Why are you so optimistic about the, in inverted commas, "new" Financial Mail?

Evening, Stephen.

Um, well, there are a couple of reasons.

I mean, I think that the media model has completely changed, um, and that's, you know, very clear from what you talked about.

But equally, you know, I do think there is a business model here.

I mean, News24 has, or Media24 has two hundred and twenty thousand subscribers.

Um, you know, Daily Maverick, for example, has quite a, quite a thriving subscription club.

What, what are people willing to pay for? Somewhere there's gotta be credibility, I would think.

Why are you so optimistic about the, in inverted commas, new Financial Mail?

Evening, Stephen.

Well, there are a couple of reasons.

I mean, I think that the media model has completely changed.

And that's, you know, very clear from what you talked about.

But equally, you know, I do think there is a business model here.

I mean, News24 has, well, Media24 has 220,000 subscribers.

What are people willing to pay for? Somewhere there's got to be credibility, I would think.

Exactly

... you're totally right.

I mean, I think the cases of the competition authorities and the PIC illustrate that these were two institutions which were absolutely at the top of their game for many years.

I mean, they weren't ...

They couldn't be faulted for a long time, but it was when their boards of directors began being compromised, and the resources were diminished.

And then ultimately, there's just a lack of political oversight at the moment.

So, you have the Competition Commission, which you talked about.

Keep your kitty out of the screen.

Rob, what exactly is a data center, for listeners that may not understand?

Well, essentially, you know, it's, it's a, it's a basically a big room full of servers.

It houses technology infrastructure which people use to, you know, process and store their company data, but it can also host a whole lot of data from these big companies like Microsoft overseas.

Foreign companies can choose to base, to base data centers in South Africa, for example, where they will keep your, your information.

Um, so there's a couple of ways they work.

Um, but, you know, the, the theory is that Africa would be a, you know, a natural place to house many of these partly because, you know, the power and construction costs are, are much cheaper than, say, building a data center in Europe, the maintenance cost for h- for, for, you know, maintaining these data centers.

So it's, it's the kind of thing that you think we could do much better at, um, had we put some sort of momentum behind building more of these.

Sure.

So if it was just some traders, how did all the banks get involved? I mean, they couldn't-- I mean, were they all named? Were they traders from all the banks?

Yeah, there were traders from some of the banks, but not all the banks.

I mean, that's the problem, is that the Competition Commission in South Africa overreached.

Now, some of the traders, like Jason Katz in the US, reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice and admitted guilt in several, in one or two of these cases.

Um, and several others were also implicated, and they have also reached plea agreements in the States.

The problem was that our Competition Commission tried to drag all the banks into, into the net and claim that it was a conspiracy of all our banks, and it just wasn't.

You know, as the Constitutional Court had said, there wasn't a factual matrix to, to underpin that assertion.

He, and I presume the other CEOs too, must have been very, very sure of their ground right from the very beginning here.

So if it was just some traders, how did all the banks get involved? I mean, were they all named? Were they traders from all the banks?

Yeah, they were traders from some of the banks, but not all the banks.

I mean, that's the problem is the Competition Commission in South Africa overreached.

Now, some of the traders, like Jason Katz in the U.S., reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice and admitted guilt in one or two of these cases.

and several others were also implicated, and they have also reached plea agreements in the States.

The problem was that our Competition Commission tried to drag all the banks into the net and claim that it was a conspiracy of all our banks, and there just wasn't, you know, as the Constitutional Court did say, there wasn't a factual matrix to underpin that assertion.

So, in the end, it looks like a case of egg being on the face of the Competition Commission, which is not, you know, not a wonderful thing after a few weeks we've had quite a blistering ruling against the Tribunal in another case involving Cape Gate.

He, and I presume the other CEOs too, must have been very, very sure of their ground right from the very beginning here.

Because why? We don't trust institutions anymore.

That's absolutely true, and I think the point you make about institutional failure is really what's at the heart of the debate about immigrants, in that we have a hospital system, a public hospital system that is failing because it's been mismanaged, because funds have been misused, not because immigrants are now waiting at the doors and taking the places in the hospital queues of South Africans.

I mean, that's the reason for it.

It's the same as our education system, to say that we have to accommodate foreigners in our schools, and that's why our standards of slips, that's why we're lost in the world for maths and science literacy, is a bogus argument.

It's scapegoating a vulnerable minority.

And the issue here that I tried to argue in this column is that the rationale for it isn't that my experience somehow trumps, you know, it gives you a right to your new set of facts.

There are a set of facts and they're relevant in this discussion.

It's people who sit in positions in power and politics.

And what ended up happening?

Well, the problem with Black Economic Empowerment as it has been implemented is that it had the unintended consequence of essentially creating a, a class of political oligarchs who have got access, preferential access, to deals.

So you've had many of the largest companies in South Africa sell their shares in these flagship Black Empowerment deals to people who were in the ANC, the ruling party.

So all you've pretty much done is you've traded a class of wealthy white oligarchs, I suppose, for Black oligarchs.

What this hasn't done then is manifested in broad-based Black economic empowerment.

So we still have a situation where you have white families in South Africa earning four times that of the average Black family.

So in terms of narrowing the gap, it's been something of a failure and I think that that's why calls have risen to review the policy.

Tell us about post-apartheid South Africa.