Today's edition
Changing Lanes
Good morning. There's a headline number in almost every story today, and a more interesting one hiding right behind it. New-car sales hit a 12-year high, but the real move is who's doing the selling; the rand looks bleak, yet the smart money is quietly betting the other way. First impressions are doing a lot of lying this morning. Let's get into it.
MARKETS
SHIFTING GEARS
New-Car Sales Just Hit a 12-Year High, and Chinese Brands Are Rewriting the Leaderboard
South Africa's dealers just had their best July in over a decade. Buyers took home 40,912 new passenger cars last month, the strongest month since September 2014, and 57,708 vehicles across all segments, up 11.9% on a year ago. naamsa, the industry body, credits July's fuel-price cuts for much of the lift. But the louder story is who's doing the selling. Toyota still owns the forecourt, selling more than double its nearest rival, yet five Chinese brands, Chery, GWM, Jetour, Omoda & Jaecoo and BYD, now sit inside the top 15, winning over fleets and families with lower prices, longer warranties and slicker tech.
What's actually shifting:
- 40,912 new passenger cars sold in July, the best month since September 2014 and up 12.5% on a year ago.
- Five Chinese brands, Chery, GWM, Jetour, Omoda & Jaecoo and BYD, now sit inside the top 15 sellers.
- New-energy vehicles more than doubled from a year earlier; about one in every 17 new cars sold is now electrified.
The catch: most of those fast-growing brands are imported rather than built here, so a boom that's great for buyers is a quiet worry for the local plants that support well over 100,000 jobs. The real question for the rest of 2026 is whether South Africans keep buying once cheaper fuel stops doing the heavy lifting.
SPLIT SCREEN
The Headlines Say Bleak August for the Rand. The Smart Money Is Betting the Other Way.
The rand has spent the week wearing two faces. On one screen it looks bleak: August is historically its weakest month, the Reserve Bank spooked markets by holding rates steady in late July, and foreign investors pulled 6.2 billion rand out of local bonds. On the other, the cost of hedging against a weaker rand over the next year has quietly dropped to its lowest since December, meaning the traders with real money on the line are easing off their bearish bets. The mood is grim; the positioning says the opposite.
The catch is that it only pays off if the calm holds, with a fresh inflation reading and the Reserve Bank's next rate call still to come.
BAGEL BITE
Which crop is produced in the greatest quantity worldwide?
A. Wheat
B. Sugarcane
C. Maize
DOING THE ROUNDS
MTN is buying back the towers it once sold off. Africa's biggest mobile operator moved a step closer to taking full control of IHS Holdings, the continent's largest tower company, after IHS shareholders approved the all-cash deal on 4 August. It values IHS at about $6.2 billion, roughly R101 billion, and would see MTN reintegrate around 29,000 African towers. CEO Ralph Mupita calls the towers central to MTN's strategy; a few approvals still stand in the way. Full story →
The government wants a clearer view of cross-border crypto. VALR says the plan will do the opposite. Treasury and the Reserve Bank published a first-of-its-kind draft rulebook on Monday that would bar local companies from moving crypto across the border and route everything through an approved provider. VALR boss Farzam Ehsani warns that just pushes deals underground or offshore, shrinking the very visibility regulators want. Public comment runs to 30 September. Full story →
A court just ordered the boss of South Africa's biggest fund manager reinstated. The High Court in Pretoria set aside the mid-July suspension of Public Investment Corporation CEO Patrick Dlamini, ruling the board acted unlawfully because it never got the finance minister's sign-off. The PIC runs about R3.5 trillion, mostly government pensions. The whistle-blower complaint and the Acapulco payment behind the saga are still being investigated. Full story →
The JSE wants to go digital and take itself across Africa. New CEO Valdene Reddy has laid out Forge 2031, a five-year plan to turn the 139-year-old exchange into a pan-African digital marketplace, digitising everything from trading to settlement. She's pitching from strength: first-half operating cash earnings rose 18% to R856 million and the exchange is sitting on R2.6 billion of cash. The real test is winning back listings that have more than halved in twenty years. Full story →
WEATHER
BAGEL GAMES
Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? Play here →
THE ANSWER
As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: B. Sugarcane
Sugarcane stands as the world’s dominant crop by harvested weight. The latest complete global comparison places production at approximately 1.94 billion metric tonnes, ahead of maize at 1.22 billion tonnes, paddy rice at 820 million tonnes and wheat at 798 million tonnes. More recent 2025/26 estimates place maize at roughly 1.33 billion tonnes and wheat at around 844 million tonnes, meaning neither comes close to sugarcane’s total. Its enormous production weight partly comes from its tall, water rich stalks, which are processed into sugar, ethanol, molasses and energy.
That's your Thursday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew.
