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Entrepreneur, scholar and author Moeletsi Mbeki is celebrated in South Africa for his outspoken criticism of the Zuma Administration, once describing them "like children playing with a hand grenade." In this in-depth interview with Biznews.com's publisher Alec Hogg he shares stories from his formative years, what shaped his philosophy, his perspectives on what is needed for South African renewal, and how to understand SA's current challenges within the context of global history. In a wide ranging conversation the brother of former SA President Thabo and son of SACP leader Govan draws on a lifetime of learning to suggest solutions to a country where tough decisions are required to jump off its current depressing path - and identifies uncertainty around property rights as the fundamental problem that must be addressed.

Our lives are punctuated by memorable events. For me, one of these was interviewing Rhodes scholar, Oxford don, author, journalist and political scientist Bill Johnson. His book, How long will South Africa survive? has topped the country's best-selling non-fiction list for well over a year. The audiobook version which I voiced is also proving extremely popular. In 246 pages Johnson provides a compelling argument of a country whose leadership has lost their way. He does so with sufficient force to remove any room for doubt. Much as its conclusions will sit uncomfortably with many in the ruling ANC, the book is having an impact. After years of deluding themselves over a BRICS alliance which Johnson argues was little more than an anagram, South Africa's political leadership has started to smell the coffee. Events of the past week - President Jacob Zuma's engagement with Merkel and Obama - suggest the philosophical tide is turning, something required before economic policies can be steered away from their current destructive path. By doing what he does best - applying his intellect and communicating bluntly - RW Johnson has provided his country a massive service. He has helped frame an economic debate whose result can have only one conclusion - moving South Africa away from a depressing trajectory. - Alec Hogg

The imminent death of BRICS by Biznews.com

There's nothing run-of-the mill about financial services entrepreneur Ian Kilbride. Having travelled from the UK to SA by road in an old Bedford truck he met a local girl, got married and has lived in the Cape ever since. We've known each other for two and a half decades, during which time I've admired his relentless focus on the matter at hand. First it was the creation, building and listing of Appleton. After being ejected from that business by his new partners, he began again and has been even more successful with Warwick. Kilbride prefers staying under the radar, but made an exception in this interview, sharing his story and sharing where he next expects to take his rapidly expanding business. Wonderful insights, specially tailored for fellow entrepreneurs .

Biznews' Alec Hogg sits down with Futuregrowth's Andrew Canter with a specific focus on ethics in the financial services sector. Canter says ethics is key to managing people’s money, primarily because as much as people want good investment returns they first want to make sure their money’s being looked after by somebody they can trust. The conversation refers to two recent surveys, the first a global one where 1,200 US and UK CFA individuals answered questions around ethics, and the second a local survey where 1,000 CFA holders were asked questions. The results varied between regions but one question showed consistency, 1 in 5 respondents felt that sometimes you must engage in illegal or unethical activity to get ahead. As Canter bluntly puts it, "20 percent of the time a bribe will be paid."

One has to turn back the clock to the 1990's when the South Africa government was looking to privatise assets. One of the units they sold stakes in was the Airports Company of South Africa. During the sale a 4 percent minority stake was taken up. Fast forward 20-something years and given ACSA's failure to list, the minority shareholders have no way of exiting the investment. Futuregrowth's Andrew Canter are part of the minority and are in negotiations with ACSA to sell the stake but price is a major stumbling block. ACSA have upped their offer to R12 per share, which Canter says is well short of the 11 times Enterprise Value of R94 per share. The next step will see both parties go to court. It's a fascinating story and Alec Hogg caught up with Canter to get more details.

The CEO of BMW SA, Tim Abbott says the JD Power Platinum Quality Plant Award won by the Rosslyn plant is the first for any manufacturer in South Africa and the highest for any BMW plant in the world. The vehicles produced at Rosslyn are exported to the United States and South Korea. He says BMW is enjoying excellent relations with the government and the workforce and intends to stay in South Africa for decades to come. He says his company is ahead of the game most of the time through its innovative approach and investment in its people. Abbott says BMW SA is going to build market share in East and West Africa and will announce a new programme next week to support their intentions.

SA's implications from China's sea of troubles by Biznews.com

Andile Mazwai, CEO of the National Stokvels Association of South Africa tells Tim Modise that stokvels have played an important role in the lives of the black community for decades and continues to do so for many citizens who work in the informal sector. He says NASASA provides members with an opportunity to speak with one voice when dealing with the financial institutions and the government. He estimates the membership of stokvels to be 11 million and the size of savings at R45 billion.

The former Prime Minister of Georgia, and McKinsey partner, Nika Gilauri caught up with Tim Modise at the Biznews studio, talking about his career in the Georgian government and how he became Prime Minister at the age of 33. Gilaur , who first started out as the country's Energy Minister, developed Georgia into a net exporter of electricity in two years. The former Prime Minister tells Tim how government improved its 'Doing Business' ranking from 112 to within the top 10 in five years - the country’s economy grew and per capita increased four-fold in that period. Nika Gilauri says fighting and reducing corruption is a very important element of improving a country’s economic performance.

The Value Investor's value investor Piet Viljoen has taken a big hit with the decision by Nedbank to move the billions in its Managed unit trust away from the company. Like other authentic value managers, few of whom remain, Re:CM's performance has been poor over the past couple of years as its strategy of buying the cheapest assets on the stock market - commodity-based businesses - has pushed it ever lower in the tables. Viljoen says lessons have been learnt, but he refuses to be swayed from the firm's approach ("it's in our DNA") although he has returned to personally manage the company's four open ended unit trusts. In this in depth interview he talks to Biznews.com's Alec Hogg about what happened and the way ahead.

Advocate Dali Mpofu says the huge turnout at the march organised by the EFF demonstrates that South Africans are fed up with the current economic structure of the country. The march took place in Johannesburg where the 50,000 demonstrators presented memoranda to the Reserve Bank, Chamber of Mines and the JSE. He says the EFF is opposed to the entrenchment of inequality and poverty levels in society and will change the constitution to revoke the property clauses. Mpofu says his party’s message and political activity are beginning to resonate with the majority of South Africans and will culminate with EFF acquiring power through democratic means.

Rhodes University tax professor Matthew Lester has focused a lot of his attention on the root cause of the #feesmustfall campaign which sparked national protests by university students. He unpacks the numbers and explains how free tertiary education can be address through a little creative thinking on the over-funded UIF and greater equity on SETAs. Lester was talking to Biznews.com's Alec Hogg

Tshepo Matlala of SAIBPP says black owned property companies have a 2 percent share of the R400 billion property sector. He says that 4 of the companies blacklisted were created through government opportunities. Matlala also says the sector has been very slow to transform due to a lack of support from financial institutions. He says an aggressive empowerment drive by government is needed.

Professor Malegapuru William Makgoba, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kwazulu-Natal and Deputy Chairperson of the National Planning Commission, says the student protests sweeping across South Africa are due to poor leadership at the institutions. Makgoba says the transformation of these institutions is overdue and the students have taken the appropriate lead. Professor Makgoba says the apartheid style exclusion should be reversed through bigger education budgets that can be raised through a reparations tax, the current protests are going to lead to a bigger social uprising.

Marketers love taking about win-win deals. Here’s one that is for real. South Africa’s Discovery Health has become the first company to sign a bulk DNA analysis deal with world famous scientist J. Craig Venter, who “discovered” how to map the human genome. Venter’s well-funded young company Human Longevity Inc needs thousands of DNA samples to create a database large enough to on-sell to the likes of pharma companies. Discovery would love to know more about the four million people it covers in SA and the UK. And the more enlightened of its clients would be delighted to acquire information about their own DNA at a heavily subsidized price. From January, South Africans will be able to sign up, at $250 a pop, with a simple saliva swab. The man who engineered the groundbreaking deal, Discovery’s Jonny Broomberg, took us through how it works and what it all means. Fascinating, even for non-scientists.

At Biznews, 2015 will be remembered as the year of the Belvedere Ponzi scheme - a global network of financial fraud and deceit masterminded by South Africans Cobus Kellermann and David Cosgrove. On March 17, when David Marchant of Offshore Alert claimed Belvedere was a massive criminal enterprise, we did our own checking and quickly realised he was on the money. Following the publication of South African angled articles on Biznews, the site was briefly paralysed by a cyber attack. Then came the bullying attempts - heavy handed threats from SA heavyweight legal Werksmans which appears to have engineered the publication of articles taunting Biznews and Offshore Alert as sensationalist and irresponsible. Six months later with R4bn of investor money now officially confirmed as having gone missing and billions more unaccounted for, Belvedere has collapsed, exposed for the Ponzi scheme Marchant always claimed it was. In this special podcast he provides an update on the unraveling of a global network of fraud, fueled by deceit, blantant lies and corrupt financial advisors.

A government initiative with a long-winded title (Department of Energy’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme aka REIPPPP) is not only seeking to ease the load of more traditional energy sources, but is actually successfully doing so. By agreeing to buy energy from co-funded renewables projects and placing it back onto the grid, an incredibly successful and encouraging private-public partnership is working within our borders and there is some evidence to show that these projects have significantly contributed to the reduction in loadshedding over the last few cold months. Futuregrowth is a material funder of some of these projects through capital it raises from pension funds. Paul Semple, portfolio manager at Futuregrowth explains how these initiatives not only may go a long way to aiding in the alleviation of electricity shortages, but also how job creation and social upliftment in geographically difficult areas has increased materially as a result. – Candice Paine

Lisa Seftel executive for Transport at the City of Joburg says October has been set aside to migrate Sandton motorists to public transport. The city hopes to get 30% of drivers using public transport. Seftel says the city has planned park-and-rides, and built infrastructure for cycle lanes and pedestrian walkways. She says more than 400 delegates from major cities around the world will attend the Festival in Johannesburg.

Founder of the Kara Institute, Mathole Motshekga, says Lee Berger and other paleoanthropologists who linked the recently discovered fossils to human ancestry are wrong because they failed to consider indigenous knowledge in their conclusions. He referred to the fossils of Homo Naledi as being those of baboons or monkeys, and says the science behind the conclusion of being connected to human beings as speculative, without basis. Motshekga says South Africans should not celebrate as they are meant to insult, particularly Africans.

SADTU General Secretary Mugwena Maluleke says unions will resist the government’s intentions to go ahead with Annual National Assessments, the same way they fought against apartheid. He says the department of education is beholden to corrupt service providers who stand to make money out the assessments at the expense of schoolchildren. He says the education bureaucracy is South Africa’s biggest challenge to providing good quality education, and says citizens should be wary of the China/ South Africa trade deals that have been linked to education.

The Executive Director of Discovery Insure Themba Baloyi spoke to Tim Modise about the high fatality rates in South Africa. Over 5,000 lives have been lost on South African roads since April. Baloyi says taxis, who transport 65 per cent of road users, contribute 15% of the fatalities compared to private motorists who contribute 50 per cent. He suggests that insurance companies can help improve the situation if all motorists were compelled to insure their vehicle. Currently, only 36 per cent of all vehicles on South African roads are insured.

Kenton Fine is the London-based executive chairman and founder of Servest, a R10bn turnover, 45 000 employee multinational group. In 1998, at the tender age of 29, Fine listed the company on the JSE - and four years later had to fight off a hostile takeover attack from Brian Joffe's mighty Bidvest, doing so by delisting with the help of African Merchant Bank. That temporarily blocked his global ambitions with the fledgling UK operation sold to pay down debt. But once the privately owned business had settled down, Kine relocated to London to have another tilt. Today that startup has a solid foothold in the UK market with annual turnover of £300m - contributing significantly to Servest's R700m in annual operating profit. Here's the story of the proudly South African 47 year old who says he'll never stop shooting for the stars.

Over the past month in London, I've sought out successful South Africans, those who left their homeland to test their skills in one of the biggest cities on earth. Most of them operate under the public radar, shying away from publicity, simply focusing on doing their best. Roy Ettlinger, co-founder of the Credo Group, is a classic example. Arriving in the UK 27 years ago with his chartered accountant's certificate and a bellyful of ambition, he has built an asset management business that now managed over R35bn on behalf of clients, many from the homeland. In this fascinating interview with Roy and Credo's Cambridge University educated chief investment officer Deon Gouws (ex Sanlam and RMB) we learn a great deal about why South Africans punch above their weight in London - and why so many have carved out hugely successful careers in their new base.