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South Africa's public servants have R3.6 trillion sitting in a pension fund that Wayne Duvenage calls a plunder pot, and he's not being polite about who's been dipping into it. In this Q&A from BNC#9 , the OUTA CEO takes on the PIC's revolving door of chairmen, explains why cadre deployment is really just a mechanism to loot state entities, and gives his most direct answer yet on whether Johannesburg can actually be saved. He also breaks down what the government of national unity is quietly getting right, why the ANC is heading for the exit, and what it would take to turn eighty percent of a captured city around within two years. Straight talk, hard numbers, and a few uncomfortable truths about where the money's really going.

Ramaphosa's impeachment inquiry loses its evidence leader just as his court challenge opens, Mashatile is still nowhere to be seen, and Dr Iraj Abedian tells Alec Hogg at BNC#9 that the world's only superpower has lost a war it won't admit to losing. Then Tatjana Smith, SA's most-decorated olympian, finally says out loud what she's been fighting behind closed doors after Swimming SA's president and CEO were suspended.

The night before she raced for a World Championship title, Tatjana Smith wasn't thinking about her stroke. She was thinking about a fine. South Africa's most decorated Olympian tells Alec Hogg how Swimming SA threatened to fine her tens of thousands of euros for wearing the wrong swimwear, how her prize money sat in the federation's account for over a year, and why she's only speaking now that the sport's global governing body has suspended Swimming SA's president and CEO over allegations of fake documents and abuse of power. She also opens up on a R100 million-plus training centre that's now overrun with weeds, and the new athlete watchdog she's launching to stop the next generation going through what she did.

Three of South Africa's toughest voices, one no-holds-barred Q&A. At BNC#9 in the Drakensberg, Dr Corné Mulder, Dr Theo de Jager and Gerhard Papenfus fielded questions from delegates on AGOA's future, a BEE court battle they say is being decided by judges swapped out overnight, and what business is prepared to do if government pushes further. Along the way: the maths behind Helen Zille's Joburg bid, why "wasting your vote" is mostly a myth, and a blunt message the panel says they delivered straight to the White House.

In their latest weekly chat, Chris Steyn and political commentator Solly Moeng talk about President Cyril Ramaphosa winning another round in his impeachment fight while the man waiting in the wings, Deputy President Paul Mashatile, has not been seen officially since July amid rumours that he might have been poisoned. “We don't have a president who's able to focus on governing, on leading, on uniting South Africa. We have a president who's running, who's constantly gazing over his shoulders...” Moeng also comments on the latest dramatic testimony at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry as well as the apparent cover-up to protect 12 serving South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers who had allegedly kidnapped an Islamic-linked financier and then assassinated the South African police officer who investigated them. Arguing against future majority rule by any one party, Moeng says: “Once the power gets launched in their heads, they become monsters we can't do anything about. Because what stands between what is good for South Africa and hell is the power that we tend to put in the heads of politicians, the trust, us treating them as heroes and heroines without ensuring that there are sufficient checks and balances in our institutions, in our system to make sure that as soon as somebody goes rogue on us, the system automatically stops them.”