BizNews Radio

Haniff Hoosen made the trip from Durban to BizNews's Hermanus studio with a blunt message: the ANC is finished in eThekwini, and what replaces it could be worse. The DA's mayoral candidate walked through how a metro that once out-drew Cape Town for tourists now loses 65% of its water to 13,000 active leaks, why he believes MK is running a placeholder candidate to make way for a scandal-tainted former mayor, and why he isn't arguing with The Economist's description of South Africa drifting into a "mafia state." He also put a number on his own chances in November: five out of ten, a coin flip between the DA and a party he says is already broke.

In this BizNews interview, Chris Steyn and Juanita du Preez, the national spokesperson for Action Society, talk about the killing spree of a suspected serial rapist (or group of rapists) in Ekurhuleni. By yesterday (Monday), five bodies had been found, four in Kempton Park, one in Olifantsfontein, and this morning (Tuesday), another one in Kwa-Thema. Four of the bodies were found in Kempton Park where the police station has a 0.4% success rate in solving crimes. Kempton Park is also the kidnapping capital of South Africa with 67 reported kidnappings between April and June this year (2026). Among the victims identified so far is Elizabeth Tsontso Moselakgomo, who disappeared while out running. Many women reported missing are still unaccounted for as Ekurhuleni sits on thousands of cold cases. SAPS has now dispatched specialist investigators, but Du Preez fumes: “Now that the bodies are piling up, now all of a sudden we get a multi-disciplinary task team investigating. Why now? Why must we have six bodies for things to start moving around? We are in a national disaster for GBV if I'm not mistaken.”

Nineteen times out of twenty, the man Cape Town's police catch red-handed with an illegal gun walks free. JP Smith explains why, and why he's taking national government to court over it. Intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman lays out something most South Africans haven't clocked: 14 active Bitcoin wallets linked to Hamas, offices operating in the open, and Islamic State using our own organised crime networks as a door into the country. Then, at the close of BNC#9, David Shapiro and Piet Viljoen make the case for staying, both with their money and their outlook: undervalued JSE stocks paying investors handsomely just to hold on, and a reminder that South Africans, whatever else is going wrong, are still hopeful, resilient and friendly to strangers. And on Wall Street, an AI-fuelled selloff runs straight into a Federal Reserve decision this week.

JP Smith has spent years being told his city is one of the world's most violent. He didn't dispute it. He explained why. Nearly every gun his officers pulled off the street came back to bite them: nineteen times out of twenty, the man caught red-handed walked free, because Cape Town cannot investigate its own arrests. That fight over investigative powers, now heading to court against national government, ran alongside almost everything else that landed on his desk this fortnight: a pet bylaw row that briefly convinced half the city it was about to be taxed for owning a cat, a cabinet minister repeating a gangster's phone call on camera, a R3 billion construction site with a 28s gang boss's family on the books, and a straight answer to the question everyone keeps asking him: would he help Helen Zille fix Johannesburg. Alec Hogg sat down with the MMC for safety and security to get all of it on the record.

Retired senior advocate Chris Marnewick spent six years on the Pistorius trial record and tells Alec Hogg the conviction should have been culpable homicide, not murder, blaming social media groupthink for a "big lie" of gender-based violence. Analyst Jasmine Opperman reveals 14 active bitcoin wallets in South Africa channelling funds to Hamas. Financial Mail's Rob Rose unpacks how the Competition Commission wrongly named salesman Bryan Brownrigg in its rand-rigging case, wrecking a decade of his life. TymeBank's Coenraad Jonker says AI will enable bankers, not replace them, and Sakeliga's Piet le Roux takes employment equity quotas towards international courts.