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Twenty-seven people were killed in two mass shootings in a single weekend, and the DA's Lisa Schickerling wanted to know where the police were. She told Chris Steyn why growing criminal networks had to be dismantled, and why the leadership of the private security regulator, raided by the SIU and the Hawks in a R130m training-contract probe, should have been placed on precautionary suspension to protect the process. Speaking the day after Donald Trump's 22 September address to the UN General Assembly, former Eskom grid chief Andy Calitz traced how energy infrastructure became a military target, from Ukraine's power grid to the Strait of Hormuz, and explained why the threats against Iran sent shudders down his back. Jasmine Opperman asked who was watching South Africa's spies with the Inspector-General of Intelligence suspended, and Helen Zille explained why a DA-run Joburg would look like an empty plot for months before anything rose out of the ground. Reuters rounded off with the latest from Wall Street.

In this interview Chris Steyn and Lisa Schickerling, the Democratic Alliance (DA) spokesperson on Police, talk about a country in the grip of fear in the wake of mass killings, multiple murders, crime increasing in areas where the SANDF have been deployed, and suspended Deputy National Commissioner of Police General Shadrack Sibiya on rape and sexual grooming charges. “The very people that are meant to protect women are the ones that are committing these crimes…So there's no trust in the SAPS. And if you as a female can't trust to actually phone the police and know that they're gonna come and assist you, then you really are on your own…” Shickerling describes how poor service delivery has further fuelled crime with roads so bad that not even taxis can use them, forcing women to walk long lonely roads without streetlights and hemmed by tall grass. “They live in areas where there's nobody patrolling, so there's nobody in the street except for obviously the criminal elements.” Asked about remedial actions being taken by Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia, she says: “...the problem that we have is that everybody comes with these grand plans and it's wonderful, but there's no implementation.”

Jasmine Opperman tells Chris Steyn the Islamic State's raid on a Niassa hunting camp was opportunistic resupply, not ransom: a splinter group pushed back west by security pressure, burning a communications tower, clinic and police station and taking up to 14 vehicles. Neal Froneman explains to Alec Hogg why landlocked Kyalami cannot host a modern Grand Prix and why his Swartland site can. ISS founder Jakkie Cilliers argues stability, not democracy, drives growth in the short run. Helen Zille denies any ANC talks and spells out how the DA could still lose Joburg at 40%.

He turned around mines others had written off and built Sibanye-Stillwater into a global giant. Now Neal Froneman wants to bring Formula One back to South Africa, on 600 hectares of Swartland farmland rather than at Kyalami. In conversation with Alec Hogg, the Blue Mountain Racing chairman explained why he treats the R6.7bn project like a mine still in exploration, what the fallback is if Formula One says no, and why he believes a modern Grand Prix is a week-long spectacle that old circuits simply cannot host. He also tackled the question hanging over every South African bid: after the Lady R affair, what stops government's foreign policy from sinking this one too? And he made his case for why Cape Town, not the team behind it, is the winning card.

On the latest NdB Sunday Show, Chris Steyn asks veteran intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman why South Africa’s intelligence agencies do not seem to intervene when they become aware of corruption and other criminal activity in official ranks. She says “the whole national analysis capacity has been diluted to the extent that it's non-existent” - and even if that should be available, such intelligence would likely just be pushed in a direction or ignored…The ANC has a laager mentality…They close ranks like it happens with ZanuPF, like it happens with Frelimo. And what happens in that laager, stays within that laager.” As for corrupt and sexually deviant officials being vulnerable to recruitment from foreign intelligence agencies, Opperman says: “Already recruited...if you start talking about the leaking of intelligence, I would love to know how many of them…that raw intelligence reports are leaking at the speed of light, that it's being given to Iran to BRICS countries…this is a probability”. Another “red light” is the Presidency’s grip on intelligence. “If you…see how many of those issues are being run directly from the Presidency. That's a serious issue. It's not right. Something is wrong here: a president cannot run the country out of this office on all these issues.” Opperman also gives an update on the ransom demand for the South African and others kidnapped by ISIS in Mozambique, as well as the 11 Iran-SA-Hamas crypto wallets.