for January on Wednesday. It is expected that the growth in the CPI will be 3.7% against the inflation rate of 3.6% and will indicate that the effect of higher meat prices due to the Mouth and Feet disease and the increased electricity prices announced by Nersadecrease will keep pressure on the Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee not to lower the repo rate soon.

Globally the US Fed's Federal Open Market Committee  meeting’s minutes of its previous meeting will be released on Wednesday. The US income and spending data for January will be published on Friday, while the UK will announce its latest unemployment and inflation rates.

Chris Harmse is the consulting economist of Sequoia Capital Management and a senior lecturer at Stadio Higher Education.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered one of his most critical State of the Nation Addresses (Sona) since assuming office in 2018.  While not every intervention or timeframe could be provided, it gave hope on many key matters affecting the working class and society.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) as well as the other Federations constituting Organised Labour met with the President and members of Cabinet before Sonato raise workers’ key expectations and proposals.  Such engagements with social partners should happen more often if we are to collectively resolve our many socio-economic crises. 

Many in society, particularly the working class, are naturally skeptical of politicians and speeches, and justifiably so.  It is important, however, to reflect on where we have come from, to remember the real damage unleashed during the decade of state capture and corruption and the substantial progress achieved to dismantle these networks of patronage and rebuild the state’s capacity.

While we still have far to go and many areas of serious challenges remain; we should take comfort from and build upon the green shoots emerging under the African National Congress led government. 

Loadshedding has been overcome.  We must now focus on reducing the increasingly unaffordable price of electricity for working and middle-class families and the economy. 

Whilst short solutions are being sought in negotiations with government and Eskom, we must expedite interventions to address Eskom’s financial losses, in particular moving all consumers to prepaid electricity as well as dealing with corruption, wasteful expenditure, acts of criminality and enabling Eskom to enter the renewable energy space.

Transnet and Metro Rail’s free fall has been stopped and capacity is being restored.  These must be accelerated to help protect and create thousands of mining, manufacturing and agricultural jobs as well as to provide 10 million urban workers with fast, safe and cheap means of transport to work.  The mining rights application system must be rolled out this year to inject investment and jobs into the economy’s backbone.

South African Airways is once again flying, connecting key domestic destinations and boosting tourism and trade along international routes.

It is concerning however, that the Sona was silent on a package of interventions needed to rebuild other embattled State-Owned Enterprises, in particular Denel, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Post Office and the Postbank.

The South African Revenue Services’ remarkable turnaround is key to ensuring the state can collect the revenue needed to fund the public and municipal services that society and the economy depend upon.  The announcement of interventions to tackle the flood of illegal goods is welcome as these products threaten local jobs and industries and deny the state taxes owed and in the case of tobacco and alcohol, the ability to curb these highly addictive products.

Sona’s focus on the need to win the war against crime and corruption, including the deployment of the South African National Defence Force to boost policing in crime hotspots is long overdue.  Society should not be expected to tolerate our high levels of crime. 

More details need to be fleshed out in the Budget due to be tabled at Parliament shortly.  The South African Police Service, Hawks, Special Investigations Unit, National Prosecuting Authority, the Judiciary and the SANDF need to be provided with the resources to defeat our entrenched levels of criminality and often highly sophisticated networks.

Budget cuts or mere inflationary adjustments won’t work.  Neither will allowing the continuous loss of scarce resources in these institutions to corruption and wasteful expenditure.  In many of them, a massive shake-up and new decisive leadership are needed.

Local government remains the other major Achille’s heel with the number of financially distressed municipalities rising to 70% over the past decade, community debt owed increasing to over R300 billion and municipal debt due to Eskom an astounding R100 billion.  Municipal corruption is becoming the norm and many fail to pay their staff for months at a time. 

Urgent interventions are needed to stabilise and rebuild local government and municipal services besides the pending White Paper and new funding model.  This is a burning fire that can no longer wait for bold action.

Sona was disappointingly silent on the need for an aggressive stimulus package mobilising resources from the Fiscus, Developmental Finance Institutions and the private sector.  Capital and other support needs to be made accessible and affordable for SMMEs, industrial and export sectors.  We cannot continue along a path of 1% economic growth and expect unemployment to fall.

The President’s reaffirmation of the Presidential Employment Stimulus is welcome. It needs to be ramped up to accommodate 1 million participants by April and 2 million by November 2026 to provide a path to the labour market for millions of unemployed youth.

The affirmation of the SRD Grant and its role in alleviating poverty provides comfort to its 8 million recipients.  It needs to be made accessible for all unemployed persons not receiving grants, raised to the Food Poverty Line and its participants included in skills and employment opportunities.

On many fronts the Sona responded to society’s challenges.  The government must now ensure the 2026/27 Budget provides its progressive objectives with the funding needed to achieve them. 

It will be a political travesty to raise the hopes of millions only to dash them with budget cuts.  The crisis at many frontline public services have proven the fallacy of austerity cuts.  The anemic 1% economic growth and 42.4% unemployment rate have confirmed the dangers of neo-liberalism and privatisation.

Besides stimulating economic growth and creating jobs and thus generating tax revenue, Sars must be given the support it needs to raise tax compliance from 67% to 75% by 2029, thus generating an additional R200 billion in funds needed to fill the many fiscal holes.

Equally critically President Ramaphosa, Parliament, the Legislatures and Municipal Councils must hold their executives, departments, entities, SOEs and municipalities accountable for implementing Sona’s commitments.  Those who fail, must be removed.

Cosatu President Zingiswa Losi

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

In migration debates, the loud argument is still about fences, patrols and permits. The quieter shift is that movement is increasingly being governed upstream by prediction systems, risk scoring and automated surveillance, long before a person reaches a port of entry.

The border is becoming less a line on a map and more a statistical judgement that follows people across airports, visa portals, mobile networks, aid systems and labour markets.That matters because once mobility is treated primarily as a signal to be detected, sorted and diverted, the governing question changes. It stops being who qualifies and becomes who appears risky. The difference is not semantic.

Risk logic does not demand the same transparency, contestability, or procedural fairness that rights-based governance requires. It rewards opacity, not explanation. And it turns human movement into a problem to be optimised rather than a reality to be governed with legitimacy.This shift is unfolding as displacement pressures remain historically high.

UNHCR’s Mid-Year Trends reporting placed global forced displacement at 117.3 million people by mid-2025, underscoring that large-scale movement is no longer episodic but structural. Whether driven by conflict, persecution, economic collapse, or climate stressors, mobility has become a defining feature of the global landscape.

In response, many jurisdictions are converging on technology. Frontex’s most recent Annual Risk Analysis frames border management explicitly through a risk lens, mapping routes, facilitators and pressure points to inform predictive enforcement. European Commission planning documents similarly outline deeper integration of drones and counter-drone systems into national border surveillance architectures. The direction of travel is clear.

Detection, anticipation and pre-emption are becoming standard operating logic. Public authorities are under genuine pressure. Unmanaged flows can strain already fragile local services. Smuggling networks exploit congestion and uncertainty. Human trafficking thrives where oversight is weak. Governments have a legitimate duty to know who is entering their territory and to manage that movement lawfully.

The counterview is not trivial. In an era of transnational organised crime, geopolitical fragmentation and climate volatility, technology promises speed, scale and operational control.The risk, however, is that what begins as capacity becomes architecture. Once border decisions are reorganised around prediction, “risk” becomes the master category into which everything else is poured: asylum claims, labour mobility, student visas, even routine travel. And risk systems expand in predictable ways.

First, they expand by scope. Tools introduced for one category of movement bleed into others because the underlying infrastructure is the same. A system built to detect irregular entry can be repurposed for labour screening, policing, or access to public services. The border becomes distributed across institutions.

Second, they expand by data hunger. Predictive systems improve by ingesting more signals and the easiest signals to ingest are often those people cannot meaningfully contest: biometric identifiers, travel patterns, behavioural proxies and administrative histories. The invisible wall is not necessarily a wall. It is a dataset.

Third, they expand by opacity. The stronger the security justification, the weaker the incentive to disclose model logic, error rates, bias audits, or accountability pathways. A person’s movement can be shaped by a score they will never see, derived from variables they do not control, evaluated by criteria they cannot challenge.The deepest problem is not technology itself. It is the misalignment between a rights-based governance framework and a risk-based operational framework.

Democracies are built to justify decisions publicly, allow challenge and prevent arbitrary power. Risk systems are built to reduce uncertainty quickly, often under conditions of confidentiality. When risk logic takes over, procedural fairness becomes a cost rather than a requirement.This is not theoretical. The consequences are visible in modern border governance, where pre-emption increasingly replaces adjudication.

Predictive analytics shifts enforcement from the physical border to the airline check-in desk, the visa application portal, or the point where a refugee’s identity is digitised. It can reroute movement into more dangerous pathways as people try to avoid detection. It can harden categories of suspicion around nationality, language, or route history. It can also produce false positives at scale, which is a uniquely modern form of harm: not one wrongful denial, but thousands.

South Africa is not observing these shifts from a distance. The Department of Home Affairs has opened public comment on its Draft Revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection, with the deadline extended to 15 February 2026 (Department of Home Affairs, 2026). Whatever one’s policy preferences, the significance is that the country is actively rethinking how it governs citizenship, mobility and protection in a more digitised era.

This is where the South African debate needs conceptual clarity. Too often it collapses into moral binaries: open versus closed, enforcement versus compassion, citizens versus foreigners. Those binaries generate heat but not governance. The harder question is whether the country is building an immigration system that is legible, lawful and accountable in a digital age, or whether it is drifting toward an infrastructure of control without the necessary democratic guardrails.

A sober reading of global experience suggests digitisation can improve administration when it strengthens integrity and reduces discretion. Better civil registration, cleaner identity verification and interoperable systems can reduce backlogs and close corruption gaps. In a country that has battled service delivery credibility, administrative modernisation is not optional.

Digitisation becomes dangerous, however, when it substitutes for institutional capability. Technology cannot compensate for weak oversight, inconsistent policy application, or low trust. It can make those failures harder to see. A dysfunctional process becomes a smooth interface. A discretionary decision becomes an automated denial. An accountability gap becomes a system outcome.There is also an economic self-harm risk that rarely receives enough attention. Modern economies compete for skills, investment and entrepreneurial energy.

South Africa already has a formal mechanism to target high-value capabilities through its Critical Skills List under the Immigration Act. The strategic question is not whether such a framework exists on paper. It is whether it is implemented with operational seriousness, aligned to sectoral demand and measured against economic outcomes. If a system cannot reliably distinguish between genuine security threats and economic opportunity, it will do what blunt instruments always do. It will cut off more than it protects. The global evidence is that talent attraction is rarely accidental. It is structured, deliberate and administratively disciplined.

South Africa’s context is distinct, given unemployment, inequality and the imperative to protect local opportunity. But a credible skills-led migration approach is not the same thing as an open door. It is targeted intake aligned to industrial strategy, paired with enforceable labour standards, localisation where appropriate and transparent performance metrics.This nuance matters. It allows the country to avoid an “us versus them” narrative while acknowledging labour market strain. A smart, enforceable system can protect South Africans from exploitation and displacement, while preventing isolation from scarce skills that accelerate investment, industrial capability and export competitiveness.

The question is not only what policy says. It is whether governance can execute it consistently and visibly.The border of the future will not only be managed by officials and inspectors. It will be managed by models, data linkages and automated decisions. That is why South Africa’s current White Paper consultation matters more than it appears to in the daily news cycle. It is an opportunity to decide deliberately whether immigration governance will be built as a lawful public system that can be interrogated, or as a technical apparatus that cannot.

In the long run, the real trade-off is not between compassion and control. It is between governance that can explain itself and governance that hides behind the authority of systems. A country that chooses the second may gain short-term operational power, but lose something more valuable: legitimacy. And in an era of heightened mobility, legitimacy is the only border that truly holds.

Nomvula Zeldah Mabuza is a Risk Governance and Compliance Specialist with extensive experience in strategic risk and industrial operations. She holds a Diploma in Business Management (Accounting) from Brunel University, UK, and is an MBA candidate at Henley Business School, South Africa.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Say the name Imperial to anyone involved in the motor trade,  present or going back 30 years and the name is synonymous with quality.

Now ask the general public their recollection of the Imperial name and without fail the positives flow.

Say the name Motus and the opinion goes south at terminal velocity speed.

Motus is seen as a brand that does not value staff, customer service, or suppliers.

Is this an opinion or a fact? In my eyes, it is a definitive fact. 

Currently the brand is facing legal action to compel it to play by the rules with regards to staff retrenchments and unwarranted, unilateral salary cuts.

Simply put, Motus has identified that with the passage of time, those loyal to the company can be replaced, at a lower cost to company (CTC).

The “problem” with that is it is immoral and plain greed.

Imagine if airline companies around the world decided that their senior pilots can be replaced at a lower CTC.

We refer to it as “The Motus Operandi” and a backhanded compliment it is most definitely not. 

What makes this situation more unacceptable, is that Motus is the official importer into South Africa of Hyundai, Kia, Mitsubishi, Renault and the country’s worst brand Tata.

Need an unsafe car?

Hyundai can help with what is officially the country's only zero rated New Car Assessment Programme (Global NCAP) vehicle the Hyundai Grand i10 with the Renault Kwid, the number one pretender for that throne.

Hyundai is the official vehicle partner to SA Rugby and the ladies and men who wear Green and Gold deserve a lot better than the vehicle that has desires to carry you directly to your grave.

Where does it all fall apart?

Lack of motoring people in all the right positions.

Group CEO Ockert Janse Van Rensburg would battle to tell what vehicle he was in if the badge was removed.

Let’s talk about the least fit for the position of CEO in South Africa.

Van Rensburg, the bean counter who battles to count fairly.

Mr CEO of the Year, earns a whopping R35 million a year despite making every wrong decision.

Motus is a highly diversified company that relies on historical success to generate substantial income.

When we say substantial, we are talking about figures at about R2.5 billion after tax.

However the motor division is said to be losing money.

Let’s explain how the individual who cannot identify an SUV from a convertible has messed things up.

Everyone of the competitors Motus is up against, identified the arrival of the Chinese on the world motoring stage.

Van Rensburg identified that being late to the party will be a “great party trick” and now the only thing his colleagues hope is that “it will be his parting trick”.

Motus is the most untransformed company in South Africa and again the facts bear it out.

Group CEO, Motoring CEO, head of Hyundai, Kia and the highly profitable pull the wool over your eyes, Auto Pedigree are all pale and male and most definitely not remotely the best for the position.

Motus your report card says, “You can do better” and doing better is “not just collaborating with the AA of South Africa and MISA” to get the results you don’t deserve.

Watch this space, you are being watched by many! 

Michael Pashut is the owner and founder of the online vehicle platform CHANGECARS and host of the well supported CHANGECARS Podcast . He has 35 years of experience in the motor industry.

BUSINESS REPORT 

South Africa does not need to guess what economic success looks like. We have already done it. Over the past decade, the country has quietly built one of the world’s most competitive Global Business Services (GBS) sectors — attracting multinational investment, exporting high-value services, and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs for young South Africans. What began as a call-centre industry has evolved into a sophisticated ecosystem spanning customer experience, fintech support, analytics, and digital back-office operations.

GBS offers more than a success story; it provides a blueprint for how South Africa can lead the industries of the future. At a time when youth unemployment remains one of our greatest national risks — and responsibilities — the question is no longer whether South Africa can compete globally. The real question is whether we can replicate this success across multiple future-defining sectors.

At the upcoming Future of Jobs Summit, we will explore what I call the Next10 — ten industries with the potential to transform our economic trajectory while creating jobs at scale. But before looking forward, it is worth recognising a powerful truth: South Africa is already globally competitive in several sectors.

Where South Africa Already Leads

Our banking sector is consistently ranked among the most sophisticated in emerging markets, combining regulatory strength with digital innovation.

Our digital and fintech capabilities continue to attract global attention, supported by a deep pool of technical talent.

In horticulture and viniculture, South African products reach premium international markets, demonstrating our ability to compete on quality, not just cost.

Tourism and hospitality remain global assets, underpinned by natural beauty, cultural richness, and world-class service standards.

And then there is GBS — arguably one of the most underappreciated economic victories of the democratic era. The sector succeeded because it aligned five critical forces: policy support, private-sector investment, targeted skills development, global competitiveness, and a compelling national value proposition. This is precisely the formula we must now apply to the Next10.

The Next10 Industries South Africa Must Lead

1. Green Energy and Storage: With some of the world’s best solar and wind resources, South Africa can become a renewable powerhouse while creating thousands of installation, engineering, and maintenance roles.
2. AI, Data, and Digital Services: Rather than fearing automation, we should position the country as a global exporter of digital talent — just as India did two decades ago.
3. Advanced Manufacturing: New technologies such as additive manufacturing allow countries to leapfrog traditional industrial constraints and integrate SMEs into global supply chains.
4. Agritech and Bio-Innovation: By merging agriculture with technology, South Africa can strengthen food security while expanding high-skill rural employment.
5. Fintech and Digital Infrastructure: Building on our financial leadership, this sector could dramatically expand economic inclusion while generating high-value jobs.
6. Healthtech and the Care Economy: Demographic change and technological advances are reshaping healthcare delivery — opening opportunities from telemedicine to medical logistics.
7. Creative Economy and SportsTech: Film, gaming, design, and performance analytics are no longer fringe sectors; they are fast-growing global industries hungry for young talent.
8. Logistics and Smart Supply Chains: Our geographic position makes South Africa a natural gateway to Africa. Smart logistics could cement that role.
9. Mining Innovation and Future Materials: As the world demands critical minerals for the energy transition, South Africa can lead not only in extraction but in downstream beneficiation and technology.
10. Education Technology and Skills Platforms: The future belongs to nations that train faster than the market evolves. Scalable skills ecosystems will define competitiveness.

The GBS Blueprint: Five Lessons for National Growth

If GBS taught us anything, it is that job creation at scale is never accidental. First, clarity of ambition. GBS succeeded because South Africa decided to compete globally — not regionally. Second, skills at speed. Training pipelines were aligned directly to industry demand. Third, public-private collaboration. Government enabled; business executed. Fourth, a compelling global proposition. We positioned ourselves as high quality, cost competitive, and culturally aligned with major markets. Fifth, confidence. Investors back countries that believe in their capabilities. Imagine applying this blueprint simultaneously to green energy, AI, advanced manufacturing, and healthtech. The multiplier effect would be profound.

From Potential to Leadership

South Africa stands at an inflection point similar to the years preceding the 2010 FIFA World Cup — a period when the nation united around a bold ambition and delivered infrastructure, investment, and global credibility. Today, we need a comparable national mission — not around a sporting event, but around economic renewal.

The global economy is reorganising itself around technology, sustainability, and skills. Countries that move early will shape markets; those that hesitate will import the future rather than build it.

Encouragingly, South Africa already possesses many of the ingredients required for leadership: strong institutions, entrepreneurial depth, financial sophistication, and a resilient private sector.

What we need now is coordinated execution. The Future of Jobs Summit is designed to accelerate precisely this conversation — bringing together business leaders, policymakers, investors, and educators to move from insight to implementation.

Because high unemployment is not merely a crisis; it is dormant capacity waiting to be activated. If we scale what works, replicate the GBS playbook, and mobilise around the Next10, South Africa can transition from a consumption-driven economy to a globally competitive producer of talent, technology, and innovation.

History rarely signals when a generational opportunity arrives. But when it does, nations must decide whether they will observe — or lead. South Africa has already shown it can lead. Now we must do it again.

Dr Nik Eberl is the founder and executive chair: The Future of Jobs Summit™ (Official T20 Side Event). He is also the author of Nation of Champions: How South Africa won the World Cup of Destination Branding.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

South Africa and the rest of the African continent face a familiar paradox. Agriculture remains central to food security, employment and economic development, yet productivity growth is slow, climate risks are rising, and public resources are constrained. At the same time, Africa has access to some of the world’s most sophisticated international agricultural research institutions — many of them with decades of experience working on African soils and farming systems. The real problem is not a lack of knowledge, but rather our persistent failure to fully exploit it.

Across the globe, a dense ecosystem of international agricultural research organisations exists, including the CGIAR network and its specialised centres, such as CIMMYT, ICRISAT, ILRI, IRRI, and WorldFish, alongside leading universities and regional research platforms. These institutions generate cutting-edge work on improved crop varieties, livestock genetics, soil health, water management, climate resilience and digital agriculture. Africa is not marginal to this system; it is one of its primary focus regions. Yet too often, the outputs of this research remain underutilised, poorly integrated into national strategies, or trapped in pilot projects that never reach scale.

South Africa illustrates this challenge vividly. The country possesses relatively strong universities, research councils and private agribusiness capacity compared to much of the continent. However, collaboration with international research institutions is often ad hoc, donor-driven and insufficiently aligned with national priorities. Memoranda of understanding are signed, workshops are held, and demonstration plots are established — but systematic adoption into extension services, seed systems and farmer support programmes remains weak.

Elsewhere in Africa, the challenge is even more acute. Many countries depend heavily on externally funded research projects yet lack the institutional capacity or political commitment to absorb results into policy and practice. This leads to duplication of effort, fragmented innovation systems and wasted resources. Africa ends up paying — directly or indirectly — for research that it does not fully use.

If Africa is serious about transforming agriculture, three shifts are urgently required.

First, governments must move from passive participation to strategic leadership in international research partnerships. Too often, research agendas are set externally, driven by donor priorities rather than national or regional needs. African governments, including South Africa’s, should be far more assertive in defining the problems that matter most — whether drought-tolerant maize, livestock disease control, soil fertility restoration or climate-smart irrigation — and then leveraging international institutions to address them. This requires well-articulated national agricultural research strategies that explicitly map how global knowledge will be adapted and deployed locally.

Second, the link between research and delivery must be strengthened. Breakthroughs in laboratories or research stations mean little if they do not reach farmers at scale. Extension systems across Africa are chronically underfunded and poorly connected to research institutions. International research centres should not be treated as isolated knowledge producers, but as integral partners in revitalising extension, farmer training and private-sector engagement. South Africa, with its mix of commercial and smallholder farmers, is particularly well positioned to pilot models that connect global research directly to diverse farming systems — models that could then be replicated elsewhere on the continent.

Third, Africa must invest more seriously in its own research and human capital to act as effective counterparts. International institutions are complements, not substitutes, for strong national capacity. Without skilled local scientists, data systems and regulatory frameworks, even the best international research will fail to take root. Increasing funding for agricultural research and development — still well below global benchmarks in many African countries — is not a luxury, but a necessity. Equally important is creating career pathways that retain talented African researchers who too often leave for opportunities abroad.

There are encouraging signs. Regional initiatives, stronger university partnerships and growing interest in climate-smart agriculture suggest that momentum is building. However, progress remains uneven and fragile. In a world of accelerating climate change, geopolitical instability and volatile food markets, Africa cannot afford incrementalism.

For South Africa, the stakes are particularly high. As a regional agricultural leader, the country has an opportunity — and a responsibility — to model how international research can be translated into real productivity gains, inclusive growth and environmental sustainability. Doing so would not only strengthen domestic food security but also support regional stability and economic integration.

The knowledge to transform African agriculture already exists. Much of it sits in international institutions that are willing and able to partner. What has been missing is deliberate, coordinated and politically supported action to turn that knowledge into impact. The question is no longer whether Africa has access to world-class agricultural research. The question is whether it has the will to use it.

Dr Thulasizwe Mkhabela is a Director and Senior Researcher at Outcome Mapping (thula@outcomemapping.co.za;  thulasizwe.mkhabela@gmail.com). He is also an Honorary Research Fellow with the African Centre for Food Security at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (MkhabelaT1@ukzn.ac.za) and an independent agricultural researcher and policy analyst.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

For decades, corporate social responsibility occupied the comfortable terrain of narrative. Annual reports were populated with carefully curated stories, photographic evidence of benevolence, and broad claims of commitment to “community” and “upliftment.”  Many of us who work closely with enterprise and development ecosystems have seen this pattern repeatedly. This era of qualitative assertion is rapidly closing.  

Since the early 2010s, particularly following the consolidation of ESG standards and the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, and more decisively after 2020, a more demanding paradigm has emerged one that builds on earlier quantitative practices but extends far beyond them. Social impact is no longer treated as a symbolic add-on, but as a measurable, strategic, and operational concern embedded in core decision-making.

The contemporary market environment is increasingly intolerant of performative purpose. Consumers, investors, and partners are more discerning, capable of distinguishing between symbolic commitments and demonstrable outcomes. Purpose-driven narratives, once sufficient, are now discounted in the absence of evidence. Measured social impact supplies this evidence, converting abstract claims into competitive advantage.

This is particularly true within contexts marked by deep inequality and structural complexity such as South Africa where social impact can no longer be relegated to the margins of corporate strategy. It has become a determinant of institutional resilience, innovation capacity, and long-term viability. Organisations are increasingly judged not only by what they produce or profit, but by how they shape livelihoods, labour markets, and socio-economic systems.    

Organisations that do not quantify these interactions operate with a critical blind spot. They struggle to anticipate disruptions rooted in community insecurity, precarious work, and the erosion of social and economic stability. Nor are they able to assess whether their investments in social initiatives meaningfully strengthen the livelihoods, agency, and long-term economic resilience of the people and communities they engage. By contrast, impact measurement frameworks function simultaneously as a risk mitigation mechanism and a reputational asset. In moments of crisis, verifiable social data provides credibility with regulators, communities, and the public. More proactively, it enables more disciplined capital allocation, directing resources towards interventions that yield tangible social and strategic returns.

Beyond reputation, social data shapes innovation. When organisations systematically analyse the needs, constraints, and aspirations of the communities and markets they engage, they unlock insights that inform product development, service design, and new market creation. The growth of financial services for the underbanked, inclusive supplier development models, and digitally enabled access to essential services reflects this dynamic. These are not charitable endeavours, but commercially viable responses to structural gaps identified through data-driven engagement with social realities. Enterprises that internalise this logic tend to develop more resilient, scalable, and contextually relevant business models.

Social impact measurement requires moving beyond simplistic indicators toward an understanding of quality, depth, and systemic effect. In practice, this means paying attention to how enterprises shape people’s skills, economic mobility, and long-term participation in markets; how communities experience stability, access, and inclusion; how trust and cohesion are built within operating environments; and whether business activity contributes to shifting structural conditions rather than merely reproducing them.

Increasingly, organisations are expected to translate these social dynamics into credible, decision-relevant insight. This has driven a shift toward more disciplined, transparent, and people-centred approaches to understanding impact supported by improved data practices and digital tools that allow social outcomes to be tracked, tested, and integrated into strategic decision-making without becoming detached from lived realities.

South Africa presents a particularly demanding environment for social impact measurement. Fragmented data systems, community fatigue with repetitive assessments, short-term corporate planning horizons, and the rise of “social washing” undermine credibility. Addressing these challenges requires deliberate choices: the adoption of long-term indicators that track outcomes over time; partnerships with credible research, academic, and civil society institutions; and frameworks that are sensitive to starkly different urban, peri-urban, and rural realities.

When approached thoughtfully, however, these constraints also present an opportunity. Organisations that invest in contextual intelligence and methodological evidence are better positioned to navigate complexity, build durable stakeholder relationships, and contribute meaningfully to socio-economic stability.

Moreover, the future of social impact measurement lies in combining technology with smart strategy. AI and real-time data systems can transform impact tracking from a quarterly compliance checkbox into continuous strategic intelligence. The technology already exists. Companies can now monitor which interventions work in real-time, give communities direct input into measurement, and use AI to spot patterns humans might miss.

In a country like ours, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. Those who build genuine measurement capabilities and use them to guide strategy will gain critical advantages: better risk understanding, earlier opportunity identification, stronger stakeholder relationships, and contribution to the economic stability their own success depends on.

Londani Mpharalala is a Research and Impact Coordinator at 22 On Sloane.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT 

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is undoubtedly one of the fastest-growing developments in South Africa’s payment landscape. While card payments remain the preferred option for online purchases, the use of BNPL products reportedly doubled between 2024 and 2025. According to the same report, BNPL is the most requested new payment method, with 34% of consumers asking merchants to implement it.

At a practical level, BNPL allows customers to purchase goods by paying a small amount upfront and settling the balance in instalments over a short payment cycle – usually weeks – without interest if payments are made on time. Providers such as Payflex, PayJustNow and Happy Pay generally pay the merchant in full upfront, while taking on the responsibility of collecting instalments from the customer. This is a key distinction from traditional credit models and one of the main reasons BNPL has gained traction so quickly.

To understand its appeal, it is useful to look at what came before. Until relatively recently, retailers – particularly in sectors such as electronics and furniture – relied on 12-, 24- or even 36-month instalment options to make higher-ticket items more accessible. While effective, these longer-term credit arrangements often involved lengthy approval processes and higher barriers to entry for consumers. BNPL, by contrast, is designed for simplicity and short-term affordability.

For small businesses, offering BNPL could potentially reduce cart abandonment, increase average order values and open access to new customers. In a tough economic environment, consumers are increasingly cautious with cash flow, and spreading payments over a few pay cycles can make a meaningful difference to buying decisions.

However, adding a new payment option like BNPL requires careful and thorough consideration. The first question to ask is whether BNPL aligns with your customer profile. Businesses selling discretionary or higher-value items online are more likely to see immediate benefits than those offering low-cost, high-frequency purchases. Understanding how your customers currently pay, and why, is essential before introducing any new method.

The second consideration is cost. BNPL providers typically charge merchants a higher transaction fee than standard card payments. While this may be offset by increased sales or higher basket sizes, the numbers need to work for your margins. For small businesses operating on tight spreads, even modest fee increases can erode profitability if not carefully managed.

There are also broader strategic and moral considerations. BNPL can drive growth, but it should support sustainable growth. Encouraging customers to spend beyond their means may deliver short-term revenue but could damage long-term relationships if not handled responsibly. Many consumers are also unaware of potential late payment fees and the implications of missed payments, and with BNPL still largely unregulated in South Africa, consumer protection and legal recourse remain limited.

Choosing a reputable payment partner that integrates seamlessly, conducts appropriate affordability checks and offers solid customer support is therefore critical. A payment partner will become an extension of your brand, and a clunky or unreliable experience can undo months of hard-earned customer trust in a matter of seconds.

That said, for many small businesses, the decision to offer BNPL may make sense as part of a broader, flexible payment mix. Afterall, successful businesses are often those that offer the most seamless customer journey. With payment being one of the final, and most critical, of those steps, you want to be sure you’re getting it right.

Jeremy Lang, Managing Director at Business Partners Limited.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

After years in the agricultural sector and having worked at the frontline of political lobbying, disaster management, farmer development, land reform, biosecurity, financing, and farm security, I am deeply alarmed. It has become impossible to ignore the growing risk: if departmental officials continue to brush aside or outright dismiss the recommendations of Treasury and the expert task teams appointed to guide them, South Africa will inevitably be confronted with severe threats to both food security and food affordability.

In my search for clarity, I examined multiple reports detailing the deteriorating state of South Africa’s animal biosecurity. When comparing the findings of the 2022 Task Team on Animal Biosecurity, the 2025 National Treasury Budget Review, and the Onderstepoort Biological Products (OBP) Q2 2024/25 Performance Report, a deeply unsettling picture emerges. One is forced to ask, with increasing urgency: who has been misleading whom? How have such clear warnings, recommendations, and critical mitigation steps been ignored, steps that could have prevented the biosecurity crisis we are now living through?

The "Broken System": Warnings from the Task Team (2022)

The Task Team’s report presents a stark warning, describing the national veterinary and animal biosecurity system as "broken" and a major threat to the livestock industry.

• Systemic Failure: The country is failing to diagnose diseases on time and lacks realistic remedial biosecurity measures.

• Core Issues: Problems include a lack of clear chain of command, poor coordination between national and provincial governments, and a significant trust deficit between the public and private sectors.

• Critical Shortages: The report explicitly cites a non-availability of vaccines for notifiable diseases and poor maintenance of laboratory infrastructure.

• Vaccine Crisis: The Task Team urged corrective actions to address the vaccine shortage caused by ongoing "problems and dilemmas" at OBP.

Concerns from National Treasury (2025)

The National Treasury’s 2025 Budget Review echoes these warnings, highlighting a facility "on the verge of collapse" due to aging infrastructure.

• Infrastructure Decay: OBP operates with equipment over 30 years old, far exceeding its 15–20 year lifespan, leading to frequent breakdowns and insufficient vaccine production.
• Slow Progress: While OBP was allocated over R492 million in 2018/19 for upgrades, progress has been slow, with R153.4 million still unspent as of October 2024.
• The FMD Crisis: Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) vaccines must currently be sourced from Botswana, which Treasury identifies as a "serious biosecurity risk" due to high costs and unknown efficacy under local conditions. 

The OBP "Glossy" Performance Report (2024)

In contrast to the dire warnings above, the OBP Q2 2024/25 report presents a more positive outlook, focusing on financial targets and specific performance indicators. 

• Financial Success: OBP reported a profit before tax of R27.9 million for the quarter, exceeding its target of R11.2 million. Sales revenue reached R100 million, overachieving the R86 million target.
• Operational "Achievements": The report claims a 90.43% production efficiency, surpassing its 83% target.
• Underlying Red Flags: Despite the positive financial framing, the report reveals significant operational failures:
• Production Gaps: Output of the "Top 20" products was only 44.41% against an 80% target due to limited freeze-dryer capacity.
• Backorders: Critical vaccines like African Horse Sickness and Redwater Africa remain on backorder.
• Project Delays: Progress on the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) project—the very infrastructure Treasury is concerned about—missed its quarterly target significantly, achieving 17% against a 100% target for certain deliverables. 

Analysis: Who Fooled Whom?

The "glossy" OBP report appears to prioritize short-term financial metrics (revenue and profit) to mask a deepening operational crisis. While OBP celebrates exceeding revenue targets through the sale of high-value vaccines, it simultaneously fails to meet output targets for its most critical products due to the exact infrastructure decay Treasury warned about.

• OBP vs. Treasury: OBP’s report suggests financial health, but Treasury points out that these "profits" occur while R153 million in infrastructure funding sits unspent and the national herd remains at risk.

• OBP vs. The Task Team: While the Task Team identified OBP as a source of vaccine shortages that cripple the industry, OBP’s internal report frames its performance through "overachieved" targets in customer satisfaction and media publications.

Conclusion

The documents suggest that OBP’s reporting may be "fooling" stakeholders by emphasizing financial gains while failing to address the fundamental infrastructure collapse and vaccine shortages that the Task Team and Treasury identified as national biosecurity risks. The "broken system" remains unfixed, even as the "glossy" reports highlight quarterly profits. 

Why are those tasked with producing these critical reports never held to account for their failures? Even more alarming, why do we repeatedly overlook the urgent need to appoint truly competent, committed professionals capable of preventing the ongoing implosion of OBP? How much longer can we afford this cycle of neglect before the consequences become irreversible? 

Christo van der Rheede, written in his  personal capacity and as previous head of Agri SA,South Africa’s largest organised agricultural advocacy body

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

On 7 February, Eskom chair Dr Mteto Nyati wrote on X that it is rarely wise for government to outsource strategic thinking on national reforms, especially energy, to private business interests. He argued that incentives are misaligned and that companies will prioritise commercial objectives over the public good.

South Africa’s electricity reform effort is continuously running into challenges. The grid has become the binding constraint. Transmission capacity is limiting the connection of new generation, even where projects are financed, permitted, and ready to build. Developers are waiting. Capital is available. Demand, while currently subdued, could grow if electricity costs decrease and supply became less carbon intensive and more predictable. Access to the network remains uncertain. This is no longer a crisis of generation. It is a crisis of institutional design.

The slowdown is visible on the ground. Grid connection timelines stretch out. Access rules shift mid-process. Investment decisions stall. These are not abstract concerns for project developers or lenders. They translate directly into higher financing costs and fewer projects reaching construction.

When the grid owner is also the dominant generator, decisions about sequencing, access, and prioritisation carry an unavoidable conflict. Even with competent leadership, the structure itself invites mistrust. South Africa has already committed, in law, to a different model. Electricity legislation provides for an independent transmission system operator, open access to the grid, and a competitive wholesale market.These were not academic proposals. They were intended to lower prices by introducing competition, unlock private investment, and shift risk away from consumers.

Without genuine grid independence, those mechanisms cannot function. Reform stalls before it reaches the point where benefits can flow through to tariffs. Eskom’s recent operational improvement complicates this moment. Higher energy availability, fewer breakdowns, and sharply reduced diesel use deserve acknowledgement. These gains have stabilised the system and reduced immediate pressure. They have also created space. The risk is how that space is used. Operational recovery can either enable structural reform or be used to defend the status quo.

Transmission exposes the trade-off. Eskom has deep engineering capability and decades of operational experience. It also carries heavy debt, competing mandates, and has a track record of slow execution on large capital projects. Grid expansion now requires scale, speed, and balance-sheet capacity that Eskom struggles to provide.

Private capital is available for transmission, but only where governance is clear and access rules are predictable. Keeping transmission inside the Eskom group blurs those boundaries and pushes up the cost of capital across the system.This is not an argument for handing energy policy to the private sector. Strategy, planning, and regulation must remain public responsibilities. The issue is role separation. System planning, grid ownership and operation, and market access need to sit outside generation interests if competition is to work. That separation is standard practice in electricity systems that have lowered costs without losing reliability.

Recent debate has focused on the risk of private interests shaping reform. That concern is legitimate. Markets do not deliver public outcomes on their own. They need firm rules, credible regulators, and enforcement.The mistake is assuming that dominant incumbents are exempt from the same incentive logic because they are state owned.

Monopoly control distorts outcomes regardless of whether the owner is public or private.Transmission delays, contested access, and rising investor caution are not failures of goodwill. They follow predictably from allowing an incumbent to influence design reforms that reduce its own control.South Africa now faces a clear choice. It can continue to manage reform through accommodation,accepting slower grid build-out, higher costs, and stalled investment. Or it can complete the separation it has already legislated, establish an independent transmission owner and operator, and allow competitionto function as intended.

The credibility of electricity reform rests on that decision.It is rarely wise for government to outsource strategic thinking on national reforms, especially energy, to dominant incumbents. Incentives are misaligned. Monopolies prioritise their own commercial objectives over the public good. What Dr Nyati failed to acknowledge in his post on X is that Eskom as a monopoly has demonstrated, over two decades, that its commercial priorities have repeatedly diverged from the outcomes South Africans expected. That record, not future intent, is what now shapes the reform debate.

Thomas Garner holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Pretoria and an MBA from the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Thomas is self-employed focusing on energy, energy related critical minerals, water and communities. He is a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering and a Management Committee member of the South African Independent Power Producers Association.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

I can still vividly recall the live images on CNN of clouds of dark smoke billowing into the desert sky. It was early 1991, and the Iraqi army was retreating from Kuwait, setting the country’s oil fields alight and leaving destruction in its wake. Millions of barrels of oil burned each day as the world watched in real time one of the largest man made environmental disasters in modern history.

That moment was not only a symbol of military defeat. It was a stark reminder of how deeply oil is woven into the fabric of global power and global conflict.

How many times have we seen our dependence on oil drive wars, insurgencies and foreign intervention? The Iran Iraq War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the conflict in the Niger Delta, the Libyan civil war, the Sudanese civil wars, the Chechen wars, and so many more. Across the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, researchers estimate that roughly 30 major armed conflicts have been linked to oil, either as a primary cause or as a powerful secondary factor.

The reasons are not hard to understand. Oil is geographically concentrated. It is strategically vital to modern economies. It generates enormous rents that can enrich states, elites and armed groups alike. It also invites external intervention. We have seen this in Venezuela, where oil wealth has long shaped both domestic politics and international pressure. Let us not pretend that the global interest in the fate of President Nicolás Maduro exists in a vacuum, separate from the country’s vast energy reserves. As in many other cases, oil also sustains authoritarian systems by providing revenue streams that reduce reliance on taxation and, by extension, public consent.

At the same time, let us be honest about our own position. We have built an economy on oil. Our infrastructure runs on oil. Our commodities, from luxuries to essentials, are rooted in oil based supply chains. A sudden and total shift to renewables alone would strain, if not overwhelm, existing energy systems. The transition is not a switch that can simply be flipped.

Yet the fact that we struggle to imagine life without oil does not mean that innocent people must continue to die because of it.

This is where nuclear energy enters the conversation, not as a miracle solution, but as a strategic tool that could change the geopolitical landscape.

First, nuclear power can reduce strategic dependence on oil exporters. If major economies generate more of their electricity from nuclear energy, they burn less oil and gas for power generation. That means fewer chokepoints, such as the Strait of Hormuz, carry the same global significance. It means less leverage for oil exporting states over importing nations. It also means a reduced incentive for military intervention framed around securing energy supplies. In doing so, it weakens one of the classic drivers of twentieth century resource security conflicts.

Second, nuclear power can stabilise energy prices and, by extension, political systems. Nuclear plants operate on long term, predictable cost structures. This can reduce the economic shock of oil price spikes, lower domestic unrest in energy importing countries and make sanctions and embargoes less destabilising. Energy stability does not create peace, but it removes one of the major pressure points that often pushes fragile systems toward crisis.

Third, nuclear energy strengthens energy sovereignty. Countries with a strong nuclear sector are less vulnerable to supply disruptions, shipping lane conflicts and political blackmail tied to fuel access. This can reduce the perceived need for overseas military bases, naval patrols and alliance structures that exist primarily to protect energy flows.

However, it would be naïve to claim that nuclear power can bring an end to war.

Most conflicts are not driven by energy alone. They are shaped by territory, identity, ideology, power and the political survival of ruling elites. Oil often acts as a multiplier, intensifying disputes that already exist, rather than creating them from nothing.

Nuclear power also introduces its own geopolitical tensions. Uranium supply chains are concentrated in a handful of countries, including Kazakhstan, Niger, Russia and Canada. Enrichment and reprocessing technologies raise concerns about weapons proliferation. Reactor exports and financing can become tools of strategic influence. In short, one form of energy politics risks being replaced by another.

And oil itself does not disappear from the strategic picture. Even in a world with a large scale nuclear rollout, oil remains essential for aviation, shipping, petrochemicals, fertilisers, medicines and military logistics. Its geopolitical value is reduced, but not erased.

The realistic conclusion is more modest, but no less important. A global shift toward nuclear energy, alongside renewables, would likely reduce the frequency and intensity of oil driven geopolitical tensions. It would lower the strategic value of oil chokepoints and petrostates. It would make energy less likely to be a primary trigger for conflict.

But it would not eliminate war. Conflict, at its core, is about power, not just fuel.

The deeper truth is this: energy transitions do not determine whether countries fight. They determine what countries fight over.

Professor Bismark Tyobeka is the principal and vice-chancellor of the North-West University (NWU), former CEO of the National Nuclear Regulator, and has recently been appointed both a member and chairperson of the Ministerial Expert Panel on Nuclear. 

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL

BUSINESS REPORT

When President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers his State of the Nation Address tomorrow, he will no doubt have to navigate a complexity of factors, both domestically and in the geo-political environment. As the global financial and trade architecture ruptures, and the once-unanimous global consensus frays, South Africa must align and integrate all its domestic policies to firmly establish a national development path to address our socio-economic challenges in a fragile international environment.

The established multilateral system has experienced its most intense challenge in recent history, resulting in potentially existential crises for the United Nations (UN) and its agencies including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which remains the platform for global cooperation in addressing climate change.

South Africans know all too well what climate impacts mean for our people and economy. Recent extreme weather events - including the devastating floods in KwaZulu-Natal, persistent drought conditions in the Eastern Cape, and the escalating wildfires in the Western Cape and recent floods in Mpumalanga and Limpopo —serve as critical signals of a shifting climate baseline, reminding us that inaction is not an option.

The undeniable truth of our century is that human suffering and loss, fiscal strain and economic costs are direct consequences of these occurrences. Climate change is not merely an environmental concern but a social, economic, and developmental challenge. We must re-evaluate and strengthen the country’s social and economic strategy.The critical challenge for all countries is to recalibrate their transitional strategies without losing the impetus for climate action.

We need an industrial strategy that embraces the need for rapidly transitioning high emissions sectors, whilst developing new sectors that will respond to the green economy opportunities. The concept of a "just" transition is not an after-thought, nor is it a paternalistic response to our most vulnerable workers and communities, it is central to the national development strategy's success, in this regard, the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) plays a critical role in aligning and convening diverse stakeholders and social partners.

South Africa’s current economic model, heavily dependent on fossil fuels, exposes the country to compounding and complex transition risks. With trade and capital markets deeply integrated into a global economy that is actively pricing and penalising carbon, the risk to carbon-intensive exports constitutes a growing risk.

Although developed countries seem to be reviewing their ambition for climate action, the adoption of carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAM) is a trend that is likely to continue and impact countries such as South Africa. The pathway to remain competitive is further complicated by the “political weaponisation” of trade and tariff regimes.

This necessitates both strategic intent and flexibility in our export-dependent sectors. Our response must be initiative-taking, strategic and growth-oriented.The commission developed the Just Transition Framework (JTF), which was adopted by Cabinet in 2022, and it provides an organising logic: decarbonisation aligned with growth, inclusion, and stability.

The PCC acts as the monitor and an enabler of action of the three principles contained in the framework – Restorative, Procedural and Distributive Justice. South Africa’s recently updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), whilst recalibrating ambition, commits us to a pathway of reduced emissions and establishes the urgent need for adaptation and resilience programmes, and effective financing of the just transition and our climate goals.

In realising the NDC our country has developed amongst others, (1) the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) as a clear signal to the market on what is needed for production of renewable and carbon-free sources of electricity, (2) the National Green Finance Taxonomy, which authoritatively categorises green finance, (3) the South African Renewable Energy Master Plan recognising the imperative for industrial and technology capabilities in the renewable energy value chain, and (4) the carbon tax system which provides an incentive mechanism for corporates to reduce emissions.

These initiatives are critical enablers, establishing a common basis for "green investment" to unlock liquidity in the domestic market and restructure balance sheets in the private sector.The capital required for the energy transition alone - encompassing the decommissioning and repurposing of the coal value chain and the construction of a new renewable-enabled national grid - is estimated in the hundreds of billions ofrands, hence the Minister of Electricity and Energy has made innovative capital raising his over-riding priority.

The impediments to private investment and capital provision must be removed, with an appropriate sharing of risks in large capital projects and through innovative private sector participation (PSP) models, which are essential to de-risk investments and crowd in the necessary scale of private capital as a multiplier factor to public finance.The challenge is one of unity in strategic purpose, effective implementation, and appropriate speed and scale of the transition.

Climate impacts do not adhere to political whims or budgetary cycles, and the economic cost of inaction is already being realised through disaster relief expenditure, lost productivity, and human displacement. We have to find pathways for a “just future” through meaningful engagement and empowerment opportunities for affected workers and communities particularly in regions that will be most impacted by a transition to a less-carbon intensive future.The just transition cannot be viewed as a separate or optional policy; it is the central economic strategy for achieving a resilient, competitive, and an equitable South African economy in a decarbonising world.

Dipak Patel is Deputy Chairperson of the Presidential Climate Commission.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The modern business is a connected one, and that goes for any business in South Africa, no matter the model or industry. During the last two decades, organisations have adopted technologies that have transformed their physical and IT operations, with many of those technologies bridging the gap between the two environments.

One of those technologies is IoT, which has proven itself to be a driver of business growth, whether it’s by unlocking new revenue streams, enhancing operations, or increasing productivity. Indeed, IoT sits at the crossroads of technology trends that are set to affect the security sector and others in 2026, including business customers taking an “ecosystem-first” approach to technology purchasing decisions, the growth of edge computing, and the evolution of hybrid architectures.

That said, enterprise adoption of IoT does come with challenges and demands a long-term, committed approach. By knowing best practices and understanding how to deploy IoT devices and build networks effectively, businesses can take their first steps to becoming smart and connected enterprises.

Facing challenges and making commitments Increasing cloud adoption and improving spectrum availability are among the factors driving South Africa’s growing IoT market.[2] At the same time, while demand for hardware remains consistent, an increasing adoption of managed services shows businesses are prioritising insight over device ownership.

This is an important development as managed services and end-to-end solutions enable local businesses to overcome key obstacles in deploying IoT devices, including data security and privacy, integration complexity, and regulatory obligations.

According to a recent study published by Axis Communications and ThoughtLab of businesses across North America, EMEA and the Asia-Pacific regions, as IoT devices multiply, fragmented legacy systems can hinder integration and scalability, while siloes and data management hurdles can prevent businesses’ efforts to extract value from their data.

The conclusion to draw is that embracing IoT not only takes time, but is also a long-term commitment on the part of business leaders. It requires significant investments in hardware and software, the upskilling of workforce members, and a need for skilled expertise in terms of installation and maintenance.

The makings of a connectivity leader According to the Axis ThoughtLab study, leaders in IoT set themselves apart from the rest in five key ways:

• Leaders deploy and integrate an array of IoT devices, combining them to create a holistic view of their operations.
• Leaders build multiple use cases to achieve a wider set of goals, taking a broad approach to IoT applications.
• Leaders overcome IoT hurdles by proactively addressing issues and accounting for them in their initial strategies.
• Leaders make IoT innovation a continuous process, expanding their use of devices and achieving a high level of maturity.
• Leaders turn connectivity into a force multiplier, translating greater benefits into a significant ROI advantage.

By doing so, these businesses not only unlock the benefits of IoT networks – everything from lower operational and reduced energy consumption to higher customer satisfaction and improved strategic planning – but they also open the door to harnessing the full power of real-time data and AI to drive growth and increase performance levels.

Connectivity in action IoT takes the form of different things for different businesses, but overall, its primary goals are to enhance visibility, unlock new insights, and ultimately be a vehicle for sustainable growth. In South Africa, sectors such as healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing have emerged as key beneficiaries of IoT.

That said, businesses should not see the technology as a means to one particular end. For example, with physical security and surveillance, network cameras, audio speakers and other sensor devices can form part of an open-platform IoT ecosystem, collecting data for organisations and leveraging AI and analytics at the edge to not just improve security, but also operational efficiency.

With the help of trusted partners who understand open-platform technologies, South African businesses can lay the foundation for an open and integrated IoT ecosystem that both protects and transforms their organisations. By unlocking new efficiencies and insights, businesses can drive higher productivity and achieve a stronger return on their technology investments.

Rudie Opperman, Manager for Engineering & Training MEA at Axis Communications.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

The programmes that reward shoppers with points and plastic cards aren’t keeping pace with how rapidly retailers and customers are changing. They’re misaligned with how customers live and shop and pay, particularly in mobile-first markets like South Africa and the broader African region. A region that is anticipating growth of 18.1% over and that craves the ingenuity and value brought by mobile-driven rewards, gamification incentives, cashbacks and deeper financial inclusion. 

Loyalty remains a key driver of customer engagement, but the traditional machinery that drives it no longer makes sense. Retailers are often left carrying the weight of contingent liabilities for points that may never be redeemed, while customers are still trying to manage physical cards. Traditional programmes are often fragmented, and many over-emphasise basic discounts and points while not really leveraging the data they gain to deliver true customer personalisation journeys. 

The result is poor differentiation and engagement, even when membership numbers are high, and this dissatisfaction has seen a gentle side shuffle away from plastic cards and complicated systems towards an ecosystem-based approach to loyalty. Partners, cross-brand earning, communities and interchangeable rewards across platforms and companies are taking their place. And these capabilities are being largely driven by an old technology on the block – blockchain.

Web3 and blockchain have been around for a while and are changing the physics of loyalty in ways that simplify the process for consumers and retailers alike. Instead of points sitting dormant and creating long-term liabilities for retailers, their value becomes tokenised. These points can be instantly transferred, redeemed and earned and work at the point of customer decision-making. It’s loyalty at the edge.

Web3 allows retailers to apply instant, per-consumer-centric rewards at the point of transaction on such a granular level that two customers standing at neighbouring tills can receive personalised offers in real time based on who they are and how they shop. Blockchain handles the trust. 

There are no next-day reconciliations or batching or waiting to see if loyalty data matches what the till saw. Instead, payments and settlements are one and the same and take place at the exact moment of purcahse, even when multiple parties have to be paid out at the same time. In traditional systems that level of coordination is impossible.

 This real-time flow also removes the financial drag that comes with loyalty programmes. Contingent liabilities clog up accounting systems and create long-term risk, which is frustrating, especially when retailers can see the potential value of a smooth loyalty programme in building customer loyalty and retention. Web3 and blockchain remove this structural weight by building digital rewards that behave like currency and that can be settled, issued and redeemed instantly. 

Adding even more value is the fact that these technologies are redesigning the economics of payments. Card transactions cost money in merchant fees, but imagine if retailers could avoid those fees? Web3 wallet payments bypass old cost architectures which means money saved can be reinvested back into consumer rewards or returns on investment. Loyalty then stops being a cost centre and becomes a proper engine for growth, one that’s funded by the infrastructure that enables it. 

Another huge benefit for retailers is that all the data and insights are sitting in a digital repository ready to be interpreted into personalised consumer journeys that deliver value. Imagine not serving a customer baby food adverts long after their child has finished school? Or not targeting consumers with products they no longer buy? Web3 gives retailers the ability to sit inside the data so the consumer’s advertising journey is matched by their life one.

This value stretches beyond corporate retail and into spaza shops, taxi associations and informal traders who can now capitalise on loyalty programmes because blockchain levels the playing field. The same rails that handle enterprise customers can hold micro-merchants as well. 

This is the new era of loyalty, which is fast and fluid and interoperable at scale. Blockchain and web3 are rewriting how retailers talk to consumers and finally getting loyalty to move at the same speed that customers expect.

Rory Bosman, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Ecentric Payment Systems

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

Aussie emerging technology lawyer Natasha Blycha taught me English at a boarding school outside Gweru, Zimbabwe, around the year 2000. She reignited a love for reading I'd let go of. 

Blycha recently joined me on the African Tech Roundup podcast to discuss smart legal contracts, AI sovereignty, and why the law as currently designed cannot cope with artificial intelligence.

She was brimming with insight. The conversation is worth your time.

But something she said early on has stayed with me since we hung up. Blycha cited her time in Zimbabwe — working part-time for a small law firm on constitutional questions during the land invasions — as the experience that shaped her international legal career. 

"What happens to a country if there isn't foundational law working really well?" she asked. It is the question that drives her work embedding enforceable contracts into AI systems, building legal guardrails before the technology makes them impossible to retrofit.

I understand the question. I also think it requires a longer answer than the one she gave.

Whose breakdown

The land invasions Blycha witnessed were the tail end of a story that began decades earlier. Before disgruntled war veterans backed by President Robert Mugabe occupied white-owned farms, before the currency collapsed and the fuel ran out, there was Ian Smith. The occupations peaked in 2000-2001 after a failed constitutional referendum, precisely when Blycha was in the country.

On November 11, 1965, Smith (whose family home in Harare's Alexandra Park suburb sat around the corner from the company house my father's employer provided when we lived there in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s, not the kind of neighbourhood too many middle-class Black Zimbabweans could afford to buy or rent into on their own terms) declared Rhodesia unilaterally independent from Britain. 

The UN imposed sanctions. It made no difference. The entire Rhodesian state that followed was built on a legal architecture designed to exclude the Black majority from land ownership, political participation, and economic self-determination.

International law did not intervene to correct that. Well, at least, not meaningfully and not in time. The "rule of law" that Blycha mourns breaking down in Zimbabwe was, for most Zimbabweans, never fully functioning on their behalf in the first place.

I raise this not to diminish her groundbreaking work, which I genuinely believe is among the most important contributions being made to responsible AI governance globally, but because it matters whose version of the breakdown we count from when we build the rules for what comes next. 

The code can't answer for itself

Blycha's central assertion is that AI systems are becoming economic stakeholders the law cannot hold accountable. You cannot put code in jail.

The legal frameworks underpinning everything from property rights to financial regulation were designed for human bodies and human intentions. When those frameworks meet autonomous systems operating at scale, they fail.

She is right. And the contradiction is blistering. The international legal order she wants to reinforce for the AI age is the same order that, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out at Davos last month, is fracturing precisely because it was never as neutral as advertised. 

Middle powers have been performing sovereignty while accepting subordination. Carney well could have been describing most of post-independence Africa.

Whose rules get embedded

So when Blycha proposes embedding smart legal contracts into AI devices — contracts that act as referees, stopping machines when they breach their own rules — the technology is compelling, the ambition is admirable, and the question it raises for Africa is: whose rules get embedded?

If the legal architecture of the AI age is built primarily by Western institutions, using Western precedents, enforced through Western infrastructure, then the land grabs of the 21st century will not involve farms. They will involve data, compute, and the contractual terms baked into every device, platform, and autonomous system operating on the continent. 

My paternal grandfather, Ndumo, was dispossessed by Smith's rural rezoning policies — forced into what were euphemistically called "Native Purchase Areas" so that his land could be repurposed for white-owned commercial farming. The mechanism was legal. The outcome was theft dressed in policy language.

The same dynamic is being encoded into digital infrastructure, only this time the rezoning is algorithmic and the title deeds are written in code.

Citizens of the Global South will live inside those terms the way my parents' generation lived inside legal frameworks they had no hand in drafting.

Blycha asked: what happens when the rule of law breaks down? The harder question is what happens when the rule of law was never framed with you in mind to begin with — and the people writing the next version are moving fast.

Andile Masuku is Co-founder and Executive Producer at African Tech Roundup. Connect and engage with Andile on X (@MasukuAndile) and via LinkedIn.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

In the historical radiology of the Republic, we have reached a terminal frequency—a point where the state has pushed the family of the nation’s founding father to do the unthinkable, only to blame them in the "loud silence" that follows. The recent court ruling permitting the auction of Nelson Mandela’s prison key, his tennis racquet, and his personal artifacts is being framed as a legal victory for familial rights. In the Lehohla Ledger, however, this is registered as the ultimate Act of Betrayal.  On the evening of the 23 of December 2021, I ran like a mad man to alert the hierarchy at Department of Arts and Culture on the impending sale of Madiba’s personal items. And the late Minister Nathi Mthethwa succeeded in blocking the sale.  To me Madiba and his family represent our pride and a national heritage. But when we fail as a government to treat them as such, they cease to be and piece by piece they fade in memory and even the 67 Minutes will fade too. 

When the state abdicates its role as the custodian of the Foundational Marrow, it drives a "Wedge" into the heart of the family. The courts, faced with a mindless state that refuses to designate the legacy of Madiba as a National Asset, had no choice but to surrender it to the private market. This is the height of a systemic ischemia: a state that remembers no one and destroys everything of value, leaving the burden of memorialization on the weary shoulders of those who bear the name.

The Schism of Appropriation: Space and Culture as Development

Space and culture are not "soft" attributes of a nation; they are the very scaffolding of development. An economy that ignores these two pillars will hallucinate "green shoots" of growth where they do not exist. In my article, "Going, going, gone mad — don’t touch me on Madiba’s prison key," I argued that the sale of these items represents a total collapse of our Cultural Economic Geography.

The key to Madiba's cell is a Spatial Anchor. It is a physical coordinate that geocodes the transition from the "Vortex" of oppression to the "Foundry" of freedom. When the government allows this anchor to be "Vented" to the highest bidder in London or New York, it is not just selling a "collectible"; it is severing a National Artery. By treating our heritage as "Administrative Dust," the Department of Sports, Arts, and Culture reveals it has lost the course of the struggle. They are auctioning the soil while claiming to plant a Renaissance.

The Axum Precedent: The Artery of Sovereign Will

To see what a mindful state looks like, we must look to the Axum Artery. In 1937, Italian fascist troops looted the 1 700-year-old Obelisk of Axum, an icon of Ethiopian sovereignty. For nearly 70 years, it stood in Rome as a trophy of conquest. Ethiopia did not treat this as a "lost jewel" or a "family matter." They recognized it as a Sovereign Debt—a missing piece of their metabolic soul.

In 2005, Ethiopia forced its return. It was a feat of Surgical Precision—dismantling a 160-ton monolith and flying it home. They understood that without their pillars, their development was an "Empty Shell." South Africa, conversely, is moving toward a self-inflicted exile. We are allowing the tools of our liberation to become the trophies of private collectors. This is a Metabolic Forfeit born of a state that has lost its Cognitive Sovereignty.

The "Investment Strike" of the National Soul

The auctioning of the Mandela legacy is the cultural equivalent of the Investment Strike confessed by Johann Rupert to then former president Thabo Mbeki. While the private sector sat on cash reserves, the state sat on its hands. By failing to create a Sovereign Trust—a "Sibling Shield" for our national treasures—the state has forced the Mandela family into the market's "Vulture Culture."

This is an act of betrayal by those who swear by Madiba’s legacy in speeches but refuse to protect it in the Ledger. They have left the family to defend the "Family Jewels" alone, while the state watches from the sidelines of the courtroom. It is the same logic that allowed the Ditsobotla Dairy to die; a refusal to protect the "Biotic Shield" of the local community in favour of "Vented Wealth.

Reclaiming the Foundry: The 2026 Mandate

In the Volume 8: PIE Blueprint, we propose a different course. We cannot allow the history of the Republic to be liquidated to pay for the state’s failures.

1. The Sovereign Restitution Registry: Every artifact of the struggle, from the "Lost Tickey" of the Lehohla lineage to the Mandela Key, must be geocoded into the Succession Registry.
2. The Cultural Surcharge: We must impose a heritage levy on any entity attempting to extract profit from the "Venting" of our history. This fund must be used to bring our pillars home, just as Ethiopia did.
3. The Biko Standard: We reject the "Empty Shell" of outrage. We demand the Surgical Precision of legal reclamation. A nation that cannot guard its keys cannot be trusted with its future.

Final Assembly: The Master Weaver’s Verdict

The court’s decision is a "Terminal Low" for the Republic. It is the sound of the "Dust that Chokes" entering our archives. But we must become "Master Weavers" of our own restitution. We must close the "Wedge" the state has driven between the family and the nation. We must restore the Mohlomi Ethical Artery. We must bring the Key home, not as a racquet for a private game, but as the master tool that ensures the African Renaissance remains unlocked for the grandchildren of the Republic and especially for restoring real victory to Makaziwe who under very dire circumstances realised that if she does not become the Manthatisi, the Batlokwa matriarch, no one will.

The schism of the industrial and cultural desert is ending. The reclamation has begun.

Pali Lehohla is the former Statistician-General of South Africa and the founder of the Lehohla Ledger – A deep science data and evidence driven development path. 

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

BUSINESS REPORT

In November 2016, India invalidated 86% of its circulating currency overnight. The policy was justified as a strike against black money, counterfeit notes and illicit finance. What followed was one of the largest real-world monetary experiments of the modern era.

Research summarised by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that demonetisation caused a sharp, short-term contraction in economic activity, with declines in employment and consumption concentrated in cash-dependent sectors. Subsequent disclosures by the Reserve Bank of India showed that more than 99% of the invalidated notes ultimately returned to the banking system.

The episode revealed a structural truth: when cash liquidity is abruptly withdrawn, the first casualties are not criminal networks, but ordinary economic coordination.That experience was not an anomaly. It foreshadowed a broader global transition in which physical cash is gradually displaced by digital payment systems that embed traceability, record-keeping and institutional oversight into everyday exchange.

The shift is often described as technological progress or consumer preference. Yet the more consequential transformation lies beneath the surface. Money itself is being reengineered from a bearer instrument into a governed data object. Since 2020, the pace of this re-engineering has accelerated. Covid did not merely trigger emergency fiscal and monetary responses; it catalysed a wider rethinking of economic infrastructure. Global institutions openly framed the pandemic as a moment to “reset” systems and accelerate digital transformation.

In parallel, central banks intensified work on the future of public money. A 2024 survey by the Bank for International Settlements found that 91% of surveyed central banks are now exploring central bank digital currencies, whether retail, wholesale, or both. None of this demonstrates a covert move toward a single global monetary system. It does, however, reveal a striking convergence in how institutions are redesigning money, often through technical standards and pilot programmes that receive far less public scrutiny than traditional legislation.

In an environment of declining institutional trust, that convergence alone is sufficient to generate suspicion. Neither technological inevitability nor absolutist resistance offers a sufficient framework for governing money at scale. At the transactional level, the case for digitalisation appears compelling. Digital payments reduce handling costs, enable faster settlement and integrate seamlessly with formal financial systems.

In Sweden, one of the most digitised payment environments globally, cash now accounts for roughly 10% of in-store purchases, down from over 40% two decades ago. Yet Sweden’s experience also illustrates the unintended consequences of near-cashlessness. The Swedish central bank reports that payment fraud losses exceeded SEK 1 billion in the first half of 2024 alone, describing fraud as a persistent and growing systemic risk. In response, authorities have begun to reframe cash not as an outdated habit, but as part of national payment resilience, supporting stronger obligations for cash acceptance in essential services. Efficiency did not eliminate risk; it relocated it.

Cash is inefficient, costly to handle and poorly suited to automated systems. But it has one property digital systems do not replicate cleanly. It works without electricity, networks, devices, platforms or real-time permission. It is final at the point of exchange. For that reason, the International Monetary Fund has repeatedly emphasised that cash continues to play a role as a fallback and resilience mechanism when other payment instruments fail.

Cash is not merely a legacy preference. It is an “outside option” that stabilises trust in the broader system. When cash is marginalised, participation becomes conditional. Not through explicit prohibition, but through dependence on infrastructure, identity systems, fraud algorithms and intermediary rules.

In such systems, exclusion is rarely dramatic. It appears as failed transactions, frozen accounts, delayed settlements or unexplained denials. These frictions are not evenly distributed. They concentrate among informal workers, small traders and those operating at the edges of formal finance.

China’s digital yuan demonstrates how this conditionality can scale. Official figures released in late 2025 report 3.48 billion cumulative digital yuan transactions, totalling 16.7 trillion yuan, approximately $2.4 trillion, with more than 230 million personal wallets opened. These figures do not in themselves imply coercion. They demonstrate that state-linked digital payment infrastructure can reach population scale without a formal cash ban, reshaping monetary behaviour through architecture rather than decree. Transaction legibility becomes normalised long before participation becomes mandatory.

Europe’s approach reflects a different political culture but converges on similar design assumptions. The European Central Bank continues technical work on a digital euro while emphasising that any issuance depends on legislative approval. The rationale is explicit: reliance on private payment platforms alone raises concerns about sovereignty, competition and resilience

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Public digital money is framed as a safeguard against private concentration. Yet it also extends the domain in which monetary activity becomes systematically observable. Decentralised cryptocurrencies complicate, rather than resolve, these dynamics. Bitcoin and stablecoins are often presented as alternatives to mediated money, preserving autonomy through decentralisation. Yet data from blockchain analytics firms shows that illicit crypto transaction volumes rose sharply in 2025, reversing earlier declines and strengthening political arguments for intensified regulation and surveillance. Crypto demonstrates that opacity attracts enforcement pressure rather than eliminating it.

The result is not escape from governance, but a reconfiguration of it. The contrast between economies exposes the limits of universal solutions. In Nigeria, Africa’s first retail central bank digital currency launched in 2021 with the aim of improving inclusion and efficiency. Yet by February 2025, reported eNaira circulation stood at approximately N18.31 billion, a small fraction of total currency in circulation. Adoption lagged not because digital money was unavailable, but because trust, infrastructure reliability and cost structures remained uneven. Cash continued to dominate where digital systems failed to replicate its simplicity.

This is where the African context becomes analytically decisive. Across much of the continent, cash underpinshybrid economies characterised by informality, intermittent connectivity and high-frequency low-value transactions. Cash is not a refusal of modernity. It is an adaptive technology. Imported models that assume stable infrastructure and universal digital literacy fracture under these conditions. The question is not whether digital payments should expand, but whether expansion preserves redundancy and choice. South Africa’s approach reflects this tension.

The South African Reserve Bank has argued publicly that while a retail central bank digital currency could support innovation and continued access to central bank money, there is no compelling immediate need for implementation. Any decision, it notes, must be evidence-based and weighed against risks and trade-offs. That restraint matters. It implicitly recognises that digital innovation already exists in the private sector, and that introducing a new public retail instrument must be justified by clear public value rather than trend momentum.

A credible counter-argument must be acknowledged. Cash facilitates tax evasion, corruption and certain criminal activities. Greater traceability strengthens enforcement and fiscal capacity. Digital systems can improve transparency and efficiency. These benefits are real and measurable. The complication is structural.

When enforcement is embedded into the payment rails themselves, the same systems that deter crime can scale bureaucratic error, automated exclusion and overreach. Governance shifts from law and institutions into models, thresholds and technical rules that most citizens cannot see or contest.This tension helps explain the surge in public anxiety since Covid. Rapid, coordinated system redesign, combined with declining trust and increasing platform concentration, creates fertile ground for suspicion. Dismissing these concerns as irrational avoids the harder task of institutional accountability.

The challenge is not to choose between cash and innovation, but to design payment systems that remain resilient, contestable and proportionate under stress.The war on cash is therefore not about nostalgia or resistance to technology. It is about what kind of monetary order is being normalised.

A society can optimise money for efficiency, legibility and control. Or it can treat money as public infrastructure that must still function when systems fail and must preserve a sphere of unconditioned exchange.The trade-off now visible is not between cash and progress. It is between payment modernity and governance maturity. Digital money will expand. The unresolved question is whether institutions can innovate with restraint, preserve redundancy and resist turning technical capability into quiet compulsion. The measure of success will not be how seamless payments appear on a screen, but whether economic participation remains robust, equitable and human when the system is under strain.

Nomvula Zeldah Mabuza is a Risk Governance and Compliance Specialist with extensive experience in strategic risk and industrial operations. She holds a Diploma in Business Management (Accounting) from Brunel University, UK, and is an MBA candidate at Henley Business School, South Africa.

*** The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Independent Media or IOL.

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