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 Edge that using import tariffs to protect local industry is a losing strategy. “ We assume that the reason our manufacturing sector more broadly struggles to compete is that we assume that an import tariff will fix it whereas the reason we struggle to make things is we've got broken infrastructure. We don't have electricity... The ports are broken.The reason we're not competitive has nothing to do with what other people are doing. Many of our imports are just the importation of [other countries’] electricity that is working consistently and functioning infrastructure and a safe environment to invest in. That is what you're effectively importing.”

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 confronting US President Donald Trump’s decisions to boycott the recent G20 Summit in Johannesburg and his subsequent announcement that he would not permit SA to participate in the G20 under his chairmanship in 2026. Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola calling Trump a “white supremacist” days before the Johannesburg summit was “the most self-harming remark” from the country’s most senior diplomat. It recalls former National Party Prime Minister John Vorster telling the world in 1968 it could “do its damndest” if it thought Apartheid would ever be dismantled. “He did very well in the next election,” remembers Leon, “but I don’t think this will help now. This idea that you can go to a powerful country and give it the middle finger might give you a moment of satisfaction but I think (for) worthwhile diplomats and meaningful diplomacy you have to think twice before you react. South African diplomacy is amateur hour, kind of … if you want a result, if you want to join the cheering gallery of the anti-trumpets in the world well that’s a very crowded saloon and no doubt it makes you feel good but I don;t think its going to meet any of the government’s apparent objectives to grow the economy, to get investment here and bulk up our trade.”

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 gathered around to support President Cyril Ramaphosa, he was unable to secure unanimous consensus on the Leaders’ Declaration he cleverly introduced at the beginning, rather than at the close, of the gathering. Whatever the gloss, the absence of the US and the the decision by Argentina not to support the Summit final communique, introduced for the first time a crack in the G20 edifice that may be difficult, if not impossible, to repair. It wasn’t all Ramaphosa’s fault but while the gathering was excellent, it didn’t quite succeed.

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 at least, on reform of South Africa’s moribund rail and ports system — Anne Bernstein, head of the Centre for Development and Enterprise tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that “I’m the first to welcome good news (but) we need to recognise what changes have been made (but) I don't think we've turned the corner. I think we're approaching the corner. And if you look at a lot of the reforms, energy's the most important … but there's so much more to do ... we shouldn't let our guard down. Look at the whole chess board. There's unemployment (which) is worse than it was a year ago by some 200,000 people. And we are simultaneously watching the absolute chaos, corruption and disaster in our criminal justice system”.

Veteran ANC leader Mathews Phosa, a former ANC Treasurer-general and Mpumalanga premier, tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that he doesn’t take talk of renewal in the ANC seriously. It’s spin, he says. "The election of 2024 showed that (the ANC) has died from 57% to 40%. If you think that was bad, as we stand now it is going to go down to 26% unless something traumatic happens ... there's too much spin. When you say want to renew, what are you renewing? You're not going to take rotten eggs and think that tomorrow they'll make a good omelet.”

South Africa is taking a huge bet on a new fuel source for electricity — liquid natural gas (LNG). Electricity Minister Kghosientsho Ramokgopa has said we will target using LNG for 6 00MW of powerby 2030 but there almost no infrastructure to import it and no plant to make electricity from it. The government will gazette its 2025 Integrated Resource Plan in a matter of days. In this edition of Podcasts from the Edge Peter Bruce talks to Jaco Human, CEP of the Gas Users Association of Southern Africa, who currently use gas for industrial heating but who face a critical deadline — June 2030 when the current monopoly supplier, Sasol, will cut of supplies, the so-called “gas cliff". The industrial gas users employ close to 100 000 people. Can they and the State build import terminals and pipelines land long-term gas supply contracts in time? Only the State is big enough to serve as an anchor importer for long-term contracts. "What simply has to happen in order to mitigate the gas cliff? That, that is priority number one,” says Human. "What we're saying to the state is (that)e have now run out of time. We simply have to talk about demand stacking (orders into the future), and that simply means the sequencing and, and addition of gas demand through Eskom, through industry and through private power generation. If we don't get that right, we will sit with a market failure. Right now we see that the government is about to issue or get moving on a gas master plan very shortly, or at least publish something. We’re not sure ... that the gas cliff is sufficiently addressed in that.”

Deputy President Paul Mashatile is a flawed individual who should probably not be president, journalist and author Pieter Du Toit tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. Du Toit in his new book on Mashatile, The Dark Prince, lays out the complex web of personal and financial relationships that keep Cyril Ramaphosa’s probable successor that are now “so intertwined that his life seems to be funded by individuals directly dependent government contracts”. “You remember that in 2009 (when corruption charges against Jacob Zuma were withdrawn there were large parts of the commentariat back then and in, in, in general, in the country saying, you know, ' Let's just give this guy a chance. He connects with people at grassroots level’ ", says Du Toit. "And I think if we decide to say, let's just give Paul Mashatile a chance we'd make a grave mistake. He lacks a political compass. He is someone who who is open to influences outside of what can be considered proper. He’s a deeply problematic character”.

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, may still be on shaky ground but it’s a good moment for South Africa to grab and to reopen its embassy in Tel Aviv, which we shuttered a few years ago without ever breaking actual diplomatic relations. Now, Freedom Front Plus leader Corne Mulder tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, is the time to go back and put official feet back on the ground. And, clearly, with an eye on Washington, where negotiations to reduced Trump’s punishing tariffs on SA are painfully slow. "South Africa is not, on its own, going to change the course of events in the Middle East at the moment,” says Mulder. " (Events have) overtaken us and we must now get onto that wave and, and, and move with it. It gives us really an opportunity to not only reach out to United States in terms of, uh, repositioning of our international relations when it comes to Israel, because that is one of the major points of contention from the US side, but it gives us the opportunity to reach out. And I think opening the embassy would be a very, uh, a very sound step to take ... it would be very well received in Washington because I know they're expecting us to have a rethink in terms of our relationship with Israel and the latest developments give us that opportunity to move into that space.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa goes to the US in the next few weeks to address the United Nations General Assembly. But will his trade negotiators currently in Washington have made enough progress by then to allow Ramaphosa to fly from New York to Washington to sign a trade deal that significantly reduces the crippling 30% tariffs US President Donald Trump has imposed on imports from South Africa? Former South African newspaper editor Phillip van Niekerk, now living in Washington, thinks a deal may be on the cards. “But, you know, South Africa has really dropped the ball (diplomatically in the US) And this goes back a long way. This doesn't, doesn't start with the Trump administration. It doesn't start now, in 2025. There's deep relationships between South Africa and the United States that back a long, long way.,” Van Niekerk tell Peter Bruce in this latest edition of Podcasts from the Edge.

“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 a balancing solution,” energy analysts Chris Yelland tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. But gas is all the rage. Minerals minister Gwede Mantashe wants to spend a fortune building new infrastructure and South Africa has built its urgent new trade proposals with Donald Trump around a huge new standing order for imported LNG. "Gas base supply is an option for South Africa. Base supply becomes an option when you've got significant indigenous gas resources where you drill a hole in the ground and natural gas comes out. You don't have to drill a hole in a foreign country, take out the gas, turn it into a liquid, transport it thousands of kilometres across the sea, convert it back into a gas, compress it, and pipe it to where it's needed.”

South African researcher, author and analyst Prof Richard Calland tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge “ are fatigued by a weak government, by extremely precarious socioeconomic conditions and by a sense of going backwards of not making progress. But it's easy to criticise our president. It's easy to say he's not ruthless enough, not decisive enough, not strategic enough but we have to maintain a sense of perspective and balance in our commentary.” And the voters and upcoming elections? “The ANC appears now to be in terminal decline, and I've long held the view that once the breach was broken and the a ANC lost its majority, that it might well enter a free fall period [and] I think we're in that. And of course once Ramaphosa goes and, and he's the last of that generation of serious politicians, then you are in a sense, you're dropping down a division.”

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, an Afrikaner delegation to the US, fronted by Freedom Front Plus leader Corne Mulder, has returned with a short list of points it says were given to them by senior White House officials when they met last week. "They really want to trade with us,” Mulder tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. "But the Trump administration feels very strongly about these political hurdles that need to get out of the way.” The four principles — that the ANC denounce the singing of Kill the Boer, that all expropriation of property is fairly compensated, that all US investment into South Africa be free of BEE regulations and that farm attacks be classified as a priority crime — are, for the most part, almost impossible to comply with. But then again President Cyril Ramaphosa has nothing substantial on the table which which to beat back the Trump tariff assault. Still, he has wriggled his way out of tougher puzzles than the one the Afrikaners returned from Washington with. Would he consider even trying?

There’ve been voices raised around the failure, twice, of finance minister Enoch Godongwana to pass a 2025 budget through parliament, each time trying in vain to slip in a VAT increase to cover for the ANCs inability to grow the economy. We should not, the argument goes, be flinging mud at an institution so central to our democracy, actually mentioned in the Constitution, whatever the politics may be. That’s just nonsense, veteran financial journalist and former Treasury spokesman Jabulani Sikhakhane tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge. “To whom much power is given, much is expected,” says Sikhakhane. “We criticise the judiciary so why would you not criticise the Reserve Bank or the National Treasury? The judiciary is a creation of the Constitution too. I don’t think they should be protected. To disagree with the Reserve Bank or the Treasury about policy or the decisions they makes very healthy for democracy.”

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 qualities but that “I doubt the party brand is enhanced by her continued presence at the top of the organisation”. Peter Bruce asks him in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge whether he still believes that and whether he thinks the DA is right to fight to stay in the Government of National Unity despite being the principle cause of failure of the National Treasury’s two attempts to increase the rate of VAT. How does it fight coming local and national elections as part of a government run by the ANC?

“Over 20 years,” writer, investor and campaigner Bill Browder tells Peter Bruce in this Special Edition of Podcasts from the Edge, “Vladimir Putin and his friends have stolen a trillion dollars from Russia.” He has to distract his people or they’d lynch him and It’s why he can’t stop his invasion of Ukraine. Russia today, Browder says, is a much more totalitarian state than apartheid South Africa ever was. In this wide ranging discussion the author of Red Notice and, more recently, Freezing Order, reveals his favourite country in the world is South Africa. He has a home in Cape Town but dare not visit for fear that Putin would ask the South Africans to arrest him and hand him over. And he worries that they would.

Business for South Africa chairman Martin Kingston tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge that business would prefer the current Government of National Unity to stick together despite the current crisis over the DA’s decision not to support the budget. Business is deeply involved in Operation Vulindlela, the reform process inside the Presidency but, says Kingston, they’re not going to interfere in the politics. "It’s much better in our view to stay the course,” he says. "We are deeply concerned that ... there is going to be either a minority government or a change in the composition of the GNU that undermines certainty and predictability, that undermines confidence, and confidence levels are now very thin, or where we can’t see the reforms that are taking place then of course we’re allow to express our opinion. What we’re not going to do is apply pressure, as has been suggested, to any of the parties. That would be wholly inapprpropriate. We work with the government of the day.”. "What the investor community require is the certainty that key policies are going to be the subject of appropriate structural reform and that where decisions are taken they are subsequently implemented."

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 competition’s trade regulator, has been instructed by minister Parks Tau to conduct arguably the widest tariff review in its history, of imported steel. This as Arcelor Mittal SA (AMSA), the country’s only integrated steelmaker, is being rescued by the State. The review threatens widespread price increases on imports — everything steel-related is included — from iron ore to wheelbarrows. The problem, as trade expert Donald MacKay tells Peter Bruce in this edition of Podcasts from the Edge, is that while literally hundreds of imported products will be reviewed, Itac normally takes 27 months to complete just one review. Parks Tau wants the review done by July! “The unintended consequences can be existential to some companies,” says MacKay, “You can’t do all of this and expect some companies to not fail. So maybe its not Mittal but there’s no way everyone comes through this… I think this review is too big. It should have been broken up.”

Joel Pollak, probably the next US ambassador to South Africa, tells Peter Bruce in this revealing edition of Podcasts from the Edge, that President Cyril Ramaphosa and his senior officials got it hopelessly wrong when they responded to US President Donald Trump’s attacks on South Africa with personal criticism of him. ”When Trump commented on South Africa,” says Pollak, “you don’t accuse him of misinformation. People in the media can do what they want but the President of South Africa and senior officials and so forth — you just don’t accuse Trump of misinformation and you don’t say he was acting irrationally. That’s exactly the wrong thing to do. You try to understand where he’s coming from, you offer compromises and you get to a better place … But it was absolutely necessary for him to behave that way.”