BusinessBrief

Industrial designer salaries in South Africa currently average about R26,787 a month according to Indeed, which works out to approximately R321,444 a year. Reported salaries range from roughly R15,675 to R45,775 a month, although senior industrial designers can earn substantially more. Location, experience, CAD and 3D-modelling capability, manufacturing knowledge, and the complexity of the products being designed can all have a major effect on earnings.

A South African national Cabinet minister currently receives a total remuneration package of R2,792,155 a year under the latest official determination for the 2025/2026 remuneration cycle. That works out to about R232,680 a month when divided across 12 months. Deputy ministers receive R2,299,398 a year, while the Deputy President receives R3,284,911. These packages were increased by 3.8% from the previous determination.

Bheki Mkhize | CEO | Wealth and Investment Solutions | FNB | mail me | Nearly half of under-60s with retirement products have dipped into their savings pots, mostly to get through the month. Our 2026 Retirement Insights Survey suggests the right response is empathy and better design. Nobody raids their retirement savings unless they are facing difficult economic pressure today. That is worth saying upfront.

Alex Cook | CEO | Wealthbit | mail me | Wellness days, Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs), flexible hours; employers have spent years building programmes that address health, mental health, work-life balance, and more. Everything except the one thing actually keeping people up at night: money stress. This isn’t a story about rising costs or a hard year. Financial stress doesn’t wait for the economy to get worse. It doesn’t disappear when the economy improves.

Tara Turkington | CEO | Flow Communications | mail me | Over 21 years of building a business have taught me many lessons about people, leadership, and sustainable growth. These lessons apply across industries and business environments. They also offer valuable guidance for South African business leaders navigating changing markets, evolving technologies, and complex workplaces. Together, they provide practical business leadership strategies for building resilient organisations.

By Dr Andrew Huberman Protocols offers a practical guide to improving mental and physical wellbeing through simple, science-based practices. Rather than presenting health as a collection of complicated interventions, Huberman focuses on everyday behaviours that readers can understand and apply. The book explores how small, consistent changes can influence sleep, focus, stress, exercise, nutrition and overall performance.

Doctor salaries in South Africa vary widely depending on whether the doctor is a general practitioner, medical officer, registrar, physician, surgeon, or fully qualified specialist. Current 2026 data shows general practitioners earning around R39,999 a month on Indeed, while public-sector medical officers start around R1.04 million a year. Fully qualified medical specialists are currently advertised at about R1.40 million to R2.30 million a year depending on grade and experience.

Food science salaries in South Africa vary substantially depending on whether you work as a food scientist, food technologist, product developer, quality specialist, or research scientist. Current market data suggests food scientists can earn around R500,100 a year on average, while food technologists average about R21,278 a month on Indeed.

When organisations conduct due diligence on a new customer, supplier or business partner, they often feel reassured once they verify the basics. The company registration checks out, the directors are identified, and the necessary documentation has been collected. The onboarding process then moves forward with confidence. But here’s the question I believe more businesses should be asking: do we really know who we’re doing business with, or do we simply know who completed the paperwork?

Ntsako Baloyi | Data & AI lead | Accenture in Africa | mail me | South Africa’s mining industry has long been defined by what lies beneath the surface – vast mineral wealth that has shaped the country’s economy for more than a century. But as ore bodies become deeper, more complex and increasingly costly to access, the future of mining will no longer be determined by what we find underground alone. It will be defined by how intelligently we use the data above it.