Bruce Whitfield’s Business Week

In this episode, Famous Brands CEO Darren Hele joins Bruce Whitfield to unpack a tough first half, in which casual dining felt the squeeze while quick service held up. With fuel costs threatening food inflation and interest rates heading higher, Healy explains how Famous Brands is fighting for every customer in an economy that simply isn’t growing. Franz Struwig of HisWay Labs discusses a railway sensor worth R6 to a thief but is priceless to an operator, and why Stellenbosch constraint-driven innovation is attracting interest from the US, India, Australia and Europe.News24 Business editor Helena Wasserman covers the medium-term budget, turning the corner on debt-to-GDP, the Reserve Bank’s plan to white-label ATMs and shake up payments, and Magda Wierzycka’s standoff with Sygnia shareholders over a R600 million share incentive scheme. And Jean Pierre Verster of Protea Capital Management talks about Afrimat’s silver lining, why Chinese cars are now pressuring second-hand vehicle prices and what it means for WeBuyCars, and whether Clicks – at half its previous price – is finally a buying opportunity. This podcast is sponsored by Capitec.To catch every episode, click the follow and subscribe buttons on News24’s Spotify, Apple, and YouTube podcast channels, or catch up on past episodes here. Editions drop on Thursdays at 17:00.

In this episode, Greg Solomon, the new CEO of Pantry by Marble, discusses what it takes to scale a chef-driven luxury food concept without losing its soul. After 15 years of growing McDonald’s SA to 400 locations, Solomon is now applying that discipline to David Higgs’ rapidly expanding premium brand. Michelle Mokone of Mo’s Crib tells the story of two sisters from Mabopane who sold their iPhones to travel to New York, survived Covid-19 by making masks, cracked into the Target and CB2 markets, and are now taking their R4-million factory sale model to Los Angeles in December. News24 Business editor Helena Wasserman speaks on the government weighing R10 billion in fuel relief as petrol approaches R33 a litre; Richemont and Signet joining the De Beers consortium; and a billionaire bust-up between Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Minerals and the Sacco family’s Assore over a major manganese mine. Lastly, Gary Booysen of Rand Swiss tackles why hotter US inflation sent the Korean market into circuit breakers while South Africa shrugged it off, and what 65% IT earnings growth expectations mean for markets heading into US earnings season. This podcast is sponsored by Capitec. To catch every episode, click the follow and subscribe buttons on News24’s Spotify, Apple, and YouTube podcast channels, or catch up on past episodes here. Editions drop on Thursdays at 17:00.

Afrimat CEO Andries van Heerden joins Bruce to unpack the group’s toughest six months since listing in 2006. Soaring shipping rates, a stronger rand, a mine reaching the end of its life and ferrochrome smelter shutdowns pushed the market darling into a loss, but he argues the way through is clear, even if the timing isn’t. Jurgens Uys, co-founder of Versus Socks, talks about turning R15 000 and a Stellenbosch garage into six million pairs of socks sold in 80 countries, while surviving cash-flow crunches and supply-chain gaps along the way. It’s a masterclass in starting small, staying focused and knowing when to attack. News24 Business editor Helena Wasserman unpacks Sanlam’s R21 billion bid for the rest of Santam, the Competition Commission’s unprecedented bid to unwind Premier Foods’ takeover of Rhodes Food Group, and a new opt-out registry that could curb the nine billion spam calls South Africans get each quarter. And Dion Gouws of Credo in London discusses whether Ray Dalio is right about an AI bubble, why AQR’s Cliff Asness disagrees, and why staying invested in equities still makes sense when markets feel wobbly. This podcast is sponsored by Capitec.To catch every episode, click the follow and subscribe buttons on News24’s Spotify, Apple, and YouTube podcast channels, or catch up on past episodes here. Editions drop on Thursdays at 17:00.

In this episode, Capitec CEO Graham Lee joins Bruce to unpack another extraordinary set of results from South Africa’s most disruptive bank. With 16.5 million digital clients, a cost to income ratio that has dropped to just 36 cents in the rand and business banking growing at over 50%, Capitec continues to defy every sceptic. Lee explains why the branch network is not a cost but a competitive advantage, what fully banked really means and why he is more heavily weighting negative economic scenarios heading into 2027.

Craig Pitchers, CEO of The Courier Guy, on the last mile problem that has plagued South African logistics for decades and how 3,500 pickup points, lockers and kiosks are finally starting to solve it. With fuel costs at record highs, doorstep delivery is the most expensive way to move a parcel, and the shift to collection points is not just convenient. It is the future of the industry.

Helena Wasserman, editor of News24 Business, on the ports authority finally breaking free from Transnet, Goldfields making a bold half-trillion-rand bid for Australian miner Northern Star to become the world’s second largest gold producer, and the Gautrain getting new operators with fresh promises and French flair.

And Meryl Pick of Old Mutual Investment Group on the seismic knock-on effect of the Dangote Refinery IPO for Nigeria’s currency and MTN investors, and whether stock markets always fall in rate hiking cycles.

Most of us have stopped thinking about payments. You tap your card, tap your phone, and walk out. It just works. But behind that two-second tap is one of the most complex and fast-moving infrastructure systems in the modern economy – and it is changing faster than most businesses realise.
In this standalone episode of Bruce Whitfield’s Business Week, Bruce sits down with Chris Zietsman, executive head of Capitec Payments, to pull back the curtain on what is actually happening when money moves – and what the next three years are going to look like.
Zietsman spent six years at SnapScan, first as CFO and later as CEO, watching South Africa’s payment ecosystem evolve from days of clearing time to card transactions settling in two to three seconds – faster, he notes, than Mexico manages on a good day.
He unpacks the PayShap instant payment rail now enabling real-time bank transfers for as little as 20 cents, why Capitec can onboard a new card machine merchant in five minutes in any branch, and how the cost of card transactions has fallen from 3%-4% decade ago to below 1% today.
But the most compelling part of the conversation is his prediction about where the next competitive battleground lies: Not speed. Not price. Security. As friction disappears, so does the safety net that used to give defrauded consumers time to stop a transaction. The winners in the next three years, he says, will be the players who use AI and behavioural monitoring to protect clients in real time.
You thought you were just tapping your phone. It turns out you were participating in one of the most sophisticated financial systems on Earth.
This podcast is sponsored by Capitec.
To catch every episode, click the follow and subscribe buttons on News24’s Spotify, Apple, and YouTube podcast channels, or catch up on past episodes here.