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Stafford Masie says the AI industry is not actually running out of electricity, it is running out of places to plug in. The real bottleneck for OpenAI and Anthropic in the United States is grid connection points that can absorb the violent power swings inference computing demands, without blowing transformers or blacking out whole regions, as happened in Portugal last year. His argument at BNC#9: South Africa, sitting on a stable grid with gigawatts of curtailed surplus power, is unusually well positioned to host that compute for the rest of Africa, the way it once became a base for telcos and banks. He also spoke about why he thinks autonomous AI agents will out-transact humans within months, the regulatory framework he is helping build with the Reserve Bank to govern them, and the security risks of prompt injection and data poisoning that come with it.

Graeme Joffe started digging into South African sports administration back in 2012, and it cost him his career, his safety, and, he says, his ability to ever go home again. Talking to Alec Hogg, Joffe walked through everything that has unravelled since: the presidents of SASCOC, Athletics South Africa and Swimming South Africa all suspended within weeks of each other, the entire executive of Karate South Africa suspended by its world body, and Olympic swimmer Tatjana Smith's prize money held back for over a year. Joffe named the people he has spent more than a decade chasing, from Danny Jordaan to Mark Alexander to Jurie Roux, and explained why, in his telling, so little ever actually changes at the top of South African sport. He also revisited what it cost him personally: a R21 million defamation suit, death threats, and a criminal charge that means he still cannot safely set foot in the country he reported on for most of his career.

In this interview with Chris Steyn, Ian Cameron, the Chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, exposes a huge cover-up over many years of animal maltreatment at the SAPS Roodeplaat Veterinary facility. Speaking following the death of the arson-detection dog Sky, he said: “That hospital, if this is the way that they look after animals, is as good as a morgue for animals. It's almost a case of if you, as a dog handler, have to send your dog to Roodeplaat, in many cases, you can say your goodbyes because you're not guaranteed that you would get your dog back. And I don't say this lightly. I say this because of the amount of cops that have called me over the last two days, pleading their cases about their dogs previously sent there, came back worse, or didn't come back at all. So, in the coming days I am going to expose even more since as far back as 2019 about criminal investigations that were made to go quiet, disciplinary processes that were not followed and just ignored at Roodeplaat, and how a lot of the animals that have died over the last few years could have still not only lived but lived prosperously.”

At BNC#9, veteran stockbroker David Shapiro told delegates that AI had roughly tripled his own output, and he is not slowing down at 78. He argued that South Africa's real obstacle is not regulation but ideology, and that it is costing the country a venture capital industry, a functioning collateral-free lending market, and a mining sector he believes is sitting on far more gold than it is using. He also explained why he cannot make a living from the JSE alone, why he sends most of his clients' money offshore, and the one signal he trusts more than any headline: what the share price is actually doing while the story is still being told.

In his latest weekly chat with Chris Steyn, Political Commentator, Solly Moeng urges action from the Democratic Alliance (DA) over reports that the party is considering promoting Cape Town councillor - and fake doctor - Abdulkader “AK” Elyas to either Parliament or the Western Cape legislature despite guilty findings relating to the falsification of his qualifications. “If it doesn't act against him, it's going to be in trouble. Then… it's slowly, slowly becoming the ANC…. it's an accumulation of things that are happening in the DA space that are making it harder and harder to distinguish from the ANC.” Moeng also comments on the biggest ever pre- by-election crisis facing the African National Congress; President Cyril Ramaphosa’s impeachment inquiry stalling - yet again; the president’s failure to act against Special Leave Police Minister Senzo Mchunu; the dirt on Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) CIC Julius Malema emerging at the Madlanga Commission; and the court room altercation between tenderpreneur “Cat” Matlala and his fiery Advocate.