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In two years, Comrades runners threw out a board accused of vote-buying and steering tenders to friends, and cut ties with the provincial and national athletics bodies to run their own race.

Swimming South Africa had to wait for an integrity panel in Switzerland to act. Rory Steyn, Nelson Mandela's former bodyguard and now a Comrades Marathon Association board member, told Alec Hogg why one could fix itself and the other could not, and why he believed too many of the country's sports federations were run by politicians dressed up as administrators. He went through the suspensions that have piled up since March, from SASCOC to athletics, swimming, karate and netball, set out what he would do in Gayton McKenzie's shoes, and asked why an Olympic champion had to fight her own federation for her prize money. His challenge to everyone else in South African sport: Comrades has done it, so what is stopping you?

In this interview with Chris Steyn, two grieving parents describe their 14-month fight to bring to justice the alleged killer of their daughter Kerry Vorster. The suspect's whereabouts are a mystery after he was released, allegedly without paying bail, having no physical address and without providing a contact number. The police allegedly took four months to try to obtain the post mortem report that was delayed further by two months, apparently because of electricity supply issues and the pathologist being on maternity leave”. Although the police promised to rearrest him on receipt of the report and the prosecutor promised to subpoena him on evidence of a cell phone number placing him at the crime scene, her family have seen no such progress. Now, 14 months after the murder, they have been told the fingerprints are still to be verified, meaning - with the huge forensics backlog - this simple matching exercise could take four years. Her father charges: “The violence was such that he severed her jugular vein, her carotid artery, and penetrated her lung…he could have killed a wild boar with the power that he used with that knife….He intended to kill her. He stabbed her with force enough to kill a wild animal.” In voice recordings left on the phone of his estranged wife, the suspect claims that the victim had attacked him and had stabbed herself in the back. Listen to those recordings here.

Twenty-seven people were killed in two mass shootings in a single weekend, and the DA's Lisa Schickerling wanted to know where the police were. She told Chris Steyn why growing criminal networks had to be dismantled, and why the leadership of the private security regulator, raided by the SIU and the Hawks in a R130m training-contract probe, should have been placed on precautionary suspension to protect the process. Speaking the day after Donald Trump's 22 September address to the UN General Assembly, former Eskom grid chief Andy Calitz traced how energy infrastructure became a military target, from Ukraine's power grid to the Strait of Hormuz, and explained why the threats against Iran sent shudders down his back. Jasmine Opperman asked who was watching South Africa's spies with the Inspector-General of Intelligence suspended, and Helen Zille explained why a DA-run Joburg would look like an empty plot for months before anything rose out of the ground. Reuters rounded off with the latest from Wall Street.

In this interview Chris Steyn and Lisa Schickerling, the Democratic Alliance (DA) spokesperson on Police, talk about a country in the grip of fear in the wake of mass killings, multiple murders, crime increasing in areas where the SANDF have been deployed, and suspended Deputy National Commissioner of Police General Shadrack Sibiya on rape and sexual grooming charges. “The very people that are meant to protect women are the ones that are committing these crimes…So there's no trust in the SAPS. And if you as a female can't trust to actually phone the police and know that they're gonna come and assist you, then you really are on your own…” Shickerling describes how poor service delivery has further fuelled crime with roads so bad that not even taxis can use them, forcing women to walk long lonely roads without streetlights and hemmed by tall grass. “They live in areas where there's nobody patrolling, so there's nobody in the street except for obviously the criminal elements.” Asked about remedial actions being taken by Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia, she says: “...the problem that we have is that everybody comes with these grand plans and it's wonderful, but there's no implementation.”

Jasmine Opperman tells Chris Steyn the Islamic State's raid on a Niassa hunting camp was opportunistic resupply, not ransom: a splinter group pushed back west by security pressure, burning a communications tower, clinic and police station and taking up to 14 vehicles. Neal Froneman explains to Alec Hogg why landlocked Kyalami cannot host a modern Grand Prix and why his Swartland site can. ISS founder Jakkie Cilliers argues stability, not democracy, drives growth in the short run. Helen Zille denies any ANC talks and spells out how the DA could still lose Joburg at 40%.