BizNews Radio

A year ago, Charles Savage made Alec Hogg a list of promises. This week he came back with Purple Group's best numbers yet: profit before tax up 36%, more than R100 billion in client assets, and nearly R17 billion deposited in a year when markets gave investors far less. So why do some shareholders still want out? Savage made the case that the scale benefits are only starting to show, that his longest-serving clients have grown their wealth faster than Warren Buffett, and that every line of the group's code is now written by AI, without a single job lost. He was also candid about what hasn't worked: a Philippine regulator who still holds the gate, a Kenyan launch that slipped, and crypto dragging on profits. He explained why his own bonus fell in a record year, and gave the advice he'd offer a 16-year-old opening her first account.

Gayton McKenzie spoke to Alec Hogg on the morning the ANC's national executive committee sat to decide its coalition path, and he was ready with a prediction: who would run Joburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, and which party he believed would be left with nothing. Hours later he was due to sit down alone with DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis, a meeting he traced back to a favour owed to Rob Hersov and a handshake made before a single vote was cast. The Patriotic Alliance more than doubled its council seats yet lost the Eldorado Park ward where it was born, and McKenzie was candid about why he felt it took silver rather than gold. He named the complacency he blamed for George, the one Northern Cape council he said the PA would rather fight a re-election over than hand to the ANC, and the message he sent his own leaders that morning. He closed by taking aim at Swimming South Africa after Tatjana Smith's switch to the Netherlands.

Before the vote, Haniff Hoosen promised to fix Durban by simply not stealing its money. MK then fell well short of a majority, and the DA's mayoral candidate found himself a coalition deal away from the job, or from losing it. He told Alec Hogg whether he'd step aside if his party's head office handed the mayoralty to someone else, why he rated the race a coin toss, which small parties he believed held the city's future, and what he'd tackle first in a city where the taps still run dry. He also named the Durban wards the DA won for the first time, and the ones that slipped away by a few hundred votes.

A month after telling BizNews that MK would fall short in Durban, Dean Macpherson came back to have his crystal ball checked. MK did fall short, and the DA's KZN chairperson said his party, the ANC and the IFP were now just three votes from running eThekwini. But he hadn't forgotten 2021, when small parties promised the DA their support and then handed the mayoralty back to the ANC. He told Alec Hogg how the DA was handling the kingmakers this time, why he believed MK's slide from 45% to about 35% came down to being shut out of the provincial government, what a DA mayor would do in a city with a record budget and 13,000 water leaks, and why he wasn't reading much into reports that Cyril Ramaphosa had cooled on working with the DA.

In his latest interview with Chris Steyn, political commentator Solly Moeng reveals that many “hardcore” ANC members - even ones who have been MPs - voted for ActionSA and the DA in secret so as not to lose their positions or businesses. He says those people now want a coalition between the Action SA and the DA. “So please, political party leaders, forget your personal grudges. Think about why people came to you and not elsewhere. Now, if you take their vote and you decide I'm going to cushion the ANC because I hate the other guys, that's disrespectful...” Moeng also dissects the bombs being dropped at the Madlanga Commission by tenderpreneur Cat Matlala about former Police Minister Bheki Cele, former Deputy National Commissioner Shadrack Sibiya, special leave Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, as well as the President Cyril Ramaphosa’s nephew by marriage, Tembisa tender don Hangwani Morgan Maumela. “There's a lot of accountability that is still not on the table because people have protection at the highest level and the president is not able to speak from a moral high ground about anything because they can also point fingers at him.” Moeng also comments on an alleged plot by IDAC to target whistle-blower General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.