Podcasts from the Edge
Episodes
Why Helen Zille is unlikely to become Johannesburg’s mayor
16 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Business Day parliamentary reporter Tara Roos tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that, while DA leader Helen Zille may secure...
How the vanities of small differences trap Africa
08 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Africa’s populations are exploding. By 2050 one in 10 children born in the world will be Nigerian. Right now 29 of the world’s top national fertil...
Cyril picks a number, any number…
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
President Cyril Ramaphosa will tell delegates at the Sixth South African Investment Conference this Tuesday morning that he plans to raise R2 trillion...
Can we really make money out of our police stations?
25 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The government is planning something quite audacious and it isn’t a high speed train from Tshwane to Durban. Instead it wants to create, out of the ...
“You have to get your hand on the steering wheel of state”
18 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Incoming DA leader Geordin Hill Lewis says that to grow the party it is going to need the votes of people who have never voted for it before. DA membe...
Stuck in the 80s, has the ANC found the perfect adversary in Donald Trump?
25 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Songezo Zibi, leader of Rise Mzansi and chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in Parliament, tells Peter Bruce in this wide-ranging editi...
Steenhuisen is just following the vaccine rules
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Agriculture author and expert Wandile Sihlobo tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that Agriculture mMinister John Steenhuisen ...
If Ramaphosa caused the navy exercise fiasco, will anyone tell us?
21 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
If the past is any guide then some middle-ranking official of officer is going to take the fall for the cock-up at sea last week when an Iranian corve...
Why Imports don’t explain our decline
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of the best industrial minds in South Africa, XA Global Trade Advisors MD Donald Mackay, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Ed...
Amateur hour in South African diplomacy?
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Former DA leader Tony Leon tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that South Africa is taking a chance in there way it is confron...
Fantastic Summit, but sadly no consensus
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Bruce argues, in this Podcasts from the Edge monologue, that while the G20 Summit in Johannesburg at the weekend went well, and that the West ga...
So, are we turning the economic corner or still getting to the corner?
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Amid a flurry of upbeat economic news — a good mini-budget, a stronger rand, escape from the Grey List, the JSE on steroids and progress, on paper a...
Renewal? Seriously? How does the ANC cook with rotten eggs?
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Veteran ANC leader Mathews Phosa, a former ANC Treasurer-general and Mpumalanga premier, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge t...
Can the State step on the gas?
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
South Africa is taking a huge bet on a new fuel source for electricity — liquid natural gas (LNG). Electricity Minister Kghosientsho Ramokgopa has s...
Why Paul Mashatile should never be president
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Deputy President Paul Mashatile is a flawed individual who should probably not be president, journalist and author Pieter Du Toit tells Peter Bruce in...
Time now to reopen our embassy in Tel Aviv?
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
US President Donald Trump’s flash coup in bringing fighting in Gaza to end end on Monday, along with the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, m...
Can Cyril get a US trade deal over the line?
13 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Cyril Ramaphosa goes to the US in the next few weeks to address the United Nations General Assembly. But will his trade negotiators currentl...
Jumping Jack Flash just wants gas gas gas
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“I do not see imported liquified natural gas as a long-term solution for South Africa or even a base power solution. I see it as a, as a peaking and...
People, we’re tired
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
South African researcher, author and analyst Prof Richard Calland tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge “ are fatigued by a we...
Shooting the Messenger
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The DA’s spokesperson on foreign affairs, Emma Powell, found herself at the wrong end of a powerful assault by the State last week after she notifie...
When a Trillion Rand might not be enough
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Cyril Ramaphosa said recently the State would spend more than a trillion rand over the next three years on building and repairing infrastruc...
"The Americans Really Want to Trade With Us"
09 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As US President Donald Trump sends final notice to the South African government that he will impose a 30% tariff on its exports to the US on August 1,...
Why Enoch and the Treasury are fair game
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There’ve been voices raised around the failure, twice, of finance minister Enoch Godongwana to pass a 2025 budget through parliament, each time tryi...
Is Helen Zille bad for the DA brand?
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Former DA leader Tony Leon, in his new book, Being There, says DA Federal Executive chair and former party leader Helen Zille may have many positive q...
"Putin stole too much..."
11 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Over 20 years,” writer, investor and campaigner Bill Browder tells Peter Bruce in this Special Edition of Podcasts from the Edge, “Vladimir Put...
What Business Wants from a GNU
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Business for South Africa chairman Martin Kingston tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that business would prefer the current ...
Steel yourself...
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
South Africa’s steel industry is in the crosshairs once again, and once again for all the wrong reasons. Itac, the department of trade, industry and...
The deal Cyril has to do with Donald
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joel Pollak, probably the next US ambassador to South Africa, tells Peter Bruce in this revealing edition of Podcasts from the Edge, that President Cy...
Don’t do it
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If he were a young Afrikaner, former Gauging Premier Mbhazima Shilowa tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, he wouldn’t take ...
They’re mature, we’re premature…
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Industrial strategy consultant Jake Morris enters the hot topic of industrial policy and tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge t...
Trump takes the GNU back to the brink
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the space of a week DA leader John Steenhuisen has moved from threatening legal action against the Expropriation Act signed into law by President C...
Cyril’s in his happy place
29 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Believe it or not, veteran political editor and Business Day Editor-at-Large Natasha Marrian tells Peter Bruce in tis edition of Podcasts from the Edg...
Maintenance, it was always maintenance…
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jamie Holley, CEO of Traxion, Africa’s largest private rail and rail services company, tell Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge th...
The right kind of bloodlust
15 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rise Mzansi leader and SCOPA chairperson in parliament, Songezo Zibi tells Peter Bruce in this first edition of the Podcasts from the Edge of 2025 tha...
"We need leadership and discipline"
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Eskom Chairman Mteto Nyati tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that South African’s crisis is about a lack of leadership. It...
So What?
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 wh...
It's OK to be a little scared
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Celebrated South African trade and industry specialist Donald MacKay tells Peter Bruce in this Edition of Podcasts from the Edge that he thinks Donald...
Home Truths
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that digitising our the entire chain of documentation...
Pots and pots of money
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 m...
Cyril's first GNU reshuffle loading?
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The DA is never wrong, Peter
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rise Mzansi leader and former Business Day editor Songezo Zibi says the Government of National Unity has seven months to get the country out of the wo...
Why on earth gas?
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Combative and passionate South African investor and industrialist Vuslat Bayoglu and Peter Bruce cross swords over the virtues of coal and renewable e...
SA has the right stuff
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jorge Heine, arguably Chile's most illustrious modern diplomat, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that South Africa has no c...
Is there an adult in the room?
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The world is closer to war than it has been for decades. As the US and China square up to each other, any of the flashpoints in the Middle East, Ukrai...
Matters of Fact
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Technology is dramatically speeding up change. The first meeting this week of the Cabinet of President Cyril Ramaphosa's new coalition Cabinet must qu...
Orchestrating Manoeuvres in the dark
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Former DA leader Tony Leon has emerged mightily relieved to get his life back after two weeks spent in the political cauldron he left behind more than...
And What Rough Beast Next?
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Former Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has harsh words for the Independent Electoral Commission and praise for ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa and ANC...
If you're going to create winners where do the losers go?
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Trade specialist and CEO of XA Global Trade Advisory Donald MacKay is unimpressed with the good press trade, industry and competition minister Ebrahim...
For Crying Out Loud, Calm Down
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The sun will rise after the May 29 election, an ANC/EFF coalition is highly unlikely and there are real signs that some of President Cyril Ramaphosa's...
Finally, white smoke from the DA’s policy chimney
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
They have an economic policy at last!! After years of chiding and goading the official opposition, in his newspaper columns, to produce an economic po...
The Power of One Tough Zulu
24 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020 young Mbali Ntuli took on the might of the Democratic Alliance establishment and ran for the leadership of the party against John Steenhuisen....
South Africa is a black country now
17 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The ANC will win the forthcoming elections, the DA will come second and the EFF third, former ANC exile intelligence leader Oyama Mabandla tells Peter...
Is that column doric or iconic?
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Bruce talks about being a columnist in this latest edition of Podcasts from the Edge. He approves of the notion that while columnists are nomina...
When business stops trying
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Most of the import tariffs protecting South African companies in their home market have been in place for more than 20 years, trade expert Donald Mack...
Time to step on the gas?
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On July 1 2026, just more than 28 months from now, a vast swathe of South African industry — from manufacturers of car windscreens, beer bottles, in...
Why the ANC might be happy polling 40% — it's not even trying yet.
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Opinion polls giving the ANC just 45% of the vote ahead of the coming general election are “good for the ANC”, veteran political writer and keen o...
Gwede Mantashe’s quiet race to build a gas-fired rival to Eskom
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Largely hidden by the desperate public discourse over the future of Eskom and electricity in South Africa, Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe...
And now for something all too familiar
31 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Bruce talks to trade and industry expert Donald MacKay in this first edition of Podcasts from the Edge for 2024. Why are our grand master plans ...
What the hell is going on?
13 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As former First Rand Chair Roger Jardine launches his new political party-cum-movement, Change Starts Now, quite how this is converted into him making...
A Rubicon for Big Business
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Can big business really parachute its own candidate into the coming 2024 election and get him elected president? That’s the ambition, it seems, behi...
Time to Rise?
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rise Mzansi is the new kid on South Africa’s heaving political block. Its founder and leader, former Bus9ness Day editor Songezo Zibi, tells Peter B...
Perhaps not quite the perfect match
18 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Springboks won an almost impossible rugby test match on Sunday, beating Rugby World Cup hosts France in what many commentators have called the gre...
High, dry and very lucky
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A gigantic flood smashed through the village of Stanford in the Western Cape last week, leaving Podcasts from the Edge presenter Peter Bruce in awe of...
Execrable English or Cunning Code?
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill is an attempt to rewrite what South Africa’s national interest it. On a first read it turn out to be al...
Cyril Ramaphosa's sweet dreams
06 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
President Cyril Ramaphosa told the country on television on Sunday night that the recent Brics summit in Johannesburg was all about creating “a fair...
Honeyed tongues and hearts of gall
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Brics summit in Johannesburg last week has left a simmering argument among South Africans in its wake. Was it a good thing or bad. Who have we bec...
When will BRICS actually do something?
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Brics summit in Johannesburg this week is a giant talk shop. Go back to the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement in the late 1950s and you’ll f...
Did the moon just get shot?
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen has pulled off something of a coup by getting author, commentator and scholar William Gumede to chair his ...
Business tries one more time
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This time, business is not trying to fix, like, everything. This time it is just trying to fix three things. It is sort of a lesson learned in trying ...
Eskom’s Energy Availability bias
26 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Eskom’s Energy Availability Factor a week ago was 56.3%, a long way from where Eskom and the government keep telling it is or jolly well should be. ...
Say it out loud
19 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the past 10 years Nicola Harris has built up, under the radar, a stunningly successful NGO helping children in poor township schools transition fr...
Complain and campaign
11 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s complaining press conference on Sunday about how much harder his job is than any other ANC head of state has Peter Bruce...
Cyril’s subtle shuffle shuttle
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Either he doesn’t know what an economic mess we are in or he does and is hiding it really well, but President Cyril Ramaphosa has a spring in his st...
Oh for a peace of the action
20 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It is not only too early to tell whether or not President Cyril Ramaphosa’s peace mission was a success or not, there may be a case for not even try...
Another Brief Encounter
13 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How long will the new “partnership” between the Government and business last? Once the election next May is past, will the government still need i...
The DA bowls me over
06 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A New Democratic Alliance policy document, possibly out this week, threatens to do the impossible and to make the party interesting as a place of prog...
South Africa has a skills problem
31 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
South Africans are outraged to find themselves last in a prestigious survey of how well our fourth graders can read for meaning. And they should be an...
Crimea river
24 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s peace mission to Russia and what the intelligence ministry in his office calls “the” Ukraine next month is headed fo...
A Brigety too far…
17 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Apology or not from the US ambassador in SA, the governments slack handling of the visit of the Russian freighter, the Lady R, to the Simon’s Town n...
Leadership is about the country, not the party
09 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The one lesson we can take out of the mess in the Johannesburg City Council is that leadership in local government doesn’t always come with a mayora...
When you see a fork in the road, take it
12 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Trade is the end of the process of dreaming, investing, creating jobs and making things other people want to buy. In South Africa though the obvious s...
The Book of John
03 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Newly re-elected Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen went out on a very long limb at the end of the party’s Midrand congress on Sunday, putt...
Heaven will have to wait
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're stressed and anxious. The State is barely functional and in many places it has already failed. While a new minister tours power plants his old, ...
What Was That?
22 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The EFF’s National Shutdown on Monday was a political failure and, if anything, argues Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, would ...
How a stinking government kills its children
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Bruce is enraged in this episode of Podcasts from the Edge by the absolutely needless death of a four-year-old girl, Langalam Viki. She fell int...
A Hiding To Nothing
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Bruce despairs of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s late night reshuffle in this latest edition of Podcasts from the Edge. The new Electricity Minis...
The writing on the wall…
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Bruce goes solo again in this new edition of Podcasts from the Edge, suggesting that former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter’s revelations about corr...
Absolute zero
21 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There is "almost zero chance" Eskom or another intervening authority, can end load shedding in South Africa any time in the next two years, ...
Send in the Clowns...
13 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
That used to be theatre-speak for when something went wrong on stage and the crowd began to boo. At South African Tourism there seems to be no need. I...
True Crime Stories
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In his first podcast monologue Peter Bruce takes his Podcasts from the Edge into new realms. Basically because a guest didn’t pitch up he wonders po...
Say what?
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Veteran energy analyst and journalist (and electrical engineer) Chris Yelland tells Peter Bruce in this illuminating edition of Podcasts From the Edge...
Half full? Half empty? Or just not full?
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Commission, Dr Crispian Olver is at the very centre of South Africa’s swirling energy policy debat...
Curb your enthusiasm folks… 2029’s the year; not 2024
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even if the ANC falls below 50% of the vote in the next general election in 2024 it’ll be able to form “a relatively easy” coalition with a smal...
SA's power cuts are deliberately inflicted by the ruling party - Robin Renwick
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Robin Renwick, Lord Renkwick, was UK ambassador in South Africa from 1987 to 1991. He was here for the end of PW Botha and the release of Nelson Mande...
Cyril's big call
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Elections analyst Michael Atkins walks Peter Bruce through the bewildering maze of a rapidly approaching Constitutional crisis over our electoral syst...
Big Batteries? Here’s a way to do it our way...
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
s South Africa's efforts to plug the gaps in our electricity supply grind slowly forward there's a clear hole emerging in the plans for new, renewable...
A Boer made a plan and that’s a pebble bed nuclear reactor orbiting above us
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
South Africa had spent around R10bn developing the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor before abandoning the nuclear project when Jacob Zuma became President. ...
The system is broken
22 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Donald MacKay, director of XA International Trade Advisers in Johannesburg is arguably the most knowledgeable outsider on the inner workings of South ...
Helen Zille on the ANC polling below 40%
15 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sunday’s cracking headline in Rapport, “ANC falls below 40%” is the result of the ANC’s own polling, chair of the DA Federal Executive and for...
What did we need most — education or skills?
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The head of Investec’s corporate social investment programme, Setlogane Manchidi, sits atop a R90m-R100m budget each year to do some good out of the...