this bus news briefing is brought to you by inves business banking make the move from business as usual to invest business banking welcome to this bis news briefing it is Thursday the 13th of March and I'm bronwin neelson well the buis news conference 7 is in full swing here in hermanus and there has been an amazing speaker lineup on the stage including the likes of Deputy president of South Africa Paul mashati Discovery CEO Adrien Gore yesterday we heard from UK entrepreneur Aaron Banks gate McKenzie South Africa's Sports Minister we've also uh seen the likes of Dan morani the CEO of esum taking to the stage and all of that content will be made available on Biz news. tv in the coming weeks but what I have managed to do for today's show is take a a few Snippets from the speakers yesterday and bring them to you um as somewhat of a teaser I suppose for the content when it does come to the bisne tv. platform we start with entrepreneur Aaron Banks who shot to Fame after the 2016 brexit referendum where support for financial support for the leave vote made him the UK's largest ever political donor here's his take on Sou Africa's politics and also on Elon Musk in the context of the US Administration it struck me there's a huge political opportunity for someone in South Africa but I doubt it's the da I mean from what I can see of uh what they've done so far in government is just facilitate the ANC to be slightly less worse than they were before and that's not a dream or an aspiration that South Africans should have and I think there's a huge Gap in the market for someone to come through it that can actually uh take this country on and fix the issues someone's looking for a government to actually do something you know put proper water in build houses build you know electricity decent schools they just want decent you know um outcomes to their families and I think that I think that's the issue in South Africa that the first person that comes will actually bit like Trump is prepared to say what they're going to do and do it is going to do extremely well getting back to the Trump relationship with South Africa he did make a few mentions of it Elon every now and then tweets about South Africa always in a negative sense is that falling off the agenda now because there are more important things going on well I think he Long's uh he's he's overextended himself I think is the correct business term you know people stopped buying his cars in Europe and he's beginning to realize that politics is more powerful than business and that's the thing that a lot of business people forget um that politics Trump's business um you can see he's got you know I think that he's going to have to reel his neck in um I also think I just can't see him surviving that along with Trump the mayor ofi in quaz hotel Chris puppet took exception to Banks's criticism of the democratic Alliance here's his response so there were some negative slightly negative comments made by uh him about the Democratic Alliance and I do take exception to this and I'll tell you why there's one political party that has been fighting for the future of this country for the history of our democ our Democratic history as well as before that there's no political party that has spent more money more time more effort and more sacrifice ensuring that our constitutional democracy works stalwarts like Helen Zilla and many others who have given up literally Blood Sweat and Tears to make sure that we can sit in a venue like this today and debate and discuss the important things that will move our country forward so I do take exception from someone from the outside coming to criticize my political party having no blood sweat or tears in the game and you know MrBanks it's easy to hide behind billions of pounds but when the rest of us are on the ground speaking to the poor speaking to those who are desperate for a government that works it is easy to call yourself a disruptor it is easy to call yourself radical the true radicals the true disrupt the true disruptors are those who are trying to break the disruptive nature of poverty and inequality in our country in a place where that is so diverse with such a deep history of division those are the true people who are trying to build a country so please do not lecture us on how to build our own country rather focus on your own in the grand scheme of things this might seem like a small moment but to me it was powerful it was a symbol a proof that broken systems can be repaired that what once was broken can work again that even a country where Decay seems to be inevitable renewal is still possible at this moment Alec with a minute left uh I must be a disciplined cader as the comrades would say and say that this would not be possible specifically in our municipality if those 42 senior citizens who did not come out and commit to voting for a government that would bring about real change so I'm asking you to support a political party whether with your your checkbook or with your time and effort to bring about that real change now that that interlude is over despite all the challenges that we face I still believe in this country's future and that the best days can still be ahead of us but we have to fight for them we must remember that history does not move in straight lines it is shaped by those who refuse to sit back and watch South Africa is not Beyond saving it is simply waiting for those with the courage to act so the question then is not whether or not South Africa has a bright future the question rather is what will you do to make it a bright future pupp's full speech will be made available on bis news.
tv as well as his subsequent interview with Alec hog the founder of Biz news now M and Becki is is wellknown in South Africa he is an economist he is a well-known businessman and uh he is also a political analyst he took to the biz news seven stage and took a heavy swipe at black economic empowerment let's hear what he had to say it was not the NC mes who accepted the policy of black economic empowerment it was the NC leadership who accepted the policy of black economic empowerment why because they benefit from it but the consequence of black economic empowerment besides driving corruption it also is against entrepreneurship because it drives entitlement instead of getting the so-called African middle class to become entrepreneurs it gets them to become very wealthy from getting shares from existing businesses huge amounts of money are allocated into black economic empowerment deals if black economic empowerment was of any good to the economy of South Africa we wouldn't be have sitting with 40% unemployment with all these wealthy black people like S ramula sakima I don't know who else these are the beneficiaries of black e of black economic empowerment it is a black economic empowerment is a parasite on the existing economy of South Africa it is parasitic on the economy of of South Africa and it is destructive of value in the economy of South Africa and it should be gotten rid of again just to emphasize that I am bringing you Snippets from the conference and all of the content will be made available now Dan morani the CEO of esum assures South Africa that the executives at esum and the board at esum are not sleeping at all given the current bot of load shading in South Africa as they look to solve the situation from an escom perspective the board and the management team are very driven uh in as far as those three priorities our concent you know we we don't sleep we spend a lot of sleepless nights and sometimes we have to be reminded that is a Monday not a Sunday weekend cuz we're really going through on this we have tasted how it feels to have no load shedding for 311 days we have witnessed the mood changing in the country we have seen the uh perception of the country from investment perspective Chang I spent time on investment Road shows in New York and in London late last year September so and the message is beginning to sink we need to get to a point where this is no longer an issue from investment perspective but we also have to deal with issues around driving an ethical high performance culture we have changed our structures internally to ensure that we can bring accountability to Bay where there's been wrongdoing that the actions been taken we working with the SIU we've got other agents of the state that are actually doing work with us there's a number of uh forensic work that was done in the last two three years those files as they come now they arrive in a very focused team that takes decisions and uh disciplinary actions to employees and to also suppliers because we also have to address this issues of around uh accountability and clean governance uh for for our people but for me I tell you we take a responsibility very seriously and I'm very proud to work for esom at this point given what it means for our country in the world of business banking the bottom line can often triumph over relationships at invest DEC we value both make the move from business as usual to investe business banking out of the ordinary at Sun exchange we make going solar simple profitable and completely risk-free join over 100 satisfied South African customers already enjoying the benefits of risk-free solar start saving today visit sun exchange. com and join the solar Revolution on the international front retired US general Ben hoders says that Putin appears to be putting a spanner in the works when it comes to the Russia Ukraine peace deal our colleagues at Bloomberg have the detail obviously we are all waiting with baited BR to breath to see what Russia's actual response will be here with your knowledge of Vladimir Putin what do you expect he'll say well Kaylee first of all obviously anything that stops the murder of innocent Ukrainian civilians is a good thing but I think we're all waiting to see whether or not Russia is actually going to accept this uh opportunity frankly I'm I'm skeptical I i' kind of think they're going to drag this out as long as they can to get what they can out of it um I don't believe anybody seriously uh expects Russia to live up to any sort of ceasefire agreement unless there is a force in place that will compel them uh to do so um I'm glad that the president has has talked about you know he might have to put more pressure on Russia because frankly up until this point all of the demands and the pressure have been on Ukraine but Russia is the aggressor here they're the ones that invaded Ukraine and and the president does have enormous leverage over Russia he can um stop or disrupt the flow of Russian oil and gas to India and China uh he can also tell the Russians that he's going to allow Ukraine to have everything they need without restriction in terms of weapons and ammunition so the president really does have a lot of Leverage with all of that said what can Ukraine do to strengthen its hand General before it gets to the negoti ating table presuming that happens well Joe I expect that um between now and if there is a ceasefire of any sort uh they will continue to do three things number one you know they have stopped Russia in most places I mean this war has been going on 11 years uh and and without the United States or other countries actually committing to helping Ukraine win Ukraine has stopped Russia so I think they will continue uh to do what they have to to stop Russia from making any significant gains number two uh they will have to continue reorganizing themselves and growing the size of their military making service more appealing to Young Ukrainian women and men and then third Ukrainian defense industry has actually grown during the war and so I anticipate they'll continue growing their own capability to produce ammunition drones and other things that they need in the US Doge has taken a heavy hand to the US education department and the cuts are making headlines across the board again our colleagues at Bloomberg will these people ever see the inside of that building again well they were told that they can come back on Thursday to collect their items but this is really impacting more than 1,300 employees and really after efforts have already been underway for people to voluntarily leave which we have seen at other agencies and a lot of the people that I'm talking to that education department feel as though some of the things that have happened at cfpb the usaid those things are starting to play out here as well where president Trump is very explicitly saying he wants to eliminate this department but he is doing it in a way that is much slower because of course there's a lot of things at State here they oversee more than a trillion dollars in student debt so they need to make sure they have experienced people staying in the department to continue to oversee some of those really critical functions well because it's congressionally mandated that the department does so and you just heard secretary McMahon making that point AAA that if they really want to undo it entirely they need congress's cooperation so how far realistically can the executive branch take that without lawmakers going along but really look at the examples that we've already seen from the cfpb usaid both of those agencies were both also created by Congress and yet I think because this agency is a lot bigger a lot more people are more familiar with it they're being more careful than they have been with some of these other agencies where we've seen signage removed from the buildings we've seen other employees pretty much taking over those building so you still have folks in that physical headquarters in Washington DC but they're closing down offices pretty much across the country in places like California so this is really a sweeping effort and they're saying they're trying to consolidate all their staffers into one building right now interesting well the Doge of course is a massive topic of conversation all over Washington and now on Wall Street the President yesterday talked about the Doge's strategy for cutting the fedal workforce at large here's what he said it's one thing to cut but we want to cut the wrong people meaning we want to cut people that aren't doing the job we want to keep the right people absolutely and I said I don't want to just say we're going to cut 50% I want to cut the people that aren't doing the job the people that aren't there the people that are scamming the system and he agrees with that 100% do we have any evidence of that sort of fine tooth comb approach when you talk about laying off half the staff that doesn't smack as being surgical well at least at the Department of Education they say that certain parts of particularly the federal student aid office which oversees that a trillion dollars in student debt that those parts of the of that office in particular have some so some of those parts have been remained intact but we have reporting that hundreds of people have been laid off there and so we're really still waiting to see how that could actually impact the dispersement of Aid and a lot of borrowers are frankly freaking out they're like what is going to happen to some of these programs that they have been relying on for years well and we should point out as well that when it comes to the whole federal government they're facing a deadline to of Tomorrow these agencies to submit uh to the office of personnel management plans to call their workforces essentially AAA do we have any sense of what those numbers ultimately could look like well we're starting to see cabinet secretaries really getting out there and talking about their plans to reduce staff and this is really a jockeying effort we're seeing by cabinet secretaries to really fulfill not only Elon Musk efforts but president Trump's efforts who says he's very strongly supporting Elon Musk we saw those Teslas at the White House yesterday so this is very much a whole of government approach and I think secretaries are frankly competing to show how much they can do still in the US Clayton swopes who is the deputy director of Aerospace security project details spacex's mission to bring two US astronauts safely home Clayton this is a really big moment everyone has really become so endeared to Sunny and Butch what did this tell us about what went wrong and will this ever happen again well Jackie it's funny I was thinking too the one thing that I have as a takeaway is just um it's about sunny and Butch and just their endurance and their patience and their Grace and it's something that I I think back on I think I admire that I'm sure a lot of Americans admire that and people around the world and probably you like me I get upset when I'm three hours delayed at the airport and they've been there since June so it's a a very different thing to think how long that they've been up there and everything that they've been through but they've had that Poise throughout um I think what we've learned too is that space really can still throw us curveballs but that we have gotten to the point where we have flexibility and adaptability that we can still do human space flight safely and do that at scale and that's a lot of credit to NASA on the approach that they've taken to get us here and then also to SpaceX on Whose technology we really relied on to make this happen how do you think about the next steps moving forward when it comes to the Starliner what do you think is the future from here well there's still a lot of things that we don't know um we we do know that Boeing has said they want to stay in the space game um it's less clear on what happens next for Starliner specifically uh that will depend a lot on what NASA decides with Boeing about certifying that capsule to fly astronauts again into space so we don't really know how long that would take but if we look to the Horizon just with the International Space Station we're planning for it to deorbit in 2030 so that's less than 5 years away so there's really only a few more opportunities really in the grand scheme to bring astronauts to that station and that window is quickly closing there's been a lot going on in the space field as of late and I think it has many people wondering are we in a new space race of some kind how does the US stack up with what we're doing in the field versus other countries it's really hard to not think about China and all their achievements in space uh right now there's Seven astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station hold that thought for a moment here because we want to bring our audience some live images of President Trump who is greeting the prime minister of Ireland the two men are about to take part in a bilateral meeting at the Oval Office now we will bring you those headlines as they come in you could also check for updates on live go on your Bloomberg terminal now Jackie back to you talk to us more about how China is really getting to the Space Race yeah there's three Chinese astronauts on their space station Tang gong 3 right now as we speak so they've really made space look routine in a lot of ways that America has also been able to do they're also eyeing the moon they want to land Chinese astronauts on the Moon by 2030 so is NASA I think it's hard to avoid the notion that this is a space race maybe a moon race 2.
