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This week’s big question… why is Donald Trump so fixated on Mzansi? It’s giving jealous ex vibes at this point, and honestly, it’s getting awkward. Find out about his latest rant and how he’s uninviting us from the G20 next year.
Our take? He’s probably just salty that we actually made things happen and got world leaders to, well, agree on something. Get the lowdown on the G20 in our longer briefs.
Meanwhile, there’s a civil war brewing within the DA, and it involves a couple of Uber Eats orders. We tell you all about it. The Police ad-hoc committee paid Cat Matlala a visit in prison, and let’s just say we’re shook by what he revealed.
Plus, did you hear? A street in Cape Town just made the list of the coolest streets in the world. Plus, why we might all be a little immature… until we hit 32.
So, let’s dive into these stories and more in this week’s wrap, brought to you by Verashni Pillay and the explain.co.za team. 😄
Format:
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ BRIEFS
NATIONAL
- The spat between DA leader John Steenhuisen and axed Minister Dion George is growing. We told you last week about the previous drama. On Sunday, City Press revealed more: George, as the DA’s federal finance chairperson, blocked Steenhuisen’s party credit card, reportedly over personal charges, including Uber Eats. Yum!🤭 Steenhuisen called it revenge over George’s ministerial axing, with further accusations flying between their factions. Yikes. The DA’s Federal Legal Commission will investigate the “dispute”, Helen Zille said on Monday.
- South Africa officially classified GBV as a national disaster. 💜 President Cyril Ramaphosa upgraded it last week from a ‘national crisis’ under the Disaster Management Act. This follows a coordinated campaign and protests across the country on Friday against GBV, calling for this action, among others. This means the National Executive will now lead a coordinated, cross-government response. Think: Policing, justice, social services, health, education and more must intensify prevention, support and rehabilitation efforts.
- Jailed tender kingpin Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala said he paid former police minister Bheki Cele R500k to kill police probes into his dodgy dealings. 😲 Testifying yesterday at Parliament’s police inquiry from prison, decked in full Burberry no less, he said Cele demanded the payment earlier this year, and allegedly returned Matlala’s seized guns. Matlala added that Cele “lied under oath” about their cosy chats, which Cele previously testified were mere intel-gathering sessions. SA’s top cops are looking dirtier by the day.
- Cape Town’s Kloof Street made Time Out’s list of the 31 coolest streets in the world for 2025. The list, released last week, is a tastemaker for tourists everywhere, and Kloof nabbed spot 22 between similarly trendy strips in Madrid and London. The street’s mix of Victorian façades, broekie-lace balconies, concept stores, cocktail dens and a hint of after-dark mischief clinched its spot. Foodie favourites include Kloof Konbini, Blondie, Vadivelu and the iconic Kloof Street House. Dezemba plans, anyone? 🍹
- The Proteas won SA’s first Test series in India in 25 years. They delivered a 408-run thrashing in Guwahati yesterday, winning the series 2-0, and handing India their worst-ever home defeat in terms of runs. Spinner Simon Harmer made Player of the Series, while Temba Bavuma captained a proper team effort that outplayed a rattled Indian side now reeling from five home losses in seven Tests. The cricket world has flipped, and now the Proteas are on top!
INTERNATIONAL
- New York’s Democratic Socialist mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani thoroughly charmed Trump. 😆 Conservative pundits predicted blood ahead of their scheduled chat last Friday. Instead, Trump said they agreed “a lot more than I would have thought.” He beamed, patted Mamdani’s arm and even told him it was “OK” to call him a fascist. Just weeks ago, Trump threatened to yank New York’s funding, invoke the National Guard and even arrest Mamdani. Mamdani stuck to his key issues: affordability for New Yorkers.
- The world may be losing the climate fight, but COP30 insists the gloves aren’t off just yet. 🌍 The UN’s annual climate summit wrapped this weekend in Belém, Brazil, after two bumpy weeks of walkouts, rampant fires and fears it might all fall apart. Still, countries squeezed out a fragile deal: more adaptation funding, a just transition mechanism and long-overdue recognition of Indigenous land rights — but no fossil fuel phase-out or deforestation pact. Now all eyes turn to COP31.
- Is Russia taking Trump’s peace attempts seriously? Ukraine reportedly agreed on Tuesday to key terms of a US-brokered peace deal to end Russia’s nearly four-year war with only a few “minor details” remaining, officials said. Trump echoed this on his Truth Social. His administration is pushing for a quick resolution through talks being held in Abu Dhabi this week. Russia, however, said that while talks are “serious”, it was premature to suggest a deal is in the works.
- Malaysia is the latest country to crack down on kids’ screen time. The government said on Sunday it plans to ban under-16s from using social media starting next year. The goal? Shielding children from cyberbullying, scams and sexual exploitation. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Australia made the same move back in November 2024, with their ban on 10 December. Social media companies aren’t exactly thrilled, warning that enforcing age-verification at this scale is… complicated.
- Scientists say the human brain goes through five phases before it’s fully mature. 🧠 The study, published Tuesday, shows four key turning points at roughly 9, 32, 66, and 83. Childhood runs until about 9, while adolescence stretches longer than we usually think, with brain development continuing until 32. Only then does the mature adult stage kick in. 🫨 Adulthood lasts until around 66, marking early ageing, and the final phase, late ageing, hits at 83. Time to rethink maturity!
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ BIG STORIES
1️⃣G20 wrap: SA delivers a historic summit despite Trump’s snubs
South Africa woke up to a diplomatic slap yesterday: US President Donald Trump has uninvited us from next year’s G20 summit in Miami.
He claims SA snubbed the US in the G20 handover. But Trump announced a boycott of the Joburg summit before it even began, initially citing debunked claims of “white genocide” against Afrikaner farmers. Tensions simmered throughout the summit, as the US skipped the talks, meaning no senior diplomat nor official was present for the ceremonial handover of the leaders’ declaration.
Sticking to protocol, Ramaphosa banged the gavel solo on Sunday, declaring the presidency passed ‘in name only’ to the US, and refusing a last-minute US request to hand over to a lower-level official. Washington collected the adopted declaration from DIRCO HQ on Tuesday morning, a far cry from the usual red-carpet moment.
Trump saw red, viewing SA’s actions as a major snub to the US. He took to Truth Social yesterday afternoon, this time to declare that South Africa “will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20”. He also doubled down on his accusations of a “white genocide”, claims which have been widely debunked and fact-checked.
Ramaphosa called the comments “regrettable”, saying South Africa “does not appreciate insults from another country,” and reaffirming that the nation remains a committed and active G20 member.
Despite the incoming host’s theatrics, this year’s historic Johannesburg summit was largely a success. Leaders from many of the world’s major and emerging powers turned up in Johannesburg: heavyweights from the Global South, Europe and beyond.
Leaders unanimously adopted a sweeping 122-point declaration, a win many thought impossible given weeks of geopolitical drama.
Highlights include:
🔹Debt relief push: Endorsed a stronger Common Framework for low-income countries’ debt sustainability, including transparency, IMF reviews, and innovative debt-for-nature swaps, where a country’s debt is reduced in exchange for commitments to environmental conservation and climate-related actions.
🔹Climate finance boost: Committed trillions for just energy transitions in Africa, tripling renewables by 2030
🔹Food security: Vowed to end hunger for 720 million people
But it wasn’t all kumbaya. French President Emmanuel Macron warned that deep divisions remain on climate policy and global conflicts.
Other points of contention were around the G20’s ongoing struggle to agree on language around major global flashpoints — especially Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.
And of course, there was some local drama: police shot and arrested a man after he attempted to hijack a G20-contracted vehicle with a toy gun. Only in Joburg.
Still, South Africa delivered a functional, forward-looking summit and handed the US a presidency it didn’t bother to show up for. The work, despite the theatrics, goes on.
2️⃣ Zuma daughters feud over SA men sent to fight in Ukraine
Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party is facing one of its biggest scandals yet.
News24 reported earlier this month that young South African men were promised fancy “bodyguard training” in Russia back in July. Instead, many ended up frighteningly close to Ukraine’s frontline instead.
The Hawks are now treating the whole thing as a possible trafficking case and a breach of foreign military assistance laws.
And if that wasn’t chaotic enough, the whole thing has now sparked a very public, very messy feud inside the Zuma family.
The family drama kicked off on Saturday when one of Jacob Zuma’s daughters, Nkosazana Zuma-Mncube, walked into a police station and filed a criminal complaint. She named her older half-sister, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, along with an alleged co-recruiter, Blessing Khoza as those behind the shady recruitment scheme. She said families had reached out to her because their sons had disappeared overseas, and they were desperate.
According to her affidavit, these young men, most of them from KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, thought they were headed for legit training. Instead, they were taken into Russian-controlled military zones. Their phones and bank cards were taken away. They suddenly found themselves near active combat areas, wearing uniforms from Russian mercenary group Wagner and panicking in messages sent back home.
These are not mercenaries. They’re regular guys, many unemployed and hoping for a chance to earn a salary. Some even related to the Zumas. 😳 Instead, they were allegedly hit with random “fees” for boats, Russian passports and even flights for the next batch of recruits still waiting in South Africa.
Nkosazana says Duduzile, who is an MK MP and very active on social media, helped arrange the travel and even did a month of basic training in Russia before heading home, while the men were pushed to the frontlines.
Duduzile is not taking this quietly. On Monday, a day before news broke that the Hawks are investigating, she filed her own countercharges naming Blessing Khoza as the main recruiter, insisting she is a “victim of deception, misrepresentation and manipulation”.
All of this is happening while Duduzile is already on trial for inciting the 2021 unrest, which only adds more political heat to everything.
Meanwhile, families are still waiting for updates about their sons, young South Africans who thought they were getting an opportunity and instead landed in the middle of a foreign war they never signed up for.
Read our full explainer here.
3️⃣South Africa scores first credit rating upgrade in 20 years – just in time to face Trump’s Agoa axe
Remember when state capture scandals plunged South Africa’s credit ratings into junk status, leaving us scrambling for scraps of investor confidence? Well, hold onto your biltong — we’ve just notched our first credit rating upgrade in nearly two decades.
S&P Global Ratings delivered the good news last week, lifting our sovereign rating by a notch from BB- to BB, just one notch below investment grade.
Credit ratings are a bit like your personal credit score. You’d be refused a loan if you have a bad credit rating, or charged a higher interest rate, meaning you pay more on repayments. Similarly, junk status meant higher borrowing costs for South Africa and a lack of investor confidence.
What’s driving this turnaround? As we told you a few weeks ago, the government’s financial health is finally improving.
- We’re heading for a hat-trick: three primary surpluses in a row for the first time in over 15 years. A primary budget surplus is when the government earns more than it spends before paying interest on debt.
- For the first time since 2008, South Africa’s debt mountain is no longer growing – it peaks at 77.9% of GDP this year thanks to those back-to-back budget surpluses and better tax collection. This means R4.8 billion less spent on servicing our debt over the next three years.
- Bond yields, a measure of investor confidence, steadily fell over the course of this year to 8.65%, from 9.8% in January. That’s a good thing – lower yields make it cheaper for government to raise capital.
- Eskom is finally making a profit after eight years of losses. This means less risk of the parastatal needing another taxpayer-funded bailout.
This is all good news — and it may also be arriving just in time.
News emerged this week that Trump and allies in the US Senate are pushing a new bill that would renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) for two years, but explicitly excludes South Africa. The previous version we were a part of expired in September.
If passed, the new version potentially slams the door on duty-free exports worth billions in textiles, autos, and agriculture for South Africa. But introducing a bill is only the first in a long process in setting a new law. As SA noted, Agoa in its previous form has strong support across both Democrats and Republicans. Here’s hoping the version that excludes SA doesn’t pass.
That’s it from us at The Wrap, an award-winning product of explain.co.za – simple news summaries for busy people. 💁🏾♀
The Wrap is sponsored by explain’s agency division. We specialise in content marketing for purpose-driven organisations, often with a pan-African reach. Mail info@explain.co.za for a quote.
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