Today's edition
Cash Flows
Good morning. A charity is handing about R11,000 to every adult in a Malawian district and waiting to see what happens. Eskom, on the other hand, has posted its second profit in a row and still cannot get fourteen small towns to pay their electricity bill.
Some money is moving, and some money is certainly not. Let's get into it.
MARKETS
CASH IN HAND
A charity is handing $550 to every adult in a Malawian district, and the shops left their prices alone
Aid usually turns up as a thing: a clinic, a bag of maize, a training course. In Chiradzulu, a Malawian district of about 400,000 people, it is turning up as money. GiveDirectly, a charity started by Harvard and MIT graduate students in 2008, is handing about $550 to every adult - once off, no strings attached.
For a household there, that is close to a year's spending. Most of the funding comes from the foundation behind the design app Canva, which put in $100 million - the biggest gift the charity has had.
What the first district showed:
- In Khongoni, the subdistrict GiveDirectly did first, the share of adults above the poverty line roughly doubled inside a year.
- The injection was worth about as much as the whole local economy. Prices rose about 1%, then settled back within five months.
- A year on, a third of what households spent was still going into housing, livestock and solar panels.
Khongoni was one subdistrict, 85,000 people. Chiradzulu is 900 villages and 400,000 residents, with 185,000 due to be paid by early 2027. That is more than double the people, across a whole district instead of a corner of one. Whether the same result survives that jump is what is being tested. The trial runs to 2035.
METER'S RUNNING
Eskom made R30.3 billion and still cannot get fourteen towns to pay their electricity bill
Eskom spent a decade being judged on whether the lights were on. On Monday it reported R30.3 billion after tax for the year to March, its second profitable year running, with reportedly four days of load shedding in the twelve months. The problem it named as its biggest is not a power station. It is R119 billion of unpaid municipal bills, and the fourteen towns that had until today to hand over their meters or risk being cut off.
Eskom's proposed Distribution Agency Agreement takes the billing out of a town's hands. Eskom runs the distribution itself for a fee: households pay Eskom directly, Eskom keeps what it is owed for bulk power and the cost of serving them, and the balance goes back to the struggling municipality. For a council, that means the money lands in Eskom's account before it lands in theirs. National Treasury called Eskom's original contract heavily skewed in Eskom's favour, and the working group meant to write a fairer one never did.
Treasury says none of the fourteen has signed. Four of these deals already run, AfriForum is in court over one, and Salga has asked for six more months to figure this out.
BAGEL BITE
What is the largest moon in our solar system?
A. Europa
B. Ganymede
C. Titan
DOING THE ROUNDS
Scooters Pizza is back to ten stores and wants twenty by the end of November. Taste Holdings converted its stores to Domino's in the years after 2014 and the brand vanished. Juan Engelbrecht, once its Western Cape master franchisor, bought the trademarks back in early 2025 and reopened in Melville that October. The pitch to franchisees is a store costing R1.66 million to R2 million, a 6% royalty, and no central kitchen marking up their ingredients. Full story →
369 Cape businesses were asked what is in the way, and labour law came out near the top. The Cape Chamber had them rate 61 named constraints, with Stellenbosch's Bureau for Economic Research running the fieldwork. Regulatory compliance came first and labour legislation second. Almost 80% of the 23 firms with more than 200 staff called labour law a serious constraint, and so did 73.6% of 53 manufacturers. Some said the employment-equity rules that start at 50 employees are why they stop hiring at 45. Full story →
Instagram is getting a bedtime. Meta has settled the states' case over what its apps do to children, and the changes are firmer than the money. Under-18s get a two-hour daily cap, a lockout between midnight and 6am, and the option of a feed with no algorithm in it. The $17.1 billion everyone is quoting only arrives if TikTok and YouTube settle too. The settling states are guaranteed at least $12.1 billion. Full story →
Bidvest says it has stopped shopping and is putting R2.5 billion into port capacity instead. Sales rose about 3% to R130.3 billion in the year to June, while trading profit rose 8%. Debt is down to about 1.9 years of operating earnings, from 2.2. The group did buy three businesses for R1.67 billion, mostly the Pretoria water-testing business Aquatico, but chief executive Mpumi Madisa says no material deals are planned. The money is going into grain and gas capacity at Durban and Richards Bay. 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. Ganymede
Ganymede is so large that if it orbited the Sun instead of Jupiter, it could easily be called a planet. It is the only moon known to have its own magnetic field, generated deep inside it. Scientists believe it hides a vast salty ocean beneath its icy surface. Titan and Europa are also famous moons, but neither is as big as Ganymede.
That's your Tuesday wrapped. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew.
