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Zambia just handed Hakainde Hichilema a landslide second term, and its youth have gone from 10% optimistic about the future to 55% in under six years. Paramount Group founder and Africa Youth Survey chair Ivor Ichikowitz explains why, and doesn't hold back on what it says about South Africa, where youth optimism is the lowest of the 16 countries the survey covers. His verdict on what Pretoria could learn from Lusaka: treat the country like a business, back the people who deliver, and stop giving investors reasons to speculate. Watch below.

Five metros are up for grabs, the ANC has slipped to third place in its own heartland, and Geordin Hill-Lewis says the party's decline can no longer be reversed. In this Q&A with Alec Hogg and the BNC#9 floor, the DA federal leader and Cape Town mayor lays out exactly how close the race in Johannesburg and Durban really is, why he will not go near an MK coalition, what the Madlanga Commission has confirmed about state capture, and how long it will actually take to fix crime, Home Affairs and the rest of a broken state. He also fields the hard questions from the floor, on cabinet size, meritocracy, failing rural municipalities and whether young South Africans should even bother staying.

Today’s episode covers South Africa’s new illegal mining bill, which introduces R100 million fines and 30-year sentences to target criminal syndicates. Niall Kramer discusses recent Constitutional Court judgments regarding offshore gas drilling and public consultation processes. We also examine nepotism allegations surrounding Gayton McKenzie and the ANC's deployment tactics. Finally, Paul Hoffman analyzes the commission investigating corruption, and Reuters wraps up US markets and Nvidia's earnings.

A commission of inquiry can't jail anyone. It can't force government to do anything at all. So what is the Madlanga Commission actually for, and what happens if its final report just gets filed away like so many before it? Accountability Now's Paul Hoffman walks through 25 years of scrapped anti-corruption units, three trips to the Constitutional Court, and one narrow legal route that could still see South Africa's newest corruption-busting unit, IDAC, ruled unconstitutional if the commission gets it wrong.

Sakeliga CEO Piet le Roux takes the "state-proofing" argument he's built at home and points it at Washington. His case: South Africa isn't the country the 1994 constitution describes any more, and the US still treats it like it is. He walks through what's actually at stake for America, then lays out three ways it could respond, from writing South Africa off to a new, differentiated approach that rewards competent institutions and bypasses failing ones. Along the way, a hard look at what happened to Zimbabwe's Western population, and why he thinks the same could happen here if nothing changes.