Peter Bruce, veteran South African newspaper editor and commentator, interviews the country's social and political leaders and experts in a weekly effort to exp...
So Donald Trump becomes President. Former DA leader and GNU co-architect Tony Leon tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that while the Trump White House may indeed smile benignly on South Africa it is highly unlikely. We have built an arc of Trumps biggest targets — we’re “misaligned”. We are close to Iran and close to China. We have attacked Israel, which Trump has sworn to defend and, probably worst, we run a trade surplus with the US. So let’s not go expecting the next few years to be a walk in the park.
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51:43
It's OK to be a little scared
Celebrated South African trade and industry specialist Donald MacKay tells Peter Bruce in this Edition of Podcasts from the Edge that he thinks Donald Trump is going to win the November 5 US presidential election and that the result could spell trouble for South Africa. If Trump declares war on imports into the US, our problem isn’t Agoa, which in reality affects only R2bn a year of SA exports to the US. It’s that the US market is worth around 10 per cent of our total exports. “It’s a big big deal,” he says, and Trump now is a far more dangerous proposition to global trade than he was when he first ran for the White House in 2016.
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40:19
Home Truths
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that digitising our the entire chain of documentation between the state and us citizens, and for inbound travelers, “is completely doable” despite the weaknesses of the state-owned IT agency, Sita. He says officials are working overtime and even at weekends to clear visa application backlogs and he wants it all done by Christmas. And as the DA MP who forced the ANC to hand over records of its secretive deployment committee, he says he’s not nearly done and that the courts are backing him.
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42:28
Pots and pots of money
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean McPherson tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that are are “pots and pots of money” available to finance the right infrastructure projects in South Africa. And the National Treasury sits on a nominal R950bn for infrastructure. The trick though is to get something actually done. Infrastructure is complicated and expensive but McPherson says he is going to push as hard as he can to turn South Africa into a construction site.
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39:13
Cyril's first GNU reshuffle loading?
Reports that Justice Minister Thembi Simelani took what she calls loans worth R575 600 from a financial advisor who paid her out of commissions he had earned as part of the looting of the VBS bank should be enough for President Cyril Ramaphosa to require her immediate resignation. That the payments to the minister were made -- to buy a Sandton coffee shop -- are not contested. She insists they were legal but so then does everyone else found in possession of the proceeds of crime.
Peter Bruce, veteran South African newspaper editor and commentator, interviews the country's social and political leaders and experts in a weekly effort to explain what is actually going on in this complicated country. Bruce's interviews are about making events easy to understand for people with little time to listen.
South Africa