BizNews Radio

Author Rian Malan fires off a pointed open letter to Helen Zille on the anti-migrant marches sweeping South Africa, while a former DA leader breaks ranks on his own party just months before the 2026 municipal elections.

Also today: oil jumps as Iran moves on the Strait of Hormuz, Tesla rallies on a Full Self-Driving rollout, and a whistleblower pushes for criminal accountability over corporate silencing.

Rian Malan is the author of My Traitor's Heart — a bestseller translated into 11 languages, still in print decades after publication, and a book that drew praise from V.S. Naipaul, John le Carré and the New York Times as one of the most important works ever written about South Africa. In short, he is the real thing, one of the finest non-fiction writers our country has produced. And for me, easily the greatest living SA writer. Commissioning Malan at rates that reflect his stature is beyond what BizNews can fund from its operating budget. The economics of modern media — collapsing CPMs, platform aggregation, subscription fatigue — make it impossible. But a BizNews community member has changed that. Their donation has seeded a commissioning fund dedicated to sourcing the very best South African writing and research for our readers: work we could not otherwise afford. This is not charity. It is an investment in the journalism South Africa needs — fearless, deeply reported, written with the skill that makes it stick. If this piece moves you, consider joining the fund. Write to me via alec@biznews.com. Not to cover salaries or overheads, but to put more Rian Malans in front of more South Africans. And for the rest of the tribe, enjoy. - Alec Hogg

Today's BizNews Edge covers three stories that cut to the heart of South African business and politics. John Steenhuisen has broken publicly with the DA, naming Geordin Hill-Lewis and Tony Leon in allegations that threaten serious damage to the party just months before the 2026 municipals. Prosus, once a byword for discount and drift, has delivered full-year results that show a genuine turnaround — every regional ecosystem now profitable, Takealot breaking even for the first time, and a buyback programme outpacing Meta and Apple. And then the story Alec Hogg has been building toward for months: Malcolm King, the invisible man behind the Steinhoff fraud, found dead in a Cotswolds village — poisoned by a Romanian sex worker — before justice could reach him. The Reserve Bank reckoning rolls on. This one is worth your full attention.

South Africa's first high-profile whistleblower Wendy Addison is done talking shop. She's raised a criminal docket against a corporation and its directors for silencing two financial industry whistleblowers — and she thinks it could be a watershed moment. Can personal criminal accountability finally give whistleblower protection real teeth?

Vessels are still threading the Strait of Hormuz, but a Bloomberg analyst calls it Schrodinger's Strait: you never know if it's open until you try to get through. With traffic down to a fraction of normal and ships taking hits, owners are weighing whether the world's most vital oil route is worth the risk. We also unpacks Cape Town losing its clean audit, a record Korean tech bet, and Venezuela's climbing earthquake toll.