The Editor's Desk - Thurs 22 Jan 2026: Energy suicide or economic realism? SA’s shift at the world stage

Today I’m digging into why Pretoria is finally ditching the ideological "Kool-Aid" to put our own energy security and jobs first. From the Davos backstory to the survival of our steel industry, it's time we played by the new world order: putting South Africa’s national interest before anything else..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 BizNews TV 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 Thursday, the 22nd of January 2026. Glad to have you with me.You may have noticed that we’ve put considerable effort into podcasting at BizNews recently and, man, is it paying off. Apple Podcasts represents about 60% of our audience; roughly 60% of the people who consume our podcasts do so on Apple devices. It’s a wonderful thing nowadays that you can get information in such detail that it helps you serve your audience better, which is, of course, what we believe in—serving our tribe. We are now, on a regular basis, anywhere between the fifth and the tenth most popular podcast of all in South Africa. It’s quite extraordinary really that BizNews Radio is right up there. If we were an independent radio station, measuring only the listens from people via podcasts, we’d be in the top 10. Isn’t that something? Well, even more "something" is that the other members of the top 10 are primarily international stations. So keep on listening. We’ll keep on working and, hopefully, we’ll get some very smart guys to start giving some commercial support to this so that we can invest more into it.Anyway, Editor’s Desk is special. It is different. It’s where I share with you the reasons why we have put certain articles onto BizNews.com today. It really, in a way, is the backstory—and there are some very interesting backstories.I’m going to repeat one that I had this morning in my interview with Anthony Ginsberg. He’s an interesting guy. He is from South Africa, originally from Cape Town, but he left for the United States a few decades ago and started a company there called Ginsberg Global. He lives in California. Ginsberg Global is an ETF company and it focuses a great deal of its attention on offering investments into tech ETFs. Anthony’s got different streams—robotics, cloud, and those kinds of areas—so he’s very up with what’s going on in the tech scene. That makes him an interesting interviewee. The fact that he is South African means that he’s also able to give us insights from a perspective that makes sense for us.He has also taken a very close interest in the trade discussions between South Africa and the United States. He recently chaired a Young Presidents' Organisation debate on South African-US trade relations, where he had a very senior person from the Trump administration on the panel. So, Anthony’s really well plugged in.This morning we were talking about what the change in South Africa’s attitude towards the COP loan—the $8.5 billion loan—means for the way that we’re looking at the world. This is a very important development because in 2021, at the climate change summit (COP) in Glasgow, South Africa got a loan of $8.5 billion on the condition that we closed down coal-fired power stations. At the time, that was conventional wisdom. Countries around the world believed that to save the world from climate change catastrophes, they needed to accelerate the move away from "dirty" energy production to clean energy. It seemed like a good idea at the time and pretty much everyone in the West "drank the Kool-Aid".The problem is the people in the East, who are doing the real polluting (60% to 70% of it), didn’t drink the Kool-Aid. They have continued to build coal-fired power stations and, of course, we inhabit one world. So you have a crazy situation where the UK, Germany, and the United States moved away from cheap energy to—willfully—expensive energy, almost committing "energy suicide" and putting their own economies under pressure. Meanwhile, in the global economic battle, China was just making more coal-fired power stations.In fact, Donald Trump in Davos yesterday made an interesting point when he said that all the windmills and wind farms we see all over the world are built in China, but he doesn't know of a single windmill in China. They are building these "Kool-Aid drinking" products for others, but they are not using them in their own country. Think what you will about Trump, but he certainly can put his finger on the nub of the issue very quickly sometimes.In this conversation with Anthony Ginsberg, he was saying that the Americans are completely baffled by South Africa. They say in Washington that when they do bother to think about South Africa, they see a country that is on the wrong page. It’s rewarding those who are pulling resources from it. Here we’re talking about the BRICS countries who are exporting heavily into South Africa, and what they’re taking out is minerals. South Africa runs a trade deficit with those countries; we are paying them a lot more for what they’re selling us than what we’re getting from them. It’s a very one-sided relationship.On the other side of the coin is the United States, with whom South Africa runs a trade surplus of tens of billions—the last figure I had was $36 billion. Yet, the politicians or the leaders are doing everything possible, it seems, to alienate them. That is what Washington can't understand. It’s a bit like we’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid not only on climate change, but the "BRICS Kool-Aid"—and that Kool-Aid has been very well engineered by those who are benefiting from the relationship with us. Maybe we’re just naive. Maybe no one’s really told us this.But the one place where the message is coming through, and is difficult to miss, is in Davos at the World Economic Forum. I recall when Kgalema Motlanthe took over—you’ll remember, he was temporarily the President between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. He arrived in Davos—and I really like Kgalema; I’ve had good engagements with him and found him to be an utter gentleman with an open mind. But when he arrived, he was set against what those of us who believe in free enterprise would call common sense.It was a little bit like Nelson Mandela, actually. What happened to Mandela when he went to Davos in 1991 for the first time—ahead of the election and ahead of the real negotiations with FW de Klerk and Mangosuthu Buthelezi—was transformative. In fact, it was only in Davos that they shared a stage for the first time. When Kgalema arrived, he was of one mind, but he was exposed over the next four days to a different approach. His final parting discussion was almost like he had been replaced by someone with a completely different mindset, much more aligned with where the world was, turfing out the parochial, blinkered approach he had arrived with.Mandela's transformation from "we will nationalise everything" to "we will run a free enterprise economy" came from an engagement with a Vietnamese general. He was Mandela's hero when Mandela was in jail—the great reformer. This general became the leader of Vietnam and implemented reforms that transformed that economy from a wasteland into a rapidly growing economic power. Vietnam was way behind South Africa in those years, but it’s now way ahead of South Africa on every economic level you care to look at. The general said to Mandela: "Don’t be sucked in by the propaganda. Don’t be caught up by the ideological nonsense. We tried it and we suffered. Go the free enterprise route as we have, and you will have the same kind of result."That story was told to me by the late Tito Mboweni when he and I were in a corner in Davos swapping notes. We knew each other well; we first met there in 1992. He was, at the time, number three in the ANC's economics department behind Max Sisulu and Trevor Manuel. It was before the election and before Tito was surprisingly made the Minister of Labour by Madiba. Madiba could clearly see the talent in Mboweni.I have no reason to doubt that story. You could see that Mandela went there with one mindset and came out with a completely different one, which transformed South Africa’s trajectory. Kgalema Motlanthe had a similar "Damascene awakening." And it seems from what Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, our Minister of Electricity, has been saying, that he’s having a similar conversion. From being the flag-waver for the Just Energy Transition Partnership, he’s pulling back and saying, "Hang on a minute, we might need those coal-fired power stations."In fact, we do need them. Why should South Africa—which is a tiny blip on the radar of global emissions—be suffering? Why should South Africans have expensive energy and load-shedding when we have 200-plus years of coal that could be pushed through our power stations? We are told we mustn't use it; that we must implement very expensive alternative sources to be part of the world’s attack on climate change.Now, nobody is saying climate change doesn't need to be addressed or that human beings aren't contributing to global warming. But we have to look beyond the obvious. When countries transform economically, they are then in a position to afford a contribution to clean energy, rather than being forced into that position from the outset and never being able to get their economy going. South Africa is a banner example of that. From being the cheapest producer of electricity in the world, we reached a state where we were no longer the cheapest—and we didn't even have enough of it.Has Ramokgopa had his awakening? And is it part of a general awakening for South Africa? We need to stop and say: "Hang on a minute. Our people are unemployed. Our GDP per capita is going backwards. This is a recipe for long-term disaster. Let’s do what is good for our country, our people, and our jobs. Let’s put South Africa first." That’s the backstory to the piece we have on the site today from our partners at Bloomberg regarding South Africa stepping away from that $8.5 billion COP loan.Also on the site today is the pivot by Donald Trump on Greenland. If you’ve been following our coverage, you’ll start coming around to the belief that this guy is quite transparent. He is a "transactor." He even wrote a book called The Art of the Deal. In it, he explains how you should "put the peg in the ground" far away from what you would actually accept so that you can be negotiated back.He is also using the "Madman Theory," first given to the world by Richard Nixon. The world didn't buy it with Nixon, but they certainly buy it with Trump. Time and again, he rolls back his outlandish demands, and you can see that at the bottom line is a guy wanting to do a deal—but he’s not going to give you his best offer to start with.The piece from the FT about Trump’s Greenland pivot explains how EU politicians are playing into his hands. They are on a completely different playbook and are now in a complete panic. They are having an emergency meeting after Trump said in Davos yesterday, "We’re not going to invade Greenland." He’s spoken with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and they’ve agreed on how to handle the military threat. Trump says, "We still want Greenland, we’d like to own it, but we’re not going to invade it." Suddenly, the EU summit meant to show a united front against Trump has had its guns spiked. He’s just been "playing these guys on a break," as we used to say in the South of Joburg.Another interesting thing is happening in my old hometown of Newcastle. When ArcelorMittal closed down the long steel plant, it was after the company—owned by Lakshmi Mittal—turned down an R1.8 billion offer from the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC). The IDC probably didn't believe ArcelorMittal would actually close the plant. Well, they did. They closed the plant at Vanderbijlpark and the one in Newcastle, and 3,500 people no longer have jobs.Well, talks are now reopening. Maybe there’s something coming from Davos here too. If you look at the discussions at the World Economic Forum at the moment, it’s all about a new world order: look after yourself first. Whether you’re the US or South Africa, you aren't necessarily aligned with an organisation that is going to back you up, because those organisations are managed by the biggest players.If you’re a little guy, like South Africa is—the tiny "S" at the end of BRICS—you’ll be "sucking the hind teat." You think you have a place at the table, but nobody listens. Think of the BRICS Bank: how much money is coming to South Africa? What real advantage has South Africa had? Fine, let's be a member, in the same way we are members of the UN, but don't sacrifice the national interest for them, because you won't get reciprocity.Now, there’s a realisation: "Whoa, hang on. What are we doing closing down a strategic resource like a steelmaking plant?" The reason it's closing is because it cannot compete with "mini-mills" owned by politically connected individuals who are given huge advantages. Even if the steel plant could compete internationally, it’s being taken out by guys converting scrap steel. It’s a finite resource; they’ll make their money and then what?It appears there is a reassessment of that strategic story as well. In this new world order, every country should put its national interests first. South Africa needs to play by that playbook, and it appears we have finally realised that, looking at the news today.Interesting times. I’m going to leave it there for today. Keep an eye on your premium newsletter for links to these stories and all our freshest content. Thanks for trusting us with your time. I’m Alec Hogg. Until tomorrow, cheerio.

The Editor's Desk - Thurs 22 Jan 2026: Energy suicide or economic realism? SA’s shift at the world stage

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