BizNews Radio

Is Jacob Zuma the glue holding MK together, or has the party already outgrown him? In the first of his weekly conversations with Alec Hogg on BizNews, William Saunderson-Meyer, whose Jaundiced Eye column has run every week since 1993, said he didn't buy the common wisdom. He argued that MK had tapped a deep well of grievance against the ANC, that it stood to grow in the local elections, and that the ANC's road back to power may run through MK. He sized up Duduzane Zuma as heir apparent, compared the family's split to Romulus and Remus, and described Gayton McKenzie as a hyena of the political wilderness. Then he laid out one set of numbers he keeps coming back to, and why it should worry anyone counting on a weaker ANC.

Earlier in the week, the DA's Tertuis Simmers sat in the same BizNews studio and called the Patriotic Alliance a criminal enterprise dressed up as a party. Charles Cilliers, the PA co-founder and former newspaper editor who wrote Gayton McKenzie's life story, came back with his reply. He told Alec Hogg what he made of the vote-buying claims in George, why he believes the DA cannot lead a coalition, and his version of the Joburg deal that collapsed over a single mayoral committee post. He took on the Beaufort West fundraising questions and the "coloured nationalist" label, and explained why the PA would still hold its nose and work with a party it finds nauseating. He would not say what the PA's first demand will be if it holds the balance of power after 4 November.

The company once known as Net1 has just posted its first full-year profit and is telling the market to expect adjusted earnings to compound at more than 40% a year. Executive chairman Ali Mazanderani, who says he has helped build seven multibillion-dollar fintechs from Brazil to Europe, told Alec Hogg why he believes South Africa's big banks are structurally unable to win the township economy, and why local capital has been too cautious to back the challengers. He also set out what the pending Bank Zero deal would do to Lesaka's debt, why nine in ten South African merchants still don't take card payments, and why he accepted a pay deal that only works if the share price does.

Nelson Mandela Bay has been through nine coalitions in ten years by Retief Odendaal's count, and the DA's mayoral candidate said he would not try to run a ten-party government again. Political scientist Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana, co-author of The Zuma Effect, explained why Jacob Zuma's comeback came as no surprise to him, and why he believes MK is as chaotic as the man who founded it. Lesaka executive chairman Ali Mazanderani argued that the market was already waking up to the fintech's story, and that cash was not coming back. Reuters rounded off the show with the latest from Wall Street.

Jaco Zuma’s ambition to become president of South Africa was rooted in personal interests: to evade the law and assuage his dire financial circumstances - and his faction used chilling tools to get and keep him in power for as long as possible. So says political scientist Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana, the co-author of the “The Zuma Effect”, a five hundred-page work regarded as the definitive work on the Zuma era. In this interview with Chris Steyn, he describes what happened behind the scenes with the making of a personality cult, the remaking of the African National Congress (ANC), the disbandment of The Scorpions, the manipulation of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and other law enforcement institutions, as well as Zuma’s “intelligence project” Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhewebane. “So you have these series of undeserving people who don't expect to have these positions on their own merit. They're shocked that they're even appointed. So they spend most of their time paying back this debt to the president for doing something that they never thought they would ever achieve in their lives.” As for Zuma’s “revenge” MKP, Professor Ndletyana says: “MKP couldn't escape Zuma's personality because JZ believes in personalised rule. So he's formed the party in his own image. When Zuma dies, the party dies.”