Peter Bruce
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Columnist/Fumbling podcaster iono.fm/c/5913 Fmr Editor, Business Day & Financial Mail, Joburg. Ex Madrid, Bonn Corr & UK News Editor @FT🇿🇦🇺🇦
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Articles by Peter Bruce
PETER BRUCE | Lots to tear up about our freedom
PETER BRUCE | Lots to tear up about our freedom Brave choices during the local elections this week will set us up for better times November 01, 2026 at 12:00 am4 min read Share current article via Email Share current article via Facebook Share current article via TwitterShare current article via LinkedIn Enter fullscreen mode displaying this image. Expand Democracy is slow and frustrating but it works, says the writer.
PETER BRUCE | Well-run cities and towns should be rewarded
One of the saddest things about the fast-approaching municipal elections in South Africa is that whatever the results, they will once again build in all the structural, political and human weaknesses — incompetence, party loyalty and corruption — that have brought most of our cities, towns and villages to their knees over the past 32 years. There’s been talk of reform for ages, but maybe next time.
PETER BRUCE | Agoa is the least of our worries
Story audio is generated using AI There is a lot of trilling at the top of our government about how unlikely the Americans are to keep us in Agoa, the African trade programme that cuts the import duties on our exports to the US if we’re in favour in Washington. We have, for a variety of reasons, fallen foul of the current US president, Donald Trump, but Agoa is up for renewal from next year, and people reckon our time is up.
PETER BRUCE | Poor folk suffer when ANC and business get things wrong
I asked a friend the other day: what’s the worst thing about South Africa, and how do you fix it? “The worst thing,” he said, “is that the people in power don’t know what’s wrong or how to fix it, and the people who do know what’s wrong and how to fix it aren’t in power.” But what, I asked, could be done? The ANC already thinks it knows everything.
PETER BRUCE | There’s one war Trump has won
Story audio is generated using AI It’s not a perfect comparison, but the story about the American woman sentenced to death by lethal injection in Tennessee, who survived two attempts to execute her last week, put me in mind, a little, of being born in 1952 and waking up each morning nearly 74 years later to a completely different world than the one I was raised in. My expectations, prepared by my parents — school, university and salaried working life — were working out pretty well, I thought.
PETER BRUCE | Hill-Lewis faces balancing act in navigating Trump’s offensive
Did the DA dodge a bullet last year when it tried and failed to join an Afrikaner delegation to Washington that later returned brandishing a document, dated June 25, it claimed was the result of “a constructive and high-level meeting today in Washington DC with senior officials from the White House”?
PETER BRUCE | Mbeki essay claims apartheid agents still shape politics
South Africans accustomed to former president Thabo Mbeki blaming all of the country’s woes on an unidentified “some among us” or a nebulous “counter-revolution” will have heard with no small degree of dread that he has just published an essay on Afrikaners lobbying the US for support against ANC policies of redress. Mbeki can go on a bit.
PETER BRUCE | White crosses and black empowerment are equally poisonous
Story audio is generated using AI It’s been quite the week in our relations with the US, what with them imposing visa restrictions on so-far unnamed people responsible for “racially motivated crime and government-sponsored discrimination occurring against the Afrikaners and other minority populations in South Africa, including race-based discriminatory legislation, threats of land expropriation without compensation and incitement of racial violence through dehumanising chants and slogans”.
PETER BRUCE | Trump knows nothing about us, cares even less
Story audio is generated using AI It’s hard to believe there are still adults here who think US President Donald Trump has been good for South Africa. No matter the damage he does in the world, no matter how hard his war on Iran is going to hit farmers and consumers here, every now and again he does something to warm the hearts of ware Afrikaner nationalists.
PETER BRUCE | No end to industrial decay despite Ramaphosa’s entreaties
Every now and again a country is blessed to stumble across a leader who either knows what they’re doing or surrounds themselves with people who do. The US was lucky to have Bill Clinton. The UK was lucky to find Margaret Thatcher when it did. Canada is lucky to have Mark Carney now. The keys to success are being a good listener, understanding that you don’t know everything already, and not lying to yourself.
PETER BRUCE | Picking the wrong Jewish target for anti-Israel anger
Story audio is generated using AI How depressing to hear reports that pro-Palestinian protesters have returned to picket outside the stores of Cape Union Mart owner Philip Krawitz despite losing comprehensively in the Western Cape High Court on September 4 in a case Krawitz had brought as he sought to save his business. The protests against Cape Union Mart began in 2023 as Israeli retaliation in Gaza against Hamas for its murderous attack into Israel was reaching an early peak.
PETER BRUCE | Chikane’s ANC comeback turns into political farce
You have to feel for the Rev Frank Chikane. Back in the day he was somebody — general secretary of the South African Council of Churches; a principal speaker at the launch of the United Democratic Front; the target of an assassination attempt when apartheid security personnel poisoned his underwear; director-general in the presidency when Thabo Mbeki ran the country. Chikane was big.
PETER BRUCE | November 4 likely to fall short as a day of destiny
Story audio is generated using AI As the local government elections on November 4 rumble towards us, I can’t help wondering whether we are not getting a little carried away with the notion that they will somehow be a “defining” moment for the country. Of course, politicians will think that, because it is going to be defining for them. But for the country? I’m not convinced. For us, the big story is going to be the general elections in 2029. Who will the ANC replace President Cyril Ramaphosa with?
PETER BRUCE | Could small wins unite South Africa’s divided society?
What would it take to unite South Africa? I don’t think we’re in as much trouble as a cursory glance at our local social media might suggest, but our divisions are many. We’re divided by race, wealth, education, language, age and — often left unsaid — ethnicity.
PETER BRUCE | Ramaphosa loses grip as ANC factions paralyse leadership
Story audio is generated using AI As a rare surviving child of apartheid, the ANC is finally coming into its own — breaking down in the face of its ineptitude, costing society a fortune, dreaming up impossible “solutions” to the problems it is solely responsible for, and fighting with its own shadow.
PETER BRUCE | Let parliament choose new NPA, Idac chiefs
Story audio is generated using AI I watched TV news footage on Friday of the appearance in the Pretoria magistrate’s court of much of the leadership of the South African Police Service’s crime intelligence division with some joy.
PETER BRUCE | Lobbying gap underlines need for reform
One of new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s first hires at Number 10 Downing Street was a chap called Hayden Munro, now Burnham’s political director. The satirical magazine Private Eye pounced like a happy puppy on the appointment. Munro, a New Zealander, had worked for two Kiwi Labour prime ministers and, before Burnham’s call-up, had been working for Arden Strategies in London.
PETER BRUCE | The folly of South Africa’s industrial hallucination
Story audio is generated using AI One definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The old adage has never been more true than when you try to understand President Cyril Ramaphosa’s obsession with industrial policy. It’s as if manufacturing were the beginning and end of all measures of economic success. The ANC has been banging the same drum since almost the moment it came to power in 1994.
PETER BRUCE | Politics trump practicality as Eskom transmission battle heats up
A simmering fight over who should own and control Eskom’s 33,000km electricity transmission network as reform of the South African power market plods slowly ahead is not nearly over. This week President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, saw fit to publicly admonish Eskom’s highly regarded chair, Mteto Nyati, for questioning the wisdom of handing the entire network over to a new national Transmission Systems Operator (TSO).
PETER BRUCE | Yen’s having a crisis — but Trump’s on the case
Story audio is generated using AI In case you don’t already have enough to worry about, I have something for you — a smouldering crisis for the Japanese yen. I’m no expert, but Japan’s currency is at a 40-year low against the US dollar and is now the subject of an intense rescue effort. Japan is the world’s fourth-biggest economy. After the US (GDP $32.4-trillion, equivalent to about R524-trillion), China ($21-trillion) and Germany ($5.5-trillion), it comes in at ($4.4-trillion).
PETER BRUCE | Editors face ‘corridor of uncertainty’
In 52 years of journalism I’ve made my fair share of apologies, corrections and retractions. It happens. Print journalism is particularly demanding. Online, things helpfully vanish to below the screen, but you can’t fix a print caption that spells a name incorrectly, or a headline that doesn’t work, or a poor judgment. You can’t change a wrong fact. They’re in the paper for the whole day and a whole week if you appear on a Sunday. I stick to print where possible.
PETER BRUCE | Brick by brick we can fix what’s broken in us all
South Africa’s problems can sometimes seem so overwhelming that the solutions we come up with are often so daunting themselves that we shout them out and quickly give up because it’s all too much. Real unemployment at more than 40%, collapsing cities, derisory economic growth, a corrupted state and an electoral cycle that pits citizens against each other almost constantly make it hard to appreciate what we still can do.
PODCAST | Death of the South African Post Office (Part 3)
Story audio is generated using AI How did it all go wrong? Former South African Post Office CEO Mark Barnes tells Peter Bruce in this final episode of their three-part series of his stewardship of the post office how he tried to take on local courier companies and had been talking to the Chinese, hoping that with mogul Jack Ma’s Alibaba they could create a South African version of Amazon. But then, out of the blue, the government announced it was going to spin the Post Bank out of the post office.
PODCAST | Death of the South African Post Office (part 2)
Story audio is generated using AI In the second episode of their three-part special, former South African Post Office (Sapo) CEO Mark Barnes tells Peter Bruce what he found when he first walked into his office at Post Office headquarters in Pretoria in January 2016.
Boek | In koelen bloede - Peter Bruce
Thrillers & Spanning Uitgeverij ThiemeMeulenhoff Uitgegeven als Paperback Eerste editie 01-01-1970 Laatste editie 01-01-1970 ISBN 9789003987259 Taal Nederlands Populair in hetzelfde genre Boeken van dezelfde auteur Uitgelicht 4 Wat vind je van dit boek? Geef jouw beoordeling. 0 1 0 0 0 Willen dit boek lezen 1 Lezen dit boek 0 Hebben dit boek gelezen 1 De Nederlandse Boekenbon is supporter van lezerscommunity Hebban
PODCAST | Death of the South African Post Office (Part 1)
Story audio is generated using AI Listen or watch as banker, financier, entrepreneur and former South African Post Office (Sapo) CEO Mark Barnes tells Peter Bruce the story of his appointment in 2016, its recovery from constant state bailouts, and his sudden exit in mid-2019 when President Cyril Ramaphosa, without warning, spun out Post Bank and, with it, Sapo’s future as a viable business.
PETER BRUCE | Trump’s Iran deal leaves allies angry and fanatics in charge
There can be only a few reasons why US President Donald Trump’s war on Iran has not caused the catastrophic oil/energy crisis that was expected to surpass the shock of 1973. While the price of oil has risen sharply and inflicted great pain on motorists and food prices around the world, it has not even approached the increase of nearly 300% it did in 1974. After Trump launched his attacks on February 28 oil topped out at about $120 a barrel, a rise of 83%.
PETER BRUCE | We need to come to terms with manufacturing’s decline
It is obviously good news that South Africa managed a really meaningful GDP growth rise of 0.5% in the first three months of this year, beating the 0.4% figure in the last quarter of 2025 that got business and government leaders really excited about recovery and the green shoots of reform. Stats SA said on release of the first-quarter numbers that agriculture and finance had done particularly well, as they have been doing for a while. But manufacturing crashed, again, this time by 0.8%.
PETER BRUCE | Firing up furnaces requires Churchillian-like sagacity
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has finally approved the terms of a dramatic electricity tariff cut to South Africa’s remaining, and struggling, ferrochrome smelters, bringing their electricity costs down from more than R1.30/kWh to just 62c/kWh. The decision has allowed the two main remaining smelters, Glencore and Samancor, to lift section 189 redundancy notices to thousands of staff, including many highly skilled workers.
PETER BRUCE | The key X is the one on the ballot paper
Story audio is generated using AI Another unedifying week on X. If I were running a political party I would think about not allowing any ranking member to spontaneously tweet anything other than their schedule, a regular newsletter or podcast or a considered response to a public tragedy. Data collected by Gareth van Onselen’s Victory Research — the most highly regarded pollster in the country — shows almost 95% of the electorate either don’t know what X (formerly Twitter) is or hardly ever use it.
PETER BRUCE | Oil and gas are no longer the fuels of the future
I’ve been preparing for a trip to Europe, and it’s been a relief of sorts to watch Europeans react really badly to the significant heatwave washing over the continent. They argue there just as bitterly as we argue here. On French social media the insult crétin is widely used, both by climate change sceptics who argue May’s record high temperatures merely herald the arrival of an early summer, and by defenders of climate change orthodoxy who find their worst fears being confirmed.
PETER BRUCE | Time for the DA’s Hill-Lewis to set bold agenda
South Africa has a way of going quiet in anxious times. Just for a start, the president is fighting in the courts to derail a parliamentary process that could result in his impeachment. And consider: The president is fighting in the courts to derail a parliamentary process that could result in his impeachment; After a new period of good fortune was being heralded at the end of 2025, first-quarter 2026 unemployment in the country rose 4.1% to 32.7%.
PETER BRUCE | Tolashe falls but Cyril’s problems grow
President Cyril Ramaphosa finally found the courage to fire his wayward social development minister, Sisisi Tolashe. This after a flurry of reports nailed her for privately using cars donated to the ANC Women’s League, which she leads; allowing her daughter to claim half the wage paid to a government employee seconded to her as a domestic helper; and appointing as her chief of staff an impossibly young and inexperienced niece of one of the advisers in her office.
PETER BRUCE | Ramaphosa ought to get his day in court
While his opponents crow over a Constitutional Court judgment that could force President Cyril Ramaphosa to face a parliamentary impeachment committee over the $580,000 stolen from a sofa at his Phala Phala game ranch in Limpopo in 2020, little attention is being paid to Ramaphosa’s defence. He has decided now to reignite the review application he made to the Constitutional Court after the report of a three-person judicial panel into the affair in 2022.
PODCAST | Cyril, a plodder by day and a cowboy in the dark? Original
Join former DA leader Tony Leon as he tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts From the Edge that the Phala Phala scandal and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s bizarre private visit to Zimbabwe a week ago reveal a man capable of taking considerable risks away from the public eye while simultaneously being careful and ponderous in policy and politics where we are able to watch him.
PETER BRUCE | Cyril finally has to account, and it’s about time
Story audio is generated using AI As they say in Afrikaans, nou gaan die k*k spat. The Constitutional Court judgment on Friday ordered parliament to refer the findings of a 2022 panel, constituted by parliament itself and then voted away by the ANC majority that existed at the time, to an impeachment committee that could result in President Cyril Ramaphosa being forced out of office.
PETER BRUCE | Leaders silent as crisis tests SA’s economic resilience
I’m not clever enough to be sure, but I have a real sense in South Africa today of a sudden expulsion of breath. Just months ago we were “turning the corner”. Business leader Adrian Enthoven started it all with a speech last November, declaring that “after a decade of decline, South Africa has turned the corner.
PETER BRUCE | Iran war pushes us towards the abyss
Where US President Donald Trump is concerned, predictions are a risky business, but it is already clear that the war he started against Iran, at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is going to wreck any chances that South Africa’s economy will grow beyond 1% this year, or that it even gets close.
PETER BRUCE | SA’s AI future clouded by poor government oversight
So, communications & digital technologies minister Solly Malatsi has apologised to the nation for producing a draft policy on AI that was itself compromised by AI “slop” ― made-up stuff, with half a dozen references to articles and academic papers that don’t exist. Malatsi told the SABC he himself had “interfaced” a number of times with the 84-page draft document released for public comment last week and almost immediately found wanting.
PETER BRUCE | In bits and bytes, the next invaders are coming
Very late in the day South Africa has begun what may be a losing or a confusing battle with AI. Humans are already compromised by the most basic internet. Our addresses, our history, relationships and what we think are easily available to anyone without our permission. And as companies, mainly in the US, make explosive advances weekly in AI, the government has just published a draft AI policy.
PETER BRUCE | A test for Meyer as prickly as 1994
Roelf Meyer will most likely be just fine as our ambassador to Washington. And now that EFF leader Julius Malema has been sentenced to jail after firing shots in the air at a stadium near East London (now, ludicrously, KuGompo City) in 2018, he’ll at least be able to tell US critics of the Kill the Boer song of the dire difficulties confronting the man who has sung it loudest and longest.
PETER BRUCE | Don’t let oil war tempt South Africa into fossil trap
The American and Israeli war on Iran has warmed hearts in the South African oil and gas lobby. In their eyes the war and its effect on the oil and petroleum markets are a great “opportunity”. In Business Day last week Dustin van Liew and Adrian Strydom argued our energy sovereignty is no longer negotiable (“Volatility is the new normal”, April 9).
PETER BRUCE | Diplomats quietly rebuilding US-SA ties
Very quietly, South Africa and the US are rebuilding ties after a significant rupture triggered by US President Donald Trump after his return to the White House last year. It isn’t yet clear what a formal end to Trump’s hostility might look like, but it is clear that the rubble caused by his cluster bombs of lies and fabrications about South Africa is beginning to be cleared.
PODCAST | How the vanities of small differences trap Africa
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 fertility rates are African. But Africans need to find new power and position in the world. Widely respected South African business leader Phuthuma Nhleko has just published a book, The Invisible People, to make the case for a new Pan-Africanism and tells Peter Bruce in this edition of “Podcasts from the Edge” that the continent really can find its voice again.
PETER BRUCE | Vagueness integral to president’s investment party
The president had fun at his annual investment conference in Sandton on Tuesday. Star of the show, he managed to pull off a slightly Trumpian format where the CEOs of companies who had made investment “pledges” were called up to greet him on a podium to publicly affirm their offering.
WATCH: Cyril picks a number, any number …
President Cyril Ramaphosa told delegates at the 6th South African Investment Conference on Tuesday that he plans to raise R2-trillion in new fixed investment over the next three years. Or five years, depending on which articles you read on the presidency website. Peter Bruce argues in this Podcasts from the Edge monologue that Ramaphosa deliberately sets himself soft targets — targets he knows he can reach.
Podcasts from the Edge | Cyril picks a number, any number …
President Cyril Ramaphosa will tell delegates at the sixth South African Investment Conference this Tuesday morning that he plans to raise R2-trillion in new fixed investment over the next three years. Or five years, depending on which articles you read on the presidency’s website. Peter Bruce argues in this Podcast from the Edge monologue that Ramaphosa deliberately sets himself soft targets he knows he can reach.
PETER BRUCE | Pity Patrice, he just has no choice
Patrice Motsepe — mining magnate, philanthropist and football club owner — is going to be the next leader of the ANC. There’s no question. He’s ethically clean, dynamic, charming, rich as Croesus and smart. With the two “formal” candidates vying to replace Cyril Ramaphosa at the end of next year — deputy president Paul Mashatile and ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula — both buckling under allegations of corruption and incompetence, desperate ANC supporters would die for Motsepe.
PETER BRUCE | With WW3 in prospect, don’t tell me not to worry about petrol
For the most part, in the days before world wars have broken out most of the world has been going about its business. On June 27 1914, the day before Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip shot and killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie Chotek, few people in the world would have imagined what was to follow. A month later Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. A few weeks later Germany declared war on Russia, France and Belgium.
PETER BRUCE | Drop ‘inclusive’ and focus on ‘growth’
President Cyril Ramaphosa has been giving some big speeches lately. I thought his address at the funeral of Jesse Jackson was really good and very moving. This week he spoke to a large conference of business leaders, academics and politicians, trying to cheer them up with a message of recovery and common sense.
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