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David Lupafya spent 25 years at AT&T, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin before coming home to grow grain on 1,300 hectares outside Potchefstroom. He did what careful farmers do: planned a season ahead and put more than R5 million of his own money down on tractors, a combine and implements, counting on the Land Bank's blended finance scheme to cover the rest. Then, weeks before planting, the phone rang. The R325 million grant pot for the year had been fully committed. He told Alec Hogg why he could not simply walk away, why conventional finance turned a fundable farm into an unfundable one, and why he could not say whether the Department of Agriculture or the Land Bank had dropped the ball. He also had a message for city dwellers who took food security for granted. With El Niño forecast for the season, the clock was already running.

In his latest interview with Chris Steyn, Ian Cameron, the chairperson of Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police, has a very blunt response to President Cyril Ramaphosa's latest address to the nation in which he outlined measures to deal with gender-based violence: “The president lied”. One “blatant lie” was increased police visibility in Kempton Park where there has been a spate of femicide. Cameron describes the horrific level of disfunctionality he found on an unannounced oversight visit yesterday to the Kempton Park Police Station. He also has harsh words for Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi who had announced the lockdown. “Him and the minister are speaking about lockdown operations. They can't even lock down a police station.” Meanwhile, Police Minister Senzo Mchunu's special leave has cost taxpayers R3.2 million. “(and) he still enjoys VIP Protection...per minister they spend more or less R8 million rand annually on their VIP Protection…(which) gets nearly R900 million more per year than Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences units…That they say it is getting the relevant attention, is simply a lie.” Lastly, Cameron reveals the finding of the postmortem of Sky, the arson-detection dog found with horrific injuries in a cage at the SAPS veterinary facility.

Gayton McKenzie said he had no time to sue Helen Zille, but plenty to say about her. Five weeks before the local government elections, the Patriotic Alliance leader and Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture gave Alec Hogg his account of the Joburg coalition deal he said the DA had broken, called the DA a younger brother of the ANC, and ran through the councils he expected the PA to win outright. He explained, with a childhood story about jelly setting under a tree, how he thought the GNU would change after 4 November. On sport, he said old legislation had tied his hands as suspensions piled up at Swimming SA and beyond, and he named the venue he wanted for South Africa's Formula One return. Then he turned to crime, and explained why he believed the Constitution itself stood in the way.

Comrades board member Rory Steyn tells Alec Hogg that Swimming South Africa, whose top two officials are suspended by World Aquatics, needs the governance overhaul cricket went through - a majority of independent directors, with Olympian Tatjana Smith the ideal candidate. Fourteen months after their daughter's murder, her parents are still waiting: the suspect was released from a police station without bail and has vanished. The DA's Lisa Schickerling says acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia has plans but no implementation, and Operation Prosper isn't prospering. Plus Neal Froneman's Cape Town F1 bid, and Anthropic's IPO prospectus.

In two years, Comrades runners threw out a board accused of vote-buying and steering tenders to friends, and cut ties with the provincial and national athletics bodies to run their own race. Swimming South Africa had to wait for an integrity panel in Switzerland to act. Rory Steyn, Nelson Mandela's former bodyguard and now a Comrades Marathon Association board member, told Alec Hogg why one could fix itself and the other could not, and why he believed too many of the country's sports federations were run by politicians dressed up as administrators. He went through the suspensions that have piled up since March, from SASCOC to athletics, swimming, karate and netball, set out what he would do in Gayton McKenzie's shoes, and asked why an Olympic champion had to fight her own federation for her prize money. His challenge to everyone else in South African sport: Comrades has done it, so what is stopping you?