Sharp Sharp

Financial Mail x Scrolla
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The Financial Mail and Scrolla.Africa join forces to bring you South Africa's sharpest weekly conversation. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova sit down each week to talk straight about politics, money, and power. No spin. No script. Just the truth.

  1. 5 days ago

    The Curious Case of the ANC's Missing Mayors

    Rob Rose and Zukile Majova pay tribute to country music icon Dolly Parton, who died this week aged 80, before turning to the ANC's election manifesto, launched this weekend in Diepsloot, one of the areas where the party has failed to deliver basic services for three decades. Rob and Zuks pick apart promises of free electricity and water that ring hollow given municipalities owe Eskom over R110 billion, and electricity costs have risen 900% in twenty years. They then dig into the real story behind the ANC's continued refusal to name its mayoral candidates for Johannesburg and other metros. Incumbent Dada Morero remains in the running despite the city's collapse, Loyiso Masuku carries the taint of a Covid-19 era procurement scandal, and veteran Reverend Frank Chikane is being floated as an alternative, though his family reportedly has doubts. Zuks explains why the ANC is stalling right up against the IEC's deadline, fearing a repeat of Jacob Zuma's 2024 strategy of peeling off disgruntled councillors ward by ward. The conversation turns to the Democratic Alliance's own headache, the fallout from finance spokesperson Mark Burke's exchange control scandal, and what it might mean for donor confidence and the party's carefully built reputation for clean governance. The episode closes on a story about a motorist who called South Africa's 10111 emergency line to report a mob attack in progress, and was hung up on, and what that says about the state's relationship with the people it's meant to serve.

    The Curious Case of the ANC's Missing Mayors

  2. 20 Aug

    Zambia's Election Nobody Believes

    Rob Rose and Zukile Majova are joined by Patrick Smith from Africa Confidential for episode 21 of Sharp Sharp, the weekly podcast on South African politics, money and power from the Financial Mail and Scrolla.Africa. Patrick unpacks Zambia's disputed election, where incumbent president Hakainde Hichilema was declared the winner with 60% of the vote, but mismatched turnout figures between the presidential and parliamentary ballots, an opposition leader now in hiding after an armed raid on his home, and a jailed bishop have left many unconvinced. Rob, Zuks and Patrick ask why SADC, the regional body meant to hold governments to account, stayed almost entirely silent on it. From there, the conversation turns to South Africa's own zama zama crisis, the illegal mining economy that has become impossible to ignore, and the wider pattern of artisanal mining stretching from Ghana to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The episode closes on a brewing scandal for the DA. Finance spokesperson Mark Burke is accused of moving R4 billion offshore in breach of exchange controls, and Zuks and Rob ask what it could mean for Helen Zille's campaign to become mayor of Johannesburg.

    Zambia's Election Nobody Believes

  3. 13 Aug

    Joburg Ready to Dump the ANC

    Rob Rose and Zukile Majova are back for the twentieth episode of Sharp Sharp, the weekly podcast on South African politics, money and power from the Financial Mail and Scrolla.Africa. A new poll from the Social Research Foundation has the ANC at just 18% in Johannesburg, down from 30% in March, in a city that's been the party's political heart since before 1994. Rob and Zuks unpack what that collapse actually means, and Zuks reveals an exclusive detail from his own reporting, ActionSA has told him they'd genuinely consider a coalition with the DA after the election. From there, they turn to Zuks' own column on the DA's new manifesto, and whether South Africa's problem is the wrong policies or simply years of bad implementation. Zuks pushes back hard on "efficiency" as a fix, pointing to who actually holds economic power in the country, and revisits why the DA's past coalitions in Tshwane and Ekurhuleni fell apart. The episode closes on the case against seven special forces soldiers and one military police officer charged with murdering Hawks detective Frans Mathipa, and what it says about whether South Africa's military answers to anyone at all. Zuks makes the sharpest case of the episode: nothing will happen to the generals involved, because they're simply carrying out what the ANC wants, and an outgoing president has little authority left to stop them.

    Joburg Ready to Dump the ANC

  4. 6 Aug

    The White Party Winning Black Votes

    Rob Rose and Zukile Majova are joined by Patrick Smith from Africa Confidential for the nineteenth episode of Sharp Sharp, the weekly podcast on South African politics, money and power from Currency News and Scrolla.Africa. This week Zuks makes the case, from his own reporting and personal experience in the Eastern Cape, that the Freedom Front Plus, long seen as an exclusively white party, is quietly winning support across racial lines. Minister Pieter Groenewald's prison bakery fix becomes the episode's clearest example of efficiency beating ideology, and Patrick brings an outsider's eye to why rural and urban South Africans are experiencing the same parties so differently. From there, Julius Malema's public attack on MacG's Podcast and Chill becomes a window into something bigger, whether podcasts are depoliticising young South Africans or simply giving them somewhere else to go. Patrick then walks through the real story behind this week's chaos in Ceuta, how a staged political moment obscured the fact that crossings into Europe are actually down this year, not up. They close on Jacob Zuma stripping a senior MK Party figure of his role in parliament and handing it to his own son, Duduzane, a move both hosts read as the clearest sign yet of where the party is really headed.

    The White Party Winning Black Votes

  5. 30 Jul

    ANC For Sale

    Rob Rose and Zukile Majova are back for the eighteenth episode of Sharp Sharp, the weekly podcast on South African politics, money and power from Currency News and Scrolla.Africa. This week covers South Africa's culture of paying for political access, ANC gala dinners selling seats next to the president for up to R2 million, set against Donald Trump's Truth Social selling millisecond trading access to his own posts for $100,000 a month. Rob and Zuks pick apart where legitimate lobbying ends and buying influence begins, and look at just how little of this actually gets declared to the IEC. From there it's another blow to Ramaphosa's New Dawn, IDAC head Andrea Johnson's resignation after damaging Madlanga Commission testimony, a Public Investment Corporation with no board and no CEO, and the growing risk that South Africa gets greylisted by FATF all over again. They also revisit Zuks' own column making the case for a grand ANC-DA coalition to keep the EFF and MK Party out of South Africa's hung municipalities, before closing on Jacob Zuma tightening his personal grip on MK Party finances.

    ANC For Sale

  6. 23 Jul

    PIC Cleared for Crash Landing

    Rob Rose and Zukile Majova are joined by Patrick Smith from Africa Confidential for the seventeenth episode of Sharp Sharp, the weekly podcast on South African politics, money and power from Currency News and Scrolla.Africa. This week: the Public Investment Corporation, Africa's biggest single asset manager, is in freefall. The CEO was suspended, five directors have resigned, and two of the ANC's most powerful finance figures are locked in a turf war over who actually runs it. Rob and Zuks unpack why a body managing R3.7 trillion in government pensions keeps ending up here, and Patrick brings in comparisons from across the continent, including Zimbabwe's opaque Mutapa fund and Nigeria's own pension fund troubles. From there, the conversation turns to business's fading faith in Ramaphosa, why replacing bad ministers with worse ones keeps costing him credibility, and what a looming super El Niño could mean for South African farmers and food security across the continent. They close on Air Zimbabwe's resumed London route, and why the story behind it isn't quite the comeback it looks like on the surface.

    PIC Cleared for Crash Landing

  7. 16 Jul

    Pity the Voter

    Rob Rose and Zukile Majova are back for the sixteenth episode of Sharp Sharp, the weekly podcast on South African politics, money and power from Currency News and Scrolla.Africa, and this one's a first, our debut video episode, filmed live in studio. This week Rob and Zuks start with the sorry state of South Africa's diplomatic missions abroad, from a London embassy where staff are reportedly told to bring their own toilet paper to work, to a shuttered mission in the Netherlands still waiting on renovations a year later. They ask what institutional neglect at home and abroad says about the country's priorities. Then it's the Public Investment Corporation, the R3 trillion asset manager now mired in fresh scandal, before Julius Malema's link to the Madlanga Commission and what it could cost the EFF ahead of November's municipal elections. The DA's Tony Leon finds himself at the centre of a lobbying row, and Rob and Zuks weigh up whether it'll actually cost the party any votes. Then it's on to the MK Party's pick for the eThekwini mayoral race, and what that says about patronage over principle in KwaZulu Natal politics. Rob closes with two takeaways: sympathy for KZN voters stuck choosing between bad, worse and inept options, and a warning to stay off the Stella Artois this weekend.

    Pity the Voter

  8. 9 Jul

    Recycling the Bad Guys

    Three scandals, one theme. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova, joined by Patrick Smith from Africa Confidential, dig into the week the Democratic Alliance turned on itself. Former DA leader Tony Leon’s lobbying firm, Resolve Communications, has allegedly sought audiences with government ministers on behalf of clients including SpaceX’s Starlink, while John Steenhuisen has gone public claiming Geordin Hill-Lewis backstabbed him after striking a deal on the leadership transition. Then they turn to the ANC, where Dina Pule, fired by Jacob Zuma himself in 2013 over a corruption scandal involving her boyfriend, has just been brought back into cabinet as Minister of Social Development. Patrick draws the global thread through both stories, tracing the political revolving door from Dick Cheney and Halliburton through the Blair government to Donald Trump pausing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and asks what happens to a body politic when insiders can freely monetise their old government connections. They close with the continental fallout from the 30 June xenophobia deadline, South African foreign policy’s uncomfortable contradiction of exporting billions in goods to Africa while expelling Africa’s people, and a World Cup catch-up featuring the giant-killing run of Norway, the heartbreak of Cape Verde, and a Paris bar full of French football fans cheering for the underdog.

    Recycling the Bad Guys
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About

The Financial Mail and Scrolla.Africa join forces to bring you South Africa's sharpest weekly conversation. Rob Rose and Zukile Majova sit down each week to talk straight about politics, money, and power. No spin. No script. Just the truth.

Information

  • Creator
    Financial Mail x Scrolla
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    22
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Financial Mail x Scrolla
  • Show Website
    Sharp Sharp

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