BizNews Radio

Afrimat CEO Andries van Heerden joins Alec Hogg to unpack the group’s worst results in decades, driven by a perfect storm of collapsing iron ore prices and early Lafarge losses. He remains bullish on the cement acquisition, touts a new ultra-low carbon product, and outlines progress on Transnet’s rail recovery and Afrimat’s rare earth ambitions. Van Heerden shares cautious optimism on SA’s infrastructure outlook under a new political era.

BizNuus Blitsbrief – ’n kragtige oorsig van die belangrikste plaaslike en internasionale nuus, vinnig en feitlik, binne minute. Bly ingelig met nuus wat saak maak.

Joburg’s rowdy mining camp excesses appear to have returned in the drama surrounding the alleged manipulation of Mantengu shares, whose CEO accused socialite Zunaid Moti and his company insider of manipulating the stock to near destruction. Mantengu’s CEO Mike Miller shares the sordid story with BizNews editor Alec Hogg.

Millions of South Africans were plunged into peak-hour darkness again last night. In this interview with BizNews, Kevin Mileham, the Democratic Alliance (DA) spokesperson on Electricity and Energy, says that ESKOM's fleet is running at 28% unplanned outages - and that “this last week, they've burned 210 million rands worth of diesel to keep the lights on.” As for sabotage, Mileham says: “I think that we've come a long way in that respect, that there's less, to use that word, sabotage than there was before… and I think that certainly the department and ESKOM are taking steps in that regard to weed those people out and take the necessary action against them. It's not happening as quickly as I would like, but there are steps being taken.” ESKOM is also battling the financial impact of corruption . “I think one of the challenges that we've got is, and again, I'm going to emphasise State Capture as being part of the problem, that we had a massively corrupt entity where things ran years over time, cost more than double what they were budgeted for. And as a result, ESKOM's balance sheet took a huge hammering.” Meanwhile, Mileham expresses concerns around the National Transmission Company which he says “needs to be really fully independent…it needs to be out of ESKOM's control and more independent minded so that there's a level playing field between ESKOM and the private sector generators.” He notes that ESKOM still behaves in a “very monopolistic fashion; that they aren't willing to play fairly and competitively with other role players”.

In today’s BizNews Briefing episode, Alec hogg explores the top stories of the day. Load shedding is back, with the DA spokesperson on electricity Kevin Mileham weighing in; JSE-listed Mantengu Mining accuses high-profile figures of market manipulation in a scandal that raises concerns about regulatory capture; Donald Trump shocks Riyadh with trillion-dollar deals and also, Palantir insights from our partners at the Economist.