Today’s edition
Scam Dunk
Good morning, and welcome to your Tuesday Roundup. Truecaller has a new weapon against scammers, one of Cape Town’s most famous hotels could finally be coming back to life, and Gold Fields just got a very expensive no from Australia. Let’s get into it.
MARKETS
CHECK, PLEASE
Truecaller will now check a dodgy link for free, and South Africans lost R2.4 billion last year to the scams it is built for
If you bank on your phone, the person most likely to empty your account is not a hacker. It is someone who sounds like your bank and talks you into approving the payment yourself. SABRIC, which counts banking crime for the industry, says most digital banking crime now works that way, and South Africans lost R2.4 billion to it in 2025, more than double the 2023 figure. Banking apps carried about 89% of the cases.
On Sunday Truecaller, the caller ID app, put the scam reports it has spent more than a decade collecting onto a free website. Scam Checker lets you paste in a number, a link or a whole message and see whether it has been flagged as fraud, with no app and no account. It starts in India, with Africa on the list for later.
How the checker works:
- Paste in a phone number and it pulls up reports from ScamFeed, Truecaller's own community of users.
- Paste in a shortened link and it follows it to the page it really lands on, then checks that page against Truecaller's risk database.
- Want the name behind a number? That still needs the app and a sign-in.
SABRIC's own advice is to pause and check anything unusual through an official channel. Scam Checker is built to be that check, once it gets here.
ROOM WITH A REVIEW
A luxury hotel group wants to bring Sea Point's condemned Ritz back, and the last rescue was shut within months
Sea Point's Ritz has a new owner with a plan. OKU Hotels, the luxury group behind OKU Ibiza and OKU Kos, paid R368 million for the tower last year, and the City of Cape Town has opened its plans to public comment: hotel suites on the upper floors, 44 apartments and the rooftop restaurant kept on top. First it needs the City to accept a 75m tower where the proposed zoning allows 60m, and the City, the application says, found no record of that height ever being approved.
It would not be the first rescue. The Ritz opened in 1972 with a restaurant on the roof that turned a full circle every hour. It closed in 2015, a R120 million relaunch was shut again by the middle of 2018, and around Covid hijackers moved in. Its long-time owners, the Hurwitz and Roffey families, only got them out by having the building condemned.
Nothing is approved yet. The City still has to weigh the plans and whatever objections come in, and comments close on 2 November.
BAGEL BITE
How many moons does Mars have?
A. One
B. Two
C. Three
DOING THE ROUNDS
Gold Fields wanted to become the world's second-biggest gold producer by buying Australia's biggest. It offered A$38.7 billion for Northern Star, with nearly three-quarters of the price paid in Gold Fields shares, and Northern Star's board turned it down unanimously. Chair Michael Chaney called the price well short of what the company is worth, and said Gold Fields shares carry more risk from the countries it mines in. Gold Fields fell almost 13% on the JSE on Monday. Northern Star rose, though not as far as the offer. Full story →
Spar's business depends on independent retailers who buy from it, and both ends of that chain are strained. The grocer warned on Monday that its 2026 financial year will come in behind 2025, because its turnaround has not yet made enough earnings or cash to cover the pressure. Fuel, utility bills and interest rates are squeezing shoppers, wholesale volumes are weak, and money owed by its own retailers is still going bad. Spar expects the benefits to build through 2027. It wants a new chair by early November. Full story →
South Africa's clothing retailers have spent nearly two years getting cheaper on the JSE, and Allan Gray has been buying. Truworths disclosed this week that the asset manager now owns just over 10% of it, double the stake it held in January. The share has lost nearly 60% since the start of 2025, a deeper fall than Mr Price or Pepkor. Only TFG has done worse. At today's price, Truworths pays a dividend worth more than 11% of what a share costs. Full story →
South Africa's first offshore wind farm is still working out whose permission it needs. The 810MW Gagasi project off Richards Bay could start feeding the grid in about five years, with construction beginning in 2030 if everything goes to plan. Its developer, GenesisHexicon, withdrew its environmental application to update the design, and most of the 54 turbines will now be fixed to the seabed rather than floating. It is preparing to resubmit. Because nobody has applied for one before, who approves what still has to be settled. 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. Two
Phobos and Deimos are lumpy, potato-shaped rocks rather than round like Earth's Moon. Their names come from Greek words for fear and dread, fitting companions for a planet named after the god of war. Phobos slowly spirals closer to Mars and may one day break apart or crash into it. Many scientists think both moons may be asteroids captured by Mars long ago.
That's your Tuesday wrapped. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew.