Hi there 🙋🏾♀️
Hello from a Jozi that’s buzzing with G20 excitement!
If there’s one thing the Madlanga Commission and parliament’s Ad-hoc Committee are good at, it’s leaving us speechless with every session. From Brown Mogotsi’s CIA claims to Mary de Haas’s outburst, we spill all the tea, so grab a seat. And speaking of seats, Cyril’s about to hand over the G20 presidency to a literal empty one thanks to the US boycott. Spicy.
In other news, the DA’s John Steenhuisen is facing some financial turbulence, while Eswatini scored a controversial deal with the US. Plus, a TV show has everyone Googling anti-anxiety meds, and tomorrow, the world will be defying gravity with Wicked: For Good. We’re also diving into the significance of the Epstein files and wrapping up with some major wins for our sports teams.
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
- Malusi Gigaba formally stepped aside from ANC duties yesterday! The ANC “step-aside” rule requires its leaders to voluntarily resign from party and government positions if facing criminal charges. The former minister appeared in court this week alongside former Transnet heavyweights Brian Molefe, Anoj Singh, Siyabonga Gama and Thamsanqa Jiyane — basically a State Capture class reunion. Prosecutors allege Gigaba took secret Gupta cash to grease the infamous 1,064-locomotive deal. It’s not clear if he’ll resign as an MP, which is typically also required by the step-aside rule.
- Planeloads of Palestinians landing in SA have confounded authorities. 🛬 Over the past three weeks, 329 Palestinians arrived in Joburg on two mysterious charter flights. Passengers paid around R34,000 to a shady outfit called Al-Majd Europe, only to land with no luggage, exit stamps, or destination. Al Jazeera reports this may have been partly to force Palestinians out of Gaza. After a 12-hour airport standoff, NGO Gift of the Givers stepped in. SA officials are deciding their legal status and next steps.
- John Steenhuisen is under fire within the DA. There’s an outcry over his axing of DA Minister of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment from the GNU, Dion George, amid speculation that it was partly due to George’s refusal to appease hunting groups. Now there’s new scrutiny over Steenhuisen’s apparently messy personal finances, including personal credit debt. Before his removal, George also flagged issues with Steenhuisen’s party credit card use. Steenhuisen calls it a smear campaign, but the whispers are only growing louder.
- Cyril Ramaphosa will hand the G20 presidency to… an empty chair. 🤔 Yes, really. With the US set to take over the G20 next year but boycotting the Joburg summit, Ramaphosa has opted for peak diplomatic shade. On Friday, he brushed off the drama: “If you boycott, you are the greatest loser,” adding he’ll “symbolically hand over to that empty chair.” Ever the pragmatist, Ramaphosa says he’ll still work to fix the frayed trade ties over US President Donald Trump’s false claims of “Afrikaner persecution”.
- Activist group Women For Change has called for a national shutdown tomorrow ahead of G20. They’re urging women and LGBTQ+ people to stay away from work, spend nothing, wear black, and stop everything completely for 15 minutes at noon. Their petition to declare GBV a national disaster has already topped 1 million signatures. A third of adult women have experienced physical violence, according to SA’s most comprehensive GBV analysis to date, released last year by the HSRC.
INTERNATIONAL
- Trump hosted a wildly controversial White House love-fest with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman this week. US intelligence previously found that the Crown Prince ordered the 2018 assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a progressive editor who was critical of the Saudi government and the Crown Prince in particular. Questioned about this on Tuesday, Trump shrugged it off, saying “things happen” 😮 and called Khashoggi “extremely controversial”. The red-carpet parade of marching bands, flyovers and billion-dollar deals only made it worse.
- Eswatini has admitted it quietly took $5.1 million from the US to accept deportees. 😳 The country’s Finance Minister Neal Rijkenberg made the admission in parliament on Monday after pressure from MPs. The secret deal with the Trump administration has already seen 15 men flown in since July under a “third-country removals” scheme that critics say is basically offshoring America’s problems. The men — some accused of serious crimes — are now held without charge in Matsapha prison. Rights groups are demanding answers.
- The internet had a meltdown on Tuesday. 🤯 Cloudflare, the giant cloud services and cybersecurity firm holding up 20% of the world’s websites, tripped over a faulty file meant to manage suspicious traffic. Ironic. It crashed their entire system and sent X, YouTube, Google, Zoom, Canva and even ChatGPT into error-message chaos. South Africans, with our loadshedding PTSD, spiralled during the three-hour outage, with the search term topping Google trends in South Africa and beyond on the day.
- The White Lotus spiked searches for its character’s favourite Benzo. After season three dropped in February, Google searches for lorazepam (the anti-anxiety med Parker Posey’s character pops like Tic Tacs) nearly doubled over 12 weeks. 💊 Researchers say that’s… not great, considering dodgy online “benzos” often contain dangerous synthetic opioids. Experts are now urging TV creators to rethink how they portray prescription drugs. Meanwhile, we just have “ Loraaazapaam!” stuck in our head in Posey’s iconic southern drawl.
- Wicked: For Good lands in local and global cinemas tomorrow. 💚🩷 The sequel is already the biggest PG-rated pre-seller ever. Critics say stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, who developed the cutest friendship, deliver “explosive” performances. Our favourite performance, though, was Erivo fighting off a man who jumped the barricades at the Asian premiere last week and grabbed Grande. He’s been sentenced to 9 days in prison. As Erivo’s character famously puts it: “I don’t cause commotions, I am one.” 🔥
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ BIG STORIES
1️⃣ Brown Mogotsi is writing his own spy thriller at the Madlanga commission
South Africa’s police inquiries have been serving pure drama this week, with the Madlanga Commission and parliament’s Ad hoc committee somehow morphing into a conspiracy theory circus.
For weeks, the Madlanga Commission lined up witness after witness detailing alleged rot inside SAPS. That was Phase 1. This week, the commission flipped the script into Phase 2 – the stage where the implicated parties finally get to tell their side under oath.
Here are the moments that had everyone glued to their screens.
🔹 Brown Mogotsi’s blockbuster claims
In testimony that sounded more Hollywood than judicial, North West businessman Brown Mogotsi told the Madlanga Commission he was an undercover “contact agent” for Crime Intelligence. He said he was recruited as a Crime Intelligence informant in 1999 and, in 2009, was elevated to “contact agent”, handled by senior police officials for years.
To sum it up: Despite other witnesses describing Mogotsi as a political fixer with his fingers in the justice system (with links as high up as Police Minister Senzo Mchunu), Mogotsi claims he was tackling corruption from the inside out. Right.
From there, the claims got wilder. Mogotsi alleged that KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi is secretly a CIA operative, a suspicion he shared with none other than former police minister Nathi Mthethwa (Mthethwa died in September this year of suicide).
🔹 John Wick = “Cat” Matlala, apparently
Another one of Mogotsi’s biggest revelations was supposedly identifying the notorious Pretoria hitman known as “John Wick”, long rumoured to be targeting the Mamelodi-based Boko Haram gang. Mogotsi testified that John Wick is allegedly Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala, a named member of the ‘Big Five’ cartel also under scrutiny at the commission, whom he says he had been asked to monitor by Police Minister Bheki Cele in 2018.
Neither SAPS nor Mchunu has issued any official comment confirming or denying that Matlala is the “John Wick” alias —the claim remains explosive but entirely unverified, leaving most South Africans treating it as just the latest chapter in the never-ending telenovela of police corruption and gangster nicknames.
🔹 Mary de Haas vs Parliament
Separately, veteran violence monitor Mary de Haas appeared before Parliament’s ad hoc committee on disbandment of the KwaZulu-Natal Political Killings Task Team. Unlike other witnesses who praised the Task Team, De Haas detailed serious allegations of abuse and torture by the unit, drawn from whistle-blower accounts.
But MPs were not impressed. Some dismissed her testimony as “hearsay”, while others accused her of making sweeping claims without confirmable evidence. At one point, de Haas lost her temper as MPs pushed back, saying, “It’s becoming a witch hunt”.
In a week when Malusi Gigaba was in the dock and Ramaphosa was shading Trump’s empty G20 chair, the Madlanga Commission still managed to steal the chaos crown. Only in Mzansi.
2️⃣ What the Epstein files release means for Trump and Washington
The long-buried secrets of Jeffrey Epstein’s depraved empire are finally clawing their way into the light.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, a new piece of US legislation aimed at unveiling the secrets surrounding Epstein’s notorious operations, passed with overwhelming support in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday. The higher legislative house, the Senate, quickly followed, approving the bill unanimously. Yesterday, the bill landed on Trump’s desk, where he’s since signed the order to release the files.
What makes this remarkable is the person at the centre: Trump himself, who for months had labelled calls for disclosure a “Democrat hoax”, with Republicans who dominate both houses largely backing him. But he couldn’t get all party faithful behind him on the issue. Super conservative representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in particular, has been a vocal advocate of the bill. (Trump has since pulled his endorsement of her and dubbed her “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene”). On Monday, faced with the bill’s impending success, he publicly stated he would sign the bill if it reached his desk, saying, “we have nothing to hide”.
It’s the culmination of deep divides within Trump’s MAGA movement over the files. While Trump has repeatedly tried to bury his association with Epstein, it just won’t go away. But Trump is still trying to detract from his role in the scandal, and on Friday, he tasked Attorney General Pam Bondi with investigating alleged Epstein ties to Democrats.
So what does this Act actually mean? It forces the US Department of Justice to release all unclassified records related to Epstein’s network, including flight logs, internal communications, and investigation materials, all within 30 days. The financier turned sex-trafficking monster, who rubbed elbows with the global elite before his suicide in 2019, left behind a Pandora’s box of documents.
Importantly, no redactions will be made for reputational harm or embarrassment—unless the material involves Epstein’s victims or ongoing federal investigations. There’s been a steady trickle of redacted docs before, but this will be the full reveal. Last week alone, over 20,000 pages spilled out: flight logs to the infamous “Lolita Express”, and emails implicating the powerful – including innocuous Trump mentions he insists prove his innocence.
As CNN analyst Stephen Collinson put it, this “Washington humiliation” has left Trump more exposed than ever. Washington may be shaken by whatever finally crawls out of Epstein’s long-sealed vault.
3️⃣ Winning weekend: Boks and Proteas give Mzansi something to smile about
Last weekend, Mzansi’s sports fans barely had time to breathe as two national teams delivered big, mood-lifting wins that had the country buzzing. 🇿🇦🔥
🔹 First up: the Springboks.
The world champs pulled off a gritty 32- 14 victory over Italy in Turin on Saturday in the Castle Lager Outgoing Tour — despite going a man down just 12 minutes in after Franco Mostert’s early red card.
But the Boks did what the Boks do: stayed calm, powered on, and dotted down four tries courtesy of Marco Van Staden, Morne van den Berg, Grant Williams and Ethan Hooker.
This marks the second time the Boks beat Italy with one man short. The last time? July in Gqeberha, when they thumped them 45–0. Casual.
The Springboks will now shift their attention to their second-last game against Ireland in Dublin on Saturday — and they’ll do it without Mostert, who could face suspension after his controversial red card.
🔹 Across the globe… the Proteas quietly made history of their own.
On Sunday, South Africa claimed their first Test win in India in 15 years, beating the hosts by 30 runs at Eden Gardens in Kolkata. After being bowled out for 153 on day three, the Proteas fought back hard, dismissing India for just 93 in 35 overs.
The heroes of the match?
🔹Themba Bavuma scored 55 runs, becoming the only player in the series to score a half-century.
🔹Off-spinner Simon Harmer claimed four wickets off 21, earning himself the player of the match award.
This win ends a brutal 8-Test drought in India (seven losses, one draw) since their last victory in Nagpur back in 2010.
The Proteas now lead the two-match series 1-0, and are just a win or a draw away from sealing their first series victory in India in 25 years.
But coach Shukri Conrad is keeping everyone grounded, saying: The job isn’t done yet. The final Test kicks off on Saturday in Guwahati.
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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