THE FUSE

This week’s Sharp Sharp is the first one you can actually watch, and Rob Rose and Zukile Majova mark the occasion by digging into just how much South Africa neglects the institutions it depends on most.

It starts with the embassies. South Africa House on Trafalgar Square, one of the country’s most important diplomatic postings, now needs a seventy million rand overhaul and staff are reportedly told to bring their own toilet paper to work. The mission in the Netherlands has been shut for a year waiting on renovations that never started. Zuks puts it simply, Johannesburg is an institution too, and it needs two hundred billion rand just to get the water running.

Then the PIC. The three trillion rand asset manager, the biggest pot of money in the country, is back in chaos. Its acting chief investment officer has been pushed out and the CEO is on precautionary suspension while a whistleblower’s conflict of interest claims get investigated. Zuks calls the president’s reform record a broom without bristles, all the intention, none of the follow through.

Julius Malema’s link to the Madlanga Commission comes next, and what it could cost the EFF with elections just months away. The DA gets its own scrutiny too, after former leader Tony Leon’s lobbying firm landed him in a row over access to government ministers.

They close on the MK Party’s pick for the eThekwini mayoral race, a candidate raided by the Hawks over a two hundred and eighty million rand water tender, with a driveway full of Lamborghinis and Porsches to show for it. Rob’s verdict for KwaZulu Natal voters this November: bad options, worse options, and inept options.