There was a time when a side hustle was simply a nice-to-have — a little extra gravy on top of a regular salary. But in today’s South African economy, sideline income has become almost essential for covering basic living costs.

The numbers tell the story

The scale of the shift is striking. According to the 2025 Old Mutual Savings & Investment Monitor (OMSIM), 57% of employed South Africans now have more than one source of income. Among young people aged 18 to 29, that figure jumps to 75%. Other surveys paint a similar picture: the JustMoney Money & Me survey found that 36% of respondents have a side hustle, while an infoQuest survey reported that 42% of consumers are taking on extra work to improve their cashflow.

The 1Life Insurance Generational Wealth Survey puts the figure even higher at 55%. And it’s not just a young person’s game — side hustles now span all age groups, with 41% of over-50s now having a side income. Nearly 9.5 million South Africans now earn through the informal economy.

From beach gowns to room rentals

Just take a walk through any Saturday morning market and you’ll see the creativity on display: people selling handmade beach hooded towelling ponchos, homemade jams, knitted jerseys, and all sorts of items crafted from home. Others with coastal properties are renting out every available room. Estate agents who might have retired years ago are still selling well into their late 70s.

This isn’t about luxury — it’s about survival. With the cost of food, petrol, electricity, insurance, and health insurance all rising, good-paying jobs are increasingly scarce.

How to find your side hustle

The common wisdom about starting a side hustle is simple: figure out what you enjoy doing, find a product or service you can offer, and then find paying customers. It may take some trial and error before you hit on something worthwhile — but once you do, you’ll be able to supplement your earnings. For some, it even means giving up their day job and going full-time.

Popular side hustles include buying and selling items online, food and beverage businesses, and gig economy work like ride-hailing — with 70% of gig workers using it as a secondary income source.

The reality is clear: in this economy, waiting for a single salary to cover everything is no longer enough. But with resourcefulness, creativity, and a bit of persistence, South Africans are finding ways to not just survive — but to build something more.

Financial News Daily – Friday Wrap

South Africa: economic, financial and business highlights

Shoprite’s latest numbers were solid enough, but the more interesting story was strategic rather than financial. Alongside a 12.2% rise in annual earnings, the group bought coffee chain Vida e Caffè and a majority stake in R&A Cellular, extending itself further into coffee, payments and adjacent consumer services.

That invites the old conglomerate question: is management building a more resilient earnings mix, or simply assembling a portfolio and hoping the parts will somehow add up to more than the whole? Harold Geneen, the ITT patriarch who later wrote The Synergy Myth, had little patience for such thinking: “If you mix beef broth, lemon juice, and flour, you don’t get magic, you get a mess.”

One can see the appeal of the move. Grocery margins are thin, retail is unforgiving, and a broader collection of businesses can look like a neat way to smooth returns. But Geneen’s warning still matters: synergy is often promised precisely where discipline is most needed.

• Standard Bank posted a 10% rise in half-year headline earnings to R26.1 billion, helped by fee and trading income plus solid corporate and investment banking growth. The bank also flagged a tougher rate environment and margin pressure, even as it talked up stronger second-half growth.
• Absa reported an 8% rise in half-year headline earnings as credit costs eased, adding another solid bank result to the season. Its latest PMI survey was less cheerful: manufacturing sentiment fell to 45.8 in August, the fourth straight monthly decline and a sign of weak factory conditions.
• Harmony Gold delivered a sharp earnings surge, with annual profit up 87%, and raised its dividend to a record level. The message from gold miners remains familiar: higher bullion prices are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
• Gold Fields also had a strong half-year, with profit up 81% on higher gold prices and output. That kept pressure on the company’s Ghana licence issue, but the earnings line was clearly doing the talking.
• Exxaro reported half-year earnings down 20%, underscoring the strain on coal-linked groups even as it ramps up solar output. It is a useful reminder that the market is rewarding cleaner transition stories and punishing weaker commodity cycles at the same time.
• Northam Platinum said an unsolicited approach this month could trigger further PGM consolidation, while it also posted a near eightfold jump in annual profit. For executives across the sector, the next move is as much about strategy and assets as it is about price momentum.

Economic backdrop

• South Africa’s annual inflation eased to 4.3% in July from 5.0% in June, helped by softer food inflation, lower municipal tariff increases and cheaper fuel. Analysts warned it could firm again as global oil prices rose after renewed U.S.-Iran tensions.
• Fuel is the headache that keeps on giving: the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources confirmed sharp September increases, with petrol up R1.34 a litre and diesel up as much as R3.15 a litre. That should keep pressure on the inflation outlook and household budgets.
• Manufacturing remains under strain, with the Absa PMI down to 45.8 in August, but the broader private-sector PMI ticked above 50 to 50.5, suggesting a small expansion in August after a soft patch. The economy is still uneven, but not entirely stuck.

International news in brief

• The bond market is getting nervous about the scale of AI spending, with Reuters reporting that global government borrowing costs are near multi-decade highs and AI-related debt issuance is one of the forces pushing yields up. Five major AI hyperscalers have already issued $220 billion of debt this year.
• Reuters also reported that U.S. tech giants are flooding euro-zone bond markets to fund AI investment, potentially crowding out other borrowers and lifting financing costs more broadly. It is a classic case of cheap-seeming innovation meeting expensive capital.

Birthdays

• Musicians
• Freddie Mercury, 1946, Queen frontman.
• The Edge, 1961, U2 guitarist.
• Tommy Shaw, 1953, Styx guitarist and singer.
• Michael McDonald, 1952, singer and songwriter associated with Doobie Brothers.
• Authors
• George Orwell, 1903, novelist and essayist best known for dystopian political writing.
• J.R.R. Tolkien, 1892, creator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
• P.L. Travers, 1899, author of the Mary Poppins books.
• David Foster Wallace, 1962, influential American novelist and essayist.

Light jokes

• I told my accountant a joke about cash flow. He said it was funny, but not liquid enough.
• Why did the investor bring a ladder? Because the market was looking up.
• I tried to write a joke about inflation, but it kept getting longer.

Weird and wonderful facts

• Octopuses have three hearts. Two pump blood to the gills, and one pumps it to the rest of the body.
• Honey never really spoils. Archaeologists have found ancient jars that were still edible.

Deep thought

• The hardest part of progress is often not moving forward, but letting go of the story that we are already finished.

Quiz question

• Which planet has the longest day relative to its year?

Quiz answer: Venus. A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus, because it spins very slowly and orbits the Sun quickly.

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Editorial Disclosure & Disclaimer
Financial News Daily is an independent business news syndicate and a wholly owned subsidiary of Idea Accelerator. We publish financial, environmental and corporate commentary for digital platforms, media outlets and organisations. Nothing published here constitutes investment, legal or financial advice. All opinions are editorial commentary on matters of public and economic interest.

In South Africa, energy insecurity is no longer measured simply by whether the electricity is on or off; it is increasingly shaping how firms budget, invest, manage costs and plan for continuity.

South African business has long been taught to treat electricity as an externality: something to be paid for, complained about and worked around. That mindset no longer holds. The issue is not only whether the grid holds up on a given afternoon, but whether firms can still plan with confidence when power costs, fuel costs and supply interruptions all move in the wrong direction at once.

What makes the current moment more awkward, and more expensive, is that the country’s energy problem is no longer a single problem. It is a layered one. Power may be available, but not always reliably. It may be present, but not always affordably. It may be purchased, but at a cost that changes the economics of everything from refrigeration and retail hours to factory output and logistics. In that sense, energy insecurity is less a technical outage story than a competitiveness story.

Businesses have responded in the only rational way available to them: by building redundancy into their operations. Warehouses install batteries and inverters to keep critical systems running through outages. Retailers manage refrigeration loads and add backup generation. Manufacturers adjust production schedules where they can. Larger groups increasingly treat energy as a board-level issue rather than a facilities problem because continuity is too important to leave to improvisation.

Solar power has become part of that response, but it is not a free escape hatch. The upfront capital cost can be substantial, particularly once panels, batteries, inverters, installation, maintenance and possible network upgrades are included. For some firms, the economics still work because the alternative is repeated downtime and rising grid costs. For others, particularly heavy power users and businesses operating on thin margins, the numbers are harder and the payback period longer.

South African business cannot assume that technology alone will solve energy insecurity, just as it cannot assume that the old grid model will simply become reliable by force of habit. The practical answer is careful management: a proper energy audit, a plan for reducing demand, realistic backup systems and a clear view of how electricity and petroleum products such as petrol and diesel feed through the cost base.

The businesses that cope best will not necessarily be the ones that talk most loudly about resilience. They will be the ones that build it into their operations, with a team that understands usage patterns, capital costs, supplier risk and continuity planning.

Energy insecurity is unlikely to disappear in one dramatic gesture. Businesses will have to manage a more complicated energy equation for some time yet. The firms that manage it best will treat power much as they treat cash flow: as something to measure, model and manage with discipline.

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Editorial Disclosure & Disclaimer

Financial News Daily is an independent business news syndicate and a wholly owned subsidiary of Idea Accelerator. We specialize in producing high-quality financial, environmental, and corporate news commentary for digital uplatforms, media outlets, and organizations. Financial News Daily does not provide investment, legal, or financial advice. Opinions expressed represent bona fide media commentary on matters of public and economic interest.

South Africa once boasted the gold standard of logistics and infrastructure in Africa. For a country thousands of kilometres from its biggest markets, that was no small achievement. Today, those same networks are buckling—and the economic cost is staggering. Let’s be clear: no country can grow or sustainably create jobs without a functioning economy. If you believe political parties alone manufacture employment, you are living in cloud cuckoo land.

The electorate that kept the same ruling party in power for three decades is now visibly withholding votes in key municipal constituencies. Yet the very same base could be galvanised back to the polls if desperate populist policies—such as wholesale nationalisation—are dangled before them. The underlying systemic risk is prolonged one-party rule. Let’s have no illusions: the political track record has multiplied the dangers for every citizen and every enterprise operating here.

We will briefly examine South Africa’s broken systems, the risks they pose (mainly to the economy), compare them with Singapore’s benchmark, and then look at successful turnarounds elsewhere in Africa.

The Reality of South Africa’s Broken Systems

South Africa’s problem is not simply that infrastructure is old. It is that the systems that move goods, provide water and connect businesses to markets are becoming increasingly unreliable. When political governance fails to protect economic infrastructure, the physical mechanics of commerce eventually stall.

Three core networks are severely compromised:

• Freight Rail: Decades of deferred maintenance, corruption and rampant cable theft have crippled state rail lines. More than 80% of bulk freight has been forced onto roads, where heavy trucks damage highways, increase diesel costs and contribute to border gridlocks. Mining companies have lost tens of billions of rands in unrealised exports because they cannot reliably get coal and ore to the coast.

• Maritime Ports: Durban and Cape Town’s ports are hobbled by ageing equipment, frequent straddle-carrier breakdowns and poor productivity. Ships can spend days waiting to berth. The delays add to shipping costs and create headaches for exporters, while agricultural products such as citrus and other fresh fruit are particularly vulnerable to delays.

• Municipal Water Systems: Unmaintained pumping stations and inadequate wastewater systems have triggered widespread water outages across industrial hubs. Manufacturers, food processors and hospitality businesses are forced to interrupt operations or divert scarce capital into private water tanks, boreholes and filtration systems.

The Impact on Small and Medium Businesses

Large corporations have the financial muscle to build private workarounds. Small and medium-sized enterprises do not.

SMMEs face higher operating costs and greater failure risks because capital gets trapped in extra “just-in-case” inventory held to compensate for unpredictable delivery times. Small operators cannot afford private rail concessions or industrial water plants. Rising transport costs, unreliable utilities and operational interruptions therefore eat directly into already thin profit margins.

The Global Benchmark: Singapore

Singapore offers the obvious counter-example. It built its modern economy around efficient trade infrastructure, treating logistics as an economic asset rather than an administrative afterthought.

The Port of Singapore handles tens of millions of container units a year and has invested heavily in automation and efficiency. By making trade logistics a national priority, Singapore helped create the low-friction business environment that underpins its position as a global financial and commercial hub.

The lesson is not that South Africa should attempt to become Singapore. It is that infrastructure is not merely concrete, steel and machinery. It is part of the machinery of economic growth.

Success Stories Across Africa

Other African countries demonstrate that pragmatic infrastructure investment can produce substantial economic gains.

• Morocco (Port Tanger Med): Morocco built a major sea-and-land trade hub along the Strait of Gibraltar, combining public investment with world-class private terminal management. Tanger Med has become one of Africa’s leading container ports and has helped anchor Morocco’s expanding automotive export industry.

• Tanzania (Dar es Salaam and Standard Gauge Railway): Tanzania has invested in modernising the Port of Dar es Salaam and expanding its railway network inland. The objective is straightforward: reduce the cost and time involved in moving goods and improve access to the port for neighbouring landlocked countries.

• Rwanda (Digital Logistics Hub): Despite being landlocked, Rwanda has invested in digital customs systems, airport cargo facilities and logistics infrastructure. By reducing bureaucratic delays at its borders, it has positioned Kigali as an increasingly important regional distribution centre.

What Businesses Can Do to Protect Themselves

While policymakers debate ideology, businesses cannot afford to wait.

Large firms are already building private alternatives—dedicated truck fleets, backup water supplies and solar installations. Small and medium enterprises can take three practical steps.

First, diversify logistics routes. Split supply chains across multiple ports and transport modes where possible to avoid dependence on a single point of failure.

Second, build buffer capacity. Hold strategic inventories of critical inputs and secure independent water or power arrangements where financially feasible.

Third, join industry coalitions. Sector bodies are increasingly negotiating collective solutions, from private rail access to shared cold-chain storage, that individual firms cannot achieve alone.

As Kaizer Nyatsumba and Mike Mathabela recently argued in Business Day, South Africa’s infrastructure, though dilapidated after years of neglect, remains the best on the continent. That latent advantage is a genuine reason for optimism—but only if goods can actually move and factories can keep running.

The political class may continue to debate long-term fixes. Businesses do not have that luxury. For them, infrastructure failure is no longer simply a political problem. It is an operational risk—and one that needs to be managed accordingly.

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Editorial Disclosure & Disclaimer

Financial News Daily is an independent business news syndicate and a wholly owned subsidiary of Idea Accelerator. We specialize in producing high-quality financial, environmental, and corporate news commentary for digital uplatforms, media outlets, and organizations. Financial News Daily does not provide investment, legal, or financial advice. Opinions expressed represent bona fide media commentary on matters of public and economic interest.

Ransomware in South Africa does not strike with a Hollywood bang, but with a back-office bleed—barely noticeable until the profit-and-loss statement turns anaemic.

While publication titles like The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times treat corporate digital security and artificial intelligence vulnerabilities as core balance-sheet risks, South African reporting remains episodic. A major breach hits the news, generates three days of executive hand-wringing and corporate PR, and vanishes.

This transient attention cycle breeds a dangerous illusion of calm. In truth, cybercrime in South Africa is an ever-present structural hazard—compounded by systemic crime, weak governance, and poor risk management across both public and private sectors.

Quantifying the damage in 2026 is difficult. Unless a firm is listed on the JSE and bound by strict disclosure rules, boardrooms routinely choose silence over transparency to protect brand equity. What reaches the public domain is merely the tip of a colder iceberg.

When high-profile targets take a hit, the fallout is severe. Earlier this year, South African financial and logistics networks faced distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and ransomware attacks that paralyzed digital portals, stalled operations, and exposed client data.

These high-level strikes demonstrate that domestic and international syndicates view South African infrastructure as a soft target.

Yet, while JSE-listed corporate giants possess the financial muscle to hire tier-one consultancies, conduct exhaustive audits, and build a culture of security, mid-sized and family-owned enterprises enjoy no such cushion.

Consider a medium-sized manufacturing or regional logistics firm in the Western Cape or Gauteng. A modest enterprise turning over a few million rand a month might assume it is too small to attract international threat actors. That assumption is often its undoing. A single compromised credential file—perhaps accessed by an employee handling invoices on an unsecured terminal—can encrypt an entire database overnight.

When ransomware hits a business of this scale, there are no crisis response teams or multi-million-rand contingency funds. Operations freeze. Payroll is missed. Supply chains break. The business faces a choice between paying an unrecoverable ransom or losing its operational history entirely. The financial damage is direct, but the reputational decay—the quiet loss of customer trust—is terminal.

The threat vector is human as much as technical. When every employee carries a corporate gateway in their pocket via a smartphone, exposure is everywhere. In a tough economic climate, insider threats also grow. Rogue employees selling access credentials or proprietary data present as much vulnerability as a foreign AI exploit.

For South African businesses navigating 2026, cyber risk cannot be filed away as an obscure IT issue. Most firms that made it through the first half of the year unscathed relied on luck.

In an interconnected market targeted by opportunists and foreign syndicates, reliance on luck is not a strategy. A single breach does not merely disrupt a week’s trading—it destroys margin, erodes equity, and brings years of hard-won growth to a silent end.

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Editorial Disclosure & Disclaimer

Financial News Daily is an independent business news syndicate and a wholly owned subsidiary of Idea Accelerator. We specialize in producing high-quality financial, environmental, and corporate news commentary for digital uplatforms, media outlets, and organizations. Financial News Daily does not provide investment, legal, or financial advice. Opinions expressed represent bona fide media commentary on matters of public and economic interest.

A 1 cent discount at a local supermarket might just show how tough things are.

Monday Morning Reckoning

This morning I was shopping at a local supermarket. I casually said to the cashier, “Well, I hope my rewards card works for me this morning.” She rang up my groceries, looked at the till slip, and burst out laughing. “Your reward is 1 cent—not even 10 cents.” I laughed too: she’s a warm woman with a good sense of humour. But when I asked what the 1 cent was for, she pointed: a 1-litre Coke. “Yoh, business is tough,” I said. She nodded. “Very tough.”

That 1 cent is not a joke. It’s a receipt-sized warning. When a beverage giant and a national retailer can only scrape together a cent to tempt you, it means their margins are already scraped bare. That discount isn’t marketing—it’s an SOS. And if you don’t believe me, I’ll send you a photo of the slip.

We’ll see that same squeeze play out this week, as a raft of JSE heavyweights open their books. Cashbuild, Woolworths, Discovery, Momentum, Growthpoint, ARM and Exxaro—all due. The question isn’t “did they grow?” It’s “did they survive without sacrificing the next quarter?” Watch for inventory write-downs at retailers, and for property groups like Growthpoint to signal how many tenants are renegotiating rent. The AGM calendar is also packed—Mr Price, Tsogo Sun, HCI, TFG, Vukile—so expect a chorus of “cautiously optimistic” that will sound less convincing than last year.

The macro backdrop doesn’t help. The JSE All Share opens at 118,173 after last week’s gain, but the rand is still hovering around R16.17/$, and diesel is set for a savage September jump—up to R3.11/litre from Tuesday. That’s not a fuel price; that’s a tax on every truck, every farmer, every loaf of bread. Stats SA’s Q2 GDP release on Tuesday will tell us if we’re shrinking or just staggering, while the manufacturing PMI will show whether factories are still firing or quietly idling.

Globally, the FTSE was closed for the UK summer bank holiday, but the Nikkei (66,405), DAX (26,569) and Nasdaq (26,402) are all hovering near levels that suggest investors are holding their breath, not celebrating.

A few softer themes are worth your time too: month-end retail spending (watch for promotion fatigue), property distribution cuts (AGM season will be testy), and the usual spring lifestyle ramp-up—wine, food, fashion—which always feels a little surreal when the economic weather is this cold.

But before you go, one genuinely South African bright spot:

Amber-Rose Berry, an 18-year-old from Pringle Bay, that sleepy coastal village just east of Cape Town, where the baboons still outnumber the traffic lights, swam the English Channel on 23 August. She left Shakespeare Beach in Dover at 5.27am and touched land near Cap Gris-Nez in France at 3.54pm, covering 33km of icy, ship-laden water in 10 hours and 27 minutes.

No wetsuit. No fuss. Just a kid from the Western Cape who grew up in the cold Atlantic, training in wind and swell that would send most of us back to the coffee shop. She didn’t wait for perfect conditions, she just got in and swam through jellyfish stings, cramping shoulders, and the surreal sight of tankers looming in the grey dawn.

It’s a reminder, in a week of margin squeezes and diesel hikes, that grit is still our cheapest and most effective export. While our corporates wrestle with 1?cent discounts, a teenager from Pringle Bay reminded the world that South Africans don’t need favourable currents — we make our own.

And that brings me to Peter Drucker’s line: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

This week, as the results land and the diesel price climbs, watch which companies scramble to create new strategies, reduce costs and cut back. Because that 1?cent Coke discount? That’s the old future. The new one starts with whoever dares to charge 2 cents more and gives you a reason to pay it.

Restaurants are under pressure; some are even closing down. STATS SA numbers tell us that restaurant and coffee shop incomes have declined by almost 2% over the first half of this year. Meal prices in restaurants have increased sharply over the past few years.

Take a simple breakfast meal at your local Wimpy: a couple of years ago, it used to cost about R30. Now you’re lucky if you can get something under R60. Coffee shops that used to sell coffee for R20 are now selling them at R35 to R40, and they entice you with add-ons so they can get nearer to the R100 mark.

The same goes for chain restaurants like Spur, where burgers start from about R140 upwards. Plus, and this is not inconsequential, you have to drive to a restaurant, so there’s money for petrol, which has gone up considerably, and you have to give a gratuity, which increases because of the increased price of food and beverages. That’s why we see a decline in the number of people eating out at restaurants.

What are people doing instead? They’re eating at home.

For those with a meal ticket—people in hugely paying public jobs and those in private sector, big corporate jobs on expensive accounts—eating out means nothing. They can order what they want and be as lavish as they want, because someone else is paying for it.

For the ordinary person, going out to restaurants might only be for birthdays, special occasions. In some cases, they might think, “It costs a lot to eat out, but I’m just tired of cooking; I want something different.”

Behind all of this is the increase in prices of food and beverages. Beverage prices have also doubled, and in some cases, tripled at restaurants. But what is behind the prices or cost of food? If you look at it from the government, they would immediately blame farmers, but farmers are the ones who are least to blame. They have to keep prices in check, or nobody will buy their produce.

Then there are the food manufacturers, many of whom are listed on the stock exchange and need to make handsome profits. That leaves the restaurants. They have to buy food and beverages from the catering industry.

Now, we’re not talking about hotels because I saw something from the hotel industry where people were having a huge annual awards function, slapping themselves on the back, and chefs such as at the Seven Apostles were being celebrated, along with all sorts of food experts. That’s a whole different category—a category not for the ordinary person, but for the ultra-wealthy tourists, people who were born with a silver spoon, inherited money, or old money.

Then you have the government itself that rakes off 15% in VAT from all food and beverages, except for a small list of basic food items. So, the government takes a higher 15% as restaurants charge more and more.

We also need to look at the other costs for restaurants and coffee shops, and that’s rentals that have been spiked up as well as wages that have risen hugely.

It’s a pity and a crying shame in a country like South Africa that people have to eat less at restaurants, because the tradition was at least every Friday night going out to a restaurant, and on Saturdays eating at home, and Sundays having a roast at home.

It’s a pity to say that the simple solution is really to stop eating at restaurants and going to coffee shops. Some would rather do their work at home and make their own coffee.

Restaurants play a very important place, as do coffee shops, in people’s lives. But it’s getting harder for people to go eat out. And it’s getting crushingly hard to run a profitable restaurant or coffee shop.

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The numbers behind the squeeze

The anecdotal pain matches the official data. In May 2026, income from restaurants and coffee shops was down 1.7% year-on-year in real terms, and they were the biggest drag on the broader food-and-beverage sector, which itself fell 0.3%. Over the three months to May, food-and-beverage income dropped 0.2%, again led by restaurants and coffee shops. June made things worse: month-on-month, total food-and-beverage income fell 1.7%, with restaurants and coffee shops recording the largest decrease at ?3.5%. Earlier in the year, in April, restaurant and fast-food income fell 3% month-on-month and 2.1% year-on-year for the whole food-and-beverage industry; restaurants and coffee shops were again the worst-hit segment, down around 2.2%.

This isn’t a one-month blip; it’s a sustained contraction through the first half of 2026. And it aligns with the closures we’ve seen: well-known Western Cape venues such as Root44 Restaurant and One Park, and award-winning city spots like ëlgr on Kloof Street. Not every closure is purely demand-driven, but the pattern fits the Stats SA income declines and operator commentary about “subdued consumer spending” and “tighter household budgets”.

Why fewer people are eating out

The drop isn’t just about “high food prices” at the till; it’s a squeeze from both sides: weaker consumer purchasing power and sharply higher operating costs for restaurants.

1. Consumers are under cost-of-living pressure

Analysts and Stats SA link the decline to weakening consumer spending as households prioritise essentials (housing, transport, education) and cut back on discretionary items like dining out. Key drivers:

• Stagnant wages vs inflation: Over the 2011–2022 period, median wages rose only about 0.2%, while inflation averaged around 5.13%, eroding real incomes.
• High food inflation: Food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation was still around 3.6% year-on-year in March 2026, with meat, fish, eggs, fresh produce and starchy foods making up most of household food costs.
• Higher utility and transport costs: Eskom’s 8.76% tariff hike for 2026/27 and sharp fuel price increases (e.g. 36% for some diesel grades, 8% for unleaded 93 in April 2026) feed into both grocery bills and restaurant prices, further squeezing disposable income.

The result: many consumers are switching to cheaper options, reducing meal sizes, or cutting back on eating out entirely.

2. Restaurants’ costs are rising faster than they can pass them on

Industry commentary highlights that restaurants now need 10–15% annual revenue growth just to maintain the same profitability, because their costs are rising so fast. Major cost pressures include:

• Electricity and municipal charges (Eskom tariffs, local authority rates)
• Food input costs (inflation in meat, produce, staples)
• Wages and compliance costs (minimum wage adjustments, regulatory requirements)
• Fuel and logistics (affecting deliveries and supply chains)

These increases have often outpaced consumer inflation, compressing margins and forcing some operators to raise menu prices, reduce portions, or close if they can’t cover costs.

3. Shift in how people eat out, not just whether they eat out

Stats SA and industry reports note a divergence within the sector:

• Takeaway and quick-service formats have held up relatively better.
• Traditional sit-down restaurants and coffee shops have seen the steepest declines.

This suggests some consumers still want “eating out” experiences but are opting for lower-cost, faster, or more value-oriented options.

So is it the high price of food?

Partly, yes—but more precisely:

• High and rising food prices (at home and in restaurants) are a major factor, driven by food inflation, electricity, fuel, and logistics.
• Weak real wage growth means those higher prices bite harder, so households cut discretionary spending like dining out.
• Restaurants’ own cost explosion makes it hard to keep prices attractive while staying profitable, leading to closures that further reduce supply and consumer confidence.

In short: fewer people are eating out in 2026 because real incomes are under pressure and eating out has become relatively more expensive, while restaurants themselves are struggling with costs that are rising faster than the revenue they can generate.

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Restaurants and coffee shops are struggling in this economy. I popped into the Harbour Bay Shopping Centre near Simon’s Town during the week and saw that the Cattle Baron there had closed down. This was a huge, 100-seater restaurant. I went there last year and I couldn’t believe how empty it was. I think there were only two couples in the entire restaurant at 7:00 in the evening—it was amazing how bad it looked.
At the time, this Cattle Baron was running advertisements on the local radio and had specials every day of the week. Now, the puzzle has been completed: they were battling. Today, something else is being built there, but there’s no indication what it will be.

The closing of the Cattle Baron near Simon’s Town reminds me of a few years ago at Peter Place, Sandton, where a Spur was going for many years. This was back when you could still get those fantastic salad bars they had. Then they canceled them. I could never find out quite why. The staff said it was unhygienic having an open area with salads, and that’s why they closed it down. There may be a bit of truth in that, but it’s probably that it wasn’t as profitable as they thought.
Spur Corporation is a listed company; it has to think of profits. Anyway, it seemed like virtually overnight that the Spur in Peter Place just closed down.

I’ve seen many restaurants being started and closing down. I remember a favorite coffee shop restaurant that was in the Sanlam Centre, Randburg, which is now called Randburg Square or something like that. It had a fantastic restaurant where you could go Saturday mornings and have coffee and cake or breakfast, but that’s all gone. The whole profile of these centers has changed.

Restaurants come and go. Often, they are started by bright-eyed and bushy-tailed entrepreneurs and then suddenly fizzle out. The big listed chain restaurants may seem like they’re having an easy time, but they come and go, too. Many get closed down and new ones open. Look what happened to Mike’s Kitchen! I don’t know how many branches are left, but Mike’s Kitchen in Johannesburg was big in its day, especially that lovely one in Braamfontein. I think they only have one left in Bryanston, if it’s still there. So, it’s a rough and tumble business.

It was interesting to see this week that Statistics South Africa had released figures showing that the real income of restaurants and coffee shops had declined by almost 2% year on year. What that means is not just the total number of physical closures; it means that the actual revenue generated across restaurants and coffee shops is actively shrinking. This sort of backs up the belief that the South African economy isn’t doing well, despite the hoo-ha—or the official panting—around tourism statistics showing how many visitors are coming to the country. Locally, for the everyday operator, it’s not so good.
When you dig into the official figures on business closures, the numbers paint a stark picture: Stats SA recorded close to 140 liquidations in the trade, catering, and accommodation sectors alone so far in 2026.

Yet, the restaurant business can still go exceptionally well for some. I think back to those fantastic little places out in Observatory, Johannesburg, with that famous chef—I think it was Braam Kruger.

I was talking the other day to someone about those fantastic, legendary Chinese restaurants down on Bree Street or Commissioner Street in Johannesburg. We always used to frequent Number 5, and this guy I was speaking to remembers Number 5, where the Chinese food was authentic and absolutely delicious.

For a modern example of where independent restaurants are highly successful: take the independent place that’s only about a kilometer away from where that Cattle Baron closed down. I’m not exaggerating, but there are probably about 50 cars parked on one side of the road and 50 cars on the other side in the evenings when Dixi’s in Glencairn is open. I don’t know how so many people can fit into one restaurant like Dixi’s, but the place is jam-packed, and in summer months, it is absolutely full. I think you’d need to book well in advance just to get a table. From personal experience, I can vouch for the food, which is great. The restaurant experience itself and the ocean view are fantastic. The staff are okay—everything seems a little bit rushed—but it’s a thoroughly pleasant place.

The main thing is the food, and there are steaks there that you simply can’t find anywhere else—they almost seem to have secret recipes. So, yes, there are plenty of very successful restaurants in South Africa, but those that are closing down in this 2026 economy remain a worrying sign.

It’s particularly worrying for all those corporate types who dream about opening a restaurant or a coffee shop to escape the corporate prison. They don’t realize sometimes that unless they have the true appetite for it and are thoroughly trained, running a coffee shop can become its own kind of prison. You have to be there all day and run the place yourself, because if you hand it over entirely to staff, it’s going to end in total disaster.

And yet, once again, there are many successful restaurants and coffee shops that continue doing a roaring trade, especially when they’re located in vibrant, high-foot-traffic areas like Kloof Street in Cape Town or prime spots like Rosebank across Johannesburg.

Friday morning wrap

South Africa: economy, business and corporate news

South Africa’s recovery is still intact, but it is slowing. Inflation is easing, the rand has firmed and some companies are still posting strong results, yet higher rates, weaker demand and patchy growth continue to bite.

The rand strengthened to a six-month high against the dollar this week, touching R15.95/$ after strong demand for government bonds and cooling inflation. At Tuesday’s Treasury auction, primary dealers placed orders for R14.79 billion of debt — nearly six times the R2.55 billion on offer. The JSE All Share Index closed the week at about 116,828, with the Top 40 at 109,535. The 3-month JIBAR rate held at 7.00%, while the repo rate remains at 7.0% after the SARB’s July decision to hold.

Inflation kept drifting lower: consumer price inflation fell to 4.3% in July from 5.0% in June, while producer price inflation dropped to 5.7% from 7.5%.

Cement is still the clue to confidence. PPC extended CEO Matias Cardarelli’s contract to 31 March 2030 as the company pushes ahead with the next phase of its turnaround. The bigger opportunity still lies in completing and commissioning the new integrated cement plant in the Western Cape, while improving performance in South Africa and growing in Zimbabwe.

Harmony Gold delivered a record financial year. Revenue surged 34% to R100 billion, headline earnings per share jumped 87% to R43.63, and the company declared a record final dividend. It also maintained production guidance for the 11th consecutive year, while the newly acquired CSA copper mine in Australia contributed 18,207 tonnes of copper.

Absa posted solid first-half 2026 results, with headline earnings rising 8% to a record R12.8 billion. Its South African unit remained the main engine of profit, while earnings from the rest of Africa were softer.

OUTsurance expects earnings to rise by up to 24% for the full year, helped by underwriting growth in South Africa, although its Australian business faced a tougher period due to natural disaster claims.

Blu Label reported a net loss after tax of R4.882 billion for the year ended 31 May 2026, largely because of Cell C restructuring and the separate listing, even though its core voucher businesses remained cash-generative.

The Industrial Development Corporation reported a group loss of about R4.7 billion for the year ended March 2026, with performance problems at subsidiaries including Foskor and Mozal weighing on results.

South Africa is also set to raise the dollar-based reference price for sugar imports to $785 a ton from $680, in a move aimed at shielding local growers from cheap foreign competition.

Quirky item of the week

Oxtail prices have surged after Argentine imports were disrupted by a technical certification problem. South Africa imports about 70% of its oxtail from Argentina, so the supply squeeze has been felt quickly in shops and restaurants.

Before you go

• Birthdays: This week’s musicians include Shania Twain, Florence Welch, Robert Plant and Van Morrison.
• Authors: Goethe, Tolstoy, Robertson Davies and Mary Shelley all have birthdays in the same stretch.
• A small joke: Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything.
• Quiz: Which planet in our solar system rotates on its side, with an axial tilt of 98 degrees?
• Answer: Uranus

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How South Africa’s stolen succulents expose the global cost of biodiversity loss

A small quiver tree growing in my garden began with a journey to Vanrhynsdorp in the Northern Cape. I bought the plant legally, received a receipt and obtained the necessary permit. It is an ordinary transaction, but the paperwork matters: it records where the plant came from and shows that ownership does not have to depend on stripping the veld.

That is what makes the illegal succulent trade so disturbing. While legally sourced plants can be bought and documented, others are dug out of the Karoo and moved into an international market where rare specimens can command high prices. Since 2018, more than 2.5 million illegally harvested plants have been seized in the Western Cape, although CapeNature estimates that these seizures represent less than a quarter of the actual trade.

The damage is not limited to individual plants. Many succulent species grow in highly restricted areas and take years, sometimes decades, to mature. When an entire local population is removed, it cannot simply be replaced by nursery stock. The loss is genetic, ecological and potentially permanent.

My quiver tree also raises a question that cannot be answered only in Vanrhynsdorp or elsewhere in the Karoo: where do the stolen plants go?

Research has identified an international chain in which rare succulents may move through countries such as Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique and Tanzania before reaching collectors in China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Some plants are then traded onwards to Europe and the United States. The evidence does not suggest one single route or one dominant buyer, but it does show that South Africa’s plant-poaching crisis is connected to a global market.

This means responsibility cannot rest with South African conservation officials alone. Importing countries should strengthen customs checks, verify CITES and other export documentation, investigate online sellers and penalise buyers who knowingly purchase wild-collected plants. Online marketplaces and social-media platforms also need to remove suspicious listings and retain information that could help investigators.

Seventeen succulent species and the Conophytum genus have been included in CITES Appendix III, which means regulated specimens exported from South Africa require appropriate documentation. Yet a permit system is only effective if exporting and importing countries have the resources and political will to enforce it.

The quiver tree in my garden is more than a reminder of a trip to Vanrhynsdorp. It is a reminder that conservation begins with knowing what we are buying. A receipt and permit cannot solve a global wildlife-trafficking problem, but they create accountability.

South Africa may be losing the plants, but the international market is helping decide which ones disappear.