Delivering your bribe in a bling bag and other national travails

Loading player...
It’s never great to be in a position where you feel you have to refuse a bribe, but should you be insulted that the bribe on offer is very small? Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen discuss this and other questions related to South Africa’s incremental decline - and how to reverse it.
The key question is whether SA’s cost of capital is too high to attract investment, and how to fix that.
And would it help if politicians were not as old as they are - and podcasters!
11 Aug English Explicit South Africa News · News Commentary

Other recent episodes

Is South Africa setting its benchmarks too low? Johannesburg, for example

Are South Africans too nice? Do we demand too little of ourselves, constantly making excuses for our underperformance and over-congratulating ourselves on minor gains? Merchant banker Mark Barnes and journalist Tim Cohen discuss this in connection with the International Mathematics Olympiad and Johannesburg. Then there is also tariff torture, inflation,…
4 Aug 25 min

What DJ Sumbody teaches everybody

It’s been an odd week, and not a great one. “We are moving from the rule of law to the rule of war,” says investment banker Mark Barnes, in this podcast with journalist Tim Cohen. We talk crime, Transnet, debt and other cheerful topics - but also, how other nations…
28 Jul 19 min

Is South Africa disintegrating, and would a kiss-cam help?

The news of the past week has been worrying, from the crisis in the police, to more news about the construction mafia, to SA getting bad press internationally. In this podcast Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen discuss South Africa’s ailments - and some good news too, like the buoyant stock market…
21 Jul 21 min

Mchunu's unusual leave of absence, and SA's politics as usual

How does the suspension of SA’s Police Minister Senzo Mchunu change SA’s political dynamic? Would you believe in the good way? Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen discuss this dramatic topic of the hour and its future ramifications - good and bad. We also discuss how AI is actually being used,…
14 Jul 21 min

The truth, Trump, trade and tenders

My word is my bond, so they say. But is the bond market telling us the truth? Mark Barnes and Tim Cohen discuss, wait for it, the bond market. Exciting! Also … all the other stuff. The Trump tariffs trauma is back, so the subject of trade is back on the agenda. But…
7 Jul 22 min