Rob Rose and Zukile Majova are back for the 20th episode of Sharp Sharp, the weekly podcast on South African politics, money and power from the FM and Scrolla.Africa.
A new poll from the Social Research Foundation has the ANC at just 18% in Joburg, 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 it would genuinely consider a coalition with the DA after the election.
From there, they turn to Zuks’ column on the DA’s new manifesto and ask whether South Africa’s problem is policy or 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 the murder of Hawks detective Frans Mathipa and what it says about whether South Africa’s military answers to anyone at all. Zuks makes the sharpest point 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.
