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Boxer's shoppers fill their pantries in grant week and run short by mid-month. Diesel has pushed up taxi fares, rice is selling for a fifth less than a year ago, and like-for-like sales barely moved. Yet the discounter sold nearly 4% more goods, opened its 600th store and cleared its long-term bank debt. On results day, chief executive Marek Masojada told Alec Hogg what his customers are leaving on the shelf, how AI went from taking meeting minutes to the core of the business in six months, how deals with controlling shareholder Pick n Pay are kept at arm's length, and what stands between Boxer and a thousand stores. He also named the question he expected investors to press hardest.

With 23 days to go to the local government elections, the DA's Western Cape leader Tertuis Simmers sat down with Alec Hogg in Hermanus and drew a hard line. He said he would never govern with Gayton McKenzie's Patriotic Alliance, and described what he said he had seen with his own eyes during the by-elections that cost the DA three wards in George. He spoke about the 2024 building collapse in George that killed 34 people, why no one has yet been charged, and the one outstanding report he said is holding up the police. Simmers set out the party's battle plan town by town, from Knysna, which he called a blueprint for poor local government, to Bitou, where the DA has twice missed an outright majority by fewer than 30 votes. He also owned up to the biggest mistake of his ministerial career, and answered the question he said follows him everywhere: does he want to be the next premier?

In this edition of the Electoral Road Show with Chris Steyn and analyst Supremo Wayne Sussman, he unpacks the polling results of the first two of six metros surveyed in the highly scientific eNCA MarkData 2026 election poll. In Ekurhuleni, the DA emerged first with 31.2% of the vote, the only party to breach that 30% mark. Second was the ANC with 29.4%. A distant third was MKP at 11.5%. The EFF came in fourth place at 9.2%. In Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA is in the lead with 37.7% of the vote just ahead of the ANC on 37.4%. Coming in third is the EFF at 8%. “The job for the DA as the leading party is how can they stretch that lead in the coming weeks. The job for the ANC is to re-emerge, try to re-emerge as the largest party in Ekurhuleni. And the other parties will be looking at these polls and saying, look, this is a golden opportunity. The ANC is not doing well. What can they extract from the ANC? There's a lot to play for, for each and every single one of the major parties over the next few weeks.” Sussman says questions about service delivery and other key issues produced “very worrying responses for those in government, for those leading. The electorate is not satisfied with the state of local government, with the way our cities are being run.” In next week’s show, the polling results for Johannesburg and Cape Town will be unpacked.

Intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman warns Chris Steyn that instability ahead of the local elections could expand beyond the state's capacity to control, with the military underfunded and crime intelligence unable to pay sources. David Shapiro and Alec Hogg return to the Dimension Data Campus saga, asking why Jason Goodall would sign away R350 million, and whether the remaining directors' defence that NTT's Japanese owners knew all along can hold. Alec also unpacks Africa Bitcoin Corporation, where the board has publicly opposed its own 76% shareholder bloc's push for two new directors. Plus Wall Street's Friday rally.

In this interview with Chris Steyn, Independent Intelligence Analyst Jasmine Opperman warns that an expansion of instability in South Africa in the lead-up to the Local Government Elections would likely be beyond the government's capability to control. “We have never seen the ANC in a crisis situation, political power-wise, as now. The fact of the matter is at the political level, they’re lost. If we look at their law and order, they are completely out of their depth. The military can only do so much, and once that fails, we have nothing else to fall back on.” She was speaking with the country in the grip of anti-immigration riots that have seen buildings and businesses and vehicles torched and looted with physical clashes between police and protestors. “I cannot help but think that the MK’s hand is involved in all of this…The quicker the ANC starts realising that ethnicity is a real issue and people are taking pride, the better. I just don't think that the police intelligence capability, nor national intelligence has the ability to realise that we must be careful here. We are walking into a spider web that can destabilise.” Opperman also gives the details behind the ransom paid for the South African held captive by Islamic State Mozambique, describes how they use collaborators to cash out ransoms at dedicated crypto currency ATMs, and identifies by name for the first time the IS leadership just across the border from South Africa.