Speaking at the group’s AGM in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday, chair Ross McEwan said China remains a major centre of industrial activity and commodity demand, and India is entering what BHP expects will be a multi-decade period of infrastructure investment, manufacturing growth and economic development.

In addition, it sees demand increasing from the infrastructure and wiring for renewable energy and artificial intelligence.

“Taken together, these trends give us confidence that demand for copper, iron ore and steelmaking coal will remain strong for many years to come,” McEwan told shareholders.

“Mining is cyclical. There are peaks and troughs. What we have is a portfolio that is designed to perform through that cycle. The world needs growth. It needs new infrastructure, reliable energy, modern technology and food security. All those things depend on the resources BHP produces,” he said.

McEwan said Jansen, BHP’s Canadian potash business, is on track to deliver its first production mid next year.

“A growing population needs more food from the same amount of farm land. Fertilisers, such aspotash, will be key to improving agricultural productivity,” he said.

He said the group has a range of options to grow across its commodities.

“It’s a good problem to have. But it also means we pay a lot of attention to competitiveness. We must always strive to be better than the competition. That is why we remain focused on improving productivity, adopting new technologies, developing our people and making our operations safer and more efficient.”

McEwan said the group enters 2027 “in a great position with exciting growth opportunities”.

“We have world-class assets, a strong balance sheet, and a highly capable leadership team. Perhaps most importantly, we operate in a world that will need more of what BHP produces. BHP is in strong health with exciting growth plans ahead.”

CEO Brandon Craig, speaking at his first AGM at the helm of the group, said BHP is fortunate to have one of the strongest growth pipelines in the industry.

“Jansen is progressing towards first production mid next year and will create a significant new earnings stream for BHP. Importantly, it also diversifies us by commodity and geography, which helps us to perform more consistently in a cyclical industry,” he said.

While Jansen has taken longer and cost more than the group originally planned, it has tightened its controls, and the immediate priority is the safe, disciplined delivery of its first production.

Craig said the group continues to advance an outstanding portfolio of growth options for copper, including projects at Escondida, Copper South Australia and Vicuna.

“Company-wide, our current plans are expected to support compound annual production growth of about 3% to 4% through to 2035, including around 5% annual growth for copper. It is essential this growth is delivered to plan.”

Business Day

Zaad supplies seeds and crop-protection chemicals to farmers and other agricultural customers. Based in Bellville, Cape Town, it operates through subsidiaries in Southern Africa and Europe and serves other international markets.

The company said on Thursday that the disposal, which excludes May Seed and other assets being sold separately or restructured out of Zaad, is expected to close by November 30, the extended long-stop date.

The investment company said it expects to receive about R1.4bn from the transaction.

Zeder said it would settle transaction costs and related obligations before distributing the proceeds and may retain some of the money to cover potential liabilities arising from the sale.

Following the disposal, Zeder will retain its 48.6% interest in May Seed, a Turkish seed producer and distributor, through its 97.19% stake in Zaad International (Mauritius).

The investment group has appointed an international specialist transaction adviser to conduct a formal sale process for its May Seed interest.

In its results for the six months ended August, Zeder reported net asset value per share of R1.41, down 16.1% from a year ago. The decrease was largely due to downward adjustments in the valuation of assets held for sale and a R108m special dividend paid to shareholders.

Attributable and headline loss per share narrowed to 2.8c from 10c in the previous period, mainly due to a downward adjustment in the valuation of assets held for sale.

Loss before tax from continuing operations narrowed to R1m compared with R3m in the previous period.

Zeder declared no ordinary dividend for the interim period.

Business Day

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Global media and entertainment company Canal+ has reported a 37.5% rise in revenue for the nine months to end-September and is “well on track” to deliver its 2026 guidance.

The group said on Thursday the increased revenue of €6.41bn on a restated basis primarily reflects its increased scale after the MultiChoice acquisition.

Group revenue remained broadly flat year on year on a like-for-like basis, including nine months’s contribution from MultiChoice.

Group revenue excluding MultiChoice increased 1.3% on a restated basis to €4.65bn and by 0.8% on a like-for-like basis, supported by strong momentum in French-speaking Africa and in content production and distribution, it said.

Europe revenue decreased 1.4% on a restated basis and by 1.5% on a like-for-like basis, mainly reflecting the termination of the C8 channel in the first quarter of 2025 and the end of the distribution of DAZN in France, and the divestment of the DTH subscriber base in Hungary in 2025.

Excluding these effects, revenue in mainland France was broadly flat. The increase in DtoC Pay-TV revenue was offset by lower contribution from wholesale and the weakness of the advertising market, it said.

In the overseas territories, revenue was broadly stable. The consolidation of MC Vision in Mauritius was offset by the slight decline in the pay-TV subscriber base.

Africa and Asia revenue more than tripled to €2.6bn after the acquisition of MultiChoice. Revenue, including MultiChoice, increased 3.1% on a restated basis and 0.7% on a like-for-like basis. This reflects 10.2% like-for-like revenue growth of Africa and Asia excluding MultiChoice and a slight decline for MultiChoice, it said.

As expected, the subscriber base normalised in the third quarter after the significant boost from the Fifa World Cup in the first half.

MultiChoice Group revenue increased 0.4% on a restated basis, benefitting from a material positive currency effect. On a like-for-like basis, revenue decreased 3%, driven by lower subscription revenue in South Africa, partially offset by higher revenue in most other English-speaking countries.

In French-speaking Africa, like-for-like revenue performed well, reflecting subscriber growth supported by a compelling line-up and improved distribution efficiency.

Asia revenue maintained its growth momentum, supported by an enhanced content offering and long-term subscriptions.

CEO Maxime Saada said the group had delivered a solid performance in the first nine months of the year.

Revenue was in line with expectations, supported by strong momentum in French-speaking Africa and at StudioCanal.

“We are making good progress with the MultiChoice turnaround plan. In September, a new, simplified value proposition was launched in South Africa, providing subscribers with more content, greater choice and better value for the same price. The rollout of the new offers will continue across English- and Portuguese-speaking Africa over the coming months,” Saada said.

He said the group had further strengthened its sports offering in Africa.

“We secured exclusive rights to all Uefa men’s club competitions across more than 40 countries for 2027–2031, the group’s first major sports rights acquisition covering all our markets on the continent, and rights across Africa for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations and its qualifying campaign,” Saada said.

He said the group remains well on track to achieve its 2026 synergies target and full-year guidance.

“While the group is cognisant of the macroeconomic and political backdrop, its medium-term guidance remains unchanged,” he said.

Business Day

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Mining and materials company Afrimat’s profit plunged 86% in the first half as the group experienced the most challenging trading conditions since its listing in 2006.

The period was characterised by a significant decline in the profitability of the group’s iron ore business and continued operational challenges in cement. In contrast, its aggragates unit delivered an excellent performance, the group said on Thursday.

Afrimat on Thursday reported a 4.3% decline in revenue to R5.1bn for the six months ended August, mainly due to lower revenue in the iron ore and cement businesses, which was partly offset by growth in aggregates and higher anthracite export volumes.

Operating profit decreased by 32.8% to R255.2m, which includes a one-off profit of R95.5m on the disposal of the divested operations.

The decline was driven primarily by the bulk commodities segment, where operating profit decreased from R445.1m to R8.6m, and by the wider operating loss in the cement business.

Profit after tax decreased by 87% to R22.6m and the group reported a headline loss per share of 58c compared with HEPS of 101.9c a year ago.

No interim dividend was declared.

Cash generated from operations increased by 21.1% to R433.1m, primarily driven by disciplined working capital management.

Looking ahead, the aggregates business is expected to maintain its improved performance, supported by a more focused portfolio, the benefits of completed capital projects and continued demand from rail maintenance and infrastructure work.

It identified rising fuel costs as a result of the Iran conflict and delays in public sector project payments as risks to demand and profitability.

With Kiln 3 back in operation from the beginning of September, the cement business is expected to benefit from improved clinker availability.

“Management remains focused on plant reliability and throughput, and demand for low-carbon, high-quality cement remains strong. The investigation into strategic alternatives continues and the market will be updated as soon as possible,” it said.

Iron ore export volumes recovered well towards the end of the period, but realised prices remain under pressure from high shipping costs and a stronger rand.

The Doornfontein resource will replace the mined-out Demaneng mine. The first iron ore from Doornfontein is expected in the last quarter of the current financial year. Domestic iron ore demand is expected to stabilise in the region of 90,000 to 100,000 tonnes per month.

Nkomati’s lower cost base leaves it well placed if volumes improve as more smelters come online, supported by the group’s export strategy, it said. The industrial minerals segment will benefit from the reopening of the ferrochrome smelters, and import protection, which the government seems to be moving towards, it added.

Despite the difficult trading environment, management is confident the group’s diversified foundation is sound, it said.

Afrimat said it will continue to prioritise cash generation, debt reduction and operational reliability, positioning it to deliver improved returns as conditions recover.

Business Day

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By Ankita Bora

Pick n Pay has withdrawn a restructuring consultation process it announced in May and expects its first-half headline loss to narrow by as much as 35%.

The retailer said on Thursday it had reached an agreement with its primary labour partner, the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu), ending the process.

It expects a headline loss per share of 38.85c-44.83c for the 26 weeks to August 30, an improvement of 25%-35% on the 59.77c loss a year earlier.

The narrower loss was driven by higher trading profit at its discount chain Boxer and a smaller trading loss in its core Pick n Pay segment.

The grocer is pursuing a multiyear turnaround plan focused on improving its product offering, closing underperforming stores and cutting costs.

Last month, it appointed Woolworths executive Spencer Sonn as its next CEO. He will succeed Sean Summers on February 1.

Reuters

From January, grocery retailers will no longer be allowed to negotiate or enter into new exclusive lease agreements, marking a further step towards opening up shopping centres to greater competition.

The phase-out stems from the commission’s grocery retail market inquiry (GRMI), published in December 2019, and has been implemented through separate consent agreements with big retailers including Shoprite, Pick n Pay and Spar.

The agreements were negotiated between the commission and the retailers, then confirmed as orders by the Competition Tribunal, making their commitments legally binding.

Under the agreements, retailers were required to stop enforcing exclusivity clauses against small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and grocery stores owned by historically disadvantaged people, with immediate effect. Existing exclusivity arrangements could not be renewed, and all remaining provisions were to be terminated by the end- December.

Competition Commission spokesperson Siyabulela Makunga confirmed to Business Day that all exclusive leases have to be terminated by year-end, and none will be allowed to remain in place.

Makunga said the exclusivity restrictions apply only to Shoprite, Pick n Pay and Spar in the grocery market, as Woolworths and Food Lover’s Market had no exclusive leases.

“It affects all landlords with grocery exclusivity clauses, though many wanted them scrapped anyway,” he said.

Read: BIG READ | Shoprite: from R1m bet to R200bn retail wonder

SA Property Owners Association CEO Neil Gopal said competition for retail floor space remains intense, and the lack of available space is precisely because the market is competitive, rather than because of any market feature restricting competition.

“Despite the removal of exclusivity clauses, formal retailers typically sign long-term leases, meaning shopping centres can remain fully occupied for extended periods before vacancies arise,” Gopal said.

He said that though shopping centres aim to offer a wide range of retailers and services, smaller businesses may opt for cheaper premises elsewhere, particularly in urban areas, to keep operating costs down.

Read: C-suite shuffle: four of SA’s five grocery giants change CEOs

Growthpoint head of retail asset management Gavin Jones said the change had been a long time coming, with landlords already reshaping tenant mixes and grocery retailers renewing leases without exclusivity clauses for several years.

“The change has created opportunities to introduce a second or third supermarket into larger centres, pairing mainstream grocers with value-focused retailers such as Shoprite and Boxer to serve different customer segments and give shoppers greater choice,” Jones said.

He said the Reit had already introduced additional grocery retailers across its properties, including Checkers FreshX at La Lucia Mall and Shoprite at Watercrest and Bayside malls, with further supermarket additions planned at Festival, Vaal and Brooklyn malls.

“However, not every centre can support multiple supermarkets. Landlords must carefully assess local spending power before expanding their grocery offering,” he said.

Jones said the right-sizing of cinemas, Game, Edgars and others had also freed up space, making a second or third supermarket a practical possibility.

“Removing exclusivity opens shopping centres to smaller butchers, bakeries and independent grocers, broadening tenant diversity and giving shoppers greater choice,” he said.

Flanagan & Gerard Property Group managing director Paul Gerard echoed this, saying the industry had known about the deadline for some time and had been planning accordingly.

“This allows us to curate a shopping centre’s retail mix to better suit the needs of the community it serves,” he said.

Sean Goldsmith, co-founder of international franchise consultancy Groe Global, said ending exclusive leases will open the market to smaller, innovative businesses that have struggled to gain a foothold under the arrangements.

“We understand that landlords like the security, but there must be balance, and I think this is going to help give the little guy a small foothold from which to thrive,” he said.

He said the commission had addressed an important structural barrier, but what happens next will depend on whether South Africa is prepared to tackle the barriers of finance, business development, commercial credibility and access to retail property.

Makunga hinted that the commission could widen its scrutiny, saying its recent “Rural and township economy report” had identified potential exclusive lease arrangements in areas other than grocery retail that it would target in the future.

Business Day

Trump is suing Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster for at least $10bn over a misleadingly edited clip of a speech. The case is one of several Trump has privately filed against the news media as part of a wider pressure campaign against coverage he dislikes.

US magistrate judge Enjolique Lett ordered Trump to take questions from the BBC’s lawyers under oath in a ruling from the bench at a court hearing on Thursday, according to the AP. Trump cancelled a deposition in October, citing conflicts with his presidential duties.

Representatives for Trump’s legal team and the BBC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump’s lawsuit filed in December in Florida federal court accuses the BBC of intentionally misleading viewers into thinking he directed supporters to storm the US Capitol by splicing together different parts of a January 6 2021 speech.

The BBC admitted the edits were misleading and apologised to Trump, though it denies being liable for defamation.

In court filings, the broadcaster has accused Trump and his lawyers of dragging their feet in response to their requests for records and other information that is exchanged between parties in a process known as discovery.

The BBC is seeking financial records from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and the web of business entities associated with him, saying the information is necessary to defend against Trump’s damages claims.

Trump’s lawyers say the requests are too broad and irrelevant to the case. They have also denied in court filings that Trump is avoiding a deposition, saying Trump’s duties and security needs must take precedence.

The edited speech appeared in a BBC Panorama documentary show shortly before the 2024 presidential election, which Trump won.

A leaked internal BBC memo cited the edits as evidence of potential political bias, sparking a public relations crisis for the broadcaster and leading to high-level resignations.

BBC director-general Tim Davie and the CEO of BBC News, Deborah Turness, resigned following the accusations of bias at the British broadcaster.

Reuters

Paris ― Kering on Thursday said sales at its flagship label Gucci fell 6% in the third quarter, dragged down by weak demand in China, dampening hopes for the luxury group’s revival anytime soon.

Sales at Gucci, which accounts for about half of group profit, were down to €1.29bn in the quarter, Kering said, while total group revenue fell 1% when adjusted for currency swings.

Asked by journalists on a call if returning to overall growth was still the aim for Kering this year, CFO Armelle Poulou declined to comment, pointing to the publication of full-year results.

Lower-than-expected quarterly sales at peers LVMH and Hermes, and signs of cooling demand in the US have added to investors’ concerns around Kering’s turnaround.

Store footfall, particularly in China, remains the main problem at Gucci, where sales have been declining for more than three years, Kering said. Revenue from the brand’s own store network was down 9%, while wholesale and licensing revenue was up.

Kering plans to ramp up spending on marketing and client experience to attract more shoppers to Gucci stores, Poulou said.

“We keep on carrying out our plan with the utmost discipline,” Poulou said, adding the group has so far reduced its retail network by 105 stores and was targeting 125 closures by the end of the year.

Hoping to bounce back from years of decline, Kering last year tapped former Renault CEO Luca De Meo to overhaul the group. He has launched a five-year plan aimed at doubling its operating profit margin, but has had to contend with the economic fallout of war in Iran and slowing consumer sentiment in China. The region also has a booming counterfeit trade.

De Meo aims to double Kering’s profit margin from 11.1% in 2025 by the end of the decade through cost cuts, more store closures and a push to streamline supply chains, but analysts have said mere efficiency measures will not be enough to turn around a business whose brands have lost appeal.

Both Anthony Vaccarello, the creative director of its second-biggest brand Saint Laurent, and Alexander McQueen designer Sean McGirr left their posts this month.

The recent changes are likely to pile even more pressure on Demna, who is nearing his first full year at the helm of Gucci, which he sought to reignite with a bold bet on daring, sexy styles reminiscent of the brand’s successes under Tom Ford.

Reuters

That character breeds resilience and in the period Temba Bavuma has captained the Proteas, they’ve shown a level of toughness, for which they often aren’t credited.

Be it Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen with the bat at SuperSport Park in 2024, Aiden Markram and Bavuma — on one-leg — in the second innings at Lord’s last year or scraping to a stunning victory on turning track at Eden Gardens against India, these Proteas thrive, with their backs against the wall.

Boland ✅
Cummins ✅

Wiaan Mulder Madoda 😮‍💨🏏

📺 Stream #SAvAUS on DStv: https://t.co/rM90YyQxaw pic.twitter.com/roeBS54vaC

— SuperSport 🏆 (@SuperSportTV) October 22, 2026

St George’s Park in 2026 must go in the pantheon of great “bounce back” displays under Bavuma’s leadership. They’d been trounced in the first Test, then lost the toss and saw their first innings lie decimated at 110/6 on the third morning, with Australia’s Scott Boland wreaking havoc.

The game had already lost 139 overs by the end of day two, and victory would have been the farthest thing from anyone’s mind as Marco Jansen made his way to the crease on Monday morning to join his skipper.

But there the turnaround started. Jansen was driving Boland on both sides of the wicket — through and over the field — as the Proteas quickly wrestled the momentum away from Australia.

It was bold and forced Pat Cummins into a defensive mindset. Bavuma played one of the great Test innings by a South African, a nine-hour vigil, that mixed courage, solid technique and clear thinking.

Like Matt Renshaw had done to them in Durban, now South Africa, thanks to their captain, with help from Jansen and later Simon Harmer, rattled the Australians.

Boland and the rest of that much-vaunted pace attack now looked impotent. From 110/6, 77 overs later, Bavuma declared SA’s first innings on 425/9.

Mitchell Starc gets a taste of KG Rabada's pace 😮‍💨🇿🇦

📺 Stream #SAvAUS on DStv: https://t.co/rM90YyQxaw pic.twitter.com/kFjNGCaRG9

— SuperSport 🏆 (@SuperSportTV) October 22, 2026

In the first Test Renshaw had masked the batting problems everyone knew Australia had. The Proteas let slip an advantage at Kingsmead, where Kagiso Rabada’s absence proved pivotal.

Back leading the attack in Gqeberha, Rabada’s mere presence liberated Jansen, who backed up his batting with a remarkable, nasty bowling performance, taking 5/33 and exposing the frailties of the Australian batters. They were bowled out for 99 in 42.3 overs and the fury that display unleashed Down Under will be felt by Cummins, head coach Andrew McDonald and chief selector George Bailey — who is on tour — over the next few days.

They showed more tenacity in their second innings, but that Boland batted for three hours will only lead to more scrutiny of the likes of Nic Maddinson — a makeshift opener — and especially Marnus Labuschagne, who succumbed to pressure — both in terms of the match situation and all the talk about his continued presence in the team — playing poor shots against Harmer.

Again, how the Proteas were tested on the last day. No rain was forecast for Gqeberha, but for two hours no play was possible as the heavens opened over St George’s Park on Thursday morning.

Bowled him 😤💥

Wiaan Mulder does the trick and Head must depart 🏏

📺 Stream #SAvAUS on DStv: https://t.co/rM90YyQxaw pic.twitter.com/UywcKXv9pN

— SuperSport 🏆 (@SuperSportTV) October 22, 2026

The start was delayed by two hours. “We were scrambling a little bit in the changeroom because we were not too sure about the weather,” Bavuma admitted.

Boland and Travis Head, who notched up just his second hundred outside Australia, stayed firm for 82 minutes until Wiaan Mulder made the second of four crucial contributions. Having already bowled Steve Smith with a peach in the first innings, he had Head chopping the ball onto his stumps five overs before the arrival of the second new ball.

Rabada got Smith to misjudge a pull shot — with a nervous Bavuma refusing to watch Matt Breetzke’s juggling act before holding onto a crucial catch.

Boland’s resistance was ended by a beautiful in-ducker from Mulder, who was surprisingly given the ball after tea. “Lots of guys had already contributed; I felt it was my turn. I just wanted to keep the ball on the stumps,” he said.

Cummins’ wicket came a short while later, also a stunning delivery, that straightened off the pitch, beat the outside edge of the bat, and clipped off-stump. Mulder’s post-tea spell, read: 6-1-11-2.

Rabada and Jansen ended the match with a wicket each.

By the bare numbers, this win scarcely makes sense. Almost 200 overs were lost to the weather; Australia were on such a high after Durban too, and the one change they made took five wickets in South Africa’s innings.

But from somewhere deep inside themselves the Proteas summoned what is now becoming their customary “gees”. This extremely tough team have got themselves back in the series.

Newlands is going to be a lot of fun.

Business Day

The move sets up a new contest for control of the central bank after the divided country’s western-based High Council of State rejected Issa’s resignation and told him to stay in his post.

The eastern parliament will discuss Issa’s resignation in a coming session, its spokesperson wrote on X.

In August, Issa submitted his resignation to the two legislative chambers, saying he could not continue in his post but without explaining why, according to two documents seen by Reuters at the time.

Libya has been split since 2014 into rival authorities ‌in ⁠the west and east that emerged from the turmoil following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in a Nato-backed uprising in 2011. It is now run by the eastern-based House of Representatives that was elected in 2014 and the High Council of State ​in the west, whose ​members were drawn from a parliament elected in 2012.

After Issa submitted his resignation, both chambers had said he should stay in position until the issue was discussed.

In reaction to Thursday’s decision by the eastern parliament, HCS first deputy Naji Mukhtar Ali rejected what he called “the unilateral measures taken by the presidency of the House of Representatives”.

“You are requested to continue performing your tasks,” Ali told Issa in a letter seen by Reuters that was confirmed by a central bank official and an HCS source.

Issa took up the post in ​2024 when the two legislative chambers agreed on his appointment as a ​way to ⁠end a standoff over control of the central bank.

Separately, the central bank said in a statement on its verified Facebook page on Thursday that it condemned the forced entry of people into its headquarters, violating the governor’s office in his absence.

It did not explain the incident, but it said it holds all those involved responsible for any consequences, “foremost among them the ministry of defence, given its responsibility for protecting and securing the bank’s headquarters.”

In a separate incident, masked men tried to storm the country’s financial oversight agency on Wednesday, in what Libya’s UN mission called an “unacceptable” attempt to install a senior employee by force.

Reuters

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Former intelligence services minister Ronald (Ronnie) Kasrils on Thursday dismissed claims he was part of secret meetings with apartheid-era defence force and police generals to talk about an amnesty mechanism for them not to face prosecution for apartheid crimes.

“I knew nothing about alleged high-level talks. If there were such talks, I did not participate in anything of that nature,” Kasrils told the commission tasked to investigate allegations of political interference to suppress investigations and prosecutions of heinous apartheid-era crimes.

Kasrils testified before the commission, chaired by justice Sisi Khampepe, as he was the minister of intelligence services in 2004-08 under the presidency of former president Thabo Mbeki. The period covers the commission’s terms of reference.

“I am alleged to have taken part in high-level talks with former generals. It is claimed that these secret talks occurred from 1999 to 2004. The [Lukhanyo] Calata affidavit describes the alleged team in these discussions. I am listed as having been part of this team as the minister of intelligence services, having replaced Joe Nhlanhla. That is incorrect,” Kasrils said.

Kasrils told the commission he was not Nhlanhla’s successor, but former minister Lindiwe Sisulu was in 2001.

“In 2001 [Nhlanhla] was replaced, not by me but by comrade Lindiwe Sisulu. Minister Sisulu served as intelligence minister from 2001 to 2004, the latter being the year that Calata alleges the talks stopped.

“There is no rational way to confuse minister Sisulu with me. I was at the time minister of water affairs & forestry and did not belong to the security cluster.”

The allegation in Calata’s affidavit was based on the book by author Michael Schmidt based on an interview with Maj-Gen Dirk Marais, a former apartheid army general, about alleged secret meetings and who took part.

“According to Schmidt, when Mbeki became president, (deputy president Jacob) Zuma’s ‘security cluster’ team would most likely have included minister of defence Mosiuoa Lekota, minister of justice Penuell Maduna (replaced by Brigitte Mabandla in Mbeki’s second cabinet), minister of intelligence Joe Nhlanhla (replaced by Kasrils), and minister of safety & security Steve Tshwete (replaced by Charles Nqakula),” Calata’s affidavit reads.

Kasrils, however, disputed the claim, saying the factual timeline proved he did not replace Nhlanhla and was only appointed to lead intelligence service in April 2004. From 1999 until 2004, Kasrils was minister of water affairs & forestry.

Kasrils testified Schmidt emailed him in 2020 seeking information about alleged ANC-South African Defence Force talks. He responded saying he did not know anything about such meetings.

“Given my political history and involvement in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [TRC], it is unfortunate that I now stand accused of seeking to protect apartheid-era officials who were involved in gross human rights violations,” said Kasrils.

Kasrils, who fought against the apartheid regime as a senior member of uMkhonto we Sizwe and the ANC, described the claims against him as ironic.

Testifying earlier this week about the alleged meetings, Mbeki said the claim was “a complete fabrication”.

Given my political history and involvement in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [TRC], it is unfortunate that I now stand accused of seeking to protect apartheid-era officials who were involved in gross human rights violations.

Ronald Kasrils, former intelligence services minister

The commission is probing whether there was political interference in the police and National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) that led to the failure to prosecute TRC cases in the past three decades, while hundreds of murders remain unsolved, with no account of those who disappeared.

The cases were referred to the NPA by the TRC, set up by the first government of national unity to help deal with events under apartheid as a platform for perpetrators of human rights violations to testify about crimes and murders committed during apartheid.

Earlier this year, the commission heard evidence from Jacob Gabriel Cilliers van der Merwe, whose father was killed in 1978, allegedly by MK members, linking Kasrils.

“I am alleged to have approached, through a lawyer, Ms Van der Merwe [wife of the deceased] and wanted to meet with her to discuss the disappearance of her husband outside the TRC.

“He [Mr Van der Merwe] heard about this incident from his aunt. Thereafter, in 1997, Ms Van der Merwe received a threatening phone call and as a result requested that they no longer directly deal with investigating officers because the situation seemed dangerous,” Kasrils’ affidavit reads.

He told the commission that when Van der Merwe’s father was killed he was in Angola, was not involved in any MK operations and knew nothing about the murder.

“I confirm what I had informed you that after serving in London I was deployed in Angola in 1977; I was there until the beginning of 1980 as a political instructor. I was not an operational person in the army. I was not involved in carrying out combat operations,” he said.

He said he knew “absolutely nothing” about the alleged approach to the Van der Merwe family and threats until the Khampepe commission hearings.

The commission continues with public hearings on Friday.

Business Day

Brussels — Digital advertisers and publishers lobbied on Thursday for EU and UK regulators to suspend Meta Platforms’ new commercial terms due to come into effect on October 30, alleging that these would give Meta an unlimited right to use their content for its AI services.

Advocacy group the Movement for an Open Web, whose members include digital advertisers and publishers, said it had complained to the European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and requested interim measures.

Publishers worldwide are stepping up their fight with AI companies that use their content without permission to train large language models, underscoring the clash between copyright owners and those citing fair use arguments.

“Meta’s new terms are clearly anti-competitive. Many businesses effectively have no choice but to use Meta’s services, and these conditions would force them to sign away the rights to their digital content with no means of opting out,” said Tim Cowen, co-founder of the Movement for an Open Web.

“The terms would give Meta a free hand to scrape content from nearly every website in the world, potentially using that data to power AI-powered services that would then compete with those businesses,” he said.

The terms would give Meta a free hand to scrape content from nearly every website in the world, potentially using that data to power AI-powered services that would then compete with those businesses.

Tim Cowen, co-founder of the Movement for an Open Web.

Meta said it disagreed with the complaint.

“The crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products, and we’ve clarified that in the terms themselves. It does not change how Meta uses web crawlers,” a Meta spokesperson said.

“As always, content owners can use robots.txt to signal their preferences. This is not about scraping news sites, and these updates don’t give us new rights that supersede those preferences.”

The CMA said it met with Meta on Wednesday to get more details on its new business terms.

“This is an important issue, and we recognise the concerns that have been raised by businesses in the UK. We are engaged in urgent discussions with Meta as we consider our next steps,” a CMA spokesperson said.

The EC said it has received a complaint which it would assess in line with its usual procedure and that it was committed to ensuring that Meta’s practices comply with EU laws.

Companies requesting interim measures have to show that they will suffer serious and irreparable damage from the alleged anti-competitive practices.

The criticism by the Movement for an Open Web followed similar complaints aired by the European Publishers Council (EPC) last week and Germany’s Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers Association (BDZV) and the Association of the Free Press (MVFP) earlier this week.

The minister was speaking at a post-MTBPS breakfast organised by RMB in Cape Town on Thursday morning. During the tabling of his MTBPS in parliament on Wednesday, Godongwana announced the government would provide temporary fuel price relief, saying that the fuel levy will be reduced by R3 per litre for diesel and R1.50 per litre for petrol from November 4 until December.

The commencement date raised eyebrows, as this is the day South Africans go to the polls in elections in which the ANC is expected to face bruising electoral battles in key councils, especially the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities.

Godongwana was asked by RMB chief economist Isaah Mhlanga about what has been called an “unusual coincidence” in the timing of the fuel levy coming into effect, and the EFF’s criticism of the announcement as an “election ploy”.

“By the way, I was also shocked when I heard the EFF yesterday, [saying] that [we] are electioneering by announcing it for the fourth. But if it were in December, it would have been done on the second, because the change to the fuel price happens on the first Wednesday of the month. Then the first Wednesday of November happens to be the fourth of November,” said Godongwana.

He said the “coincidence” did not occur to him until EFF MPs pointed it out after he tabled his MTBPS. “These people are leading with elections when the date has got nothing to do with elections at all,” he insisted.

Godongwana said the challenges facing municipalities were deeper and much more complex than broad cost drivers, but they also have a great impact on South Africa’s investment and development case at a macroeconomic level.

He said state capacity as a pillar of the National Treasury’s budget and fiscal priorities has come into sharp focus as South Africa heads towards local government elections, but the Treasury has always flagged this as a key challenge.

“I think we normally have got a standard kind of approach, where we say we’ve got four pillars. The first one is to achieve macroeconomic stability … The second one deals with the binding constraints [in the network industries]. That’s structural reforms. The third one is state capacity.

“It’s coming into sharp focus … because we are going into an election, but we have always said that’s a problem, because municipalities provide the basic needs, not only in terms of performance and infrastructure, but in the regulatory framework and how long it takes to rezone.”

No-one is going to invest if you can’t get water and you can’t get electricity; basic things.

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana

Godongwana has been known to adopt a tough-love approach towards municipalities over their equitable share allocations and service delivery failures. He said a close friend in business told him it takes 80 days to get a rezoning licence in one municipality, and sometimes it can take up to 200 days in another.

“Those minor things influence how people make decisions about investment. I am just stating those kinds of regulatory challenges that we are talking about. So, we are talking about structural concerns and state capacity and also infrastructure itself.

“Take Johannesburg as a starting point. When you are dealing with Johannesburg, you are not only dealing with leakages; you are dealing with old water infrastructure that needs rehabilitation … We have got to sort those things out so that we can see investment. No-one is going to invest if you can’t get water and you can’t get electricity; basic things.”

Mhlanga said the MTBPS showed flexibility to provide breathing room for the successes of National Treasury to take hold in the broader economy while allowing market-friendly stability and predictability.

TimesLIVE

The Sharks have travelled from the southeast of France to the southwest of the UK, eager to ensure the momentum from their sensational weekend Challenge Cup win over Olympique Lyon flows into their United Rugby Championship clash against Cardiff on Friday night.

The Sharks scored after the final hooter for a delicious 40-33 victory over a determined Lyon, who just kept coming back and had equalised at 33-33 with a minute remaining. The Durban team’s dangerous backline produced one final moment of magic as fullback Zekhethelo Siyaya freed ruthless winger Litelihle Bester for the match-winning try with a daring offload.

That sort of win, especially on French soil against a team who were the early pacesetters in last season’s Top 14, can do wonders for the confidence of a team. Veteran lock Stephan Lewies, who played his first game back at the Sharks having spent seven years at Harlequins, highlighted the magnitude of the triumph.

“It was a special victory. It always is when you win in Europe, and it’s awesome to do it at a place like Lyon,” he said.

Top finish by Yaw Penxe v Cardiff in March '26 📅

We can't wait for Friday night 🦈#BlackWhiteForever #HollywoodbetsSharks pic.twitter.com/gcU1ImyC6V

— Sharks Rugby Club (@SharksRugby) October 21, 2026

“It was especially pleasing how we stuck in the fight; it was a full 82-minute performance. It showed what the coaches are trying to build: to believe that we are never out of the contest.

“We had to pull close together, and when times are tough in the future, we can look back on that game when we were relentless and say we’ve been in that situation before.

“When you have that momentum, you want to build on it, and it’s important we back that performance up against Cardiff.

“We need to stick to those systems, learn from our mistakes and get better every week. We need to take that performance one [level] up,” the 34-year-old Lewies exhorted.

Lewies, a well-travelled lock who dominates lineouts and played one Test for the Springboks at Cardiff Arms, will go up against a set piece that had a rare off day against Northampton Saints in their 28-12 Champions Cup defeat at Franklin’s Gardens last weekend.

It’s going to be a big challenge playing Cardiff at home, they know the weather conditions and how the 3G pitch plays.

Sharks lock Stephan Lewies

But Cardiff are coached by Corniel van Zyl, a former Free State Cheetahs lock who played for Italy, and Sharks forwards coach Warren Whiteley warned Lewies and his fellow jumpers will be given a proper test given their hosts will be out to fix what went wrong at Northampton.

“Cardiff are a quality team, and Corniel has a lot of experience and is very astute when it comes to the set pieces, especially the lineout,” he cautioned.

Lewies added: “It’s going to be a big challenge playing Cardiff at home; they know the weather conditions and how the 3G pitch plays.

“They have a very good set piece and strong kicking game, and the weather plays a part. But it’s a big opportunity for us to get closer as a team, to grow and get better.”

URC fixtures

Friday:

• Cardiff Rugby vs Sharks, Cardiff Arms Park (8.45pm).
• Connacht vs Zebre, The Sportsground (8.45pm).
• Edinburgh vs Lions, The DAM Health Stadium (8.45pm).

Saturday:

• Bulls vs Ulster, Loftus Versfeld (1.45pm).
• Stormers vs Llanelli Scarlets, Cape Town Stadium (4pm).
• Benetton Rugby vs Glasgow Warriors, Stadio Comunale di Monigo (4pm).
• Leinster vs Munster, Lansdowne Road (7pm).
• Ospreys vs Dragons, St Helen’s (8pm).

Story audio is generated using AI

France has reported the first known human case of Shamonda virus in a patient who died, raising questions about the risks posed by a livestock virus that reached Europe this year, decades after first being detected in Nigeria.

What is Shamonda virus?

Shamonda is transmitted by biting midges and mainly affects cattle, though infections have also been identified in sheep, goats, horses and alpacas.

It belongs to the same group as Schmallenberg virus, which causes reproductive disorders in livestock.

Where has it spread?

First detected in cattle in Nigeria in 1965, it has since been found in parts of Africa and Asia.

First identified in Europe in late July, by October 20 cases had been reported in more than a dozen European countries, including in top cattle breeders France, Germany, Spain and Ireland. France said the virus had probably been circulating in the country since the spring.

How dangerous is it for animals?

Symptoms include fever, diarrhoea and reduced milk production.

More serious complications include abortions and severe foetal malformations. Neurological disorders have also been reported in some horses.

The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) says the long-term impact of the European variants is uncertain.

What is the risk to humans?

The first documented patient was being treated for a serious illness at a hospital in Lyon and had a severely weakened immune system.

The UN’s World Health Organisation said that based on current information and knowledge of the transmission of closely related viruses, this was an isolated human case and unlikely to lead to wider spread at this time.

French authorities suspect infection occurred through a midge bite in eastern France, where the virus circulated among livestock earlier this year.

They said the patient’s brain complications were very likely linked to Shamonda, though investigations into the infection and death are continuing.

What is its current status?

Shamonda is not a disease listed by the WOAH and countries are therefore not required to notify WOAH of cases under its disease-specific reporting obligations.

Nor is it listed under the EU’s Animal Health Law framework, meaning it is not subject to EU disease-specific mandatory surveillance.

Because of this, available data may not provide a complete picture of its spread.

Reuters

Story audio is generated using AI

President Cyril Ramaphosa has apologised for the Bronkhorstspruit water crisis that has left many children ill and hospitalised.

Between October 7 and 18, 408 cases of gastrointestinal illness were recorded after residents were exposed to unchlorinated water from the Bronkhorstspruit water treatment works.

On Monday Tshwane mayor Nasiphi Moya addressed the water contamination crisis in Bronkhorstspruit, publicly admitting that the City did not communicate with the residents adequately.

Speaking during the ANC’s door-to-door campaign in Daveyton, Ekurhuleni, on Tuesday, Ramaphosa said they are dealing with the issue and challenge.

He said the national government had intervened after the City of Tshwane failed to properly treat water supplied to communities in the Bronkhorstspruit area, apologising to those who had fallen ill.

“The issue in Tshwane was not underreported. The issue of the challenge of water was reported on time and we immediately embarked on finding solutions,” he said.

WATCH | President Cyril Ramaphosa during his door-to-door campaign trail in Daveyton speaks on the water issues plaguing the metros touching especially on what has happened in Tshwane. pic.twitter.com/iOm0bJsaqq

— Sowetan (@Sowetan1981) October 20, 2026

“We’re very sorry that it has resulted in the challenge of illness that has affected a number of people. That’s why the minister of health has become involved — but we will be dealing with that problem because we cannot afford a situation where our people are drawn to illness because of our inability to treat water properly.”

Most patients were rehydrated and discharged within a day, while Bronkhorstspruit Hospital set up an isolation area and overflow beds to manage the influx.

Patients were also treated at surrounding facilities, including:

• local clinics;
• Steve Biko Academic Hospital; and
• Mamelodi and Wilgers hospitals.

Daily admissions peaked on October 13, when 72 cases were reported in a single day, before dropping to 16 new cases by October 18.

Ramaphosa said the water crisis in Tshwane, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni required national intervention.

“National now has to intervene and come up with solutions. Now, with regard to dealing with that challenge, we are invoking the work of the national water crisis committee. So the national water crisis committee is dealing with the challenge and we are hoping that in a few days we will have a solution.”

The committee was established to ensure that people across the country have access to safe drinking water, he said. “[This is] to make sure that our people have safe drinking water — not only in Tshwane, Johannesburg or Ekurhuleni but throughout the country.”

Water provision remains the responsibility of the municipality but national government had to step in because of the ongoing challenges, he added.

“It’s most unfortunate that it happens in the municipality that has been dogged with water challenges all along.”

Sowetan

Story audio is generated using AI

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa says coalition governments tie the hands of municipalities and constrain service delivery, compounding the various challenges that plague local government.

Residents of Daveyton in Ekurhuleni on Tuesday expressed their disappointment with service delivery in the area, citing a lack of water and electricity, even in new RDP homes.

Ramaphosa was in the area for the party’s door-to-door campaign ahead of the November 4 local government elections.

He said the local government system faced serious challenges, but argued that these should not be used to paint everyone in government with the same brush.

“In a number of instances, yes, we have the right people.

“We cannot say because one or two people have done the wrong thing, then brandish everybody in local government and say all of them are leading lavish lifestyles,” he said.

“No, we still have good people at provincial level and at local government level, and many of the people who are in those spheres of government are fully determined to serve our people.”

I’m hoping that in these elections, we will be able to have an outcome that gives outright support to parties that will be able to run municipalities effectively, so that we don’t constrain and tie the hands of our municipal governance

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa

Ramaphosa said while they made democracy robust, coalition governments often made it difficult for mayors and municipal committees to deliver services.

“They actually introduce constraints on the ability, for instance, of the mayor, the ability of the various municipal committees and all that to do the work they should do,” he said.

“I’m hoping that in these elections, we will be able to have an outcome that gives outright support to parties that will be able to run municipalities effectively, so that we don’t constrain and tie the hands of our municipal governance.”

However, Emfuleni, Ditsobotla, Joe Morolong and Maluti-a-Phofung are some of the worst run municipalities which were in the hands of the ANC.

Ramaphosa said the ANC was delivering services, pointing to residents moving from informal settlements into new RDP houses in the area.

“There has been delivery. There has been provision of houses. Our people who lived here lived in informal settlements in shacks,” he said.

“As I go into each of their houses, they say, ‘We are grateful that we’ve been moved out of informal settlements. We now live here, but we now have new problems, and new problems that are given rise to by the newness of the house’.”

He said issues such as faulty taps, door handles and outstanding electricity connections were being attended to.

“One lady was saying there isn’t any electricity yet in the house that she has moved into.”

The electricity contractor would be in the area on Wednesday to install electricity, Ramaphosa said.

“So all these things are being addressed and they are being addressed in a very systematic way. That there hasn’t been delivery is not true, there has been delivery.”

We don’t have jobs and the place we live in is a shack. It’s not the right place for children

Mosadi Khoza, resident

However residents, like Slindo Mthembu, who is originally from Tsakane and rents in the area for work purposes, said her main concern was safety.

“The street lights aren’t working and roads are dilapidated,” Mthembu said, adding that she was also concerned about overgrown grass.

“It’s a big problem when you have children who are playing and people coming back from work in the dark.

“These issues are a space for crime. It’s good that he’s here and he’s hearing our troubles, but these need to be addressed.”

Mosadi Khoza, 33, who has lived in Mayfield since 2011, said she was still living in a shack with three children and no jobs.

“We don’t have jobs and the place we live in is a shack. It’s not the right place for children. The toilets are dirty and don’t get cleaned, and we can’t even feed the kids because even the grant isn’t enough. We want change. If he can just give us jobs or proper homes so we can move out of that settlement.”

She said the settlement did not have proper roads, making it difficult for ambulances to enter.

“They would tell us that we need to meet them at the road because they can’t enter. It’s even worse when it’s raining because everywhere, even the shack, gets flooded,” Khoza said.

The issue is not that Africa should be shielded from scrutiny. On the contrary, rigorous assessment is essential for functioning capital markets. The problem is that prevailing models of risk evaluation systematically misread African economies, producing outcomes that are inconsistent with underlying fundamentals. What is at stake is not sentiment, but accuracy.

‘Africa premium’

Evidence of this distortion is mounting. A 2023 study by the UN Development Programme estimates that African countries pay much higher borrowing costs than peers with similar macroeconomic indicators, resulting in up to $74.5bn in excess interest payments and lost financing opportunities. This “Africa premium” cannot be fully explained by debt ratios, growth performance or inflation dynamics. Instead, it reflects the translation of perception into price.

The asymmetry becomes clearer when examining how ratings evolve over time. African sovereigns are often downgraded rapidly during periods of stress but experience slower or more limited upgrades during recovery phases. IMF research has shown that rating actions tend to amplify market volatility rather than smooth it, particularly in frontier markets. In practical terms it means countries face higher borrowing costs precisely when they have the least fiscal space to absorb them.

The structure of the ratings industry reinforces this dynamic. Three agencies — Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch — dominate about 95% of the global market. Their methodologies, while sophisticated, are shaped by data availability, institutional histories and financial architectures that differ markedly from those in many African economies (Fofack, 2021). This is not necessarily a matter of intent but of design. Models built for one context do not automatically translate well to another.

IMF research has shown that rating actions tend to amplify market volatility rather than smooth it, particularly in frontier markets. In practical terms it means countries face higher borrowing costs precisely when they have the least fiscal space to absorb them.

Market behaviour often reveals these inconsistencies. African sovereign bond issuances are frequently oversubscribed, indicating strong investor demand even when ratings remain conservative. For example, Nigeria’s eurobond issuances have repeatedly attracted substantial investor interest despite relatively low credit ratings. This divergence suggests that investors, when pricing risk directly, may incorporate factors that rating methodologies underweight or overlook.

At the same time, rating decisions can have outsized effects. Downgrades trigger higher yields, which increase debt servicing costs, which in turn worsen fiscal indicators — creating a feedback loop that reinforces the initial assessment. This circularity raises an important question: to what extent do ratings reflect risk, and to what extent do they shape it?

Addressing this issue requires more than incremental adjustment. What is needed is a clearer articulation of the principles that should guide the evaluation of African risk. Such a framework must begin with transparency: the criteria used to assess creditworthiness should be explicit, consistently applied and open to scrutiny. It must also be empirically grounded, distinguishing between liquidity constraints and structural insolvency, and recognising the role of external shocks in shaping macroeconomic outcomes.

Context sensitivity

Equally important is context sensitivity. African economies are often penalised for structural characteristics — such as commodity dependence or infrastructure gaps — that are themselves legacies of historical patterns of integration into the global economy. A credible framework should account for reform trajectories, revenue mobilisation efforts, and institutional improvements, rather than relying predominantly on static indicators.

Data is central to this effort. One of the persistent challenges in assessing African economies has been the availability and timeliness of reliable data. Yet this is changing. Advances in digitalisation, improvements in public financial management and greater transparency in debt reporting are expanding the informational base on which assessments can be made. Risk models must evolve accordingly.

It is in this broader context that recent institutional initiatives should be understood. The Africa Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA), endorsed by the AU, represents an attempt to diversify the sources of credit assessment and incorporate more locally grounded analysis. Its potential contribution lies not in producing more favourable ratings, but in improving the quality and relevance of information available to markets. Its credibility will depend on independence, methodological rigour and its willingness to challenge overly pessimistic and overly optimistic narratives.

Similarly, the proposal for a Borrowers’ Forum — now supported in discussions at the UN Conference on Trade & Development — reflects a recognition that the current global financial architecture does not adequately represent the perspectives of debtor countries. By facilitating co-ordination among borrowers, such a forum could help address informational asymmetries and improve the terms of engagement with creditors.

Mispricing is not a neutral error; it has distributive consequences, shaping who has access to finance and at what cost.

These initiatives are best seen as components of a broader shift rather than as standalone solutions. No single institution can, on its own, recalibrate how African risk is perceived and priced. The deeper transformation lies in establishing a more balanced ecosystem of analysis, where multiple perspectives coexist and compete, and where methodologies are continuously tested against empirical reality.

Ultimately, the question is one of credibility. For African countries, credibility depends on strengthening fiscal governance, enhancing transparency and sustaining reform efforts. For those who assess African risk, credibility depends on the ability to produce evaluations that are not only technically sound but also contextually informed.

The current moment offers an opportunity to move beyond inherited assumptions. As global economic conditions become more uncertain and capital becomes more selective, the precision with which risk is assessed will matter even more. Mispricing is not a neutral error; it has distributive consequences, shaping who has access to finance and at what cost.

Africa’s objective is not to redefine risk in its favour. It is to ensure that risk is defined correctly. That requires a framework that is transparent, data-driven and attentive to context. It requires institutions that can generate and interpret information with greater proximity and insight. And it requires a willingness on all sides to question long-standing practices that no longer serve their intended purpose.

The price of perception has been high. Reducing it begins with understanding how it is constructed — and ensuring that the rules by which it operates are no longer beyond contestation.

• Lopes is a professor at the Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town.

Business Day

Russia said on Wednesday it was ready to resume US-mediated talks with Ukraine next month, after President Vladimir Putin hosted US envoy Steve Witkoff for talks in St Petersburg.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped negotiations, which would be the first since February, would take place early in November.

Ukraine said Russia fired at least 21 ballistic missiles in three waves, and Zelensky said three of them carried cluster munitions — “bomblets” that disperse over a wide area and are banned by many countries because of the danger they pose to civilians. Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russia said Ukraine launched 630 drones towards Moscow during the night.

The two sides held an exchange of war dead, with Moscow handing over 252 bodies and Ukraine handing over 25, according to the Belta state news agency in neighbouring Belarus. Such exchanges have accompanied moves towards talks in the past.

But while Witkoff spoke of “some degree of momentum” after meeting Zelensky and European and Nato officials in Oslo earlier in the week, the Kremlin expressed doubts.

“The Americans sensed some new nuances (in Oslo) and told us about this. But these nuances, so to speak, do not entirely satisfy us,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.

A senior Russian official, briefed on the results of the Putin-Witkoff talks, said they were relatively short and not substantive. The American brought a set of proposals drafted in Oslo and handed them to Putin for review, the person said.

Another source close to the Kremlin said the US proposals included a scenario where Ukraine would cede all of its Donbas region to Russia in return for receiving a guarantee of its future security from Nato.

Russia says it launched the war, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two, in part to prevent Ukraine joining Nato. It has repeatedly said it would not end fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, limits the size of its forces and is permanently barred from forming alliances.

Ukraine, which says the invasion was an unprovoked war of conquest, has long dismissed Russia’s conditions as a demand for capitulation that would leave it defenceless against future Russian attacks.

Zelensky’s meeting with Witkoff was aimed in part at smoothing over a deterioration in relations with Washington this month, after President Donald Trump announced a deal to buy Russian diesel and lifted sanctions on Moscow.

Kyiv says Washington failed to provide early-warning data on Russian missile launches, throttled the SpaceX satellite system used to guide Ukrainian drones, and withheld missile defence systems bought on its behalf by Europeans. Washington denies any shift in policy to intentionally hamper Ukraine’s forces.

Trump has repeatedly rebuked Ukraine for attacking Russian oil refineries while saying little about far deadlier Russian attacks on Ukraine. He called for Zelensky to be replaced and said Russia’s actions in Ukraine have been “fine”.

Zelensky, who long avoided any criticism of the Trump administration, has increasingly pushed back against what he describes as a shift towards sympathy with Moscow.

On Thursday Zelensky snapped back at Witkoff for saluting Putin as a “humanitarian” during his visit to Russia, when the US envoy thanked Putin for releasing a 74-year-old American captured by Russian forces in Ukraine.

“Three waves of ballistic missiles have been launched at Kyiv by Russian ‘humanitarians’ since yesterday evening,” Zelensky posted on X. “They used 21 missiles. Unfortunately, numerous sites across the city have been hit and damaged.”

He said two people were killed and 34 injured, including five children, in attacks on a dozen Ukrainian regions.

Russia said it carried out a “massive strike” overnight on port infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa region, as well as on vessels used by the Ukrainian military.

In Russia, two people were wounded near Moscow by drones launched towards the capital during the night, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram. Most of the drones were downed at long range, he added.

In the Russian border region of Belgorod, one man was killed and another wounded by Ukrainian drones, local officials said.

With the frontlines of the war largely static, both sides have escalated long-range air strikes this year. Russia has particularly targeted the Ukrainian power grid, while Ukraine has aimed at Russian oil refineries. Both have struck data centres, commercial warehouses and Black Sea shipping.

The war has ground on for more than four-and-a-half years, defying Trump’s pledge during his 2024 election campaign that he could end it in a day. No breakthrough emerged from three short meetings in Istanbul last year and three rounds of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva at the start of this year.

Reuters

Manchester City will try to preserve the Premier League’s only perfect record at Aston Villa this weekend while dealing with mounting injuries and major off-field distractions following their guilty verdict on financial-rule charges.

Enzo Maresca’s City have won all seven league matches to sit three points clear of champions Arsenal, but an independent commission’s finding that the club were guilty of 114 financial breaches has cast a shadow over their blistering start.

City have denied any wrongdoing and appealed, with sanctions yet to be decided. Their immediate task is maintaining their flawless run at Villa Park on Saturday despite a growing injury list.

Forward Antoine Semenyo is set for a lengthy spell out with a knee injury, while wingback Nico O’Reilly and midfielders Mateo Kovacic and Matheus Nunes are doubts.

League-leading scorer Erling Haaland was rested for Tuesday’s 5-1 Champions League thrashing of AEK Athens because of a knock but is expected to be available against Villa.

Arsenal, City’s closest challengers on 18 points, host Everton on Saturday, although they have fitness concerns after Bukayo Saka limped off in the 10th minute of Wednesday’s 2-2 Champions League draw at Bayern Munich with a quadriceps injury.

“He doesn’t look good at all, but we’ll have to wait and see,” Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta said.

Liverpool face one of the tougher challenges of the weekend when they welcome high-flying Brighton & Hove Albion to Anfield on Sunday

Fourth-placed Chelsea host London rivals Tottenham Hotspur at Stamford Bridge on Saturday after back-to-back league victories over Bournemouth and Everton.

Spurs finally earned their first league victory of the season with Monday’s 3-1 home win over Coventry City after a miserable start that has left them 16th with six points from seven games. Chelsea have 13 points.

Liverpool face one of the tougher challenges of the weekend when they welcome high-flying Brighton & Hove Albion to Anfield on Sunday. Brighton’s superb start has them third with five wins and a draw from seven matches, two places and four points above Liverpool, while their goal difference of plus 18 is the league’s best.

Liverpool, though, have uncovered another attacking weapon in 18-year-old Rio Ngumoha, who produced a dazzling performance in their 4-3 Champions League comeback win over Villarreal on Tuesday. Ngumoha created two goals and became the youngest Liverpool player to register a Champions League assist, earning a standing ovation from the Anfield crowd.

“That’s the good thing with Rio; he is still 18, he is not the full package, but he can add things, fortunately for us. Hopefully he can continue in the same way,” Liverpool manager Andoni Iraola said. “But I’m happy because attitude-wise I think he’s in a great place.”

Liverpool’s injury problems complicate the task, with the versatile Dominik Szoboszlai, wing back Jeremie Frimpong, right back Conor Bradley and striker Hugo Ekitike among those sidelined.

For us to play in that way, it’s not acceptable. That bit of intensity, that aggression, that real willingness to give everything — tonight was totally the opposite of the performance. It was tough to watch

Michael Carrick, Manchester United coach

At Old Trafford, Manchester United desperately need a victory over Bournemouth to breathe life into a season that has gone awry.

Michael Carrick’s team are 13th with one victory and seven points from their opening seven matches and are coming off a shambolic 4-1 Champions League defeat at Como on Wednesday.

“I have to apologise to the supporters,” Carrick said after the latest setback in Italy. “I care about this football club as much as anyone, if not more.

“For us to play in that way, it’s not acceptable. That bit of intensity, that aggression, that real willingness to give everything — tonight was totally the opposite of the performance. It was tough to watch.”

Complicating matters, Marcus Rashford, Kobbie Mainoo, Luke Shaw, Benjamin Sesko, Patrick Dorgu and Lisandro Martinez are among those with injury or fitness concerns, while midfielder Manuel Ugarte has a long-term knee injury.

Carrick’s United were held 1-1 at home by Tottenham and away to Leeds United in their last two league outings and now face a Bournemouth side who sit one point below them.

Reuters

Story audio is generated using AI

By Helen Coster

US vice-president JD Vance on Wednesday defended an explosive attack ad by Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign against his Democratic rival in the Ohio governor’s race, telling fellow Republicans to “stop whining” about it and go win the race.

The ad features Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, disputing Acton’s account of a childhood she says involved a period of homelessness and sexual abuse. Arthur, whom Acton says she has not seen since 1978, urges Ohioans not to vote for her daughter.

Acton has said she was sexually abused by her stepfather when she was 12. Her mother stayed with the stepfather, who was charged with rape but fled the state and was never tried. He died in 2004. Acton said she and her brother were removed from her mother’s custody for severe abuse, neglect and sexual abuse.

Acton’s brother has supported her account.

The ad, which has been widely condemned, underscored the incivility of the run-up to the November 3 midterm elections and could backfire on Ramaswamy and other Republican candidates in Ohio, which has moved to the right during Republican Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns.

Vance, campaigning with Ramaswamy and Republican US Senator Jon Husted on Wednesday, brushed aside the blowback.

“My message to my fellow elected Republicans is: If you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days,” Vance said in Cincinnati before attending a rally with Ramaswamy.

The ad initially appeared on social media on Tuesday without identifying its source, but Ramaswamy’s campaign later said it was behind the spot and was spending $4m to promote it.

“Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar,” Vance, who rose to fame on his own story of childhood neglect in Ohio, said at the rally with the candidates.

“And my message, ladies and gentlemen, is very simple. Whatever you think about any of the TV advertisements, focus on the substance and focus on the facts.”

Trump said on Wednesday he knew nothing about the ad.

“It’s a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much, but I don’t think that has anything to do with Vivek,” Trump told reporters before leaving the White House to campaign in South Carolina.

‘Disgusting attack’

Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said in a statement that Ramaswamy’s ad was a “desperate, disgusting attack”.

Acton campaign spokesperson Addie Bullock said Ramaswamy’s decision to promote the ad was “both despicable and entirely predictable”.

As the backlash built on Tuesday, Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson Connie Luck issued a statement saying: “We don’t know what happened between Amy and her mother ... but we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulist.”

Opinion polls show Acton with a narrow lead over Ramaswamy, and the scandal could help cement her position as the favourite in the race, analysts said.

“It was campaign malpractice,” said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.

Cohen said it could also mean trouble for Husted, who said in a statement that he would “not have run that ad” and who polls show trailing Democrat Sherrod Brown in a race that will help determine control of the US Senate.

Among Republicans, Cohen predicted, “I think this will either encourage some people to switch parties, or more likely, you’re going to have a lot of people staying home” on election day.

Reuters

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About 27 foreign national traders in Bellville have turned to the Western Cape high court, accusing the City of Cape Town and police of failing to protect them from anti-immigration groups allegedly using intimidation and threats to drive them out of business.

The traders, supported by the Somali Association of South Africa (Sasa), want the court to stop Operation Dudula and the March and March Movement from preventing them from operating at the Bellville Trading Zone, despite holding valid municipal trading permits.

In court papers filed on Monday, the applicants accuse the city of failing to take reasonable steps to prevent what they describe as unfair discrimination and the unlawful disruption of their livelihoods.

They seek prohibitory and mandatory orders against Operation Dudula and the March and March Movement, which in the court papers they describe as “vigilante respondents”.

The applicants also want authorities to develop a coordinated plan to ensure traders can safely access their stalls without intimidation or interference.

The respondents include the City of Cape Town, the minister of police, the national commissioner and the Western Cape police commissioner, the Bellville police station commander, Operation Dudula, the March and March Movement and Siyabulela Dukumbane, cited on behalf of Operation Dudula and Concerned Citizens.

According to the founding papers, the dispute dates back to June 30, when members of the two anti-immigration movements allegedly began blocking foreign nationals from trading at the Golden Arrow Bus Terminus and Middestad Mall trading areas, collectively known as the Bellville Trading Zone.

The applicants allege that the groups launched a campaign targeting black foreign national informal traders.

“The vigilante respondents are demanding that all other non-nationals trading at the Bellville Trading Zone cease trading and leave South Africa,” the court papers state.

The traders maintain that they are legally entitled to live and work in South Africa and that the city has issued them with informal trading permits in accordance with its trading by-laws.

They argue that the blockade has deprived them of their only source of income, threatening their families’ survival.

“The traders are indigent and rely on their informal trading income to provide for their households,” the papers state.

The applicants say foreign nationals often face significant barriers to entering the formal job market, leaving informal trading as one of the few opportunities to earn a living.

Some of their trading stock and belongings were forcibly removed from their trading bays.

Abdulhakim Mumin Salih Husein, a Somali national employed by Sasa

In his founding affidavit, Abdulhakim Mumin Salih Husein, a Somali national employed by Sasa, alleges that the blockade is part of a broader anti-immigrant protest that began on June 30.

He said traders who tried to return to their stalls on July 1 were confronted by groups of people, some wearing clothing associated with Operation Dudula and the March and March Movement.

They were allegedly told they were not permitted to trade in South Africa and should leave the country.

“Some of their trading stock and belongings were forcibly removed from their trading bays,” Husein said.

He further alleges that about 13 affected traders approached the Bellville police station to report the incidents but were turned away after spending about seven hours seeking assistance.

According to his affidavit, officers allegedly told them they could not assist because the traders could not identify the alleged perpetrators by name.

No criminal cases were opened and police allegedly failed to take written statements from the complainants.

Husein said the alleged police response, coupled with the city’s failure to intervene, had left traders vulnerable to further intimidation and financial losses.

He accused the authorities of allowing private individuals to interfere with lawful economic activity based on traders’ nationality or perceived immigration status.

The applicants argue that the city has failed to enforce its informal trading by-laws and trading plan, despite issuing permits authorising the traders to operate in the designated area.

Access to trading spaces

They also accuse the municipality of failing to enforce its public nuisance by-law against those allegedly obstructing access to trading spaces.

Husein said the city’s inaction had effectively prevented permit holders from exercising the rights granted to them under municipal regulations.

The traders want the court to compel the authorities to develop and implement a coordinated response to the alleged intimidation, restore safe access to the trading zone and prevent further disruptions.

They contend that the City’s failure to ensure safe and unhindered access to the Bellville Trading Zone amounts to unfair discrimination based on nationality, citizenship or refugee and asylum-seeker status.

The applicants want the court to declare the city’s alleged failure to act unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid.

The allegations against the city, police and anti-immigration movements remain claims contained in the court papers and have not been established by the court.

The City of Cape Town said it would respond to Sunday Times’ inquiry in due course. Western Cape Operation Dudula said it could not comment as it had not seen the court papers.

Sowetan

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After a slow start to the year, new motorcycle sales in South Africa made a strong comeback in the second and third quarters.

Year-to-date sales are 13.5% ahead of the corresponding 2025 period, according to the Association of Motorcycle Importers and Distributors (Amid).

Current trends indicate that total sales for 2026 could exceed the 46,000 unit level, which would be the best year since 2008, when the global economic crisis negatively impacted many markets, says Arnold Olivier, Amid’s national director.

There were 43,144 motorcycles sold in South Africa in 2025, the best year since 2014.

The leisure segment is the best performing sector with a year-to-date increase of 42%, led by the sub-500cc market (up 43%), youth motorcycles and quads (up 39%) and the over-500cc segment (up 16%). Off-road motorcycles grew 6%.

A trend towards more affordable motorcycles has been the case throughout the year, says Olivier.

“The motorcycle market shows more liveliness than what has been the case for several years but will remain very competitive as more brands enter the market, especially in the commercial segment.”

The commercial motorcycle market increased 10.2%. Within this segment, internal combustion-engined (ICE) machines are up 8%, and electric bikes continue to grow strongly with a 35% increase.

“Though EV is clearly the flavour of the day, it is worth noting that it is growing off a comparatively small base, as ICE motorcycles and scooters still dominate this segment with 85% of volume,” says Olivier.

“The third quarter has also seen the introduction of significant numbers of conventional electric motorcycles as opposed to scooters. At present the commercial EV environment is dependent on battery swopping stations to operate effectively. This has the effect that ownership will, for the time being, vest in the hands of fleet operators who can install and maintain these swopping stations.”

Used motorcycle sales have remained stable this year with a modest 1.1% increase over the corresponding period in 2025.

Since the US imposed a de facto ban on fuel imports on Cuba’s communist-run government in late January, the Caribbean’s largest island has seen an unprecedented collapse in public transport.

“Traditional public transport is at one of its lowest points of all time,” Rodriguez Davila, a mechanical engineer turned minister, told Reuters in an exclusive interview in Havana this week.

The island’s top transport official estimates passenger trips on public transport will plunge 75% this year from 2025, with public bus services to the provinces from the capital, Havana, dropping from 419 a day to just 11 this year. Bus routes island-wide have been slashed from more than 100 to just 21. Interurban transport, a mainstay for Cuban workers, would fall 90%, he said.

“These are families that can’t move around, people who can’t visit their sick loved ones, others who can’t get to a hospital,” he said. “The drama behind these shortfalls is complex.”

Even domestic freight transport is expected to fall to around 20-million tonnes this year, Rodriguez Davila said, less than a third of the 70-million tonnes moved across the country last year.

The US says the fuel blockade and recent beefed-up sanctions are necessary to upend Cuba’s government, which it calls inept and corrupt. Cuba and the UN have called the blockade illegal and a violation of human rights.

Electric vehicles

While tension soars between governments, Cubans have turned to hitchhiking, impromptu carpooling and, increasingly, far pricier private transport.

Electric options have also flourished, the minister said. “It’s what we have to work with, but it comes with a high investment cost,” he said, noting that such vehicles are often twice the price of those that use petrol or diesel.

Rodriguez Davila says Cuba now has 150,000 electric cars, bikes and tricycles, double the number in 2025 and around 15% of the total 1-million vehicles in Cuba. The actual proportion of electric vehicles is likely far higher, he said, given the large numbers of unregistered plug-in cars and bikes and the prohibitively high price of running a car on petrol or diesel.

By August, 40% of vehicle imports were electric, he said, up from just 3.5% in January 2025, thanks to import incentives that waive or reduce taxes for electric cars and bikes. “Electric vehicles have increased more quickly than the supply of renewable energy,” the minister said.

Cuba is scrambling to construct solar-charging stations to move soaring demand from the decrepit, mostly fuel-fired electrical grid to the sun. Rodriguez Davila said the transport ministry had just purchased 60 solar charging stations to be distributed countrywide.

Examples abound across Cuba of experiments that have ended in success — and failure. Transmed, a state enterprise, will soon inaugurate a fleet of cargo vans and charging stations that will move medicines to pharmacies throughout Havana without using hard-to-source fuel.

But even on a government-led press tour, not everything was running like clockwork. At one stop, dozens of yellow electric tricycles owned by a state company sat idle in a parking garage because there was no electricity to charge them. Frustrated taxi drivers vented.

The minister grimaced. “These are the problems we have,” he said.

Reuters

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The South African Football Association (Safa) has disclosed that it will foot the bill for all legal costs incurred by president Danny Jordaan and CFO Gronie Hluyo in their ongoing court case of alleged fraud and corruption.

Jordaan, who was re-elected for a fourth term last month, and Hluyo were arrested in 2024 after a Hawks investigation into the alleged misuse of R1.3m in association funds, and the matter is before the Palm Ridge magistrate’s court.

The case involves allegations of theft, corruption and fraud and has been ongoing since 2024. Grit Communications director Trevor Neethling and former Safa CEO Russel Paul have also been linked to the proceedings.

In a surprise statement sent on Wednesday night, Safa said its national executive committee had resolved to pay the legal costs of Jordaan and Hluyo and will appoint a senior counsel to defend them.

“Safa CEO Lydia Monyepao wrote a letter to the court in December 2024 stating that Safa was never a complainant,” the statement read.

Safa’s shock move is bound to anger the association’s critics who’ve long accused Jordaan of using its coffers to fight personal battles

“The letter further stated that the complainants are disgruntled former Safa NEC members and employees who have no legal right to represent Safa in the proceedings. They have done so in their personal capacity outside the ambit of Safa.”

Safa added that those claims are unjustifiable given that the federation had “consistently received clean financial audits” during the period of the alleged corruption.

“It is worth adding that Safa received unqualified audits for the period of this investigation by the National Prosecuting Authority and the subsequent audit period to date,” the statement continued.

“The NEC further resolved that Safa shall intervene in the criminal proceedings by making a detailed written statement refuting any wrongdoing on the part of the president, the CFO, and former acting CEO, Mr Russel Paul.”

The association has indicated that it intends to institute civil proceedings against anyone it believes has brought Safa and its officials into disrepute.

“Finally Safa shall appoint an attorney and senior counsel to attend the proceedings on a watching brief going forward,” it said.

Safa’s move is bound to anger the association’s critics who have long accused Jordaan of using its coffers to fight personal battles.

Abuja/Dakar — Nigeria’s first Ebola patient in over a decade was not tested for the disease until 13 days after falling ill, officials said, a delay that raises questions about authorities’ ability to contain an outbreak already spanning four African nations.

The epidemic, first detected 3,000 km away in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in May, is the second-largest on record and had already hit Uganda and Kenya before the Nigerian case was confirmed on Tuesday — the widest known spread on the continent.

The patient, the Ugandan-born wife of a Swiss diplomat, arrived in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, a major travel hub, on October 3 after a two-week holiday in Uganda, Dr Jean Kaseya, the head of Africa’s top public health body, said.

She fell ill three days later, Kaseya said, citing the account given by Nigerian authorities. Initially suspecting malaria, she sought treatment at several facilities before being tested for Ebola on October 19.

“When we identified at-risk countries, Nigeria wasn’t part of this list. It is now,” said Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That list would have to be redrawn, and North and Southern Africa could also be at risk, he added. “We need to consider that no-one is safe today.”

The late detection would complicate efforts to trace people the woman may have infected, he said. Ebola spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone showing symptoms.

“We need to identify all the contacts... this one is a little bit tough for someone who took almost two weeks without being tested, coming into contact with health workers, family members and friends,” Kaseya said.

44 contacts so far

Nigeria has identified 44 contacts so far, a number Kaseya and other Ebola experts said was bound to rise.

The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo species of Ebola, for which there is no vaccine or treatment. It has infected more than 9,500 people and killed more than 4,600 in DRC alone.

Uganda reported ​20 cases in May ⁠and June, mostly imported from Congo, but the World Health Organisation declared the country Ebola-free in August.

Ugandan authorities have said the woman who fell ill in Nigeria had travelled to eastern Congo before transiting through Uganda.

Nigerian officials said they have not confirmed that.

“Our case did not have confirmed travel to DRC. So we presume it was likely picked in Uganda,” Nigeria’s health minister Muhammad Ali Pate said on state television on Tuesday.

Kaseya said the Africa CDC was seeking clarification from both countries and from the woman herself.

‘Far from over’

Whether she was in Congo is an important question, said Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist who sits on the World Health Organisation’s Ebola emergency committee.

If she were, it would reinforce worries about the efficacy of screening at borders and in airports, she said. If not, it would raise the possibility that she somehow got infected in Uganda.

“Either way, it confirms that this is far from over,” she said.

Nigerian officials have pointed to the country’s handling of a case during the West African outbreak in 2014-2016, saying the country is fully prepared to deal with the disease.

But Dr Ayoade Alakija, a Nigerian physician and co-chair of a G7 committee for investment in global health, noted that the first case to reach Nigeria in that outbreak involved a patient who flew from Liberia and was immediately hospitalised.

“It’s a very different scenario,” she said.

To find out, Business Day TV sat down with Ajen Mothee, head of innovation at Old Mutual Personal Finance.

Business Day

The push came after governments in Europe and elsewhere took websites offline as a precaution on Wednesday while website operators scrambled to secure systems running the software.

The emergency shutdowns of banking, airline, rail, tax and government services from Tokyo to Helsinki showed how much public and corporate systems rely on the software and how hard it is to fix such flaws quickly once they are made public.

“It was a long day and a long night, I know for all the IT and security folks ... I’ve not seen anything like this in a long, long time,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at a company event in Cologne, Germany, on Thursday.

He said the episode underscored the importance of building digital systems that can be maintained securely.

PHP developers released urgent fixes on Wednesday for vulnerabilities that had lurked in the software for years until they were uncovered using AI, urging users to “update immediately”.

“Details of these flaws became public before fixes were ready, and attacks have since been reported,” said Madeline Lawrence, co-founder of Belgian cybersecurity firm Aikido Security.

“So companies are racing to update against attackers who can use AI to exploit them. That’s the whole race.”

Details of these flaws became public before fixes were ready, and attacks have since been reported.

Madeline Lawrence, co-founder of Belgian cybersecurity firm Aikido Security.

As companies and governments deployed patches and suspended websites as a precaution, hacking attempts surged into the millions, according to cloud services firm Cloudflare.

“In the 10 hours before it was publicly announced, across the network we saw thousands of attempts to exploit it,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in a post on X late on Wednesday.

“That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post-announcement, hundreds of thousands within two hours, and millions now.”

Emergency measures

Japanese companies including brokerage Nomura, lender Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, airline ANA and East Japan Railway said on Thursday they were temporarily suspending some internet services as part of emergency measures.

Insurer Tokio Marine Holdings said it had suspended the website of a group company.

Japan’s Ministry of Finance and Meteorological Agency partially suspended online services to implement safety measures, while Japan’s National Tax Agency temporarily took down its service.

The precautionary shutdowns underscore growing concerns over cybersecurity in Japan, which recorded more cyber incidents in the first nine months of the year than in all of last year, according to data from TrendAI.

French telecom group Orange said it had temporarily suspended access to certain PHP-based websites and applications across several subsidiaries as a precaution.

Tencent Cloud, one of China’s largest cloud-computing providers, urged customers to install updated PHP versions but stopped short of calling for widespread website shutdowns.

Finland’s state IT services provider Valtori said it had continued installing PHP security patches overnight and was gradually lifting precautionary service blocks after shutting down government public web services a day earlier.

“Restoring services can take days or even weeks, as, in addition to updates, the systems need to be carefully tested,” Valtori director general Hannu Naumanen said in a statement.

Valtori said the outages were not caused by exploitation of the vulnerabilities or by a cyber breach, and that it was not aware of any active exploitation of the flaws.

Several Asian governments ordered cybersecurity inspections related to the PHP vulnerabilities on Thursday.

China’s industry ministry urged organisations and users to inspect systems immediately and upgrade to the latest secure version of PHP. It also recommended strengthening cybersecurity monitoring and changing accounts, passwords and keys where necessary.

South Korea raised its private-sector cybersecurity alert level and activated emergency response measures, citing concerns over an increased risk of hacking attacks.

Revenue rose 28%, while its Western Cape property portfolio grew to R8.8bn, supported by acquisitions and rental growth.

Business Day TV unpacked the numbers with the group’s CEO, Quintin Rossi.

Business Day

Business Day

London — Barclays said it is cutting about 5,000 jobs, or 5% of its workforce this year, as it uses technology such as AI to slash fixed costs and improve returns.

The job cuts were revealed as Barclays reported third-quarter profit of £2.3bn, up 12% from a year ago but undershooting analysts’ forecasts as its fixed income trading business underperformed.

“I am disappointed, and you can be sure this will get my attention,” CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan said about the bank’s traditional strength of fixed income trading, blaming a volatile quarter and weak trading in rates and credit products in particular.

The bank said it had taken a further £201m in “structural cost actions” in the third quarter, part of its longer-term plan to reduce expenses such as staff costs through greater use of technology.

About 60% of the overall job cuts will affect staff in support functions such as developers, CFO Anna Cross said, in one of the clearest signs yet from a big bank of how AI is enabling firms to reduce headcount in such roles.

Cross said 1,000 roles have already gone, with the remainder to be cut by the end of the year.

“The cuts illustrate just how significantly AI and automation could reshape the banking industry over the next few years,” said Will Howlett, a financials analyst at fund management business Quilter Cheviot.

Companies worldwide, including Microsoft and banking group HSBC, have announced layoffs this year, as automation increasingly impacts employment.

Barclays shares slipped 0.1%, outperforming other lenders. The bank’s shares have fallen 12% so far this year, in line with European peers, which have fallen after years of rallying as higher interest rates lifted profits.

Shore Capital said in a note that the results were weaker than expected due to the disappointing performance by the investment bank.

Taxes loom

Barclays is the first major European lender to report its quarterly earnings, with British banks’ results likely to be overshadowed by finance minister John Healey’s first budget on October 28, where further taxes on banks may be levied.

Healey has refused to rule out hiking taxes on banks’ bumper profits despite intensive public and private lobbying by the industry in recent months, as the finance minister mulls higher taxes to help fund the Labour government’s policy agenda and as higher borrowing costs eat into the public purse.

Banks have argued they are already highly taxed compared with other jurisdictions and that any such levy would curb lending.

Barclays’ investment bank reported total income in the third quarter of £3.1bn, lower than forecasts for £3.3bn.

Third-quarter earnings from Barclays’ Wall Street rivals earlier this month showed the cyclical nature of investment bank revenue, as dealmaking slowed and fixed income desks underperformed, with only equities trading sustaining the strong momentum seen in the first half of the year.

Barclays’ equities revenue rose 47%, outperforming the average 37% gain across the top five US banks, according to a calculation from company statements.

The British lender, however, saw income from fixed income trading slide 19% to £1bn, weaker than a 5% drop among its US peers and worse than analysts’ forecasts for £1.3bn.

While the opening weeks of the season have featured a number of smaller races, the Ozzie Gladwin at Albert Falls Dam represents a step up in competition as paddlers look to build fitness, sharpen racing skills and measure themselves against some of the strongest competitors in the region.

For Mtolo, one of the Dusi’s modern-day stars, the Ozzie will be an important test of his preparations, allowing him to assess his progress and identify areas for improvement ahead of the three-day race from Pietermaritzburg to Durban.

“I’m very excited. The smaller races have been important for getting back into race mode, but there’s nothing quite like competing at a bigger event,” Mtolo said.

“The Ozzie Gladwin is a race I’m really looking forward to because it gives me an opportunity to test myself against strong paddlers and see where I am with my preparation.”

Although the Ozzie Gladwin takes place on a different river to the Dusi, Mtolo believes the lessons gained from racing on the Msunduzi and Umgeni rivers.

The result is always important because I’m competitive and I want to perform well, but my main focus will be on how I race.

Msawenkosi Mtolo a

The race provides an opportunity to work on several key aspects of performance that he will need to get right during the Dusi if he wants to push for the top spot on the podium.

“Even though the river is different, I believe every race contributes to Dusi preparation,” Mtolo said.

“The Ozzie will help me work on my fitness, boat control, racing pace and decision-making under pressure. It’s also a good opportunity to identify areas that still need improvement before Dusi.”

While a strong result would be a welcome boost, Mtolo is also focused on ensuring his performances reflect the work being done in training. Finding the right balance between competitiveness and executing his race plan will be a key objective for Ozzie Gladwin.

“The result is always important because I’m competitive and I want to perform well, but my main focus will be on how I race.

“I want to feel strong, comfortable and confident in the boat, execute my race plan and see how my training is translating into racing. If I can do that, hopefully the result will take care of itself,” Mtolo said.

The 76th Dusi canoe marathon takes place from February 18-20.

Video courtesy of SABC.

TimesLIVE

Carrim was arrested on October 15 at OR Tambo International Airport as he was trying to board an international flight.

Stream courtesy of SABC.

TimesLIVE

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana has admitted that a “new approach” is needed for the rules.

The draft capital flow management regulations, published in April, and the subsequent draft crypto assets manual for cross-border activities, in August, propose a big overhaul of South Africa’s 1961 exchange control framework, moving towards a risk-based system focused on surveillance, illicit flow prevention and crypto asset regulation.

“We received thousands of comments, and it is clear that we need to take a different approach to these amendments,” said Godongwana as he tabled the medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) for 2026 on Wednesday.

Under the proposed regulations, South Africa was likely to prohibit businesses from using stablecoins for cross-border payments and repatriating funds.

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency designed to maintain its value by pegging it to another asset, such as a fiat currency. The most common of these is the dollar. Examples of stablecoins include USD Coin and Tether. The other main peg for stablecoins is commodities such as gold or oil.

Settling payments and transactions has emerged as the most popular use of stablecoins, helping to reduce the time and cost, as with such financial flows. The minister indicated that authorities should move away from requiring prior approval and instead assess transactions based on their legitimacy and tax compliance.

Having received feedback, the Treasury is looking to redraft the regulations.

“The treatment of crypto assets should also be guided by the recommendations from the Financial Stability Board. Consultations will commence, with the aim of publishing a revised second draft of the regulations for further input.”

There are currently about 10 rand-pegged stablecoins in the market, including Zaru, which was launched in 2025 in a partnership between Lesaka, Easy Equities, Sanlam Specialised Asset Management, BlockTower and Luno.

“The concern was never the need for regulation. It was whether the proposed solution would achieve its objectives without undermining legitimate activity and innovation,” said Wiehann Olivier, partner and global co-head of digital assets at audit firm Forvis Mazars.

“Sanity, at least for now, has prevailed, but the real test will be whether the revised framework allows South Africa not merely to regulate the future of finance, but to participate in it.

“Moving from pre-approvals to assessing transactions for legitimacy and tax compliance is a positive step,” said Gideon Greaves, MD of Supercoin, issuers of the ZARsc stablecoin.

Sanity, at least for now, has prevailed, but the real test will be whether the revised framework allows South Africa not merely to regulate the future of finance, but to participate in it.

Wiehann Olivier

“As the minister noted, the Financial Stability Board’s recommendations should guide how crypto assets are treated, and we hope that means rules that recognise the difference between a domestic rand stablecoin and other crypto assets. That would give South African businesses a workable path forward, and we look forward to working with the regulators on it.”

Blockchain, the technology powering cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, had previously been seen as fringe and associated with finance scams. However, in recent years, the market has seen more mainstream adoption, driven in part by large fund managers such as BlackRock.

In early October, FNB moved to allow crypto trading on its online platform.

In addition, Capitec signed a deal that enables its customers to fund Binance wallets through its banking app.

Crypto assets under custody at major local platforms (Luno, VALR and Ovex) topped R25bn by late 2025. More than 6-million South Africans hold a crypto asset, with Southern Africa boasting one of the largest uptakes of Bitcoin in the world.

Consultations will commence, with the aim of publishing a revised second draft of the regulations for further input.

With Kabelo Khumalo

Business Day

Four years old when Sebastian Vettel became the hitherto youngest champion at 23 with Red Bull in 2010, the racer from Bologna has a mighty 102-point lead over teammate George Russell ahead of the US Grand Prix in Austin.

There will be a maximum 125 points remaining to win after the chequered flag drops at the Circuit of the Americas, meaning that Antonelli — in his second season at the pinnacle of motorsport — will clinch the title if he extends his lead by 23.

Only a win would give him that margin, but the Italian will still need Russell and Ferrari’s seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton to finish no higher than ninth or fifth, respectively. Otherwise the wait to become Italy’s first champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953 rolls on to at least Mexico City a weekend later.

“I know it’s very close, I know it’s there, but I just need to make sure that I keep doing the best I can. You know, the mindset is always the same: to go out there and win and perform the best way I can,” Antonelli said after finishing third in Singapore, the race before Austin.

That result was his 14th podium of the season.

Deputy principal Bradley Lord said in a team podcast: “We’re in that very uncomfortable phase of the season where you have to navigate the Thursday media with everyone saying ‘Oh, you could do it ... you’ve got a first match point’.

“People love this tennis comparison of match points, don’t they? But I think there’s something like a one-in-25 chance of that being remotely possible in Austin.

“Our focus is how we can get the car in its sweet spot and then score as many points as possible.”

Russell, who crashed in the Singapore sprint and started the main race at the back of the grid due to an engine penalty, will be thinking exactly that.

Antonelli has won eight of 17 rounds so far, but the momentum has been more with Red Bull’s four-time champion, Max Verstappen, the winner of the last two races in Malaysia and Singapore and also last year’s winner in Austin from pole position.

“You look at the recent races, and Red Bull have been very much best. In Baku, Max was a similar level to me. We go to Malaysia, a totally different track, and Singapore another different track, and he’s dominated the last two weekends,” said Russell.

Verstappen is 119 points behind Antonelli and has said he just wants to have fun for the remaining races, given the championship pressure is off.

Both Mercedes drivers will have the latest upgrade package for the first of three successive race weekends in Texas, Mexico and Brazil.

McLaren’s reigning champion, Lando Norris, was runner-up in Austin last year with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc third. Both could be in the mix again, while Hamilton’s record in the US is second to none.

“The last few races have not been great for us, but I think we’re getting stronger again and Austin is probably a better circuit for our car,” said McLaren’s chief technical officer, Rob Marshall, whose team will also have some upgrades.

The weekend will also see a novel crossover, with four MotoGP riders set to take to the track for a demonstration ride on Saturday. The two-wheeled series and Formula One have a common owner in US-based Liberty Media.

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Police have confirmed the death of a foreign national in an apparent xenophobic attack in the Durban CBD on Thursday.

KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Col Robert Netshiunda said a case of murder was opened after a foreign national, believed to be in his late 30s or early 40s, was allegedly fatally assaulted by a group of people.

“Information available at this stage suggests a group was marching on Dr Pixley kaSeme Street towards Maud Mfusi Street. Two males reportedly pulled away from the group and approached a man on the roadside. It is alleged the victim was assaulted by a group of about 50 people and was declared dead at the scene.”

Police are following several leads and using all investigative aids to identify possible suspects.

Netshiunda said the motive for the killing is unknown at this stage and community members are urged not to spread unverified information.

Protesters armed with sticks and knobkerries allegedly stormed a visa and permit office in Morningside on Thursday morning.

Private security reported the protesters allegedly fired shots and attempted to force their way into the office near Cowey Road.

The protesters dispersed after police and private security arrived.

TimesLIVE

Maven House has emerged from the restructuring practice previously housed within BDO. The moves are not surprising, as similar shifts are taking place globally, with some advisory business units potentially better suited to an independent model.

Recent reports also indicate specialist operators are looking to buy out units, such as insolvency units, from some of the bigger players, with Kroll, for instance, targeting KPMG’s insolvency unit in Australia. Kroll, a leading independent provider of global financial and risk advisory solutions, has also recently strengthened its advisory team in South Africa, reflecting growing demand for restructuring and special situations expertise.

Restructuring sits at the intersection of law, finance, operations, strategy and people, requiring practitioners to understand the technical and commercial realities of a distressed business. Large multidisciplinary firms such as the Big Four have tended to group their corporate restructuring, insolvency and turnaround strategy consulting divisions within their broader advisory umbrellas. However, severe regulatory pressure, shifting market economics and crackdowns on conflicts of interest have radically altered this landscape.

South Africa’s corporate distress burden is intensifying, with business rescue filings expected to rise through 2026 as tough trading conditions pressure corporate survival. Despite lengthy timelines to turn businesses around, taking an average of 18 months, business rescue is delivering meaningful outcomes, with two in three companies entering the process returning to operation and preserving 87% of their economic value, according to research prepared for the Turnaround Management Association Southern Africa.

Speaking to the current economic conditions and the increasing need for experienced restructuring professionals, Rey says businesses are being squeezed from several directions at once.

“Funding is more difficult and expensive to obtain, input costs have increased, margins are under pressure and customers are taking longer to pay. In many cases, the underlying business remains viable, but its funding structure or operating model no longer reflects current economic conditions,” says Rey.

However, he also points out that financial distress is not necessarily evidence a business has been poorly managed.

“Macroeconomic and sector-specific pressures can place an otherwise viable company under severe strain. The role of a restructuring specialist is to diagnose whether the problem lies in the operations, the balance sheet, the availability of working capital, or a combination of these factors, and then determine whether there is a credible and implementable path forward.

“Technical knowledge is essential, but practitioners must also understand how a business operates, manage competing stakeholder interests and develop solutions that can be implemented in practice.”

However, business rescue in SA is too often seen through the lens of failure, and a persistent challenge is that businesses still frequently seek professional assistance only after liquidity has been exhausted and much of their value has already been eroded.

“The earlier a business identifies and confronts financial or operational problems, the wider the range of options available to it. Restructuring is generally more effective when it is undertaken proactively, rather than as an emergency response to an immediate cash crisis,” says Rey.

Depending on the circumstances, restructuring may include renegotiating funding arrangements, addressing an unsustainable capital structure, disposing of non-core assets, improving operations, or reaching agreement with creditors before formal proceedings become unavoidable.

“The objective should increasingly be to identify and address problems before value has been destroyed. This requires boards and management teams to recognise the warning signs and seek specialist advice while meaningful choices are still available,” Rey says.

Business Day

Wiliete held the Brazilians to a goalless draw in the first leg of their Champions League qualifier in Lubango on Sunday, and the visitors have a golden opportunity to cause a major upset against the defending champions in Pretoria.

Sundowns go into the match backed by a proud record of having made it to the group stages since 2016. Coach Miguel Cardoso said they must be at their best to maintain that record.

The last time Downs failed to qualify for the group stages was when they were knocked out 3-2 on aggregate by TP Mazembe of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 2015 edition.

The visitors arrive in the capital with a strong recent run of five wins and one draw in their opening six matches in Angola’s top-flight Girabola, conceding just two goals.

Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso warns against underestimating Wiliete SC.

WATCH press conference on #PrimeSportsWithMahlatseTV ➡️➡️➡️https://t.co/rLwRXLNVkx pic.twitter.com/UCuvpCHYw1

— Mahlatse Mphahlele (@BraMahlatse) October 21, 2026

“The level of preparation we are going to put in is the same as for an important final,” Cardoso said ahead of the second leg.

“I don’t look at the fact that we drew away as a negative and I am saying that with all due respect. The last time Sundowns played against Petro de Luanda from Angola, they were knocked out of the Champions League [in the 2021-22 quarterfinals].

“This team is on top of the log in Angola. They have conceded only two goals in the matches they have played. They are as qualified as the team of Petro Luanda.

“I said it when the draw came out that it was not a kind one for us, but Sundowns will stand for its level. We arrived in Angola and produced a result that puts us in the match and we just need to finish it.”

Wiliete were competitive at home. Cardoso pointed out there are no easy games in continental football.

“Is it not going to be easy because there are no easy things in the Champions League. If we think it’s going to be easy, we would be misjudging the situation.

Sundowns coach Miguel Cardoso on altercation between Steve Komphela and Wiliete SC coach Beto Bianchi.

WATCH press conference #PrimeSportsWithMahlatseTV ➡️➡️➡️https://t.co/3brmFnG5tL pic.twitter.com/5gCE6uj7oa

— Mahlatse Mphahlele (@BraMahlatse) October 21, 2026

“I think there have been difficult qualification round matches in the past and we have to fight for it. We are gathering the energy, mentality and connection and we will find the best ones to start the match, and those who are going to help us to finish it and we will move forward from there.”

Cardoso has a good idea of what he is up against.

“They have quick players in the front. This team needs to be respected and I showed that respect to them from the beginning.

“I don’t want my players to show too much respect to anyone inside the four lines. That will mean respect for ourselves is higher than what you have for the opponents. It is when you recognise the weaknesses of the opponents that you can exploit them.

“They have quick players, they can use the wings to attack, they have energy in the middle, they have centre backs who are stable.

“They don’t overlap a lot on the sides and they can play a good zonal game.”

Trade, industry and competition minister Parks Tau said on Thursday that the South African Revenue Service (SARS) had issued 25,975 certificates of origin between June 1 and August 31, allowing qualifying goods to enter China without customs duties. Customs declarations increased 199% year on year over the period, according to Tau’s speech at a briefing for South African and Chinese businesses in Pretoria.

The zero-tariff arrangement is temporary and subject to rules of origin and other requirements. Exporters must obtain valid certificates of origin from SARS to qualify for the preference, while certain products remain subject to tariff-rate quotas. The two-year period is intended to provide a bridge towards a longer-term trade arrangement.

Tau said South African and Chinese officials were negotiating an Early Harvest Agreement through the Southern African Customs Union, following the signing of a framework agreement on economic partnership in February.

“Our aim is to give exporters certainty beyond 2028, with safeguards that protect South African industry and jobs,” he said.

The figures offer an early indication of activity under the scheme, which took effect on May 1 and runs until April 30 2028. However, the number of certificates and the increase in declarations do not establish how much additional export revenue the arrangement has generated.

Agriculture is among the sectors with opportunities to expand sales, particularly through exports of citrus, apples, stone fruit and wine. China’s duty-free treatment reduces the tariff costs facing eligible South African products, potentially improving their competitiveness against suppliers from other markets.

South Africa exported about 11.5-million cartons of citrus to China in 2025, accounting for roughly 6% of its total citrus exports, according to agricultural industry figures. The sector generated export earnings of about $2.47bn globally last year, highlighting the scale of the industry that could benefit from wider market access.

China has also opened its market to South African stone fruit, including apricots, peaches, nectarines, plums and prunes. A separate protocol signed in September gave South African cherry producers access to the Chinese market for the first time, creating another potential avenue for export growth.

The opportunities come as South Africa seeks to diversify its export destinations and reduce its exposure to trade disruptions in established markets.

Tau said the government had developed a portfolio of 100 value-added products for the Chinese market.

“The portfolio cuts across agro-processing, beverages, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, machinery, medical equipment, fabricated metals, plastics and rubber, automotive products and other industrial capabilities,” he said.

🇨🇳 🇿🇦 Minister Parks Tau addressing the Briefing Reception on China’s Zero-Tariff Treatment to African countries in Pretoria says China is South Africa’s largest trading partner and an important source of investment. #ChinaZeroTariff pic.twitter.com/KcTg70OOnQ

— the dtic (@the_dtic) October 22, 2026

China is South Africa’s largest trading partner globally, with bilateral trade reaching R642bn in 2025, up from R483bn in 2021. South African exports to China rose to R222bn from R198bn over the same period, while imports from China increased to R420bn from R284bn.

South African agricultural exports to China rose more than 35% year-on-year to nearly $500m in the four months after Beijing introduced zero-tariff treatment for African countries, as the government seeks to turn preferential market access into a longer-term boost for exporters and domestic production.

Chinese ambassador to South Africa Wu Peng said bilateral trade between the two countries reached nearly $15bn between May and August, up almost 24% from a year earlier. South African exports to China rose nearly 25% to $5.3bn, outpacing the country’s overall export growth of 17% over the same period.

Wu said discussions about access for other agricultural products were under way.

The expansion of agricultural access comes as South Africa seeks to diversify its export markets and increase the value of goods it sells abroad. China is South Africa’s largest trading partner, but the relationship remains characterised by substantially higher imports from China than exports to it.

Wu said South African exports to China totalled $5.3bn between May and August, compared with imports of $9.47bn from China, while exports grew faster year on year.

Business Day

Africa’s top gold producer has directed miners to transfer operations to local contractors or face sanctions under local-content rules affecting major operators including Newmont, AngloGold Ashanti, Zijin and Ghana Manganese Company. Labour unions have opposed the policy, warning it could reduce workers’ pay and benefits.

The ministry of lands and natural resources said late on Wednesday it had instructed the Minerals Commission to ensure no worker employed by a mining contractor suffers a cut in wages, benefits or conditions of service as a result of the shift from owner mining to contract mining.

The regulator has also been tasked with harmonising salaries, wages and employment conditions across the mining value chain and introducing a contractor classification system based on capacity. It must complete the process and submit implementation proposals by November 30.

The ministry said there would be “zero tolerance” for unfair labour practices, cartelisation, bid-rigging and fronting arrangements that undermine local-content objectives.

The Minerals Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters

According to Ramsamy, the company’s group chief technology and data officer, the competitive advantage in AI will not come from adopting raw technology faster than peers, but from building trusted, well-governed institutions that harness data to deliver sustainable human and economic progress.

Key to financial services is building and maintaining trust with clients. As such, technology investment in the age of AI has to keep this tenet intact for an institution like Old Mutual.

To do so, Ramsamy said deploying customer-facing AI required non-negotiable transparency and safeguards.

“Trust can take decades to build and just takes a moment to lose,” he said. “Adversaries are always looking to steal encrypted data, to be frank, to decrypt later once things like quantum computing matures and our current encryption models fail.”

To this end, Old Mutual enforces gated deployments, comprehensive AI tool inventories, mandatory pre-deployment checklists, data loss prevention protocols, and human sign-offs for all use cases.

Ramsamy was speaking in a recent episode of the Business Day Spotlight podcast — listen to it below — ahead of the Singularity South Africa Summit 2026 in Johannesburg on October 21 and 22.

Old Mutual is a headline sponsor of the event, which is regarded as Africa’s premier exponential technology summit.

Ramsamy said the company’s partnership and participation in the summit gave the 181-year-old institution an ability to stay at the forefront of technology developments.

Old Mutual is deliberately focusing on technology and machine learning to amplify access, replication and quality of service across several key business lines. These include underwriting and premium calculations, claims processing as well as risk assessment and pricing.

A significant structural challenge that persists is the systemic underrepresentation of Africa in global AI datasets. This is because global models built on Eurocentric or Americentric data struggle to accommodate the linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic realities of African consumers.

“Africa remains significantly underrepresented when it comes to data sets that shape AI systems. We absolutely need AI that understands local realities, rather than assuming a Eurocentric or an Americentric model will fit all of our solutions,” said Ramsamy.

He said African institutions must move beyond merely consuming foreign tools to actively training local models, safeguarding data sovereignty, and ensuring broad societal participation.

Addressing renowned American researcher Roy Amara’s adage that technology is typically overestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long run, Ramsamy explained where tangible returns were appearing and where expectations had gone off track.

For instance, he noted that engineering squads utilising AI-assisted development cut delivery times by 30% to 50% on specific tasks, such as reducing a user journey build from several months down to about six weeks.

The goal, he said, was quality and speed rather than immediate staff reductions.

AI projects stall when models are developed without clean data, when consumption lacks cost tracking, or when solutions are treated purely as isolated IT experiments.

“The gain shows up as quality and speed, and not always headcount reduction ... developers are also becoming reviewers, integrators, and, you know, guardrail builders with AI,” said Ramsamy.

But what happens when AI systems fail?

Ramsamy said successful AI relied on an organisation’s capability to corral, clean, and conform disparate datasets into usable, meaningful assets.

“It’s not the primary technology that we find failures in. Failures are mostly linked to poor underlying data. Before it stalls on an algorithm ... it would stall on your ability to correlate data properly, to make sense of data, to clean data in some instances,” he said.

Initiatives often falter because leaders underestimate the operational, cultural, and workflow adaptations required to support new systems.

Ultimately, AI decision making and broader technology investment is a board level issue that should be guided appropriately.

“Boards don’t need to become deep AI specialists. Nobody needs to understand how every machine learning model comes together. But sufficient literacy to oversee value, risk, ethics, governance, accountability ... those things are critical,” he said.

When evaluating an AI proposal, Ramsamy said leadership must ask:

1. What specific customer or societal problem does this solve?
2. Is the underlying data fit for purpose and well-governed?
3. Who owns the accepted risks?
4. Does this deliver enduring value, or is it technology for its own sake?

By using AI properly, companies can cut through industry hype and address data deficits in Africa, while embedding rigorous governance and trust into technological adoption.

This article was sponsored by Old Mutual.

Story audio is generated using AI

Coming from Zimbabwe was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, said Brian, who asked that his surname not be published.

He came to South Africa in 2022. He was earning R8,000 a month working as a bartender in Summerstrand, Gqeberha, but in June, in the wake of the anti-immigrant group March and March’s campaign, his boss demanded a valid permit. He has been unemployed since. He lives in Kamvelihle with his wife, who works two days a week, earning about R2,400 a month.

Brian believes he qualifies for asylum because he “ran away from torture and possible arrest by Zimbabwean government officials who were grabbing land from legally resettled farmers”.

“They don’t give reasons for the evictions, nor do they have court orders. Settlers are not given notice or time to prepare to leave. Senior politicians take the land for themselves. They use the army to beat people and demolish houses,” Brian said.

He said those who resist are imprisoned on trumped-up charges.

In practice, there is no legal way for Brian to live and work in the country, other than to claim asylum and attempt to become a refugee. Work visas are aimed at skilled workers: a general work visa requires the employer to show that no suitably qualified South African citizen or permanent resident could be found for the job, and a critical skills visa is limited to occupations on a government list. Bartender is not one of them.

Once Brian applies for asylum, he should be issued with an asylum seeker permit that lets him stay in the country until, ultimately, a refugee status determination officer at the department of home affairs decides whether he has a well-founded fear of being persecuted in Zimbabwe based on race, tribe, religion, gender, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group, or whether he fled events seriously disturbing public order.

But he hasn’t even been able to get to that point. The asylum system has effectively been closed to new applicants since January 2020, mainly because of amendments to the Refugees Act that allowed immigration officers to turn away asylum seekers who did not at the time have papers to be in the country.

João fled political violence in Mozambique after the October 2024 election. He now lives in Motherwell, Gqeberha, and works with a team of fellow Mozambicans painting houses and churches.

“I was a teacher in Tete province before the unrest, earning a decent salary and living in a good home. My children attended good schools. But all that ended after violence broke out due to the general elections,” he told GroundUp.

“Several houses, businesses and hospitals were burnt. Hundreds were killed. Some are still missing. So I left my wife there and travelled to South Africa using a valid passport.”

Mozambicans can enter South Africa for up to 30 days without a visa.

“When the days expired, I tried to get an asylum document but failed because refugee reception offices were closed.”

He believes the recent harassment of asylum seekers is related to the upcoming local government elections on November 4.

“It is ironic that I ran away from my country because of violence caused by an election, and I am now facing the same violence in South Africa because of elections,” João said.

“We try to explain that we are not taking the jobs of South Africans because we do piece jobs. We even train locals how to paint, but the hatred seems to worsen.”

Because the country’s five refugee reception offices are closed to newcomers, asylum seekers like João and Brian can’t get papers and face arrest and deportation.

In September 2024, the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town won an interim order stopping the government from deporting people who had said they intended to apply for asylum, even if they didn’t have a permit. And on July 7 this year, the Constitutional Court confirmed a 2025 high court ruling that the new laws were unconstitutional as they risked sending people back to danger in their countries.

Brian carries with him a “letter of intention to apply for asylum”, a document created by Scalabrini that summarises the court orders, which he can show to government officials if he is threatened with arrest and deportation.

A decision by home affairs on September 28 to comply with the court order and open refugee reception offices led to long queues across the country. Anti-immigrant protesters, some organised by March and March and Operation Dudula, harassed and assaulted asylum seekers. About 25 people have been charged over the violence in Durban.

Online posts falsely claimed that the July 7 Constitutional Court ruling gave asylum seekers citizenship or the vote. Home affairs called this an “apparent co-ordinated disinformation campaign”, and an analysis of about 98,000 posts on X traced the earliest high-engagement posts to March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma.

Home affairs then shut the offices again, citing “unintended consequences”.

GroundUp spoke to a man from Somalia who asked not to be named. He arrived in 2024 after living for years in a refugee camp in Kenya.

“I could have continued to reside in Kenya, where most Somali refugees live, but the situation in the camps is little different from the war we ran away from in Somalia,” he said.

“Factional fights always erupt. There is hunger and inadequate services. So we travelled as a group to South Africa through Tanzania and Mozambique, where we risked getting caught in war.”

He arrived in Gqeberha with the help of family members who had settled there earlier.

“It is not easy to live in South Africa either because of the high crime rate and rising xenophobia. South Africa also has one of the highest asylum rejection rates in the world,” he said.

A 2019 Amnesty International report found an asylum rejection rate of 96%.

“But the pull factor is that in South Africa asylum seekers live in communities with locals and look after themselves. Unlike in Kenya, you can rise economically here if you work hard,” he said.

Sharon Ekambaram, head of Lawyers for Human Rights’ Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme, said all three people spoken to have a case for refugee protection. Refugee status determination officers must consider various factors, including the relevant country of origin information published by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the period during which the person fled their country.

But South Africa has a high rejection rate — close to 100% at Musina, which is on the Zimbabwean border — and the number of recognised refugees in South Africa has dropped. In 2016, South Africa hosted 91,018 recognised refugees and 218,275 asylum seekers. In 2025, there were 55,177 recognised refugees and 82,358 asylum seekers, according to the UNHCR. This is despite an increase in displacement across the African continent, said Ekambaram.

Nasir Mohamed Moalin, who leads the Somali Association of South Africa, said his organisation helps look after new arrivals who have no shelter or food.

“We try to register them with home affairs as soon as they arrive. We face challenges because the refugee offices have been closed for a long time. We often get arrested and pay hefty fines if found housing people without valid papers,” he said.

“Do we have to throw them into the streets when we know they qualify for asylum under UN regulations, of which South Africa is a signatory? These people are coming from war zones.”

Moalin said the recent forced closure of refugee reception offices by vigilante groups was concerning.

Justice minister Mmamoloko Kubayi announced on October 11 that the department of home affairs aims to launch an online application system on November 10. Asylum seekers will be able to book appointments online for a physical appointment at a refugee reception office.

“Assisted registration will be available at every refugee reception office and, on request, for a person in police or immigration detention through officials, legal representatives and civil society partners,” Kubayi said.

She said an appointment receipt would protect asylum seekers from arrest. She said border management officials, police and other law enforcement authorities will be informed that someone who holds a receipt should not be arrested or deported for being in the country illegally pending a final determination.

GroundUp

Transmitted by biting midges and most commonly found in cattle, Shamonda has also been found in horses, alpaca, sheep and goats, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) said.

“The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is carefully monitoring the situation after French authorities announced the first reported human infection with Shamonda virus, a disease that has until now only affected animals,” the Stockholm-based ECDC said.

“ECDC is in contact with the French authorities and European partners to investigate the potential public health implications.”

The French announcement said the leading hypothesis was that the patient was infected in eastern France, where the virus had circulated among animals this spring and summer.

“Based on the knowledge available regarding the virus, no health risk to the general population has been identified to date,” it said.

Investigations into whether the virus caused or contributed to the patient’s death and how the infection was acquired are ongoing

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

The ECDC said the patient died in early October and noted the victim had been receiving treatment for a serious illness that made them more susceptible to infection than the general population.

“Investigations into whether the virus caused or contributed to the patient’s death and how the infection was acquired are ongoing,” it said.

There are currently no commercially available vaccines against Shamonda virus, WOAH said.

Identified in Nigeria in the mid-1960s, Shamonda was first confirmed in Europe in late July after genomic tests on sick cattle in southern Germany, Switzerland and eastern France.

A report from France’s weekly animal health surveillance bulletin said the virus had also been detected in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and UK’s Jersey.

A study of French nine dairy farms found milk output fell by up to 75% in affected herds.

Reuters

Barring two years lost to the Covid-19 pandemic, the seaside track south of Melbourne has been a fixture on the world championship calendar for 30 years and produced some of Australian motorcycling’s most memorable moments.

Australian double world champion Casey Stoner celebrated six wins in succession from 2007 to 2012, while compatriot Mick Doohan sealed his fifth and final world title with victory in the 1998 race. Both riders have sections of the track named after them, along with the country’s first premier-class world champion Wayne Gardner, who won back to back in 1989-90 in the grand prix’s first two races in the global series.

The island’s combination of high-speed corners and fickle weather has often produced drama, and millions of fans have attended race weekends over the decades. Hundreds of local residents gathered at roadsides on Thursday to greet the racers as they crossed San Remo bridge to the island on a processional ride to the track.

“Phillip Island is an extraordinary circuit. Racing here for the last time will be emotional,” said Ducati’s Marc Marquez, who has won five races at the circuit, including four MotoGP events. “It is a track with a unique, breathtaking layout.”

However, it is also a far-flung track with ageing facilities long overdue for an upgrade.

With the 2026 race marking the end of a long-term contract with the Victorian state government, MotoGP organisers Dorna pushed to move the grand prix to Albert Park, which hosts a Formula One race in central Melbourne in the autumn.

With the two sides failing to reach agreement on renewing the contract, the South Australian government stepped in to cut a deal with Dorna and will host the race in Adelaide on MotoGP’s first street circuit in 2027.

Stoner said local organisers had not tried hard enough to keep the race at Phillip Island or build a festival atmosphere around it as seen every year at the buzzing F1 grand prix. “I think it’s a lot to do with the Victorian government that’s dropped the ball with it and maybe they wanted to, I’m not sure,” he told Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper.

The Victorian government said it had declined Dorna’s request to move the race to Albert Park.

Aprilia rider Jorge Martin leads the championship by two points from Ducati’s Marquez.

Last year’s winner Raul Fernandez said he would “cry a little” on the final weekend at Phillip Island. “Not because I got my first MotoGP victory here but also because I always enjoy coming to Phillip Island, it’s super nice,” the Trackhouse rider said in quotes published by motor racing website Crash.net. “It’s a track that everybody will miss a little bit.”

After a week of sunshine at the island, rain is forecast for qualifying on Saturday and a storm may even disrupt Sunday’s race.

Home racer Jack Miller, a decent performer in the wet, was not complaining ahead of his final Australian Grand Prix. “Phillip Island’s giving itself a proper send-off,” he told reporters at the circuit on Thursday. “I’m not angry about that.”

Reuters

Story audio is generated using AI

Beauty and pharmacare retailer Clicks has reported annual turnover of more than R50bn for the first time, while returning R976m in cashback rewards to loyalty programme members.

This reflects Clicks’ ability to grow turnover and deliver savings for shoppers amid strain as the cost of living continues to rise.

The retailer’s group turnover for the year to end-August rose 5.4% to R50.4bn, roughly R138m generated in sales during the period. Its Clicks ClubCrad programme had 13.1-million active members, who it said accounted for more than four-fifths of sales.

The JSE-listed group, with a market capitalisation of more than R57bn, also introduced an additional 10% discount on 3,000 products and partnered with Engen and First National Bank in a campaign aimed at helping members manage rising fuel costs, it said.

The results come as the cost of living remains a concern for many. Annual inflation rose to 4.5% in September from 4.4% in August, while transport costs climbed sharply as petrol and diesel prices surged.

Clicks did not disclose the total value of savings customers received through its discounts and fuel campaign. The R976m figure covers cashback rewards paid through ClubCard, rather than all savings from the retailer’s promotional offers.

The expansion builds on a year in which Clicks opened a net of 41 stores and increased its share of the retail pharmacy market

The group’s turnover rose, with its retail business continuing to expand despite intense competition and limited increases in selling prices. Retail turnover rose 4.2%, while sales at comparable stores, excluding the impact of new stores, grew more slowly.

Clicks said low selling-price inflation and increased promotional activity had constrained retail turnover. Delays in implementing a warehouse management system at its Cape Town distribution centre also affected retail sales in the first half of the year.

Its distribution business, United Pharmaceutical Distributors (UPD), performed better on turnover, buoyed by growth in contracts to supply medicines and other products in bulk. However, the business faced pressure on profitability after losing two distribution contracts and receiving a smaller adjustment to medicine prices than in the previous year.

The group’s profit rose at a slower pace than turnover, while its trading margin narrowed slightly. Headline earnings per share rose 4.4% to 1422c.

Retail trading profit increased, supported by other income and cost management, but the decline in UPD’s trading profit weighed on the overall result.

Clicks expects competition and discounting to remain intense in the year ahead, it said. The group said rising fuel prices and higher interest rates would put further pressure on household spending, while low selling-price inflation is expected to continue.

Nonetheless, it plans to keep expanding its store network, opening 40 to 50 new stores and pharmacies in the 2027 financial year. It also intends to grow UniCare, its specialist pharmacy brand, and township market contender KwaMakhi.

The expansion builds on a year in which Clicks opened a net of 41 stores and increased its share of the retail pharmacy market. The group is also seeking to strengthen its position in premium beauty retail, having agreed after year-end to increase its stake in ARC Store to 61% through an R507m transaction that still requires competition authority approval.

Even with the pressure on its distribution business, Clicks generated R6.3bn in cash from operations and returned R3.4bn to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks.

The group declared a final shareholder payout of 925c per share, also up 4.4% from the prior year.

Business Day

Under the deal, Zuckerberg will get non-voting shares he can sell to potentially foot a multibillion-dollar tax bill in the event the proposal is approved, in exchange for a commitment to remain a resident of California, or wherever Meta maintains its headquarters, for eight years, Meta said on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg, the world’s sixth richest person according to Forbes, told Meta he was considering moving his primary residence outside California because Proposition 40, a ballot measure dubbed the “California wealth tax”, could expose him to a massive tax liability, potentially forcing him to sell voting shares to pay it.

Proposition 40, which asks Californians whether to impose a one-time 5% tax on the state’s billionaires, is far from certain to pass, political analysts said. The state is home to as many as 250 billionaires collectively worth upwards of $2-trillion (R33-trillion).

Zuckerberg, who has a net worth of about $240bn (R3.9-trillion), can immediately sell 20% of the class C shares he receives, representing 10% of his overall economic stake in the company, allowing him to pay a potential tax bill without losing voting control.

The company said on Wednesday it will issue a new class of non-voting class C common stock in January 2027, effectively resulting in a two-for-one split, to fund acquisitions and retain top talent while maintaining Zuckerberg’s control.

Meta’s long-term forecasts, as described in the filing, showed it would need to raise “hundreds of billions” over several years, beginning as early as autumn 2026, as it expects to need capital to finance its AI-related growth plan.

The parent of Facebook and Instagram said a special committee of its board concluded it was “critically important” that Zuckerberg remain in a leadership role and continue to manage the company from its California headquarters, particularly during what it described as “unprecedented challenge and competition in our industry” driven by AI.

Reuters

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When I arrived at the South African embassy in Washington DC in 1987, the US Congress had recently imposed sanctions on South Africa and my job, as part of a team, was to stop it from going further.

Foreign minister Pik Botha wanted an update every day. Some days I worked 20 hours. It took me 18 months to build a network across both houses and both parties: conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats and, eventually, the Congressional Black Caucus, our fiercest critics.

I was defending a government that deserved to lose that argument, and it did. But those years taught me how Washington DC actually works, and it is a lesson Pretoria appears to have forgotten: in America the president proposes, but Congress disposes.

Ronald Reagan was the most sympathetic president the apartheid government could have hoped for. It made no difference. In October 1986 Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over his veto, and 37 of the Senate’s 53 Republicans voted against their own president. The act banned new US investment, cut South African Airways’ landing rights and closed the American market to our coal, uranium, iron, steel and agricultural goods. Within a year General Motors, IBM, Kodak, Ford and dozens of other American companies had sold up and left. A friend in the Oval Office counted for nothing against a determined Capitol Hill.

The same holds in the other direction. The African Growth & Opportunity Act (Agoa), which gives our cars, citrus and wine duty-free access to the US market, was written by Congress in 2000. Tariff preferences, sanctions and aid: every lever that matters to South Africa runs through congressional committees.

Yet four decades later our diplomacy remains fixated on one man. Since Donald Trump’s return as US president Pretoria has poured its energy into the White House: the presidential visit to the Oval Office, the fight over a G20 invitation, the hope a good personal rapport will unlock a trade deal. Even the early successes claimed by our new ambassador, Roelf Meyer, have been framed in terms of his reception at the White House.

Meanwhile, the real danger sits 2km down Pennsylvania Avenue. Agoa’s current authorisation expires on December 31. An extension to 2028 has moved through the Senate, but members of both houses are trying to write South Africa out of it. Senator John Kennedy’s US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act would force the administration to certify whether South Africa undermines American interests, with Agoa eligibility and sanctions on ANC leaders hanging on the answer. None of this is a presidential whim. It is legislation, and legislation is won or lost one staffer, one committee and one congressional district at a time.

Corporate South Africa is no better. In my day American business was a formidable presence on the Hill, and it still is. More than 600 US companies operate here, employing about 130,000 South Africans. Each of them has a head office, a congressman and a lobbyist. How many South African CEOs have asked them to make our case? Our exporters of vehicles, fruit and metals have the most to lose, and the least visible presence in Washington DC. AfriForum and Solidarity understood the Hill long before Pretoria or Sandton did, and it is increasingly their version of South Africa that members of Congress repeat.

Meyer is a good envoy. He is a negotiator by temperament and has the credibility to talk to Republicans and Democrats alike. But an ambassador is only as strong as the government behind him. Without a clear mandate, a budget and a dedicated team to work Congress, and without a cabinet that refrains from undercutting him with gestures towards Tehran and Moscow, he will struggle.

The window is about to open. The midterm elections on November 3 will reshape Congress, and a new set of committee chairs and Africa subcommittee members will take their seats in January. Agoa’s fate will be settled in the weeks either side of that changeover. Pretoria has perhaps three months to get this right.

What would that take?

• Give the embassy a real congressional strategy and the money to execute it, including the professional political, media and legal consultants every serious country retains in Washington DC.
• Map the districts: which members represent the US companies, ports and farmers that trade with South Africa, and therefore have a reason to care.
• Mobilise business: a joint South African and American business coalition, visible on the Hill, would carry more weight than any number of ministerial visits.
• Talk to everyone. Writing off Republicans because of the president is as foolish as writing off the Black Caucus was in 1987.

In 1986 South Africa learnt, too late, that a sympathetic White House is no protection against a hostile Congress. Today we lack even the sympathetic White House. If Pretoria has to learn the lesson a second time, the price will be Agoa, higher tariffs and possibly targeted sanctions. And this time we will have no excuse.

• Snyman, a former South African diplomat who served at the embassy in Washington DC from 1987 to 1990, is CEO of The Corporate Diplomat.

Business Day

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The National Automobile Dealers’ Association (Nada) has welcomed temporary fuel levy cuts announced in the medium-term budget policy statement — but says sustained economic growth, job creation and improved municipal services are needed to strengthen vehicle affordability and support the automotive retail sector.

A sustainable automotive retail market depended on consumers and businesses having the confidence and financial capacity to buy vehicles, said national chair Brandon Cohen, adding that faster economic growth was essential to expanding market participation and supporting dealership jobs and skills.

The relief will reduce the diesel levy by R3 a litre and the petrol levy by R1.50 a litre from November 4 to December 1. Thereafter, reductions of R1.50 a litre for diesel and R1 a litre for petrol will apply until January 5 2027. The R10bn relief package will be funded from money previously transferred to the Central Energy Fund.

Cohen said the intervention recognised the pressure that transport costs placed on the wider economy, including commuters who depend on public transport and businesses moving goods and delivering services.

“Affordability extends well beyond the purchase price of a vehicle. Consumers must accommodate finance repayments, fuel, insurance and maintenance alongside other household expenses. Fuel levy relief helps with one component of that cost but sustained improvements require stronger household incomes, employment growth and lower pressure on everyday expenses,” he said.

Nada backed responsible public finance management and efforts to reduce waste, saying the benefits of fiscal stability needed to reach households and businesses through better services, economic opportunities and job creation

The association said the downward revision in the economic growth forecast for 2026, from 1.6% to 1.2%, underlined the need to accelerate reforms that encouraged investment and employment.

Nada welcomed the government’s emphasis on municipal financial management, accountability and infrastructure maintenance, saying unreliable electricity and water supplies, deteriorating roads and poor local services added costs for dealerships and undermined their ability to serve customers.

It called for additional municipal funding and stronger oversight to translate into visible improvements in service delivery and infrastructure maintenance.

The association said accelerating infrastructure projects and attracting private investment could stimulate economic activity and create demand for vehicles used in construction, deliveries and other essential services. However, implementation and accountability would determine whether funding commitments translated into improved productivity and broader economic benefits.

Nada backed responsible public finance management and efforts to reduce waste, saying the benefits of fiscal stability needed to reach households and businesses through better services, economic opportunities and job creation.

It welcomed measures to strengthen policing capacity, noting that crime affected employees, customers and business confidence while increasing dealership operating costs.

He said the longer-term test of the government’s measures would be whether they:

• improved household purchasing power;
• strengthened service deliveryl and
• created conditions that allowed dealerships to invest, develop skills and sustain employment.

South Africans feel the pressure every time they fill their tanks, buy groceries or pay for transport. This relief will help, but only temporarily

Wayne Duvenage, Outa CEO

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) also welcomed the fuel price relief but warned that it offered only temporary respite from rising living costs.

“South Africans feel the pressure every time they fill their tanks, buy groceries or pay for transport. This relief will help, but only temporarily,” said Outa CEO Wayne Duvenage.

He called on the government to examine the long-term tax burden on fuel and address billions lost through waste and poor financial management, including at institutions such as the Road Accident Fund.

Outa believes the Treasury should review the fuel levy structure to identify opportunities for sustainable relief without compromising essential infrastructure funding.

Despite fuel prices hitting record levels, the South African new vehicle market closed the third quarter of 2026 on a resilient footing. Sales continued to expand at a double-digit pace in September, increasing by 12.7% to 61,645 units compared with September 2025, said motor industry body Naamsa.

Naamsa attributed the sustained demand on competitive pricing, attractive financing propositions and a wider range of entry-level and value-orientated cars, even as macroeconomic fundamentals remained constrained.

Business Day

With GDP growth forecast at just 1.2% in 2026, attention is turning to the government’s ability to free the structural bottlenecks choking investment and productivity, including electricity, water shortages, failing infrastructure and persistently high fuel costs.

Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) welcomed the government’s commitment to fiscal discipline, saying its proposed fiscal anchor could improve policy certainty and lower borrowing costs by holding each administration accountable for its fiscal objectives.

“The core focus from here is to ensure that the stability translates into delivery. Faster economic growth is the best way to address South Africa’s severe unemployment crisis,” BLSA CEO Busisiwe Mavuso said. “This is a long-term process, which is why every effort to accelerate delivery matters, especially on structural reforms and infrastructure.”

‘Prioritise growth’

Elna Moolman, Standard Bank group’s head of South African macroeconomic research, said the Treasury was shifting its focus from stabilising government debt to driving economic growth, using stronger-than-expected revenue collections to fund infrastructure investment.

Moolman also welcomed reforms aimed at improving municipal finances and service delivery, although she cautioned that their impact would take time.

“The focus is now shifting to prioritising economic growth, with the Treasury expecting increased infrastructure spending to boost growth and employment,” she said.

FNB’s medium-term budget review echoed that sentiment, noting that the government has made progress in stabilising its finances but now needs to translate fiscal improvements into stronger economic growth. However, the bank warned that weak growth remains a big challenge, with the government forecasting economic growth of 1.2% in 2026 and 2% by 2029.

“Critically, the [medium-term budget] passes the fiscal credibility test, but the ultimate test will now be whether the government can convert improved fiscal stability into higher potential growth,” FNB said.

The bank also said quicker implementation of infrastructure investment and reforms in the electricity, logistics and water sectors would be critical to boosting growth, attracting private investment and creating jobs.

The mining sector said fiscal gains would count for little unless the government accelerated reforms to lower operating costs, unlock investment and lift production.

Minerals Council South Africa said reliable electricity, efficient rail and port infrastructure, water security and incentives for mineral exploration were critical to turning favourable commodity prices into higher exports, jobs and tax revenue.

“The central message from this [medium-term budget] is therefore encouraging. Fiscal consolidation and structural reform must reinforce each other,” the council said. “South Africa cannot sustainably strengthen its public finances without stronger economic growth, and stronger growth requires faster implementation of reforms in electricity, rail, ports and water.”

SME prospects

Umesh Madhav, head of business banking coverage at Standard Bank South Africa, said the medium-term budget offered opportunities for SMEs through infrastructure investment and greater private-sector participation.

“Infrastructure investment can create opportunities for SMEs across sectors, from logistics and manufacturing to technology and business services. The priority is ensuring businesses of all sizes can access these opportunities,” Madhav said.

PSG Financial Services chief economist Johann Els said the medium-term budget reinforced South Africa’s fiscal consolidation path, with declining deficits and primary surpluses supporting investor confidence and the prospect of credit ratings upgrades. Infrastructure spending and structural reforms could also help boost economic growth, he said.

Read: Ghost worker audit flags more than 4,000 fictitious government employees

“The budget is market friendly and ratings friendly, with declining deficits and debt ratios strengthening the sustainability of government debt,” Els said.

However, the improved fiscal outlook did not remove the underlying risks to the economy, particularly the cost of servicing government debt and the slow pace of growth, he added.

Mark Phillips, head of portfolio management and analytics at PPS Investments, said the improvement in public finances was encouraging, but weak growth, high debt-service costs and the slow pace of debt reduction remained concerns.

The priority, he said, was to turn fiscal stability into stronger economic growth through infrastructure investment and structural reform.

“Fiscal stability is an important achievement. Its lasting value will be measured by whether it creates the conditions for a stronger economy and a more sustainable debt burden,” Phillips said.

Business Day

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the agreement in the Saudi holy city of Mecca on Friday. It states that an attack on one would be considered an attack on all three.

Read: ISMAIL LAGARDIEN | Turkey serves Nato well, but Europe keeps the door shut

The “Mecca joint defence agreement” brings together oil-rich Saudi Arabia and nuclear power Pakistan as well as Türkiye, which has Nato’s second-largest army and a rapidly growing defence industry. It deepens co-operation and deterrence at a time of increased regional uncertainty and threats from the war in Iran.

In an interview with Türkiye’s state-run Anadolu Agency, Türkiye’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan insisted that the three countries do not view any particular state as an adversary unless they take hostile action against them.

“We don’t have anything written down — nothing we’ve signed — that defines a common threat,” Fidan said. “Any country that does not attack us is not a target for us.”

The Turkish minister described the agreement’s clause on mutual defence as being “technically the same” as Nato’s article 5, under which an attack on one of the 32 members is considered an attack on them all.

Asked how the mechanism would work, Fidan said a member would need to formally request help and that the other two countries’ assistance could range from intelligence sharing to logistic support — or the deployment of military units depending on the threat.

Read: NICHOLAS SHUBITZ | Russia and China the only winners from Iran war

“These are multi‑layered matters that vary according to the scale of the threat,” Fidan said. “This is the perspective we have set out so far in our work.”

The Turkish minister said other nations — which he did not name — have expressed interest in joining the agreement, adding that he expects Egypt, which he described as a “natural partner”, to participate “at the next stage”.

Under the deal, the foreign and defence ministers of the three countries, along with their military chiefs, would hold regular committee meetings. The three countries would also establish a secretariat, to be based in Saudi Arabia, Fidan said.

AP

True leadership is defined by positive impact, the ability to shape markets, uplift people, and create lasting value.

At KAP, a diversified group consisting of leading industrial, chemical and logistics businesses, category leadership is not about maintaining the status quo. It is about being the change that strengthens industries, enables businesses, and contributes meaningfully to society.

Category leadership, when done with intent, becomes a powerful force for progress. It sets direction, raises standards, and mobilises multiple stakeholders around a shared purpose.

For KAP, being a category leader means using its influence responsibly, to inspire people, enable sustainable business, and create value that endures.

Inspiring people, leadership with purpose

At the heart of KAP’s approach to category leadership is people. Being the change starts internally, by inspiring employees with a clear sense of purpose.

When people understand their work contributes to something bigger than individual brands or business units, helping to shape industries and improve livelihoods, they are more engaged, innovative, and committed.

KAP’s leadership extends beyond operational excellence to values-driven action. By investing in skills development, transformation, and leadership capability, the company inspires its people to think long term and act responsibly.

This culture of accountability and ambition empowers individuals to lead change in their own roles, creating momentum across the organisation.

Externally, KAP inspires customers, partners, and communities by demonstrating what responsible leadership looks like in practice.

Through transparency, consistency, and principled decision-making, it helps build trust in the categories in which it operates, reinforcing confidence among stakeholders and encouraging higher standards across the market.

Enabling business, strengthening the ecosystem

Being the change also means enabling business, not just within KAP, but across the entire value chain. Category leadership is most effective when it creates the conditions for others to succeed.

KAP plays a critical role in strengthening ecosystems by investing in infrastructure, local manufacturing, and supplier development, ensuring that growth is inclusive and resilient.

By setting clear standards, sharing insights, and collaborating with partners, the company reduces friction and uncertainty in the market.

KAP plays a critical role in strengthening ecosystems by investing in infrastructure, local manufacturing, and supplier development

KAP

This enables suppliers to invest with confidence, retailers to operate more effectively, and emerging businesses to access opportunity. In doing so, KAP helps build categories that are competitive, innovative, and sustainable over the long term.

Importantly, enabling business also requires confronting systemic challenges. As a category leader, KAP recognises its responsibility to address issues such as illicit trade, inconsistent quality, and regulatory fragmentation.

By engaging constructively with industry bodies, regulators, and enforcement agencies, KAP helps create a fairer, more transparent trading environment, one where legitimate businesses can thrive and consumers are protected.

Creating value, a multi-stakeholder approach

For KAP, value creation extends far beyond financial performance. While strong returns remain essential, true category leadership is measured by the value created for all stakeholders.

This includes employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders, government, and the broader communities in which it operates.

Customers benefit from better quality products, clearer choices, and greater trust in the category. Suppliers and partners benefit from stable demand, long-term relationships, and shared growth.

Communities benefit from job creation, skills development, and local economic participation. Governments benefit from responsible businesses that contribute to economic stability and development.

This multi-stakeholder approach reflects KAP’s belief that sustainable value is interconnected. Economic success cannot be separated from social impact or ethical conduct.

By aligning commercial objectives with broader societal outcomes, the organisation builds resilience, ensuring that its categories are better positioned to withstand economic shocks, regulatory change, and evolving consumer expectations.

Category leadership as responsibility

At KAP, category leadership is understood as a responsibility, not a privilege.

It requires balancing ambition with stewardship, competition with collaboration, and growth with integrity. It demands courage to lead change, even when doing so requires investment, patience, and difficult decisions.

By being the change, KAP does more than lead categories; it helps shape a future that others can participate in and benefit from.

Through inspiring people, enabling business, and creating shared value, KAP demonstrates that category leadership can be a powerful driver of progress, building stronger industries, healthier economies, and more inclusive growth.

In a world that demands more from business, KAP’s commitment to being the change underscores why category leadership matters. Not only for today, but for generations to come.

This article was sponsored by KAP.

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Building retailer Cashbuild grew revenue by 1% for the first quarter of its financial year, due mainly to the opening of 14 new stores.

The group said in an operational update for the quarter to end-September on Thursday that for the 304 existing stores in existence before July 2025, revenue decreased by 4% and the 14 new stores contributed 5% growth.

Comparable store revenue, excluding Amper Alles, P&L Hardware, Cashbuild new and closed stores and the Malawi subsidiary disposal, decreased by 1%, it said in a statement.

Transactions through the tills decreased 3% in the quarter compared with a year ago, with existing stores decreasing 4% and new stores contributing 1% growth.

Selling inflation was 3.1% at the end of September.

Cashbuild South Africa contributed 81% of total sales in the first quarter, while the rest of South Africa, which comprises P&L Hardware and Amper Alles, contributed 9%. Its African operations, which include Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and Malawi until its disposal at the end of December 2025, contributed 10%.

During the quarter, the group opened two new stores, closed one and refurbished three stores, bringing the total number of stores trading to 318.

Business Day reported in September that Cashbuild plans to open about 15 stores in the 2027 financial year as it pushes ahead with its expansion strategy, but the building retailer says suitable locations for its traditional stores are becoming harder to secure.

This has led Cashbuild to focus more on alternative formats as it looks for new locations. Of the nine stores opened during the 2026 financial year to end-June, two were traditional Cashbuild stores, while the remainder were smaller format or alternative stores.

According to CEO Werner de Jager, the traditional Cashbuild format requires suitable shopping centre developments, which have become less available.

“The traditional Cashbuild stores are more difficult to open because we need the shopping centre developer to open them and there are not that many of them at the moment that are suitable for us to go in,” he said.

Cashbuild said the process of opening and converting stores to its small-model format remains on track. The company is continuing with its store relocation and refurbishment programme. During 2026 it refurbished 19 outlets.

The group now has more than 40 stores approved for opening over the next three years, though De Jager does not believe all of them will materialise.

With Nompilo Zulu

Business Day

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The South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) has welcomed the announcement of temporary fuel levy relief by finance minister Enoch Godongwana.

On Wednesday, while tabling the 2026 medium-term budget policy statement in a joint sitting of parliament, Godongwana announced the government will again provide temporary fuel price relief, saying the fuel levy will be reduced by R3/l for diesel and R1.50/l for petrol from November 4 until December. It will reduce in value thereafter until January.

He said the fuel relief would add up to R10bn.

The relief will continue at a lower amount until January 5 2027. The diesel levy will be reduced by R1.50/l, and the petrol levy by R1/l.

The council believes a viable taxi industry is essential to South Africa’s public transport system, economic activity and the daily livelihoods of millions of people who depend on minibus taxis to access work, education, healthcare and other essential services.

The council’s national spokesperson, Mmatshikhidi Rebecca Phala

Santaco acknowledged the intervention as a welcome step towards easing the financial pressure currently experienced by the transport sector and commuters.

The council’s national spokesperson, Mmatshikhidi Rebecca Phala, said while Santaco appreciates the temporary relief announced, it believes short-term interventions alone cannot provide a lasting solution to the structural cost pressures confronting the taxi industry.

Phala said the temporary nature of the relief underscores the need for continued engagement on measures that can sustainably cushion operators and commuters against volatile fuel prices.

Santaco remains committed to constructive dialogue with the government in pursuit of practical, sustainable solutions that protect the interests of taxi operators and the travelling public.

The council’s president, Motlhabane Abnar Tsebe

She said the council will continue engaging the relevant government departments and stakeholders to explore further relief measures that address the long-term sustainability of the industry.

“The council believes a viable taxi industry is essential to South Africa’s public transport system, economic activity and the daily livelihoods of millions of people who depend on minibus taxis to access work, education, healthcare and other essential services,” she said.

Santaco has assured commuters there will be no immediate fuel-related fare increases while the industry continues to engage the government in pursuit of more sustainable, long-term relief measures.

The council’s president, Motlhabane Abnar Tsebe, has called on all industry structures to communicate responsibly with operators and commuters as engagements continue.

He said: “Santaco remains committed to constructive dialogue with the government in pursuit of practical, sustainable solutions that protect the interests of taxi operators and the travelling public.”

TimesLIVE

New car registrations, a proxy for sales, rose 10.2% year-on-year to 1.36-million vehicles across the EU, Britain and the European Free Trade Association, Acea said.

Demand for electrified vehicles remained strong across major European markets, supported by purchase incentives and a broader model lineup.

Battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid car registrations jumped 59.9%, 24% and 5.3%, respectively, and together accounted for 76.2% of all new vehicles.

Petrol and diesel registrations fell 20.6% and 28.2%.

Chinese carmakers continued to gain ground, with Chery and BYD nearly tripling and doubling sales, respectively, while Geely and SAIC reported increases of more than 33% and 23%.

The four Chinese carmakers’ combined market share rose to 14.6% from 9.6% a year earlier.

Registrations at Volkswagen and Renault declined between 2.9% and 0.7%, while Stellantis gained 4.5%. The three carmakers’s combined market share fell to 43.7% from 48.4%

Reuters

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About 27 foreign national traders in Bellville have turned to the Western Cape high court, accusing the City of Cape Town and police of failing to protect them from anti-immigration groups allegedly using intimidation and threats to drive them out of business.

The traders, supported by the Somali Association of South Africa (Sasa), want the court to stop Operation Dudula and the March and March Movement from preventing them from operating at the Bellville Trading Zone, despite holding valid municipal trading permits.

In court papers filed on Monday, the applicants accuse the city of failing to take reasonable steps to prevent what they describe as unfair discrimination and the unlawful disruption of their livelihoods.

They seek prohibitory and mandatory orders against Operation Dudula and the March and March Movement, which in the court papers they describe as “vigilante respondents”.

The applicants also want authorities to develop a coordinated plan to ensure traders can safely access their stalls without intimidation or interference.

The respondents include the City of Cape Town, the minister of police, the national commissioner and the Western Cape police commissioner, the Bellville police station commander, Operation Dudula, the March and March Movement and Siyabulela Dukumbane, cited on behalf of Operation Dudula and Concerned Citizens.

According to the founding papers, the dispute dates back to June 30, when members of the two anti-immigration movements allegedly began blocking foreign nationals from trading at the Golden Arrow Bus Terminus and Middestad Mall trading areas, collectively known as the Bellville Trading Zone.

The applicants allege that the groups launched a campaign targeting black foreign national informal traders.

“The vigilante respondents are demanding that all other non-nationals trading at the Bellville Trading Zone cease trading and leave South Africa,” the court papers state.

The traders maintain that they are legally entitled to live and work in South Africa and that the city has issued them with informal trading permits in accordance with its trading by-laws.

They argue that the blockade has deprived them of their only source of income, threatening their families’ survival.

“The traders are indigent and rely on their informal trading income to provide for their households,” the papers state.

The applicants say foreign nationals often face significant barriers to entering the formal job market, leaving informal trading as one of the few opportunities to earn a living.

Some of their trading stock and belongings were forcibly removed from their trading bays.

Abdulhakim Mumin Salih Husein, a Somali national employed by Sasa

In his founding affidavit, Abdulhakim Mumin Salih Husein, a Somali national employed by Sasa, alleges that the blockade is part of a broader anti-immigrant protest that began on June 30.

He said traders who tried to return to their stalls on July 1 were confronted by groups of people, some wearing clothing associated with Operation Dudula and the March and March Movement.

They were allegedly told they were not permitted to trade in South Africa and should leave the country.

“Some of their trading stock and belongings were forcibly removed from their trading bays,” Husein said.

He further alleges that about 13 affected traders approached the Bellville police station to report the incidents but were turned away after spending about seven hours seeking assistance.

According to his affidavit, officers allegedly told them they could not assist because the traders could not identify the alleged perpetrators by name.

No criminal cases were opened and police allegedly failed to take written statements from the complainants.

Husein said the alleged police response, coupled with the city’s failure to intervene, had left traders vulnerable to further intimidation and financial losses.

He accused the authorities of allowing private individuals to interfere with lawful economic activity based on traders’ nationality or perceived immigration status.

The applicants argue that the city has failed to enforce its informal trading by-laws and trading plan, despite issuing permits authorising the traders to operate in the designated area.

They also accuse the municipality of failing to enforce its public nuisance by-law against those allegedly obstructing access to trading spaces.

Husein said the city’s inaction had effectively prevented permit holders from exercising the rights granted to them under municipal regulations.

The traders want the court to compel the authorities to develop and implement a coordinated response to the alleged intimidation, restore safe access to the trading zone and prevent further disruptions.

They contend that the City’s failure to ensure safe and unhindered access to the Bellville Trading Zone amounts to unfair discrimination based on nationality, citizenship or refugee and asylum-seeker status.

The applicants want the court to declare the city’s alleged failure to act unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid.

The allegations against the city, police and anti-immigration movements remain claims contained in the court papers and have not been established by the court.

The City of Cape Town said it would respond to Sunday Times’ inquiry in due course. Western Cape Operation Dudula said it could not comment as it had not seen the court papers.

The reform will allow investment institutions to operate funds and management companies in foreign currencies within South Africa’s borders, opening the way to bring back asset management activity now based in offshore centres.

The JSE and the Treasury have championed the reforms, and on Wednesday the Bank, custodian of the country’s exchange controls, issued a draft exchange control circular indicating that licensed private equity fund managers may also qualify for the SFC dispensation.

“The first phase will enable approved institutions to manage qualifying foreign portfolios and related foreign currency investment activities from South Africa. Future phases will consider additional measures to support the development of a competitive international financial centre,” the Bank said.

“The reform is expected to deepen financial markets, enhance the competitiveness of the financial sector, attract investment management activity in South Africa, support skills depth and strengthen South Africa’s role as a gateway for investment into Africa.”

The circular also states that foreign financial services providers may apply to the Bank’s financial surveillance department to participate in the SFC dispensation.

South African assets or exposures held in an SFC portfolio would retain their domestic classification for exchange control, prudential, regulatory and reporting purposes, according to the circular.

Under the proposal, South Africa would allow local fund managers to administer and trade nonrand-denominated products, such as global equities, emerging market debt and offshore funds, without needing to establish management companies abroad.

The circular says approved SFC participants may:

• Manage qualifying foreign assets or foreign currency exposures.
• Administer or service an approved foreign investment mandate.
• Acquire, hold, manage or trade qualifying SFC instruments.
• Undertake qualifying foreign currency financing.
• Centralise approved management, administration or servicing functions.

JSE CEO Valdene Reddy said South Africa has the skills, institutions and financial infrastructure to compete globally, and the SFC gave the country the regulatory means to put those strengths to work.

“This is about winning international business, attracting investment mandates and building a financial sector that contributes more to economic growth. We developed the SFC because South Africa should be competing for this business, not watching it move elsewhere,” Reddy said.

The SFC will be linked to the JSE and is expected to help reverse the long-term leakage of investment activity offshore through targeted repatriation, rather than enforced capital controls.

Instead of constructing a physical financial centre, the vision is to build a digital-first, regulation-enabled framework that allows South African institutions to manage international funds, foreign currency assets and global mandates from within the country.

Nedbank chair Daniel Mminele, member of the Operation Phumelela steering committee, said the reform created an opportunity to convert South Africa’s financial capabilities into tangible economic gains.

“We have a sophisticated financial system. The challenge is to translate that strength into investment, exports and jobs. The SFC creates an opportunity to attract international financial business to South Africa, generating employment, growing professional services and strengthening our economy,” Mminele said.

Operation Phumelela is a private sector initiative, chaired by Reddy, that aims to position South Africa as a competitive regional financial services hub.

Business Day

Building on the success of its Business Booster campaign, the initiative is designed to support the growth of small and medium-sized tourism businesses.

Each winner receives a package valued at over R350,000 from FlySafair, including:

• 10 return domestic Business Class flights.
• A full-page feature in FlySafair’s digital InFlight magazine.
• Brand exposure on the FlySafair website.
• Visibility across the airline’s social media platforms, which reach more than 1.5-million followers.

In addition, the winners receive car hire coupons from First Car Rental and tailored business solutions from Vodacom SA.

“What stands out about these four businesses is how personal they are,” says Kirby Gordon, chief marketing officer at FlySafair.

“They take visitors into artists’ studios, onto tracking trails, through Durban’s food and street culture and into the story of Cape Town’s Robben Island.”

Gordon adds that for small businesses, a flight can open doors to new connections and opportunities for growth.

“Our hope is that these four meet new customers and partners, and that more South Africans discover what they offer,” he says.

“When businesses like these grow, so do their teams, their communities and the places they call home.”

Meet the winners

World Trackers

World Trackers is built on a partnership of three decades between Alex van den Heever and Renias Mhlongo (pictured above).

Combining Mhlongo’s traditional tracking skills with Van den Heever’s guiding and wilderness experience, the pair offer something far beyond a traditional safari: the chance to understand the African bush through the eyes of experienced trackers.

Both are also involved in the Tracker Academy, which develops skilled trackers from disadvantaged rural communities and helps preserve traditional tracking knowledge.

The flights will allow Van den Heever and Mhlongo to travel across South Africa to meet potential clients, build relationships and expand their network.

“Winning this competition is an incredible opportunity for World Trackers to share our passion for Africa, wildlife and the ancient art of tracking with a wider audience,” they say.

Travel Bug Tours & Safaris

Travel Bug Tours & Safaris started as a small Durban tour business with a belief that tourism should do more than move people between attractions.

Today the destination management company works with local guides, artists and food businesses to show visitors the people and stories behind a place, from Big Five safaris and Drakensberg journeys to a new Durban street-art experience with local artist Kev7.

As it grows from a KwaZulu-Natal-focused operator into a broader destination management company, Travel Bug plans to use the flights to meet travel trade partners and clients in Johannesburg and Cape Town, attend industry events and develop new itineraries.

“As we grow, we want that growth to create opportunities for the guides, artists, small businesses and communities that form part of the experiences we offer,” says founder Dominic Naidoo.

Art Aid Africa

For 25 years, Art Aid Africa has connected indigenous knowledge and traditional skills with contemporary art, design, industry and new markets.

Today, it brings this experience into immersive tourism, taking visitors beyond the usual tourist trail and into the creative pulse of South Africa from cutting-edge contemporary art and street culture to independent studios, emerging designers and rural communities where heritage meets innovation.

The flights will help the Art Aid Africa team build partnerships with travel industry innovators, open up new markets and bring more visitors into direct contact with the people shaping South Africa’s contemporary cultural landscape.

“Winning the FlySafair Travel Booster competition gives us wings to take our ideas further,” says John Anthony, Art Aid Africa’s co-founder and creative strategist.

Legacy Collection

Cape Town-based Legacy Collection turns original Robben Island prison fencing into handcrafted jewellery, art and statement pieces, each telling a story of human rights, justice and South Africa’s journey to democracy.

Founding artist and CEO Charmaine Taylor-Claasen says she will use the FlySafair flights to meet jewellery retailers, art galleries, interior designers and property developers across the country, train retail staff to share the story behind each piece, and grow Atlas + Taylor, a bespoke travel business offering private Robben Island storytelling tours.

“Winning the FlySafair Travel Booster is the opportunity Legacy Collection has been waiting for to take our business to the next level,” says Taylor-Claasen.

“It gives me the freedom to travel across South Africa, meet retailers and build partnerships that will help grow our national footprint.”

This article was sponsored by FlySafair.

London — Kenya’s government and a group of donors have signed a $160m conservation programme aimed at protecting 17.3-million hectares of some of the most complex and least disturbed natural environments on Earth.

The Thamani Asili initiative, which means “value of nature” in Kiswahili, will focus on key biodiversity hotspots from the Great Rift Valley to the Maasai Mara, home to thousands of elephants, rhinos, lions and other species.

Details on Wednesday showed it will combine $80m from dozens of donors including billionaire heirs of the Walton and Cargill families, with a similar amount from the Kenyan government over the next 10 years.

The money aims to fund new conservation areas and improve management of some existing ones using a Project Finance for Permanence (PFP) model, which binds funding to key government policy changes.

Kenya’s cabinet secretary for tourism and wildlife, Rebecca Miano, said it would protect the country’s wildlife and help farmers and communities that share the landscapes.

A recent UN Environment Programme report cited past government estimates that about 42% of Kenya’s GDP and 70% of employment in the country depends on nature in one form or another.

Kenya’s environmental credentials have been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks after President William Ruto and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, broke ground on a new $16bn oil refinery being built on the country’s coast.

The PFP model is gaining popularity. Brazil and Gabon announced similar agreements last year, while others are in the works in Namibia and Botswana.

Ruth Masha at The Nature Conservancy, which helped put together the plan, said it would initially focus on four key regions.

One of them, Tsavo, is home to the country’s largest national parks, 40% of its elephants and 20% of its critically endangered black rhinos. Another in the south along the border with Tanzania includes the Maasai Mara National Reserve and connects into the Serengeti.

It is also set to get the government closer to the global target to protect 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. TNC estimates Kenya is at about 20%-23%.

“There is a substantial gap that would be largely closed,” the head of TNC’s PFP programme, Ryan Bidwell, said.

Reuters

The disclosure created a “mess” for the process, as it could lead to questions about how well Tesla shareholders’ interests would be represented, the person said. The concerns reflect similarities some participants see with Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity, which sparked years of litigation over Musk’s role in the deal.

Musk, who serves as CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla and owns significant stakes in each company, this week told investors that the two companies were examining what would be the largest corporate transaction in history and revealed that both had formed special committees to evaluate it. The backlash to those remarks is reported here for the first time.

The parties have hired advisers, but discussions are at an early stage, three sources familiar with the matter said. SpaceX approached Tesla in recent weeks, and the companies have been discussing a range of transaction structures, including a SpaceX acquisition of Tesla or a merger under a newly formed holding company, the person familiar with the matter said. They are weighing different forms of merger consideration, including an all-stock deal, the person said. These details of the talks have not been previously reported.

Tesla, SpaceX and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Shareholder litigation over Tesla’s SolarCity deal

In related-party transactions such as a SpaceX-Tesla merger, independent board members typically oversee the process to safeguard public shareholders’ interests.

That issue loomed large in Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity, which triggered years of litigation after shareholders alleged the world’s richest man had influenced the process to bail out his investment in the struggling rooftop solar company. At the time, Musk owned roughly 22% of both Tesla and SolarCity, which was founded by his cousins.

Shareholders argued that Musk’s involvement and public support undermined the deal’s fairness. Central to the case were claims that despite his minority stake, Musk was a controlling shareholder of Tesla due to his ties to board members and domineering style.

The Delaware Supreme Court later noted that plaintiffs’ contention of the absence of an independent committee, together with “certain other facts concerning Musk’s involvement in and public support for the transaction,” warranted the finding of unfair dealing.

The courts ultimately upheld the acquisition as fair, though it took several years for the case to be resolved and Tesla directors settled allegations for $60m.

Musk cannot be involved in talks

Musk owns nearly a fifth of Tesla and just under half of SpaceX, and analysts have said a merger would give him control of the combined entity. On Tuesday’s call with investors, Musk acknowledged that as a conflicted party he cannot be part of the discussions of the special committees. Advisers are also in contact with his lawyers to ensure Musk is recused from the merger discussions, the source familiar with the talks said.

Eric Talley, a law professor at Columbia University, said a merger could benefit shareholders by eliminating the need for Musk to divide his time between the two companies. He added that any legal challenge may be harder to predict than the SolarCity case because Tesla is now incorporated in Texas rather than Delaware.

“The Texas thing is a wild card. No one knows how Texas deals with cases like this because Texas never dealt with cases like this,” Talley said, noting that Texas has sought to establish itself as a business-friendly alternative to Delaware, and Musk’s comments so far were not necessarily problematic.

Ultimately, he said, litigation risk would hinge on the terms of any transaction.

“Who’s going to get the better side of this deal? And that’s usually what gives rise to litigation,” Talley said.

Musk’s comments could affect discussions

People involved in the process worry Musk’s public endorsement of the merger and disclosure of talks could intensify investor scrutiny, as interested parties typically avoid expressing views publicly while independent directors evaluate a deal, the source said.

The SolarCity case could become a referenfce point for investors and courts assessing any future SpaceX-Tesla transaction if advisers fail to fully insulate the special committees from Musk’s influence, the source added.

A tie-up between Tesla and SpaceX would be the biggest deal in history, creating one of the world’s largest industrial and technology groups. It would surpass Musk’s acquisition earlier this year of his artificial intelligence company xAI by SpaceX, which ranks among the largest corporate transactions ever announced.

A deal of this size would also face scrutiny from global regulators, especially due to Tesla’s business in China and SpaceX’s work in US defence and AI.

Reuters

The deal approved on Tuesday is part of a years-old dispute over competing claims to sea borders and energy exploration rights in the eastern Mediterranean.

“Egypt reaffirms that this memorandum is null and void ... possesses no legal effect,” Egypt’s foreign ministry said.

Israel said on Wednesday it “strongly” condemned the Libyan eastern parliament’s approval, which also drew swift criticism from Greece.

“Regretfully, once again we see Türkiye working to destabilise the east Mediterranean region,” the Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement.

Israeli and Turkish leaders have escalated their rhetoric against each other as they remain sharply at odds over Syria and the war in Gaza.

The Libya-Türkiye maritime deal was originally agreed in 2019 by Libya’s internationally recognised government in Tripoli in the west, but the rival eastern administration under military commander Khalifa Haftar had withheld its approval for years.

Greece and Türkiye, Nato allies but historic rivals, have disputed maritime borders in the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean.

Greece, Egypt and Cyprus have long been opposed to a maritime-boundaries deal between Libya and Türkiye, as they see it as an infringement on their own maritime claims.

In 2020 Athens and Cairo signed an overlapping deal designating an exclusive economic zone in the eastern Mediterranean, which Türkiye opposes.

Reuters

Inflation data from September, published by Stats SA on Wednesday, shows consumer prices increased marginally from 4.4% in August to 4.5% in September, against the market consensus of 4.7%.

Food inflation was also largely contained, rising to 1.2% from 1.1%, an indication consumers are turning to cheaper options to put bread on the table amid a surge in fuel prices, with transport costs up 10.8% in September.

While headline inflation was muted in September, economists expect October’s print to see a bigger uptick after another surge in fuel prices this month, which saw the price of petrol breach the R30 mark for the first time.

PSG Financial Services chief economist Johann Els said he expects headline inflation to increase to 5% in October. However, he said this does not necessarily point to another interest rate hike, after a 25 basis points increase last month.

“The key point is that there is still very little evidence of second-round inflationary pressure. Apart from the direct impact of higher petrol prices, there have been some increases in transport costs, including minibus taxis and public transport, but little evidence of broader price pressures elsewhere. This will be welcomed by the Reserve Bank,” Els said.

“For now, I do not see the need for further rate increases. The Bank has been pre-emptive, hiking in May and in September. There are risks, of course. The sharp petrol price increase at the start of October could lead to further second-round effects,” Els said.

“But it is also important to remember that sustained higher petrol prices can ultimately be deflationary. They squeeze household budgets and increase business costs, depressing spending. Consumers also tend to substitute more expensive goods and services with cheaper alternatives, putting downward pressure on inflation.”

September’s inflation print dragged consumer prices further away from the Bank’s 3% target and the upper bound of its 2%–4% tolerance band.

Transport costs rose 10.8% in the period under review, compared with 8.8% in August, as diesel prices surged 46% and petrol 25%, putting pressure on consumers and businesses — painting a worrying picture for October’s inflation print after another big hike in fuel costs in the month.

The Reserve Bank last month raised its key repo rate by 25 basis points to 7.25%, citing the need to bring inflation back towards its target.

The decision was unanimous, reflecting upside risks to inflation and downside risks to economic growth.

This is as the monetary policy committee warned that headline inflation is likely to rise above 5% later this year and in early 2027, driven by higher fuel prices, before slowing as the fuel price shock recedes.

Mark Phillips, head of portfolio management and analytics at PPS Investments, said food-price pressures remain subdued, providing an important offset to higher energy costs.

Phillips added that the broader composition of inflation therefore continues to suggest that the recent acceleration is being driven more by specific supply-side and administered-price pressures than by a broad-based increase across the consumer basket.

“Against this backdrop, the Reserve Bank continues to face a finely balanced policy environment. The September inflation outcome provides some reassurance that the significant increase in energy prices has not translated into a more pronounced acceleration in headline inflation,” Phillips said.

“However, elevated transport and administered-price pressures, with the need to establish the credibility of the 3% inflation target, leave the Bank with limited room for policy accommodation.”

Business Day

Local content in South African vehicles stands at 38.1%. The target for 2035 is 60%. The industry still imports R151bn worth of components a year, and the share produced locally has barely moved in a decade.

If the policy were working, the figure would be climbing. Another round of conditions on incentives is unlikely to change it, because the constraint is the price and reliability of everything a local supplier needs to operate.

Eskom tariffs have risen 1,044% since 2008, while consumer prices rose 158%. The latest round added 8.76% for direct customers from April 1 and 9.01% for municipalities from July 1.

Municipal increases for households and businesses this year range from 8.7% in Tshwane to 10.5% in eThekwini, with Nelson Mandela Bay at 9.5%. The official inflation rate in August was 4.4%. A tariff that rises at twice the inflation rate, year after year, is in effect a tax on every machine in a component plant.

Next, the ports. Automotive cargo moves through Durban and Gqeberha, and the ports regulator’s benchmarking shows tariffs there are 71% and 67% above the sample average for comparable automotive ports.

Container tariffs in Durban are 53% above the average sample. Exporters pay the premium; so do local suppliers that ship parts to assembly plants or import the steel, resins and electronics they cannot yet make at home.

Rail was meant to take pressure off the roads. Freight volumes were 167.9-million tonnes in 2025/26, against 222-million in 2017/18. Much of what rail once carried now sits on trucks, on provincial roads where, according to the auditor-general, the share rated “good” or “very good” in Gauteng has fallen from 56% to 25%.

Meanwhile, diesel is up 72% and petrol almost 50% since April. That war-driven oil shock lands on logistics chains that are already stretched.

Soaring costs

Then there is security. Crime costs the economy about R700bn a year, almost 10% of GDP. Every plant manager budgets for guards, insurance and the occasional stoppage. Foreign investors price it in before they decide where to build.

Set these beside a localisation target and the contradiction is painfully clear. The government asks firms to buy more from South African suppliers while the cost of being a South African supplier keeps rising. It then asks the same firms to meet transformation obligations, or pay into a fund, to qualify for incentives.

A small supplier cannot absorb a 9% electricity increase, a port premium and a security bill and still win an order from a multinational that can import the part from Thailand for less.

The government asks firms to buy more from South African suppliers while the cost of being a South African supplier keeps rising. It then asks the same firms to meet transformation obligations, or pay into a fund, to qualify for incentives.

Morocco shows what happens when this sequence runs in the other direction. It built its car industry on reliable power, a purpose-built port and a government that treated delivery times as policy. Renault’s Moroccan plants alone built almost 400,000 vehicles last year and exported 82% of them. Stellantis is doubling its plant at Kenitra, with local content of 75% as the goal.

The decision by Ogihara Corp, a Japanese manufacturer specialising in automotive body press dies, inspection jigs, and stamped sheet-metal body parts, to invest in the Dube TradePort Special Economic Zone shows that capital still comes here when a specific set of frictions is removed for a specific project. Investors respond to relief on cost and logistics.

Macro weaknesses

Local industry of all colours, levels and history face barriers that exist and need attention; any new black-owned entrants are especially exposed to failing infrastructure and rising costs. But no localisation master plan can overcome the macro weaknesses all these businesses face.

The core argument being made here is one of sequencing. The government cannot hold prices above inflation in the services that industry depends on and then judge industry by whether it localises fast enough. A 60% target in 2035 will remain a slogan unless the cost of operating in South Africa starts to fall relative to competitors.

The following would show it is serious:

• Cap annual increases in administered prices for manufacturers at the inflation rate for a defined period.
• Set a public target for port tariffs against the benchmark the regulator already publishes.
• Report local content and the cost drivers side by side, every year, so the link is visible.

The minister is correct that policy should serve both goals. It would serve them better if the government pursued reforms and policies that created a more supportive macro environment that lowered input costs wherever possible and by as much as possible. Otherwise any local content target will remain unreachable.

• Hattingh is executive director at the Centre for Risk Analysis.

Business Day

Godongwana said, among other measures to stabilise the economy, the government will cut the fuel levy by R1.50 a litre for petrol and R3 a litre for diesel from November 4 to December 1 2026. Treasury has identified a further R38.1bn in savings over the medium term, on top of R12bn identified in the 2026 budget. The plan includes cutting low-priority programmes, reducing duplication and tackling administrative inefficiencies and fraud.

The finance minister said government was also allocating an additional R21.8bn to local government to help cover the costs of free basic water, sanitation, electricity and refuse removal. Provinces will receive an additional R20.5bn to meet rising health and education costs

However, the Treasury has cut its 2026 growth forecast to 1.2% from the 1.6% predicted in February, insisting that the economy had proven resilient to the toll from the Middle East conflict.

Read: IN FULL | Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s MTBPS speech

DA finance spokesperson Kingsley Wakelin said the party believed that “faster and more far-reaching growth reforms are now urgent”. “The 2026 MTBPS cuts this year’s growth forecast from 1.6% to 1.2%. This is not enough to move the needle on unemployment. Bold and far-reaching reforms beyond the Treasury are now essential, with a clear goal: growth of at least 3.5%,” Wakelin said.

“The DA has fought for reforms that lower government debt, get value for taxpayer money and reduce the deficit, proposing a fiscal responsibility bill in both the 5th and 6th parliaments. The DA therefore supports the steps taken by National Treasury in the MTBPS, particularly the commitment to a fiscal anchor, the ongoing growth of the primary surplus and debt stabilising for the first time in nearly two decades.

“These are important steps towards restoring confidence in South Africa’s public finances after the fiscal deterioration from 2008 to 2024. However, fiscal stability must be the foundation for economic growth, not the limit of government’s ambition.”

With growth reaching only 2% by 2029, the economy cannot create jobs at scale, Wakelin said. “South Africa cannot tax, borrow or redistribute its way to prosperity. We must grow our way there. Structural reform must move faster. In electricity, this means a genuinely competitive market, urgent expansion of transmission, and independent producers competing on equal terms. In ports and rail, private operators must be able to invest, operate and compete under a fair and independent regulator.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking to journalists, said: “We are stabilising the economy, and ensuring our reforms become a stronger foundation. We are allocating more money to local government to deal with infrastructure challenges. Infrastructure is the flywheel with which to grow our economy: the rail, ports, and reform of electricity architecture.”

Bosa leader Mmusi Maimane said the suppressed economic growth spoke to lack of employment opportunities in a country battling a 33.6% joblessness rate. He commended National Treasury, however, for its efforts in balancing what is otherwise a “complicated situation”.

ACDP MP Steve Swart said: “We welcome fuel levy relief, but are disappointed at the projected low economic growth. It’s not enough to create jobs at scale in the country. But some of the positive aspects of this MTBPS are that investors are going to start investing more.”

Freedom Front Plus MP and finance spokesperson Wouter Wessels described the mini budget as being “very positive”, saying the party also welcomed the fuel levy relief.

UDM chief whip Nqabayomzi Kwankwa said government resources must be channelled to areas with maximum impact in terms of addressing the socioeconomic crisis affecting people. “The budget focuses on maintaining the status quo, and the projected growth of 1.2% is not setting the world alight,” Kwankwa said.

ATM leader Vuyo Zungula said the MTBPS was disappointing and questioned why the government was not employing more immigration officers to deal with illegal immigration. “We need more permanent, sustainable solutions instead of rebates that would last for two months,” Zungula said.

Rise Mzansi leader Songezo Zibi said: “I give this budget 7/10. I’m not thrilled but it’s treading in the right direction.” He noted a “welcome shift towards allocating tax windfalls to productive capital and targeted projects rather than expanding permanent, unsustainable expenditure”.

“While praising several key allocations and policy steps, Rise Mzansi stresses that temporary measures are insufficient to address South Africa’s cost-of-living crisis and structural economic challenges,” Zibi said.

“South Africa cannot build a resilient economy on temporary band-aids. Government must tackle structural cost drivers head-on by accelerating public infrastructure investments, enforcing strict project execution, and delivering permanent relief for households and small businesses,” he said.

Read: Treasury proposes fiscal anchor law to boost stability

Cosatu parliamentary co-ordinator Matthew Parks said: “While appreciating the many competing demands facing the state, we remain deeply disappointed that once again Treasury and government collectively missed the opportunity to table a bold package of interventions that would tackle the fundamental crises of a staggeringly high 43.8% unemployment rate, weak economic growth averaging 1% for over a decade, entrenched levels of poverty and inequality, high rates of crime and corruption, embattled public and municipal services.”

He said while it was important to place the budget’s debt and deficit on a sustainable trajectory, “this cannot be at the expense of stimulating the very economic growth and job creation essential to South Africa’s long-term recovery”.

“An unhealthy obsession with neo-liberal austerity budget cuts or in the case of the MTBPS, prioritising early retirement packages, is not a sustainable path to unlocking economic growth and slashing unemployment. The fact that the MTBPS forecasts only reaching the 3% economic growth needed to see unemployment fall in 2034 is beyond depressing. Unemployment has risen 2.2% this year alone,” Parks said.

“We do however welcome efforts that have secured R18bn worth of investments in industrial projects and R1bn to boost local pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing, helping to create over 5,200 jobs. R217bn approved allocations for 32 infrastructure projects will have a massive impact.”

The ANC-aligned labour federation appreciated government heeding its call for “badly needed relief to the working class and the economy with a R10bn fuel levy holiday for November and December.

“This will ease the burden on commuters, inject money in the economy, lower inflation and hopefully prevent a November repo rate hike. An overhaul of the fuel taxes and levy is needed, including fixing the Road Accident Fund,” it said.

“It is extremely disappointing that no further allocations have been made to boost the public employment programmes to give hope to 12-million unemployed. It is beyond shameful that despite R13bn worth of savings in social grants, yet again there is no inflationary relief for the 8-million destitute SRD grant recipients,” Parks said, adding that Cosatu would be seeking urgent engagements with government to ensure that a “bold and progressive budget that will invest in public and municipal services, stimulate economic growth and jobs, tackle crime and corruption, and provide relief and hope for the poor is tabled in parliament in February”.

Business Day

This was despite a cut to the 2026 growth forecast, with Godongwana pledging to maintain the fiscal prudence that has earned South Africa favourable reviews from ratings agencies.

The medium-term budget policy statement Godongwana tabled in parliament drew mixed reaction, including a thumbs down from labour federation Cosatu.

The key ally of Godongwana’s ANC said the Treasury had missed the opportunity to present bold interventions to promote stronger growth, tackle high unemployment and grapple with high rates of crime and corruption, as well as embattled public and municipal services.

But Godongwana argued that the economy had proved itself resilient to the Middle East war, which has sent fuel prices soaring, pushing up production costs for key sectors such as manufacturing and mining.

Read: IN FULL | Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s MTBPS speech

“South Africa is weathering the storm much better than its peers because we have been able to consistently take hard decisions over the last five years that have built our fiscal buffers and fortified our resilience,” he told legislators, even as he lowered the GDP expansion forecast for 2026 to 1.2% from the 1.6% predicted in February, still slightly higher than last year’s 1.1%.

Growth is expected to reach 1.6% in 2027, down from the 1.8% seen in February, and 2% by 2029.

“This statement recommits the government to responsible stewardship of public resources, to creating the conditions for faster and more inclusive growth, and to building a state capable of delivering on the aspirations of all South Africans.”

In its medium-term budget, the Treasury said it would soon publish for public comment draft legislative proposals for a fiscal anchor. These will require each administration to prepare a plan setting out its fiscal objectives and targets in line with its electoral mandate. This will mean that fiscal discipline to entrench fiscal sustainability will be written into law.

The fiscal anchor will be principles based, rather than impose numerical rules as favoured by credit ratings agencies. The anchor, which the Treasury said formed part of “the most extensive reconfiguration of the public finance system since 1999”, has been in the pipeline for several years and been widely consulted on.

Godongwana said the draft law was expected to be tabled in parliament in 2027, adding that the approach adopted by the National Treasury “preserves flexibility in changing economic conditions while strengthening transparency, accountability and fiscal discipline”.

In motivating for a fiscal anchor in its February budget review, the Treasury had warned that without sustainable public finances, “debt services costs will consume ever more of the economy’s available resources, eroding investment, productive capacity and living standards”.

“In my budget speech in February I said we had reached an important turning point in the public finances. I spoke of restored credibility, of renewed resilience and of a nation regaining its footing,” Godongwana said on Wednesday.

“That is as true now as it was in February, even after a turbulent year for the global economy. Our commitment to macroeconomic stability has reinforced economic resilience. Structural reforms in energy, rail and tourism are removing barriers to growth. More competitive electricity and transport sectors will help reduce costs for households and businesses over time.”

In its reaction, Cosatu said it was “extremely disappointing” that no further allocations had been made in the medium-term budget to boost public employment programmes to give hope to 12-million unemployed people.

“It is beyond shameful that despite the R13bn worth of savings in social grants, yet again there is no inflationary relief for the 8-million destitute SRD [social relief of distress] grant recipients,” the federation added.

It was referring to the Treasury saying it expected to save R13bn in social grant payments over the medium term, freeing up extra money to help combat gender-based violence and reduce child stunting.

The savings will arise due to more stringent verification of applicants for the SRD grant, which was introduced to mitigate the economic hardships caused by lock-downs during the Covid-19 pandemic.

But in a move that will offer some relief to households and businesses whose budgets have come under serious strain amid steep fuel prices since April, as the US-Iran war has strangled the global oil supply, the Treasury said it would again reduce the general fuel levy by R3 per litre for diesel and R1.50/l for petrol from November 4 until December 1.

Thereafter, until January 5, the diesel levy will be reduced by R1.50/l and the petrol levy by R1/l.

“Geopolitical conflict has pushed up global oil prices and led to a sharp rise in the cost of living for businesses and households,” Godongwana said. “Because we have rebuilt fiscal buffers, the government is in a stronger position to respond, including by again providing a temporary fuel levy.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa had told journalists on Monday that the Treasury was “giving consideration” to potential interventions to ease the pressure on South Africans with petrol and diesel prices soaring nearly 50% and 72%, respectively, over the past seven months.

Unlike labour, business gave Wednesday’s policy statement a thumbs up, with Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) applauding the Treasury’s commitment to containing its debt, which has seen gross debt stabilising at 78.4% of GDP in 2025/26, below the 78.9% peak projected in February.

“That discipline is being rewarded: the rand has remained resilient, strengthening and becoming less volatile despite the sharp rise in global oil prices resulting from the war on Iran, and the ratings agencies are taking notice,” BLSA said.

“S&P upgraded South Africa in November 2025, Fitch followed in June 2026, its first upgrade in almost 21 years, and Moody’s moved to a positive outlook. BLSA expects further upgrades after these figures, which would lower borrowing costs for the government and business alike.”

The rand initially firmed after the minister’s speech, but by the JSE’s close it had given back those gains to trade flat at about R16.39/$. Bonds fared better, with the yield on the benchmark R2035 falling as much as 16 basis points to 8.575%.

Business Day

The department of finance, which commissioned the review by former bureaucrat Ian Watt, said KPMG has instead agreed to not bid for new federal work until February next year while the firm undertakes further governance reforms, extending a pause in place since June.

“The review considers that KPMG should not be treated as permanently unsuitable for Commonwealth work, but nor should confidence be restored on the strength of assurances and encouraging early signs alone,” it said.

The review was launched to probe KPMG’s governance, culture and ethics following a whistle-blower’s allegations that staff misused confidential information to bid for new audit contracts.

“KPMG mishandled the whistle-blower matter. Its response was misguided, fragmented, prolonged and, at critical points, lacked clear ownership,” the report released on Thursday said.

KPMG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The report said despite the whistle-blower raising concerns of unethical conduct arising from commercial pressure and a fear of retaliation, KPMG primarily treated it as an “employment matter” and was more focused on the legal implications and organisational risks, paying inadequate attention to whether the allegations might be accurate.

“These shortcomings significantly damaged the whistle-blower’s confidence in KPMG’s handling of the claims. It also damaged client and public confidence and KPMG’s credibility,” it said.

KPMG’s mishandling of the whistle-blower’s complaint also reflected broader weaknesses in its culture and governance, which have persisted for years at the firm.

The report said that by 2020, KPMG had already identified issues around “the primacy of financial returns, inconsistent ethical leadership, reluctance to challenge senior personnel, barriers to reporting misconduct and weaknesses in ethical decision-making”. But there was little evidence the firm adequately addressed them, it found.

It recommended the government should not allow KPMG to bid for new contracts again until it independently verified it was implementing reforms and that they were “changing behaviour in practice”.

Federal government work made up A$207.1m, or 9.5%, of KPMG’s revenue in the 2026 financial year, the report said.

Since the scandal became public in March, KPMG has lost major blue-chip clients and replaced key leaders, including its CEO, chairperson and audit chief.

Reuters

Story audio is generated using AI

The government expects to save R13bn in social grant payments over the medium term, freeing up extra money to help combat gender-based violence and to reduce child stunting, the Treasury announced on Wednesday.

An extra R3.8bn has been set aside for provinces to hire more than 3,500 social workers over the medium term, and an additional R1.6bn has been allocated to step up support for pregnant women and young children through the district health programmes grant.

Read: IN FULL | Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s MTBPS speech

The savings will arise from a reduction in social grant beneficiaries due to more stringent verification of applicants for the social relief of distress (SRD) grant and a drop in applications for the child support grant due to South Africa’s declining fertility rate, said Treasury director-general Duncan Pieterse.

The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) was working closely with banks to weed out SRD beneficiaries who breached the income requirements to qualify for the grant, he said.

More than half of all households in South Africa receive a social grant, and almost a quarter rely on grants as their main source of income, according to Stats SA’s latest household survey. By the end of September there were 18.1-million social grant beneficiaries.

Treasury warned that the ongoing legal challenge to the regulations governing the SRD grant represented a material expenditure risk that could unwind the anticipated savings.

In January the high court found the SRD grant administration system unlawfully excluded eligible people and ordered the government to address barriers that prevented them from accessing the grant. The government challenged the judgment in the Supreme Court of Appeal in August and is awaiting a ruling.

The total cost of the grant could increase substantially if the high court judgment is upheld, with preliminary estimates suggesting it could increase the annual funding requirement from R36bn to R74bn, said Treasury.

Read: Treasury cuts 2026 growth forecast but says economy shows resilience

It has once again announced that the SRD will continue for another year, to March 2028, while the government considers its future. The grant was introduced in 2020 in response to the hardship caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and was initially envisaged as a temporary measure. It has, however, been repeatedly extended.

“As a government, we have to decide exactly what this grant must do: is it about food poverty … does it need to include some kind of conditionality on job searching? Only when those questions about the grant have been resolved will we as government advise on its future,” said Pieterse.

The SRD grant is currently R370 a month and reaches about 7-million beneficiaries.

Civil society organisations are campaigning for it to be replaced by a more generous universal basic income grant, pegged above the food poverty line of R855 a month.

A third of South Africa’s women have faced physical violence and almost one in 10 has experienced sexual violence, according to the Human Sciences Research Council. A recent string of highly publicised murders of women triggered nationwide protests and extensive media coverage, and drew international condemnation.

RECORDED | Godongwana delivers medium-term budget policy speech

In response, Treasury has announced a series of additional allocations to tackle violence against women and girls, including an extra R186m to improve the criminal justice system’s forensic services and investigative capacity. This is expected to complement plans to increase the numbers of specialised sexual offences courts, victim support programmes and shelters for survivors.

An additional R157.4m is set aside for the department of women, youth & persons with disabilities to improve the co-ordination oversight of the government’s response to gender-based violence.

Business Day

Hundreds of shops were looted and government buildings set on fire.

As the Arab Spring, which swept through the Arab world from 2010 onwards, clearly demonstrated, such protests can spread like wildfire when the political and social conditions are ripe. The riots in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere in July 2021 also showed how a political and economic spark can create social and economic havoc.

Other European countries such as Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain have recently experienced similar protests by Gen Z youth and other social groups struggling to cope with the cost of living and housing crises fuelled in part by sharp spikes in petrol prices due to the Middle East conflict.

India has been gripped by protests by the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party, which initially demanded the resignation of the education minister and an overhaul of the country’s college exam system and more recently electoral reforms. Mauritius has also been hit by street protests over the cost-of-living crisis, chronic water shortages and a police shooting.

In almost all these cases, the response by the police using water cannons, teargas, grenades and batons worsened tensions, leading to many injured and mass arrests.

The initial demands by thousands of French school students who took to the streets were for more teachers, smaller classes and renovations to dilapidated buildings. These were latched onto by other social groups demanding relief from the high cost of living, particularly the cost of petrol, diesel and gas. They were also supported by left-wing political parties opposed to the government’s austerity programme and with an eye on the presidential elections, which take place in six months’ time. Opposition by right-wing parties to France’s immigration policies will be a feature of their election campaigns.

Disaffection by excluded communities from the French establishment runs deep, which is perhaps why symbols such as the tourist office in Lyon and the 19th-century city hall in Limoges were gutted.

The French government responded by promising 3,000 additional teachers and other reforms but its financial room for manoeuvre is limited. It is the third most indebted country in Europe after Italy and Greece with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 120%, much higher than permitted by the EU. Sluggish economic growth does not offer a pathway out of the debt stranglehold. It has also felt compelled to increase defence spending in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine and Europe more broadly.

Attempts to reduce the deficit and cut government expenditure are fiercely resisted by a population protective of its social security benefits. A bid by French President Emmanuel Macron to raise the retirement age was met with prolonged street protests, resulted in the 2024 resignation of prime minister Elisabeth Borne and had to be abandoned.

The fiscal constraint is matched by a political paralysis after the snap election called by Macron in June 2024, which led to a sharply divided National Assembly.

South Africa’s youth have much to be aggrieved about. Youth unemployment stands at 47.4% and university graduates have a hard time finding a job. Poverty is widespread and deep-seated. All it needs is a spark for Europe’s malaise to be replicated in this country.

Business Day

Laughton was sentenced in 2016 to 30 years’ imprisonment for the murder of Ketani. His sentencing dominated headlines over a breakthrough in the 1999 cold case after the discovery of a confession letter, resulting in the discovery of Ketani’s remains and the unravelling of her murder 13 years after her death.

Laughton turned to the high court in Johannesburg seeking a court order to convert the sentence of direct imprisonment into correctional supervision.

Correctional supervision means Laughton would serve the remainder of his sentence at home under the supervision of correctional services. His application is based on provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act.

In July, his application before judge Lebogang Modiba failed on the basis that the first request had to be sent to commissioner Thobakgale or a parole board to consider whether he is fit for his sentence to be converted.

In the judgment, Modiba ordered the state to consider Laughton’s request in 30 days.

The Criminal Procedure Act provides that if a person has been sentenced by a court to imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years or exceeding five years but his date of release under the Correctional Services Act (1959) and the regulations “is not more than five years in the future”, the commissioner or a parole board may deem if the applicant is fit for correctional supervision.

The court, however, has the last say in the process.

The provision is interpreted to include the date on which such prisoner may be considered for placement on parole.

Laughton contended he qualified for consideration because the offences for which he was convicted were committed during May 1999, and in determining his parole eligibility and release date, the provisions of the Correctional Services Act applied. He contended the parole consideration in his circumstances was May 2026 after serving one-third of his sentence.

While Modiba dismissed Laughton’s relief for the court to convert his sentence, she ruled parole eligibility must be determined with reference to the law applicable at the time the offences were committed. The court found Laughton accordingly falls to be considered under the transitional provisions relating to the 1959 Act.

On Tuesday, Laughton turned to the high court again in a case against Thobakgale and correctional services minister Pieter Groenewald.

Other respondents include five correctional services management officials, including Ruth Magakwe of the case management committee (CMC) and Luckyboy Mathiba, chair of correctional supervision.

In court papers, Laughton’s legal representative, Paige Ferreira, argued the state is in contempt of the Modiba court order.

Modiba’s order required compliance in 30 days for consideration of her client’s request to serve the remainder of his sentence at home under supervision. Ferreira argued that did not occur.

She said that on September 11, after a CMC sitting, Laughton was informed he was not a suitable candidate for consideration of the conversion of the sentence, with the committee citing the nature of the crimes committed and that his sentence exceeds five years.

“The applicant [Laughton] asks that the respondents [correctional service officials] be ordered to comply, failing which the individual office bearers responsible be committed to prison, and that they personally bear the costs of having to bring this application,” the court papers read.

Ferreira argued that the report did not recommend her client for conversion of sentence falls short of what the court had ordered the officials to do.

“The respondents failed to deliver their report within the 30 days. Some 14 days after the period expired, a one-page letter was given to the applicant which falls dismally short of what the respondents were ordered to do in terms of the order.

“The letter does not confirm the applicant’s release date, repeats the very contention that this court had rejected and records no decision by the commissioner or any duly authorised functionary. The applicant asks that the respondents be ordered to comply.”

Ferreira argued the first reason proffered in the report for the applicant’s lack of eligibility for consideration of the conversion of his sentence, that his sentence “exceeds five years”, is not a ground for disqualification.

Another shortcoming in the report is that the law required the consideration of the conversion of the sentence to be decided by the commissioner or a parole board, but in Laughton’s case the report was signed by the CMC assistant director.

“The purported report records no decision by the person on whom the statute and the order place the decision. Section 276A(3)(a) vests that opinion in the commissioner or a parole board. The letter is signed by an assistant director of the CMC and says only that the CMC ‘cannot recommend’ the applicant,” she argued.

“The respondents’ actions have been a failure, resulting in severe prejudice to the applicant. The respondents ought to be held personally responsible for the payment of the applicant’s costs in this matter, considering their personal conduct and failure,” argued Ferreira.

The state is opposing the application.

Zane Matiwane, correctional services legal officer, argues in an affidavit that even if the court finds further steps are required to comply fully with Modiba’s order, that does not automatically establish wilful and bad faith disobedience by Thobakgale and five other officials in correctional services management in their personal capacities.

“The available records reflect the applicant’s profile, and the request was considered within the correctional services processes, including a sitting of the case management committee; correctional supervision and parole board minutes reflecting that the board considered the offender for conversion of sentence and recorded a decision that he does not qualify for conversion of sentence,” Matiwane says.

It is the state’s case that the order was complied with.

“The respondents submit that records demonstrate the applicant’s case or request was not simply ignored. Therefore, the allegations of wilful noncompliance with the court order of this honourable court are, it is contended, unfounded and without basis,” Matiwane contended.

“I am advised that before a contempt of court order can be granted, an applicant must first demonstrate the existence of the requirements for contempt.”

Matiwane described the application, which seeks an order for Thobakgale and five other correctional services officials personally to be in contempt, committing them to imprisonment or imposing fines, and directing them to pay costs, as “exceptional relief and requires a proper factual and legal basis in respect of each official”.

“The fact that an official holds a particular office does not, by itself, establish personal wilfulness and mala fides. The respondents submit the applicant has not established a sufficient basis for the collective personal sanctions sought against all the officials cited.”

The matter has been postponed to Friday.

Business Day

However, the South African government seems to be moving reasonably adroitly to mitigate the risks posed by US diplomatic tensions.

Late last year President Cyril Ramaphosa signed an agreement with EU leaders to develop sustainable mineral and metal value chains. This week Ramaphosa confirmed plans to deepen trade relationships with China, building on Beijing’s recent extension of zero-tariff treatment to qualifying imports from African countries. The president also has stated ambitions in India, where talks over a preferential trade agreement have restarted.

South Africa arguably has certain advantages over wealthier peers in adapting to the challenges of the present era. For decades global economic policymakers in the north could rest on the comforting premise that open markets and international trade operate independently of power politics.

Today, of course, that illusion is no longer tenable, as large powers have begun to deploy sanctions, export controls and supply chain embargoes, and national security is displacing economic efficiency as the driving force of economic policy.

This incipient wave of trade wars, sanctions and strategic decoupling is far from unprecedented. Legendary mid-century thinkers such as Albert Hirschman, John Maynard Keynes and Thomas Schelling recognised that international economic integration is never politically neutral.

Hirschman’s 1945 book National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade traced how 17th century mercantilist thinkers such as Jean-Baptiste Colbert viewed international trade as a zero-sum game in which national wealth directly translated into state power.

While 18th-century liberal economists Adam Smith and David Hume believed free trade can promote mutual prosperity and peace, Hirschman observed that mercantilist logic inexorably resurfaces during periods of geopolitical tension. When international order fractures trade policy quickly reverts from a vehicle for mutual gain into an instrument of statecraft and strategic coercion.

The core of Hirschman’s 1945 work is its analysis of asymmetric trade dependency. Hirschman demonstrated that when a powerful state becomes the dominant buyer or supplier for a smaller neighbour it creates a structural vulnerability. By intentionally cultivating these asymmetric ties the dominant power can threaten to disrupt trade, using economic leverage to extract political concessions or economic rents without firing a shot.

During the globalisation of the late 20th century policymakers in the north largely set aside Hirschman’s warnings, assuming market competition would deter large nations from weaponising trade. Today though, they are having to revisit classical mercantilist or “geo-economic” frameworks to understand how hegemony, export controls and supply chain choke points can be used to force political alignment.

As major powers construct defensive economic shields, “friendshoring” networks and technological export restrictions, middle powers such as South Africa face intensifying pressure to take sides. A smaller nation heavily reliant on a single power for critical technology, debt financing or export markets risks being coerced into geopolitical alignment or suffering severe collateral damage if those trade ties are suddenly severed.

While this situation poses many challenges, our policymakers have never viewed international trade through a naive peacetime lens. During the 1970s and 1980s the apartheid state routinely weaponised transport monopolies, rail corridors and energy grids against the neighbouring frontline states in a textbook demonstration of Hirschman’s asymmetric dependency model.

Simultaneously, liberation movement leaders were proponents of comprehensive international sanctions, oil embargoes and financial credit freezes, while apartheid governments were forced to build sophisticated defensive economic shields, import substitution industries and clandestine trade networks to survive.

This shared history as proponents, practitioners and targets of geo-economics perhaps leaves our policymakers and business leaders more comfortable than their northern peers with supply chain adaptation, sanction evasion and the amelioration of economic dependencies in a fracturing world.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

One of my first exposures to the industry ― quite a culture shock ― was the Institute of Estate Agents conference at Sun City in the mid-1980s. There was plenty of bling from the female and male realtors ― the official name for estate agents that they would soon adopt from the US.

At that stage I hadn’t much experience of super salesmen working hard and playing even harder. Some of the Liberty Life agents I met at industry functions were cut from the same cloth. But whether it was insurance or houses, the skill was selling. And selling the industry to me as the representative of the premier business publication of the day was also taken seriously.

Aida Geffen had recently listed her estate agency on the JSE in the small-cap boom before the 1987 crash. I can’t recall if Pam Golding was there, and I never met her. I sometimes think she must have been invented by an advertising agency, like Mrs Ball’s Chutney or the Ploughman’s Lunch. She probably found the company at these gatherings a little louche.

The big names of the time were all there. Eskel Jawitz was already my go-to for quotes about the property market, and there was another estate agent curiously known as Basil Elk, whose signs had the distinctive Elk logo. I could never work out if he came from Elk country in the frozen north of Canada or not.

Going full circle more than 40 years later, Sun City isn’t the party capital it used to be. I don’t go to casinos anymore anyway. The resort’s no longer in an “independent” country, and the South African embassy to Bophuthatswana in Mafikeng ― yes there was one ― has long been closed.

The X-rated movies, always actually quite tame, are no longer shown. The cinema now shows the usual blockbusters and the Las Vegas-style extravaganza is long gone ― as has the great impresario of the place, Sol Kerzner.

The last time I went to the Sun City Superbowl was for a wonky fund management industry event called the Investment Forum ― not much high jinks there.

Going full circle, the likely sellers of my house are the firm set up by Aida’s son, Lew Geffen. It’s Pam Golding’s major national competitor, though without the Capetonian stuffiness. Confusingly, Geffen has the Sotheby’s franchise. My brother will be impressed that Sotheby’s is selling my house alongside Fabergé eggs.

But Lew Geffen is a supreme marketer, even trumping his mother. For example, she used to say Yeoville and Bellevue properties were in “Upper Houghton”. I looked through his book, Soul Mandate, to get more insights into the younger Geffen, who is now a fit 82 and chair of the business. His daughter Yael is CEO.

Some passages made me blush. You will be disappointed if you are expecting to see such personal revelations in my upcoming book on Investec ― Stephen Koseff and Bernard Kantor will be able to sleep well at night in the lead-up to publication.

But even Geffen has slowed down a bit. He lives half of the time in Corsica, appropriately Napoleon’s birthplace.

The closest to playing hard at Investec would have been their receptions at a hotel in Georgetown, a smart part of Washington, DC, during the IMF/World Bank annual meetings.

David Lawrence, Investec deputy chair, would host these. And certainly no-one would confuse this dyed-in-the-wool banker with an in-your-face impresario such as Geffen or Kerzner. Lawrence has run Citibank and FNB’s investment banking businesses after all.

Selling a house is far more scientific than it was even when we last sold in 2018. The presentation pack Lew Geffen gave me is highly informative, though it can’t avoid cheesy sentences such as “Our goal is to ignite the sparkle of imagination that leads to a successful sale.” It also explains the transfer process in detail in a way the layman can understand.

I have had far more exposure in my career to the commercial property sector. This is the grown-up part of the market, with quieter characters. Consider, for example, Norbert Sasse, who recently retired as head of Growthpoint. It’s a huge business with a market capitalisation when I last looked of about R75bn. It’s best known for its 50% holding in the V&A Waterfront.

Growthpoint was unbundled from Investec in 2007, well before the arguably far more high-profile unbundling of Investec Asset Management, now Ninety One, in 2018. Ninety One is also a substantial business, but with a market cap more like R50bn.

There are characters in commercial property, even if they aren’t quite as larger than life as Lew Geffen. Mike Flax comes to mind. He sold commercial property syndications at Seeff, a predominantly Cape Town business, which also listed before Mark Barnes consolidated it into Capital Alliance — later Brait. Flax then went on to set up the specialist Western Cape real estate investment trust Spear.

Now Flax has a far more humdrum existence running a property equity fund for Visio. Poacher turned gamekeeper.

• Cranston, a veteran financial journalist, is author of ‘The Mavericks’, a new book about South African fund management.

Business Day

Earlier this month the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) said it would take more direct equity stakes in Africa, with critical minerals a priority. It already has more than $3bn committed to the sector on the continent.

That money goes mainly into larger projects and infrastructure, such as the Lobito rail corridor, rather than to junior miners directly. But it signals how seriously global capital now takes African minerals.

At home, the Junior Mining Exploration Fund, run through the Industrial Development Corporation, has grown to R1bn with Anglo American’s backing and has funded 13 projects since 2024.

The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) has set aside a further R1.35bn for projects from the post-scoping stage to the bankable feasibility stage. That is exactly where junior projects have traditionally stalled.

Money is now being aimed at the right place. The question is whether there will be enough projects ready to take it. On the evidence, that is far from certain.

Junior and mid-tier miners around the world raised more than twice as much capital in 2025 as in 2024, according to S&P Global. Yet junior exploration budgets fell 13%, and spending at and around existing mines reached a record 45% of exploration budgets. Investors had money. They kept putting it where the risk had already been taken out.

The same logic applies to every new source of capital, at home and abroad. None of them is in the business of funding hope. The PIC invests through funds and partnerships that will only back projects able to survive due diligence. International investors such as the DFC are backing large, advanced projects and the infrastructure around them.

Too many juniors will not get past the first meeting. The most common mistake is believing that good geology attracts capital. It helps, but investors do not fund an orebody. They fund a business and the people running it.

A project that is ready for this money can show a resource reported to a recognised code and signed off by a competent person, with mining rights secure for the next stage. It has a realistic plan for power, water, transport and getting its product to market, and a team that has built and run a mine or has hired people who have.

Its shareholding is clean, with empowerment and community agreements written down rather than promised. And its financial model shows what each tranche of capital will achieve.

Most of the gaps funders find are fixable: valuations pinned to the best case, resources that need more work, tangled shareholdings, and incomplete environmental and social studies. They are far cheaper to fix before the first meeting than after an investor has done due diligence and walked away.

The government’s job is changing too. Funding was the visible gap, and public institutions have started to fill it. The less visible gap is time. The national rollout of the online mining cadastre, which is meant to make licensing faster and more transparent, has been pushed to March 2027 after several missed dates.

Investors can price commodity risk and construction risk. They cannot price a permit that may take one year or five. Time to permit is a cost of capital.

Two things would help the new money find projects. The first is a project preparation facility that pairs technical and transaction support with capital willing to take early risk, as infrastructure finance has done for years.

The second is pooled vehicles that combine several junior projects into a size the PIC, development finance institutions and pension funds can invest in.

Juniors have choices to make as well. Raising at the highest valuation as early as possible is not always the right goal. Some dilution, an experienced partner or an earn-in, royalty or offtake deal, can build a company that raises far more later.

• Mutonhora is director: corporate finance at HLB-CBS Group and founder of Taka Capital.

Business Day

Historical novelist Philippa Gregory’s new novel, Royal Witch, arrives soon after the much-trumpeted release of Practical Magic 2, with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman returning to our screens as the Owens sisters.

Both tap into something powerful in contemporary culture. The witch has been reclaimed as a feminist figure: independent, knowledgeable, bonded to other women and resistant to authority. But as a historian interested in how women’s reputations change over time, I think our enthusiasm for reclaiming the witch comes with responsibility. Before we celebrate the label, we must ask why and from whence it came.

Power and threat

Royal Witch retells the story of Eleanor Cobham, a 15th-century woman whose extraordinary rise took her from relatively modest beginnings to the highest ranks of English power as Duchess of Gloucester, married to a man briefly heir presumptive to the throne (Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle to the young Henry VI).

Then, in 1441, everything collapsed. A formal inquiry revealed that Eleanor had commissioned scholars to cast King Henry VI’s astrological chart and exposed her association with Margery Jourdemayne, the woman later notorious as the “Witch of Eye”. Eleanor was publicly humiliated, her marriage annulled and she was imprisoned for life.

It makes Gregory’s irresistible description of Eleanor, “the woman they called witch. Who would have called herself queen,” feel entirely natural. But the implied correlation between ambition and accusation is key. Eleanor belongs to a wider pattern in which the complicated political histories of powerful mediaeval women have gradually hardened into much simpler stories.

Take Joan of Navarre, another powerful mediaeval woman linked with witchcraft. A generation before Eleanor, Joan was the widow of Henry IV, stepmother to Henry V and to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Eleanor’s stepmother-in-law.

It makes Gregory’s irresistible description of Eleanor, “the woman they called witch. Who would have called herself queen,” feel entirely natural. But the implied correlation between ambition and accusation is key. Eleanor belongs to a wider pattern in which the complicated political histories of powerful mediaeval women have gradually hardened into much simpler stories.

Her fall from favour involved suspicions about split loyalties and the seizure of her dower lands. As the daughter of a French princess and the former regent of Brittany, her later life in England was marked by xenophobic doubt. Yet Joan, an astute political leader, was never formally accused of witchcraft.

Joan’s reputation developed through association and repetition. Chroniclers introduced witchcraft into her story; later accounts repeated it. Her reputation became entangled with other supposed magical family members. The label travelled further than the complicated political reality. Historian Elena Woodacre captures that uncertainty in her biography’s title: Joan of Navarre: Infanta, Duchess, Queen, Witch? That question mark matters.

Political expedience

Gregory’s focus — Cobham’s tale — is different but the same flattening occurs. She had been lady-in-waiting to Humphrey’s first wife, Jacqueline of Hainault, before becoming his mistress and, after that marriage was annulled, his second wife. In 1441, the crucial offence was not that Eleanor’s associates had cast Henry VI’s horoscope but that they had done so without permission; that was the treasonous act.

As with Joan of Navarre, this became a crisis only because dismantling Eleanor’s power, and in turn Humphrey’s, had become politically expedient to those bringing the charges. With Joan, it was about her income and potential double-dealings. With Humphrey, his peace-leaning rivals used it to dismantle the duke’s aggressive war policy against France and permanently eliminate Eleanor and her husband as political players.

Three men — Roger Bolingbroke; Thomas Southwell; and John Home, Eleanor’s chaplain — were indicted for treason alongside Eleanor. Their fates diverged: Bolingbroke was executed, and Southwell died in the Tower before judgment, but Home was eventually pardoned. Eleanor was never tried by the secular courts that judged them but faced an ecclesiastical process instead.

What stuck, in the end, was her own admission: that she had sought spells from Jourdemayne.

Jourdemayne supplied remedies and was associated with fertility treatments among elite clientele. She was well known at court, and, it seems, was well used by it. Once Eleanor’s household became politically dangerous, Jourdemayne’s existing reputation made her vulnerable. Eleanor survived. Jourdemayne was burnt at Smithfield on October 27 1441, the same day she was found guilty.

New layer of meaning

Over time, nuance and politics are obscured behind easy labels, such as “witch”, flattening context and shielding systemic perpetrators. This is how cultural memory works. The stories societies inherit are not static records of what happened. They travel between chroniclers, novelists, films and audiences, and even historians, accumulating and shedding meaning as they go, until the most memorable version becomes more familiar than the historical event itself.

The pattern is not unique to witchcraft or to Royal Witch. Discussing The White Queen series adapted for screen from Gregory’s Cousins’ War novels, literary scholar Misty Urban observed that modern retellings “attribute the same weapons to women that mediaeval authors did; they simply imagine a reception by the audience that is delighted rather than horrified”.

Those accusations — manipulation, ambition, occult influence — have not disappeared. We have simply learnt to read them as evidence of power rather than proof of guilt.

“Witch” has now acquired another layer of meaning: a celebration of female knowledge, independence and resistance to patriarchal authority. That reclamation has value, but it is a different project from recovering the lives of historical women. If we collapse the two, we risk turning a misogynistic simplification into an empowering identity without asking whether it belonged to the woman at all.

That does not mean novelists should stop writing witches. Popular culture, Gregory’s novels included, keeps histories alive. I say this as a fan and fellow historical fiction author working in the same creative tradition. Engaging the public with the past is the core of what I do as a public historian.

But the question mark matters. Every generation inherits stories, and we also rewrite them. Historical women are remembered through reputations they never chose. We need not pass them on uncritically.

• This article appeared first in The Conversation. The writer, Lynsey Cowlishaw, is a PhD candidate in history and culture, media and creative industries at King’s College London.

South Africa has not had a Nepal or Bangladesh moment, and is unlikely to because its elections are still free and competitive. And as recent registration figures show, its youth are beginning to get hopeful for the democratic system.

For a decade young South Africans have voted less and less, while protests on campuses and in communities have continued. In 2026, for the first time in years, the registration figures point the other way: 46% of the new voters added during the June and August registration weekends were under 29.

In 2024, students in Bangladesh overthrew prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s government over civil service job quotas. In 2025, Nepal’s “Gen Z” protests toppled the government within 48 hours with the use of Discord, a network that emerged after a ban on social media.

Earlier this year India’s Cockroach Janta Party forced the resignation of the education minister, then shifted its protests against the removal of more than 100-million people from the voters’ roll. In France in the past few weeks, a blockade at a single high school over leaks, lack of heat in classrooms and missing teachers spread to about 640 schools and 30 universities, with about 7,000 arrests being recorded.

Protest is not a monopoly of the youth, but young people tend to lead it, becoming decisive when street protests find expression through the ballot. For example, in Kenya after the 2024 #RejectFinanceBill protests faded under repression, the Niko Kadi (I have my card) campaign used TikTok and local WhatsApp groups to register 2.6-million new voters in two weeks. Organisers are now recruiting young candidates for the 2027 elections.

The Human Sciences Research Council’s long-run survey data shows that in South Africa the belief that voting makes a difference has collapsed across all age groups. Among Gen Z it fell from 35% in 2014 to 23% in 2024. Yet 63% of Gen Z still see voting as a civic duty, valuing the vote but doubting that the vote produces results.

Three factors contribute to this state of affairs: economic exclusion, especially given the high youth unemployment rate; weak political party responsiveness; and protest becoming the natural form of action for young people who feel excluded from formal politics.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom: the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s 2026 registration cycle was the strongest for young people in a decade. The June registration weekend recorded 2.9-million registrations, compared with 1.7-million for the 2021 local elections. After the August registration weekend, the roll passed 29-million, about 2.1-million more than in May 2024, and 46% of new registrations were under the age of 29.

But the roll still covers only about 64% of eligible South Africans, and the addition of a few hundred thousand young registrants is small against the millions still missing. Nevertheless, there is reason for cautious optimism given that newly registered young voters tend to turn out. In 2021, 71% of registered 18-to-19-year-olds voted, double the 35% rate among 20-29. Those who register shortly before an election usually do so with the intention to vote.

South Africa’s advantage is that its electoral system still works. Its weakness is that young people no longer believe it works for them. The registration surge of 2026 is the first sign in a decade that belief in our democratic system can be rebuilt.

The lesson from #FeesMustFall and from international experiences is that mobilisation without organisation fades, and organisation without a route to power is absorbed. If November 4 brings even a modest rise in youth turnout, it will show that the route is still open and that we may see more youthful energy entering local government and possibly other spheres.

If it does not, the energy will remain on the streets, where, as the international cases warn, it is far harder to produce lasting change.

• Abba Omar is director of operations at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.

After exhaustive research, she lifts the veil on the past through this enthusiastic, whirlwind narrative.

“We think, if only I had been young during the 70s for disco, or the 90s for the rave scene, or even earlier — how about coming of age in 20s Paris,” she suggests.

Bars are closing at an alarming rate in the US, British pubs are shuttering their doors in scary numbers, and “it’s even worse for nightclubs”.

“The UK lost more than half of its nightclubs between 2013 and 2024. If the trend continues, there will be none left by 2030. France has lost 70% of its nightclubs since the 1980s, while Italy has lost more than half since 1990. America almost lost half of its gay bars in the last decade,’” bemoans Willetts.

“Meanwhile, less hedonistic businesses — 24-hour gyms, escape rooms and coffee shops — are thriving. We have become unnervingly well behaved, at least in the analogue world.”

Up All Night suggests that the first flames of night-time excitement were quite literally lit centuries ago when people huddled together around fires after dark.

“The ability to control fire transformed the night from a time of invisible terrors into one of feasting and revelry. The anthropological theory goes that, while sitting around flickering flames, prehistoric humans developed crucial skills in storytelling, language and imagination. We owe a lot to the night,” Willetts argues.

Meanwhile, less hedonistic businesses — 24-hour gyms, escape rooms and coffee shops — are thriving. We have become unnervingly well behaved, at least in the analogue world.

Imogen Willetts

“Fire came first. Elaborate costumes, dance and music were added into the mix much later.”

She suggests that without nightlife, we might have been deprived of many of our most worthwhile cultural developments: “The seemingly superficial act of getting gussied up to drink, dance, have fun and meet people has left an incredible legacy.

“Nightlife has been the greatest generator of cultural inventions: jazz, the Charleston, the cancan and disco were all created on, and for, dance floors.

“Not to mention art movements such as surrealism and Dada, whose daring ideas were chewed over at late-night drinking sessions. Nightlife has inspired entire artistic forms such as Japanese ukiyo-e.

“Considering the influence it had on French modernists, the last century of Western art history would look very different were it not for nightlife.

“And these knock-on effects are important, sure. But this book is not some lengthy ‘nightlife as artistic incubator’ treatise. Instead, I want to unearth the history of the big night out,” explains Willetts.

She suggests that nights out began when people stopped living in the countryside and clustering around campfires — and went on to establish towns and cities.

“We lost the campfire ritual but got pubs instead.”

Not a bad trade, say I.

Tokyo is a great city for nightlife, and I fondly recall my own booze-fuelled outings in that great metropolis, but I had never thought Japan was the origin of after-dark partying, until Willetts spilt the beans.

She explains that in September 1657, men in Edo (the original name for Tokyo) could do something they had never done before — go out at night, in the red-light district of Yoshiwara.

Tastes at the time may seem bizarre to us now, as the courtesans had their “teeth blackened — as was the fashion — by applying a dye made from iron and tea. Hair glossed with imported Indian elephant dung. Faces delicately coated with rice-powder to appear luminous by candlelight.”

While it may have been a paradise for the partying set, “Edo was one of the most male-dominated, testosterone-fuelled cities in history … Wives and daughters were left behind, meaning that life in Edo was one long boys’ trip”, Willetts explains.

Up All Night takes the reader from Tokyo in the 1650s to different continents and centuries, providing a dizzying array of details, anecdotes, quotes and characters from each party location.

Tastes at the time may seem bizarre to us now, as the courtesans had their ‘teeth blackened — as was the fashion — by applying a dye made from iron and tea. Hair glossed with imported Indian elephant dung. Faces delicately coated with rice-powder to appear luminous by candlelight.’

We visit London in the 1660s, when pleasure gardens opened up, providing illuminated spaces decked out with artistic oddities, grottos, bandstands, natural springs or fountains and fireworks.

We also explore the Montmartre district of Paris, with the Moulin Rouge and Toulouse Lautrec, and then we are whisked off to New Orleans, where jazz was born, and then Weimar Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s, before the rise of Nazism turned excitement and revelry into horror.

Then back across the Atlantic to New York, where black culture exploded in Harlem, with prohibition opening opportunities for speakeasies where “you’d be served gut-rot whiskey, nicknamed ‘smoke’ for the disconcerting vapour it emitted.

Speakeasy liquor could be an ungodly medley of wood alcohol, sulphuric acid, benzol and kerosene … not that the bad moonshine put anyone off.”

Up All Night then takes us to pre-Castro Havana in Cuba and Las Vegas as it emerged from the desert in the 1950s and 60s — both of which were initially developed and run by mobsters.

“For a renegade few years, Las Vegas and its Cuban rival, Havana, sold a vision of playboy debauchery with fuck-the-consequences recklessness.

“Both cities were gangster utopias offering political intrigue, espionage, easy sex and the promise of overnight fortunes. It was all at once opulent and dangerous: an operatic combination of mobster crime without feeling dodgy and extravagance without feeling feminine.

“You’d be hard-pressed to design something more tantalising for your average Playboy-reading schlub (American slang for a stupid, worthless, or unattractive person).

“Of course, in Las Vegas, this experience was a privilege for white men only. Hotels and casinos were segregated, even as black workers staffed the casinos, pools and kitchens. It wasn’t until civil rights pressure, combined with Frank Sinatra’s intervention on behalf of Sammy Davis Jnr, that the city slowly opened up to black consumers.”

More recently, the music-driven disco revolution propelled nightlife forward, fuelled by celebrities such as Andy Warhol, and drugs and fashion.

“Disco offered escapism and joy at a time when decrepit New York was on the brink of bankruptcy and growing more unsafe by the year. It brings to mind the hedonism of Weimar Berlin, when nightlife obscured the bombed-out cityscape,” Willetts writes.

This is a book crammed full of personalities, anecdotes and detail after detail. While it does bring certain periods to life, I found much of the most recent material rather tedious, probably because of my own lack of interest in, and appreciation of, the modern music trends.

Others may relate more to these post-disco waves and find the narrative more absorbing. Willetts herself suggests that the world is waiting for something fresher, more exciting to reignite nocturnal partying.

“The 90s techno aesthetic still dominates club culture today. Decades later, we are still choosing to dance to electronic dance music in gritty warehouses. It can feel as though nightlife is stuck. Between 1965 and 1995, nightlife was in constant flux. From 1995 to 2025 and the time of writing, it has barely changed,” she writes.

She blames a lot of this stagnation in nightlife on social media.

“Smartphones are ruining our nights out … our obsession with documentation combined with the knowledge that any misdemeanour could be captured, shared and posted (and worse, go viral) is the death of chaos and spontaneity. Smartphones have contributed to flake culture and an embarrassed reluctance to give stuff a go,” she writes.

However, she does close this book on an optimistic note: “The future of going out lies not in more sophisticated gadgetry, but in returning to its fundamental promise: uninhibited fun, self-expression and connection after dark.

“A good night out looks different at different stages of life, but there will always be something profoundly magical about getting dressed up, stepping out after dark, and losing yourself in esoteric, weird conversations or the thrill of music. There’s no better feeling.

“So, put on a song that makes you want to dance all night. Then go do just that.”

Business Day

The auditor-general’s damning finding to parliament summed it up: “I draw attention to note 32 to the financial statements, which indicates that a net loss of R145.7bn was incurred during the year ended 31 March 2026 and, as of that date, the total liabilities exceeded its total assets by R439.49bn.

“As stated in note 32, these … indicate that a material uncertainty exists that may cast significant doubt on the entity’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

The facts below suggest this is an understated description of the problem. Any private sector insurer facing such an assessment would be forced to close. But the RAF cannot simply be closed: it has a vital role in compensating people injured in motor vehicle accidents and supporting bereaved families.

Its acting CEO at the time the report was drafted, Radikwena Phora, who is now chief internal audit officer, described that role as a “deeply human purpose”. He is right about the purpose, but the fund’s results give little reason to believe it is achieving it.

Consider that the RAF’s net liability position of about R439bn is equivalent to 18%-19% of South Africa’s 2026 budget — about a fifth of the cost of running the country. Eskom’s debt is about R320bn and Transnet’s borrowings total about R155bn.

The RAF’s liabilities exceed its assets by an amount comparable to those two figures combined. On the present trajectory its net liability position could exceed their combined debt in 2026/27.

The RAF’s net liability position is more than 5% of South Africa’s GDP. The fund owes compensation to 288,000 claimants whose claims are awaiting finalisation. More than 59% have waited five years or longer for settlement.

The prescribed statutory interest rate is about 10% a year. Interest on unsettled claims could therefore add substantially to the RAF’s current obligations, depending on how many claims attract interest.

On the figures cited here, the annual increase in outstanding losses could be R10bn-R40bn — as high as 80% of the fund’s annual income, before operating costs or claim payments.

To put the shortfall in perspective, the fuel levy allocated to the RAF would have to rise from R2.27/l to about R20/l to cover it. Even spreading the shortfall settlement between assets and liabilities over five years would imply a levy of about R4/l each year.

The uncomfortable truth is that the RAF is broken and possibly beyond repair. As its own annual report states: “Given its crucial role in compensating individuals affected by motor vehicle accidents, the RAF holds a crucial position within South Africa’s public service framework ... it embodies a deeply human purpose serving injured persons … and households whose lives have been irrevocably changed by road trauma.”

It has failed, and continues to fail, to deliver on these noble ideas. The reporting improvements and measures described in the accounts bring to mind the saying “the operation was a success, but the patient died”. Accident victims may survive physically, but delays in settling claims can leave them and their families in financial distress, with serious consequences for dependants and household stability.

The department of transport’s failure to address the RAF’s rising liabilities and costs raises serious questions about whether it should continue overseeing the fund. Transport minister Barbara Creecy moved to change the board, but the department’s leadership has also failed to respond adequately to repeated adverse audit opinions from the auditor-general and advice from the Accounting Standards Board.

The RAF maintains that it should report as a social benefits fund, a position that would allow it not to recognise outstanding claims. But failing to report those obligations does not make them disappear. Yet the RAF leadership, its board and senior officials in the transport ministry accepted an approach that excluded claims not yet being negotiated or settled.

The RAF receives claims like an insurer, assesses them like an insurer and settles them like an insurer. It should therefore be structured and supervised like an insurer. The right expertise and regulatory focus should oversee the RAF. The correct move is to place the RAF under the finance ministry and apply insurance-focused standards, regulation and expertise.

But changing the reporting line alone will not be enough. The existing claims process needs fundamental reform. New claims appear to enter a system in which they have little prospect of being handled promptly. At the present performance level more than half of people injured in 2026 could wait more than five years for settlement. That is unacceptable.

The RAF needs help. It is foolish and unreasonable to expect the supervising body that failed to prevent the problems to now fix them. The collective expertise of short-term insurers — through the South African Insurance Association — should be sought.

The debate over changing the RAF’s funding model distracts from the more urgent problem. It is a classic example of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The fuel levy is a direct and efficient way to collect revenue from road users: broadly, the more people use the roads, the more they contribute. The levy also limits administrative complexity and opportunities for fraud.

Electric vehicles present a legitimate funding question, but one possible response is to charge them a higher annual licence fee. These fees would not be around R1,500, as recently suggested, but closer to R3,675. The claim that foreign motorists do not contribute is also misplaced: they pay the levy when they buy fuel in South Africa.

The priority should be twofold: first, accelerate finalising the 288,000 unsettled claims and second, ensure the RAF settles claims fairly and promptly so it can fulfil its human purpose. Patching up a system that needs fundamental replacement will not achieve that.

Reform should address both existing claims and future ones: ringfence the RAF’s historic liabilities and create a new, insurance-structured entity, subject to appropriate oversight by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority and Prudential Authority.

South Africa’s record of service delivery and accountability to injured people is shameful. It is time for change. Leaders in the departments of transport and finance, and in the insurance industry, should speak up for people whose voices go unheard.

Murphy, who previously held CEO roles in South African reinsurance companies, sits on a number of boards.

Various sectors of the trade union movement are starting to show wide internal cracks (“When did Numsa’s top brass last meet? Leaders want court order”, October 16).

First we saw Cosatu having to cancel its AGM, leading to court cases and a major leadership rift, and now we see the largest union in Saftu starting to fall apart.

In “the Battle for Cosatu (2016)” former Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven pointed out the fault lines in the local trade union movement. Today these fault lines are yawning chasms.

Organised labour got too involved in the politics of the day, with its leaders scrambling for positions of power in both government and the tripartite alliance. Now, with local government elections looming, trade union officials are still putting their names forward for positions within political parties.

Trade unions must go back to their original mandate, which is to serve their members, many of whom are desperate for advice and representation. They complain that shop stewards are not trained and union officials never get back to them.

It is only the bargaining council system that allows the unions to survive, because they have legal powers to insist that all employees within companies under the auspices of the relevant bargaining council must join a particular union.

It is time for South Africa to rethink the bargaining council system so that unions stand on their own two feet and go back to their original calling.

At least Cosatu has, at its latest gathering, given its blessing for members to vote in the local government elections for the candidates they believe will be most efficient in bringing service delivery to their communities.

Michael Bagraim, MP

DA employment & labour spokesperson

Precision fermentation offers hope for housing and food security

On November 4 we will elect the town and city councils that decide what may be built where. Voters should think carefully about farmland.

Councils guard farmland jealously, with reason. But our housing backlog now runs to about 2.6-million units, while farmland on town edges sits locked behind outdated rezoning rules.

Precision fermentation offers a way out. Microbes brew proteins such as whey, egg white and collagen now taken from animals. Most cheese rennet and baking enzymes are made this way. In May US regulators cleared the first fermented animal protein for pet food.

The Western Cape is well placed. Cape corridor wind and solar farms are often curtailed because the grid cannot take their power. Plants beside them would turn wasted electricity into exportable protein and skilled jobs.

Every tonne brewed rather than grazed frees up farmland. Measure it, credit it and let developers retire those credits to win rezoning, much as English developers must now prove biodiversity gains. Food capacity is protected and land released for homes, with no subsidy.

So ask your candidates: will you release farmland for housing where its food output is replaced?

Robin Louis Ducret

Franschhoek

Australia’s model raises questions about SA’s chicken self-sufficiency

With a population of about 27-million, less than half of South Africa’s, Australia produces about 1.6-million tonnes of chicken annually and is virtually self-sufficient.

Australians consume an average of 54kg each year, substantially more than South Africans, despite their country’s highly successful beef and lamb industries.

South Africa produces about 1.7-million tonnes of chicken annually, yet imports feature prominently in discussions about the industry’s ability to meet domestic demand. Yet the composition of those imports tells a different story (“No more duties on EU chicken, urge meat importers”, October 13.

In 2025 South Africa imported about 205,000 tonnes of mechanically deboned meat (MDM), which is not manufactured locally on a meaningful commercial scale. Imports excluding MDM amounted to about 167,000 tonnes, including offal, feet, livers and other products.

Conventional chicken portions competing directly with locally produced chicken therefore represented only a relatively small proportion of total poultry imports.

Australia’s exceptionally stringent biosecurity requirements undoubtedly contribute to its self-sufficiency, and the two countries operate under different economic circumstances. Nevertheless, the comparison raises an important question.

If Australia can produce virtually all the chicken required by a population consuming substantially more per person, why should South Africa, with more than twice the population and a well-established poultry industry, not be capable of meeting its own requirements for conventional chicken?

This is neither an argument against imports nor a plea for greater protection. Competition and consumer affordability remain essential. It is simply a reminder that production capacity, import volumes and dependence on imports are three quite different things.

South Africa may be considerably closer to self-sufficiency in conventional chicken than the headline import figures suggest.

David Wolpert

Sydney, Australia

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businessday.co.za. Letters of more than 200 words may be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.

The measures form part of a broader effort to improve the capacity of law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Godongwana said an additional R2.2bn over the medium term would be provided to enhance the independence of the judiciary.

The allocation, announced in Wednesday’s medium-term budget policy statement, is aimed at renewing the police fleet. Godongwana said crime and corruption weakened governance, diverted public funds intended for service delivery and raised the cost of doing business.

Read: IN FULL | Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s MTBPS speech

“In addition to the allocations to the Border Management Authority this year, we are also increasing the number of labour inspectors. The government is also considering measures to strengthen the capacity of the border inspectorate and the immigration officers to address our challenges with illegal migration,” Godongwana said.

The adjustments budget also includes R823m for the deployment of the South African National Defence Force to assist police in tackling gang-related crime and illegal mining.

“These efforts are complemented by measures to establish the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption Ombud Office and strengthen the Information Regulator. Police funding is being redirected to forensics to reduce backlogs and improve investigations,” the Treasury said in Wednesday’s medium-term budget policy statement.

A further R186m has been allocated to forensic and investigative capacity as part of the government’s response to gender-based violence and femicide.

Read: State allocates R21.8bn to boost local government services

The adjustments budget also allocates R516m to the Madlanga, Kampepe and Nkabinde commissions of inquiry, which are examining matters of public accountability and the functioning of state institutions. The funding is included in the government’s in-year expenditure adjustments for 2026/27.

The R516m allocation matters because commissions of inquiry require funding to gather evidence, hear testimony and produce findings that can inform decisions on accountability and possible further action. The funding ensures the Madlanga, Kampepe and Nkabinde commissions can continue their work.

Business Day

This is in addition to the R12bn identified in the 2026 budget.

The additional funds will be spent on child nutrition, combating violence against women, strengthening safety and security, and supporting economic development, the MTBPS said.

Read: IN FULL | Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s MTBPS speech

The Tars initiative aims to improve the quality and impact of spending. It was introduced in the 2025 MTBPS with the aim of identifying programmes that were not cost-effective, did not deliver on their objectives, or were low priority, and to reduce or close them. Savings from the programme would be used for higher priority spending and better service delivery.

Savings of R13.1bn in social grant expenditure over the medium term is projected through improved administration and beneficiary biometric verification. The number of social grant beneficiaries is expected to decline from 17.8-million in 2026/27 to 17.1-million by 2029/30, generating savings of R6.2bn.

Read: Treasury cuts 2026 growth forecast but says economy shows resilience

“These savings will be reprioritised to prevent gender-based violence and femicide and to support health-sector interventions to combat child malnutrition and stunting,” the MTBPS said.

In addition, savings of R7.8bn will be achieved over the next three years by pausing the poorly implemented human settlements development grant pending the development of an alternative model.

Over the medium term, savings of R11.7bn will also be obtained from national departments through the focus on priorities and boosting efficiency, including savings from:

• modernising technology;
• cutting administration expenses; and
• reducing duplication in rural development programmes.

Cash surpluses of R5.5bn accumulated in some public entities will be transferred to the National Revenue Fund in 2027/28.

Government also introduced an early retirement and voluntary exit programme to manage the public sector wage bill, rejuvenate the public service and support fiscal sustainability, which the MTBPS said would generate projected net savings of R4.3bn in 2027/28, R4.4bn in 2028/29 and R4.6bn in 2029/30.

“This average annual saving of about R4.4bn translates into a fiscal capacity to fund about 7,101 additional posts to support critical frontline areas or address spending pressures without breaching existing compensation ceilings,” the MTBPS said.

So far 27,450 applications under the programme have been approved.

The audit process to identify ghost workers in national and provincial departments — announced in the 2025 budget — had flagged 4,323 high-risk, suspicious cases in the payroll system.

Business Day

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South Africa now expects revenue for 2026/27 to be R17.1bn higher than forecast in February, driven by better collections from corporate tax, dividends tax and VAT, finance minister Enoch Godongwana said on Wednesday.

A large portion of the improvement is due to higher commodity prices and these gains are expected to dissipate over the medium term, Godongwana said in a speech to parliament, where he tabled the National Treasury’s medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS). Overall, gross tax revenue is projected to increase from R2.14-trillion this year to R2.53-trillion in 2029/30.

Read: IN FULL | Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s MTBPS speech

In addition to the upward revision to estimated tax revenue collection for 2026/27, mineral and petroleum royalties have been revised up by R6.8bn, while departmental revenue is now expected to be R14.3bn, including unattributed cash surpluses from public entities, the MTBPS says. In total, tax and non-tax revenue and national revenue fund receipts are R54.1bn above the February budget estimate.

But fuel levy collections have been weak, pulled down mainly by the temporary general fuel levy relief implemented between April and June 2026. Taxes in the “other category” are lower due to the repeal of the electricity generation levy from January 1 2026.

In-year non-tax revenue is revised up, driven by higher projected mineral and petroleum royalties and interest earned on cash reserves held to service large near-term bond repayments. In addition, unattributed accumulated surpluses in public entities will be surrendered to the national revenue fund as well as R10bn that had been transferred to the Central Energy Fund in 2025/2026 for temporary fuel price relief.

By end-September 2026, the South African Revenue Service (Sars) had collected tax debt of R52.4bn out of a projected R126bn overall for 2026/27.

“Sars continues to strengthen revenue administration and improve compliance. Sars is also playing a key role in the government’s efforts to combat the illicit economy, particularly in alcohol and tobacco,” Godongwana said in his speech.

Read: Treasury cuts 2026 growth forecast but says economy shows resilience

The National Treasury’s efforts to limit bailouts of state-owned entities, to fund new commitments responsibly and prioritise investment over unsustainable consumption were beginning to pay off, he said, with debt as a percentage of GDP now falling and creating a stronger foundation for investment, growth and job creation.

Earlier this year, all three major global credit rating agencies announced positive rating actions on South Africa, despite a challenging global environment, he noted, adding: “The fiscal space created through disciplined budgeting allows us to protect front-line services, preserve the jobs of teachers, doctors and nurses, while protecting the social wage for the most vulnerable.”

In a foreword to the MTBPS, the finance minister said South Africa had “emerged from the fiscal wilderness”.

“Government is meeting its fiscal targets and restoring the public finances to good health. Debt stabilised last year. For three years, government has run primary surpluses — collecting more revenue than we spend, excluding interest costs. We will continue to build these surpluses to the end of the decade, reducing our borrowing needs and debt-service costs, and creating fiscal space,” he added.

The government’s efforts to improve the value of each rand of spending have yielded R38.1bn in savings, which over the medium term had been redirected to priorities including child nutrition, combating violence against women, strengthening safety and security, and supporting economic development, the Treasury said.

The fiscal strategy aims to reduce debt over the rest of the decade by running a growing primary surplus, where revenue exceeds non-interest expenditure by a widening margin.

The government is on track to achieve these objectives despite heightened global uncertainty, the Treasury said in the MTBPS. The primary surplus is expected to grow from 1.7% of GDP in the 2026/27 financial year to 2.9% in 2029/30.

The deficit on the main budget — the difference between total revenue and total expenditure and the most common measure of government’s fiscal stance — moderates from 3.7% of GDP in 2026/27 to 2.5% in 2029/30.

The deficit on the consolidated budget, which consists of total spending by the national and provincial governments, social security funds and selected public entities, including transfers and subsidies to municipalities — will narrow from 3.9% in 2026/27 to 2.5% by 2029/30.

After debt stabilised at 78.4% of GDP in 2025/26, the Treasury aims to reduce the debt ratio over the rest of the decade by continuing to grow the primary surplus and narrowing the budget deficit, the MTPBS says.

Read: Tax revenue projections up R17.1bn for 2026-27

“Government is on course to achieve these objectives despite heightened global volatility. Lower debt levels will reduce borrowing costs and improve investor sentiment, supporting higher public and private investment, and stronger growth and job creation,” it said.

But debt-service costs remain far too high, and over the medium term, the government will spend more on debt costs than it will on health, social development or basic education. To manage these costs down over time, the primary surplus will continue to grow.

“The fiscal strategy is on track. Over the medium term, government will entrench fiscal discipline in law and reduce debt-service costs as a share of revenue, while growing the share of expenditure allocated to capital infrastructure to support economic growth,” it said.

Risks to the fiscal outlook include weaker-than-expected global and domestic economic growth, higher borrowing costs, volatility in gross tax revenue, the financial health of state-owned companies and the impact of El Niño.

Business Day

This is as the state seeks to tighten controls over public service salary payments.

The final results of the ghost worker audit will help establish the extent of any improper salary payments and whether the verification drive can deliver measurable savings for the state.

Read: IN FULL | Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s MTBPS speech

National Treasury is consolidating the findings of several government verification initiatives and will provide a final account of suspected ghost workers by the 2027 budget, according to the government’s latest update on efforts to curb wasteful spending and contain the wage bill.

“Government has implemented a series of measures to address high unit costs and spending pressures in the public service wage bill,” the National Treasury said in Wednesday’s medium-term budget policy statement.

“These initiatives also aim to professionalise public administration, eradicate irregular spending and ensure every rand allocated to compensation yields a tangible return in service delivery.”

The 4,323 cases identified so far are suspicious rather than confirmed instances of fraud. The final number of ghost workers, the potential financial losses and any money recovered have not yet been established.

The audit, announced in the 2025, is being conducted by the National Treasury and the department of public service and administration.

It uses a data-driven approach to identify payment irregularities across government, including individuals whose details cannot be verified against official records.

Read: Treasury cuts 2026 growth forecast but says economy shows resilience

An online verification platform developed in partnership with the department of home affairs enabled officials to check employee information in real time.

The process, guided by a National Treasury instruction that took effect on June 15 2026, remained open for two months before closing on August 15.

The platform was intended to complement physical verification exercises conducted by the department of public service and administration. The National Treasury is also working with the Financial Intelligence Centre to investigate high-risk officials, with findings expected to be reported in the 2027 budget.

The audit is part of a broader effort to improve public spending efficiency as the government faces pressure to fund frontline services while managing a large and costly public administration.

Compensation of employees accounts for nearly one-third of consolidated government expenditure, according to Treasury’s 2026 budget review. Weak payroll controls can therefore expose the fiscus to significant losses if salaries are paid to people who are not entitled to receive them.

The government has said employees who cannot be physically verified will have their salaries withheld and their employment status suspended, pending the verification process.

The findings will be important in determining whether the suspected cases reflect fraudulent payments, outdated employee records, administrative errors or other irregularities. Identifying a high-risk case does not, by itself, establish that a crime has occurred.

Parliament’s portfolio committee on public service and administration has previously called for detailed reporting on the audit, including the number of ghost workers confirmed and removed from the payroll, the amounts recovered and any prosecutions resulting from the investigations.

Alongside the payroll audit, the government has introduced an incentivised early retirement and voluntary exit programme aimed at reducing long-term compensation costs and creating opportunities to recruit younger employees at lower salary levels.

Read: Government responds to pleas for fuel price relief

A total of 27,450 applications have been approved under the two phases of the programme, according to the latest government figures. After accounting for initial exit costs, the programme is projected to generate net savings of R4.3bn in 2027/28, R4.4bn in 2028/29 and R4.6bn in 2029/30.

The government estimates replacing departing employees with younger recruits at lower entry-level salary notches can produce an average permanent saving of R110,097 per employee annually. The savings are expected to create room for additional personnel in priority sectors, including basic education, health, correctional services and policing.

“Major frontline sectors such as defence, correctional services, education and agriculture all display average savings exceeding R100 000 per employee per year, validating the fiscal logic of the programme,” National Treasury said.

“Savings remain allocated in the baselines of departments. These savings will allow the basic education sector to potentially add 2,860 personnel, health 841, correctional services 709 and the police 376 over and above the initial replacements of employees who exited.”

Despite the measures, the compensation budget is projected to increase by an average of R29.9bn, or 3.9%, annually over the 2027 medium-term expenditure framework period, rising from R760.7bn in 2026/27 to R850bn in 2029/30.

Business Day

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A parliament committee meeting report 19 years ago came in handy for former justice minister Brigitte Mabandla, who is challenging allegations that she asked former acting National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Silas Ramaite to halt prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes.

Mabandla, who was the minister of justice during former president Thabo Mbeki’s tenure, appeared before the Khampepe commission, which on Wednesday discussed whether there was political influence in the NPA’s failure to prosecute cases from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Ramaite told the commission that Mabandla had called him on November 11 2004 and told him the prosecution of all TRC-related cases must be put on hold until the development and adoption of guidelines for prosecutions. The policy was finalised in 2006.

Ramaite said that when he received the call, Anton Ackermann, who headed an NPA special unit at the time, decided that three former security police officers, Maj-Gen Christoffel Smith, Col Gert Otto and Johannes van Staden, should be arrested and charged for the attempted murder by poisoning of Rev Frank Chikane in 1989.

Earlier call

Ramaite said that before Mabandla’s call, he had received one from Ackermann, who told him he had been contacted by Jan Wagener, an attorney representing the three suspects, advising him not to proceed with the arrests.

Ramaite said Wagener indicated the NPA would receive a call from the justice ministry to hold off on the arrests of his clients.

“I deny that I instructed Dr Ramaite as alleged. It is unheard of that a minister would call to discuss a matter of this nature with an official over the phone,” Mabandla told the commission.

She said that at the time the usual method of communication from her office to NPA head office was through memorandums.

“I also would never have called Dr Ramaite for an instruction concerning the work of the NPA regarding who and when to prosecute,” she said.

“Confidentiality in the security cluster was of paramount importance. Receiving and making phone calls about the work of that cluster was generally avoided because of the possibility of interceptions. For that reason, I would never have called Dr Ramaite about work that is subject matter before the security cluster.

“I also did not instruct Dr Ramaite to stop prosecuting TRC cases. I had no authority to give such an instruction.”

Minutes of meeting

Mabandla referred the commission to parliamentary committee meeting minutes from May 3 2007, in which former NPA head Vusi Pikoli and Ackermann were asked about the cause of delays in prosecutions of TRC cases.

The minutes read: “Ackermann personally declined to prosecute 92 cases. Sixteen were identified for investigation and potential prosecution. On 9 November 2004, Ackermann was stopped when trying to arrest three security policemen and charge them with poisoning of identified people. Dr Ramaite had instructed him not to proceed with the arrest, but rather to formulate guidelines how prosecutions should be conducted.”

The minutes further state: “Whenever there was an attempt to charge members of the former police services, there was political intervention, and effectively the NPA was being held to ransom by the former generals.”

Mabandla said the meeting’s minutes show that Ramaite made the call to stop prosecutions two days before her alleged call.

“This shows, amongst other things, that Dr Ramaite had already stopped the arrest of perpetrators and thus the prosecution of TRC cases on November 9, 2004, prior to the alleged phone call and instruction by me, which I deny, on November 11 2004,” she said.

Asked whether she knew Wagener, Mabandla responded: “I do not know him. I have never even heard the name until I started reading these papers.”

She also said there had never been any identification of any staff member in her office who made such a call.

Mabandla will return to the commission for cross-examination.

Business Day

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National Treasury will soon publish draft legislative proposals for a fiscal anchor for public comment that will require each administration to prepare a fiscal plan which sets out its fiscal objectives and targets in line with its electoral mandate.

This will mean that fiscal discipline to entrench fiscal sustainability will be written into law.

In line with previous statements by National Treasury — which indicated in the February budget that its fiscal anchor plans would be disclosed in the medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) tabled in parliament on Wednesday — the fiscal anchor will be principles-based, rather than impose numerical rules as favoured by credit rating agencies.

Read: IN FULL | Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s MTBPS speech

The proposal for a fiscal anchor, which Treasury said in the MTBPS formed part of “the most extensive reconfiguration of the public finance system since 1999”, has been in the pipeline for several years and has been widely consulted on.

In his speech in the National Assembly, finance minister Enoch Godongwana said the draft law was expected to be tabled in Parliament in 2027. He said the approach adopted by the National Treasury “preserves flexibility in changing economic conditions while strengthening transparency, accountability and fiscal discipline”.

“Most importantly, it helps to ensure that developmental priorities and constitutional obligations are pursued at a pace that public finances can sustain.”

The MTBPS said the fiscal anchor would formally define fiscal sustainability “as the ability of the state under reasonable macroeconomic and fiscal assumptions to meet its present and future expenditure and debt-service obligations and to manage its fiscal risks, without undermining macroeconomic stability and without requiring an unrealistically large or abrupt future correction to revenue or expenditure”.

Read: Government responds to pleas for fuel price relief

The fiscal sustainability standard will be set out in amendments to the Public Finance Management Act and the government will have to explain to parliament how it is adhering to the standard. The law governing the processing of money bills by parliament will also be amended to accommodate the fiscal anchor plan.

“Following each general election, the cabinet of the incoming administration will be required to approve a fiscal plan setting out its objectives, strategy, main assumptions and risks. The government will be required to explain how its policy choices support fiscal sustainability and report against the plan through the Budget Review and MTBPS, including reasons for and responses to material departures,” the MTBPS said.

“The framework established binding duties to disclose, assess and explain. Each government will retain responsibility for its fiscal choices.”

The Financial and Fiscal Commission (FFC), which evaluates and comments on fiscal policy, will assess the sustainability plan and the credibility of its forecasts. The FFC Act will be amended to facilitate this.

Read: Treasury cuts 2026 growth forecast but says economy shows resilience

The fiscal anchor, the MTBPS said, would “embed prudent management of the public finances across administrations”.

The February Budget Review in motivating for a fiscal anchor stressed that “without sustainable public finances, debt services costs will consume ever more of the economy’s available resources, eroding investment, productive capacity and living standards”.

In March 2025 the Treasury released a Fiscal Anchors Discussion Document for public comment. Consultations were held with a broad spectrum of stakeholders. The discussion document outlined how slow economic growth and persistent budget deficits had led to a tripling of public debt over the last 15 years. This had forced the government to spend more on interest payments, crowding out services and investment.

The document proposed two reform options — a numerical fiscal rule, and a parliamentary procedures mode.

The aim of a fiscal anchor was to strengthen the sustainability, credibility, and transparency of South Africa’s fiscal framework.

Business Day

Dubai — The US state department is preparing to issue an ordered departure of some personnel and family members from US embassies across the Gulf region, three US officials said on Wednesday.

The move was due to a possible resumption of hostilities, particularly with Iran-aligned Houthi militia in Yemen, two of the US officials said.

The US embassy in Riyadh issued a security alert on Wednesday about possible further attacks by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia, after recent deadly strikes including on Riyadh’s airport.

Two of the US officials said the ordered departures would potentially involve the evacuation of all personnel and their families from the US mission to Saudi Arabia.

A judge in New Mexico ordered Meta Platforms to pay $25bn on Wednesday after a jury found the company had misled consumers in a case arising from allegations that a political consulting firm involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign obtained data from ‌millions of Facebook users without their consent.

The state’s attorney-general had sued Meta in 2021 following revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, had harvested personal data from as many as 87-million Facebook users through a third-party app.

The state accused Meta of lying to Facebook users in New Mexico about who had access to their data, how the company handles hate speech and misinformation posted on the platform and other internal policies.

The company knew that third parties had broad access to users’ personal data, and it tolerated hate speech or other harmful content when it benefited the company’s bottom line, the state said.

Jurors on September 25 found that 26 of 29 statements made by the company and its leadership on those issues were misleading. They said the company had committed more than 43-million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws, based on the number of Facebook users or New Mexico residents who were the audience for each misleading statement.

State law allows a penalty of up to $5,000 per violation and directs that all the money go to New Mexico’s school system, New Mexico ⁠attorney-general Raúl Torrez told reporters after the verdict.

At a hearing on October 1, Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, had asked Mathew to award the state between $35bn and $40bn, saying that would be supported by the US constitution’s protections on due process and the jury’s verdict.

“This court should speak to Meta in the only language it understands, which is money, and the value of its stock price,” McGinn said.

In court filings, Meta urged Mathew to cap the penalties at $3.45bn, saying a higher penalty runs the risk of scaring businesses out of the state. The evidence showed that Meta does not sell user data, and New Mexico did not prove that any consumer had actually been misled, the company said in court filings.

Second verdict in six months

The verdict was the second in six months by a Santa Fe jury in a lawsuit brought by the state of New Mexico against Meta Platforms.

In the first trial, which ended in March, a Santa Fe jury ​found Meta misled users ⁠about young users’ safety on its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms and ordered the company to pay $375m in civil penalties.

After a second phase of that trial, a judge directed the company to pay $567m into a New Mexico fund for teen mental health and ordered Meta to implement measures to protect teen Facebook and Instagram users in New Mexico.

Business Day TV discusses the MTBPS and its implications for the economy and public finances with Annabel Bishop, chief economist at Investec; Mpho Molopyane, chief economist at Alexforbes; and Maarten Ackerman, chief economist at Citadel.

Business Day TV

Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez accused the US on Wednesday of threatening member states of the UN with sanctions should they side with Cuba in next week’s annual ​UN vote on a resolution calling for an end to a US embargo on ‌the island.

“The US state department is exerting unprecedented pressure — at times in a personal and brazen manner by the secretary of state himself — to get UN member states to change their votes,” Rodriguez said.

Tensions between the two nations are soaring ahead of the ​vote on the non-binding resolution, which has passed in favour of Cuba in the UN General Assembly ⁠by wide margins every year since 1992.

Rodriguez told reporters at a press conference in Havana that US officials had threatened to deny visas and impose trade and economic sanctions on UN members that side with Cuba at the UN.

The US state department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the allegations.

US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz earlier this week called on countries to vote against the resolution supporting Cuba, calling it “an excuse to justify (Cuba’s) oppression, to justify the misery of the Cuban people”.

The UN vote to condemn the US blockade is expected to take place on October 27-28, officials said.

The US has imposed a trade embargo on Cuba for more than 60 years.

The administration of US President Donald Trump, however, has ramped up pressure on Cuba since January, imposing a fuel blockade on the island and stiff sanctions against a swath of Cuban officials and state entities.

The ​UN vote against the US blockade can carry ​political weight, but only ⁠the US Congress can lift the Cold War-era embargo.

Reuters

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Marco Jansen has grabbed the spotlight in this second Test, after shunning it a week ago and to look like the player Dale Steyn regards as “currently the best cricketer in the world”.

There were 85 runs off Jansen’s bat, he claimed five wickets in Australia’s first innings and held onto an excellent running catch on Wednesday, to stamp his authority on the match at St George’s Park.

It is a quirk of Jansen’s personality that he has the physical attributes to be a main character, but when pushed into the role, he has not been able to perform his best.

These two Tests against Australia have illustrated as much. Jansen had to lead the attack in Durban last week, when Kagiso Rabada was missing, and besides a spell after lunch on the first day when he delivered a devastating one-two punch to dismiss Steve Smith, he appeared bereft.

In Gqeberha, with Rabada back in situ, Jansen has been in alpha mode. His aggressive intent provided momentum to the South African innings and relieved the pressure on Temba Bavuma at a crucial time in the first session on day three.

Marco Jansen is currently the best cricketer in the world.

— Dale Steyn (@DaleSteyn62) October 21, 2026

It was the period where the match turned and by Wednesday Jansen was ensuring that the direction it took was one that would end with South Africa winning.

Much work remains before that journey is completed. Australia still have six second innings wickets in hand, though there are doubts about Steve Smith, who was being treated for a neck problem while he was batting in Australia’s first innings. He did not come out in his usual No 4 spot in the follow-on innings. Australia still trail by 170 runs and will hope that one of their great batters ― who became the third from that country to reach 11,000 Test runs ― is able to play a part on the final day to help rescue this Test.

The Proteas are also a man down with Anrich Nortjé being assessed for a right groin injury.

It made Jansen’s contribution, especially in the 20 minutes before lunch on Wednesday, so crucial. Smith and Australia’s hero from the first Test, Matt Renshaw, had staved off the Proteas for more than an hour when Bavuma asked Jansen to get him a breakthrough before the interval.

He got two. Renshaw, so obstinate in Durban, could not get on top of a delivery that bounced sharply, found the edge of his bat, and presented Simon Harmer with his third catch of the innings, diving forward in the gully.

Renshaw misjudges a straight one 🤯

📺 Stream #SAvAUS on DStv: https://t.co/rM90YyQxaw pic.twitter.com/j0TtOMtaYr

— SuperSport 🏆 (@SuperSportTV) October 21, 2026

Alex Carey, who attempted a shot he would quickly want to forget, two balls later was the fourth and Jansen secured his fifth wicket after lunch when Beau Webster edged another steepling delivery to give Aiden Markram a catch at second slip. His 5/33 was the fifth five-wicket haul of a Test career in which he has now taken 98 wickets.

The only blemish on an otherwise outstanding day was Jansen’s dropping of Travis Head, in the gully, when the Australian opener was on five.

But he played a big role in building the pressure that led to the wicket of Marnus Labuschagne after tea. First he troubled Labuschagne, who had been scoring freely against Wiaan Mulder, with a shorter length and tighter line. Harmer had started to get the ball spinning, and was unlucky when a referral by Labuschagne for lbw, was overturned, with replays showing the ball spinning past the leg stump.

But Labuschagne was unsettled and Jansen produced his next big intervention, with an excellently judged catch over his left shoulder while running back from midwicket.

Harmer, who made 82 on Tuesday, has justified the selectors’ decision to back him over Keshav Maharaj for this Test. Besides those runs, he took three catches and added the wicket of Webster, 20 minutes before stumps on Wednesday, deceiving the all-rounder with a beautiful off-break, and trapping him lbw.

Rabada claimed two wickets, deceiving Renshaw, in the second innings, with a ball that brushed the pad and clipped the left-hander’s off-stump.

The Australians, who will resume on 156/4 will hope someone can lend Head support on the last day. The opener was on 87 at stumps, with Scott Boland, who had also come in as nightwatchman in the first innings, doing so again in the second, not out on two having faced 23 balls.

Athens — Two police officers and two members of the public were injured in an explosion at a building in central Athens, Greek police said on Wednesday.

All four were taken away in ambulances, police said in a statement.

A police official who declined to be named said the explosion occurred when officers reached the building in the area of Kolonos and picked up a backpack thought to contain drugs.

Police had earlier received a call from a resident and the manager of the building notifying them of the suspected drugs at the building’s entrance. They later found parts of an explosive device.

The bomb went off as police inspected the backpack and was potentially activated remotely, a second police official said.

The manager was also injured in the blast, which police are not treating as a terrorist act, the first police official added. The murder unit is leading the investigation.

Reuters

The negotiations in a grand imperial palace in St Petersburg, the ninth time that Witkoff has met Putin in person, began with a goodwill gesture from Russia ― the release of Stephen Hubbard, a retired US school teacher held in Russia whom US President Trump had asked the Kremlin chief to release.

Wednesday’s encounter unfolded amid concerns in Kyiv and among its allies that the US is backing away from Ukraine, at times holding back real-time intelligence on Russian attacks and hobbling Ukraine’s military communications.

The latest talks also came more than two years since Trump promised in his successful election campaign to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours.

The Kremlin said the new three-way peace talks, which would be at a technical level, could take place in Abu Dhabi and would focus on how to guarantee the security of Ukraine and Russia once the war ended. They could begin sometime on or after November 10, it said. The last US-mediated ​peace ⁠talks took place in February before the US and ⁠Israel ​launched a war ​against Iran.

The Kremlin was less upbeat, however, about the outcome of talks Witkoff had held a day earlier in Oslo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the leaders of Finland and Norway, and European and Nato representatives. Witkoff told Putin the talks had been characterised by “some degree of momentum” and a US official said Ukraine had brought new ideas and proposals.

“These nuances, so to speak, do not entirely satisfy us,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters after the St Petersburg meeting, which lasted nearly three hours.

Possible peace deal

Ukraine and Russia remain far apart when it comes to the terms of any possible peace deal, though Trump has recently intensified pressure on Ukraine to strike some kind of a deal. He said on Tuesday it was time for Ukraine to end the war or face “a very bad thing”.

Putin also used Wednesday’s talks to offer to help Trump deal with Iran, saying Russia had a decades-long relationship with Tehran, which it has repeatedly offered to leverage to address US concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme. Putin told Witkoff it was possible and necessary to get a deal with Tehran, the Kremlin said.

Russia could also supply vast quantities of fertiliser to the US to help US farmers, the Russian president told Witkoff.

A potential meeting in China next month with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was also discussed. The Kremlin said Beijing was already preparing what it said would be the first meeting of its kind in history.

No compromises

Putin has shown few signs of compromising on his central war aims, which include full Russian control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, no Nato membership for Kyiv and an overall peace deal rather than a temporary ceasefire.

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special investment envoy, was also present at the talks with Witkoff and the Kremlin said that major joint economic projects had been discussed, including some that were close to being realised.

Witkoff said he had brought some documents with him containing various ideas for a potential peace deal for Putin to review, and that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, also wanted to convey some ideas to Putin. Kushner later joined the meeting remotely by phone.

Zelensky said he hoped to discuss key issues on how to end the war during a trilateral meeting with Putin and Trump.

The Kremlin has repeatedly said that any Putin-Zelensky meeting would need to be painstakingly prepared in advance by aides to make it worthwhile.

Fraying US-Ukraine ties

US-Ukraine ties have deteriorated sharply since Trump announced a diesel export deal with Russia earlier this month to help lower prices in the US. High fuel costs since he launched strikes on Iran have hurt his Republicans ahead of November legislative elections.

Since the diesel deal, Ukraine has complained of disruption to some intelligence sharing and to its use of the Starshield military satellite system, though Zelensky said that the Oslo meeting had reached an agreement to resolve those issues.

Citing US officials and people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that billionaire Elon Musk had last week ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service that ​Ukraine relies on to track Russian ballistic missile strikes.

Reuters could not ​immediately verify the report.

Musk has said any such decision is taken by the US military or the president. Trump has said he was not responsible and US secretary of state Marco Rubio reiterated on Wednesday that Washington had not pulled back Kyiv’s ability to access Starlink.

Reuters

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana made the announcement in his medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) speech, in the National Assembly on Wednesday.

In terms of the relief, the fuel levy will be reduced by R3 per litre for diesel and R1.50 per litre for petrol from November 4 until December 1. Thereafter, the relief will continue at a lower amount until January 5 — the diesel levy will be reduced by R1.50 per litre and the petrol levy by R1 per litre.

Read: IN FULL | Finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s MTBPS speech

The Treasury said the intervention would help ease cost-of-living pressures without compromising the sustainability of the budget.

“Geopolitical conflict has pushed up global oil prices and led to a sharp rise in the cost of living for businesses and households,” Godongwana said. “Because we have rebuilt fiscal buffers, government is in a stronger position to respond, including by providing temporary fuel levy again.”

The price of Brent crude oil has risen to more than $100 a barrel and petrol and diesel prices in South Africa have soared by nearly 50% and 72%, respectively, since domestic prices started rising as a result of the conflict in the Middle East. This caused ripple effects throughout the economy and contributed to a spike in the cost of living.

Read: Ghost worker audit flags more than 4,000 fictitious government employees

Petrol and diesel prices rose to R30.28 and R33.29 per litre in October, with further increases expected in November, prompting calls for immediate relief.

The R10bn for the fuel levy relief is not new money. Treasury director-general Duncan Pieterse explained during a media question-and-answer session before Godongwana’s speech that it arose from a revenue overrun in the 2025/26 fiscal year.

This was allocated in the Second Special Appropriation Bill to the Central Energy Fund’s (CEF’s) Equalisation Fund, to stabilise basic fuel price volatility linked to international market pressures and to cushion consumers.

Read: Tax windfall boosts South Africa’s fiscal outlook

Pieterse said the CEF would surrender the R10bn to the National Revenue Fund for fuel levy relief, which he said was positive for households, consumption and inflation.

He stressed that this would not affect the fiscal framework. Future relief might be considered, he said, as long as it was fiscally neutral and did not affect the fiscal framework and fiscal targets. It would be difficult to consider if it compromised fiscal targets and the fiscal trajectory.

Read: Treasury warns of fiscal risks posed by provincial health departments

The R10bn allocated to the CEF has not yet been used as the Second Special Appropriation Bill still has to be adopted by the National Assembly. The allocation has so far earned nearly R342m in interest.

The envisaged R10bn fuel levy relief will be in addition to the estimated R17.2bn relief (it actually materialised to relief of about R22bn-23bn) granted in April, May and June, which took the form of temporary cuts to the general fuel levy of up to R3.00/l for petrol and a final total of R3.93/l for diesel.

The relief measure was designed to be fiscally neutral, being funded through a combination of higher-than-expected tax revenue and underspending. It was not expected to have an effect on the fiscal framework adopted by parliament following the 2026 budget.

Business Day

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Sowetan has been reliably informed that controversial businessman Suliman Carrim will face fresh charges in the Musina magistrate’s court relating to alleged attempted smuggling of vehicles.

“He will face two counts relating to alleged motor vehicle theft,” a reliable source told Sowetan.

The source said Carrim will appear in court on Thursday.

Carrim was arrested on October 15 at OR Tambo International Airport as he was trying to board an international flight.

Questions have been put to a police spokesperson and the story will be updated once responses have been received.

Sowetan