The Editor's Desk - Mon 12 Jan 2026: Southern Africa’s political tremors, and a rules-based world under strain

In today’s Editor's Desk, Alec Hogg connects the dots from Mozambique’s unrest to Angola’s UNITA surge — and what it signals for liberation parties, SA’s 2026 vote, and a tougher global order..PS. You can book tickets for the post BNC#8 golf day sponsored by Shyft, by clicking here..Don't miss out on future episodes of The Editor's Desk. Subscribe to BizNews Premium and get the podcast delivered to your inbox daily..Listen here.Read the full transcript of The Editor's Desk podcast below.Hello and welcome. I’m Alec Hogg.You’ve seen the headlines on BizNews.com, watched and listened to the interviews on BizNewsTV and BizNews Radio — so now let’s talk about what the latest developments mean for your money.This is The Editor’s Desk, exclusive analysis for BizNews Premium members. Today is Monday, 12 January 2026. Glad to have you with me.We’ve got some insightful writers sharing their work on BizNews today — with a lot of attention on what’s happening in Southern Africa.It starts with the Financial Times piece on Mozambique, featuring an interview with Venâncio Mondlane, the opposition leader who believes the election was stolen from him. In 2024, around 300 people were killed in the unrest that followed. Mondlane fled the country at the time, but has since returned — rebuilding for the next election and arguing that liberation movements across the continent are due for their comeuppance. He specifically mentioned South Africa, Angola and Zimbabwe. We know what’s going on in South Africa. But Angola is still a mystery to many South Africans — though not as much anymore. Greg Mills and Ray Hartley have travelled to Angola, done extensive work there, and attended the conference of the main opposition party to the MPLA ruling party: UNITA.UNITA was once led by Dr Jonas Savimbi, one of the original freedom fighters in Angola. Both UNITA and the MPLA were aligned with communist ideals — but the MPLA was backed by Russia and Cuba, while UNITA looked elsewhere for succour and received support from the Americans and the apartheid government.Many South African boys were sent into Angola to fight alongside UNITA. There’s an absolutely brilliant Showmax mini-series called Unspoken War which documents that time. If you haven’t seen it — and you are of that generation — it will stir memories, but also open avenues of insight that I’m pretty sure you weren’t aware of. I certainly wasn’t. What Mills and Hartley found in Angola is very interesting in the context of where the country comes from.To begin with, UNITA fighters — or those who fought against the MPLA — were hunted down and killed, and many had to flee. In Unspoken War, there’s a note towards the end about how some of those UNITA fighters joined 32 Battalion, a crack force of the apartheid government. And when that was disbanded after the 1994 election in South Africa, some joined Executive Outcomes — the well-known mercenary outfit that fought in multiple wars on the African continent.So it’s fascinating to track the arc from 1975 — when Angola gained independence, the same year Mozambique did — to today, 50 years later, where reality seems to be dawning on what economic systems work, and how the elites of the liberation parties in both countries have ripped the system.A similar reality seems to be dawning here in South Africa. It’s almost as if liberation movements cannot break with the past — and cannot break with what, politically anyway, got them into power. Here in South Africa, we see that in the continued adherence to the National Democratic Revolution years after its sell-by date.The stories on BizNews today — from both Mozambique and Angola — suggest it’s only a matter of time before common sense prevails.In Angola, the next election is in 2027. UNITA’s leader, Adalberto Costa Júnior (an engineer — this time an electrical engineer), is leading the charge. Mills and Hartley were in the hall for the leadership vote: he secured roughly 90% against Rafael Massanga Savimbi, one of Dr Jonas Savimbi’s 30 children. UNITA definitely had momentum in the 2022 election; the MPLA reportedly won 51.2% of the vote. The big question is whether that was a stolen election — in the same way Mondlane says the 2024 election in Mozambique was stolen by the incumbents — or whether the MPLA will be prepared to let go of power in 2027. All of this is playing out in our region — and, locally, not least as we head towards the 2026 election.BizNews also carries two excellent pieces on the shifting global order.First, John Authers — widely regarded as one of Bloomberg’s best columnists — looks at the “new world order” and how Donald Trump’s approach has revived comparisons to George Orwell’s 1984, with its three competing blocs. Second, there’s a column by Barry Wood, a journalist I’ve known for many years and who knows South Africa well. He reflects on the assault on the world’s rules-based law-and-order system — and that’s also on BizNews today.A reminder: we are back on television this evening with eNCA at 19:30 — appointment viewing if you want the latest insights on the BizNews Briefing.On that note, I’ll leave it there for today. Keep an eye on your Premium newsletter for links to our freshest published content.Thanks for trusting us with your time. I’m Alec Hogg — until tomorrow. Cheerio.

The Editor's Desk - Mon 12 Jan 2026: Southern Africa’s political tremors, and a rules-based world under strain

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