South Africa: economic, financial and business highlights
The week was all about banks and miners printing money, while retail and property dealt with boardroom drama and aggressive expansion.
Banks and markets post solid gains
Absa Group: Headline earnings up 8% to R12.8bn, revenue up 4% to R58.8bn, ROE at 15%. Executives are juggling credit discipline against faster rate cuts in Africa, while eyeing more Nigeria growth.
Nedbank: H1 headline earnings R8.4bn (flat YoY, up 12% constant-currency post-Ecobank), interim dividend 1,052 cents. Management must balance rising credit losses with scaling AI automation that’s already unlocked R375m in annualised value.
Mining giants bounce back
AngloGold Ashanti: Revenue surges to USD6.3bn, profit more than doubles to USD2.3bn. Leadership must decide how aggressively to reinvest record free cash flow into growth vs. debt reduction.
Glencore: Revenue USD174.4bn, turnaround to USD4.4bn attributable income from a USD655m loss prior. Executives are weighing commodity-cycle positioning carefully.
Anglo American: Agrees to sell Australian steelmaking coal business to Dhilmar for up to $3.88bn (R64–67bn). Tough call: sequencing debt reduction, portfolio simplification, and the pending Teck merger without overpaying for integration risk.
Retail and property shake-ups (the real action this week)
Spur Corporation: This week, Spur reported a 4.1% rise in group turnover to R2.4bn for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, with South African same-store sales up 3.2% and a net increase of 14 restaurants across the group. Management highlighted ongoing cost pressures and the need to support franchisees amid a “challenging consumer environment”, while continuing to lean on value offers and digital channels to drive traffic.
Shoprite quietly stole the show by opening 262 net new stores in its 2026 financial year – more than Pick n Pay, Woolworths, and SPAR combined in their latest periods. That aggressive expansion is putting serious pressure on rivals to rethink footprints.
Balwin Properties: Shareholders approved a PIC-led buyout and delisting at R4.35 per share (R2.26bn), with 98.48% in favour. Management now transitions to private ownership, away from public-market pressures.
Other notable moves
Astral Foods: Declared a 427% increase in interim dividend to 1,160 cents, driven by strong poultry demand. Management must decide how much to reinvest in capacity and biosecurity.
WeBuyCars: H1 revenue up 7.8% to R14.2bn but margin pressure from used-car deflation. Executives face the delicate task of protecting volumes without eroding profitability further.
Economic backdrop
Inflation eased to 4.3% in July (from 5%), giving the SARB breathing room to hold rates at 7%. But diesel and petrol hikes loom for September.
Business insolvencies jumped 134% month-on-month in July, while unemployment hit a four-year high of 33.6% in Q2. Mixed signals all round.
International news in brief
Perplexity AI reportedly offered to buy Chrome from Google for $34.5bn in cash – a bold move that would reshape search and shopping.
The US national debt has surged past 40 trillion by month-end – about $120,000 per American.
Before you go
Musician birthdays (rock emphasis) — 21 August
Joe Strummer (1952) – The Clash vocalist/guitarist.
Glenn Hughes (1951) – Deep Purple & Black Sabbath bassist/vocalist.
Serj Tankian (1967) – System of a Down vocalist.
Liam Howlett (1971) – The Prodigy founder/keyboardist.
Also nearby: Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) – 20 August.
Author birthdays — 21 August
Jules Michelet (1798) – French historian who coined “Renaissance”.
Robert Stone (1937) – National Book Award winner (Dog Soldiers).
Denise Mina (1966) – Scottish crime writer.
Sharon Draper (1948) – five-time Coretta Scott King Award-winning children’s author.
Also nearby: H.P. Lovecraft (20 Aug) and Ray Bradbury (22 Aug).
A couple of light jokes
Why don’t skeletons fight each other? They don’t have the guts.
I used to play piano by ear, but now I use my hands.
What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta.
Weird and wonderful facts
Bananas are technically berries – but strawberries aren’t. Botanically, a berry has seeds inside the flesh, and bananas fit the bill perfectly.
Your stomach gets a new lining every 3 to 4 days – otherwise, its own acid would digest it. You’re basically wearing a temporary internal raincoat.
A group of flamingos is called a “flamboyance” – which is frankly the most accurate collective noun ever coined.
The Eiffel Tower grows about 6 inches (15 cm) in summer due to thermal expansion of the iron – it shrinks back in winter.
Deep thought
The heaviest burden is not what we carry in our hands, but what we refuse to set down in our hearts.
Lighthearted quiz question
I have cities, but no houses. I have mountains, but no trees. I have water, but no fish. What am I?
Quiz answer: A map.
Stay in the loop — no inbox required.
Add ideaaccelerator.co.za to your news reader for daily updates:
All-in-one: Raindrop.io
Web: Feedly, Inoreader, NewsBlur
Apple: NetNewsWire, Reeder
Android: FocusReader, Jetpack
Other ways to find us:
Social: Follow Idea Accelerator on LinkedIn, X/Twitter, and Facebook
Bookmark: Hit Ctrl+D / Cmd+D and check in daily — fresh analysis every morning.
Vibrant Kilamba residential area in Luanda, Angola.
Luanda is not a city most people spend much time thinking about. That may soon look like a mistake. Forecasts suggest Angola’s capital could become one of Africa’s largest cities by 2100, driven by war, oil, migration and the relentless pull of a capital that dominates its country.
And before you protest, I know. Demographic projections can sound like the kind of thing reserved for people who enjoy bonds, interest rates and yields. But this is critical stuff for anyone who wants to understand where Africa is heading, and where capital, infrastructure and economic gravity may be heading with it.
Luanda is expected to be among the cities that expand dramatically over the coming decades. That is an extraordinary prospect when one considers how little attention the city gets compared with Johannesburg, Cairo or Lagos. Yet that may be part of the point. The cities that matter most in the long run are not always the ones that dominate the news cycle today.
The reasons for Luanda’s projected boom are not mysterious. Angola has lived through decades of conflict, displacement and rural poverty, all of which pushed people towards the capital. Once those migration patterns become established, they are difficult to reverse. People move for safety, for work, for schools, for hospitals and for the possibility of a better life. Cities become magnets, and Luanda has been one of the strongest magnets in Africa.[1][2]
There is also the matter of opportunity. Luanda is Angola’s political and economic centre, and that matters enormously. When government, finance, trade and services are concentrated in one place, the city begins to pull more people and more investment towards it. In that sense, urban growth becomes self-reinforcing. People follow jobs. Businesses follow people. Infrastructure follows both, though often too slowly.[3][4]
Oil has given Luanda an added lift. Angola’s urban expansion is tightly linked to offshore oil wealth, which has helped finance construction, roads, housing and the physical building-out of the city. That is why Luanda keeps spreading, even when planning is uneven and services lag behind population growth. The city is not just growing on paper; it is growing in concrete, in informal settlement, in transport pressure and in the daily scramble of urban life.[5][6][7]
There is also a historical irony that should not be missed. Angola was once a major sugar producer, with a long agricultural history that included significant sugar production in earlier decades. That matters because it reminds us that Angola’s productive potential has never been small. The country has always had resources and promise. The tragedy is that so much of that promise has been channelled unevenly over time. Today oil is the dominant story, but the deeper question is whether that wealth can support a broader and more balanced urban economy.[8][5]
That is why Luanda matters beyond Angola. Cities do not grow in a vacuum. They grow because national systems push and pull people in the same direction. If rural areas remain weak, if the capital continues to monopolize opportunity, and if infrastructure struggles to keep pace, then the city grows not just larger but more dependent on the same centralizing forces that created it.[9][1]
For South Africans, there is a familiar lesson here. Big cities do not become big by accident. They grow when the rest of the country fails to spread opportunity evenly and one place becomes the obvious destination. Johannesburg has long played that role. Lagos has too. Luanda may be heading the same way, only faster and from a lower base.
So yes, Luanda on fire may sound provocative, but the phrase has a point. The city is not literally burning. It is igniting in demographic terms. It is becoming a symbol of Africa’s urban future: fast-moving, uneven, resource-linked and impossible to ignore.
The real story is not just that Luanda may become one of Africa’s great megacities. It is that the future of African urban growth is being shaped right now by history, migration, oil and the stubborn imbalance between capital cities and the rest of their countries. That is why Luanda deserves attention today, not in 2100.
Sources [1] Concept0Projec000MOSAP30000P177305.docx https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099120012092126895/Concept0Projec000MOSAP30000P177305.docx [2] Civil society notes: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08c7ced915d622c00139f/R8257AngolaCaseStudy.pdf [3] HABITAT-MINOTH COUNTRY PROGRAMME DOCUMENT … https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2019/10/31_10_2018_hcpd_-angola_en.pdf [4] [PDF] Luanda city profile Paul Jenkins, Paul Robson & Allan Cain http://bibliotecaterra.angonet.org/sites/default/files/luanda_city_profile.pdf [5] Capitalism and Modularity in the Making of Contemporary … https://www.ijurr.org/article/blocos-urbanism-capitalism-and-modularity-in-the-making-of-contemporary-luanda/ [6] Angola https://habitat3.org/the-new-urban-agenda/preparatory-process/national-participation/angola/ [7] 7 Housing for whom? – Development Workshop Angola https://dw.angonet.org/wp-content/uploads/cain_2020_housing_for_whom-_rebuilding_angolas_cities_after_conflict_and_who_gets_left_behind.pdf [8] ANGOLA. TECHNICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE SUGAR INDUSTRY (13101.en) https://downloads.unido.org/ot/48/04/4804370/10001-15000_13101.pdf [9] rcd 5/3/10 – Development Workshop Angola https://dw.angonet.org/wp-content/uploads/DW-Angola-Narrative-Proposal-.doc
Enjoyed this article? Keep up with our daily coverage effortlessly.
You don’t need another email cluttering your inbox to stay informed. To receive daily updates from Financial News Daily and Idea Accelerator, simply add our site URL (ideaaccelerator.co.za) to your favorite news reader or app: • All-in-one bookmarking & news saving: Raindrop.io • Web-based feed readers: Feedly, Inoreader, or NewsBlur • Apple users (Mac/iPhone): NetNewsWire or Reeder • Android & Blog app users: FocusReader or Jetpack It’s completely free, keeps your reading organized, and delivers our latest analysis straight to your feed every day.
Let’s not start with politicians. They’re the easy target, the low-hanging fruit. State capture, tenderpreneurs, Eskom—we’ve all heard the rant a thousand times. It’s exhausting.
Let’s start at the bottom. With us. With the small stuff.
You know the type. The guy who dodges his tax because “the system is corrupt anyway.” The neighbour who applies for a grant she doesn’t really need, because “everyone does it.” The friend who borrows 500 bucks and then develops a sudden, mysterious inability to reply to WhatsApps.
Then there’s the car that vanishes at 3am. The house that gets hit. The loan that never comes back.
And here’s the weird part: when someone pulls a fast one and gets away with it, we don’t always gasp in horror. Sometimes we smirk. “Sharp, hey.” “Street-smart.” “He knows how to work the system.”
We’ve started cheering for the escape artist.
So what’s actually going on? Is it just survival? After decades of inequality, unemployment, and watching connected people swim in gravy, maybe the rules started feeling like a joke. Why be the mug who plays fair when the field is already tilted?
Or is it something simpler? Greed? Example from above? A bit of everything?
This isn’t a sermon—nobody wants that. But let’s be honest: when honesty takes a back seat, trust evaporates—and life gets expensive. You can’t do business without a contract. You can’t trust the contract without a lawyer. You can’t trust the lawyer without another lawyer. Suddenly you’re spending your whole day just trying to figure out if someone actually means what they say.
Honesty is the cheap lubricant of society. Without it, trust vanishes, and everything grinds to a halt.
And we all know the little voice. That quiet nudge when we’re about to take the shortcut. “Nobody will know.” “They owe me.” “It’s just this once.”
The low road is tempting. It’s also crowded.
But here’s the twist: we’ve got plenty of good people left. The pensioner who pays every bill on time, even when it hurts. The small business owner who scrapes to make payroll and still does it. The person below the breadline who refuses to steal, even though stealing might feed their kids tonight.
The teacher who shows up. The cop who actually investigates. The prosecutor who won’t look the other way. The businessperson who says “no” to the bribe.
They exist. In numbers. They’re just quieter than the noise.
So where does the reset start? Not in a commission. Not in a new law. Not in another committee to investigate the committee that investigated the first committee.
It starts at home. At school. At the workplace. In that small decision that nobody else will ever see.
Do I pay back what I borrowed? Do I tell the truth when a lie would be easier? Do I return what isn’t mine? Do I do the right thing when doing the wrong thing would be so, so convenient?
That’s it. No fireworks. No tender. No grand national strategy.
Just the quiet, unglamorous, deeply uncool act of keeping your word and being straight with people.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly where the great South African reset has to begin. Not with a bang. With a shrug that turns into a habit.
Because if we can’t be honest with each other, we’ve got nothing. And we all know it.
Enjoyed this article? Keep up with our daily coverage effortlessly.
You don’t need another email cluttering your inbox to stay informed. To receive daily updates from Financial News Daily and Idea Accelerator, simply add our site URL (ideaaccelerator.co.za) to your favorite news reader or app: • All-in-one bookmarking & news saving: Raindrop.io • Web-based feed readers: Feedly, Inoreader, or NewsBlur • Apple users (Mac/iPhone): NetNewsWire or Reeder • Android & Blog app users: FocusReader or Jetpack It’s completely free, keeps your reading organized, and delivers our latest analysis straight to your feed every day.
One thing you can say about SPAR retailers: they are passionate about retail.
I first encountered SPAR in Johannesburg, where some Greek store owners ran superb businesses. The Northcliff and Greenside stores were memorable. More recently, the SPAR in Broadacres has impressed me. Its catering section is as good as anything found in a hotel.
Unlike the centrally controlled supermarket chains, SPAR’s strength lies in its independent retailers. They are not technically franchisees. They are members of the SPAR Guild, operating under a voluntary trading model that gives independent retailers considerable autonomy.
It is an unusual arrangement. SPAR supplies the infrastructure, buying power, distribution and brand. The retailer supplies the entrepreneurial energy.
Judging by some of the stores I encounter in the Western Cape, the retailers haven’t forgotten what retail is about.
They know their customers. They promote specials aggressively. Some have their own apps. They run community noticeboards and loyalty schemes. They know that a supermarket is not merely a warehouse with tills at the exit.
The curious thing is that the people at the top of SPAR seem to have had rather more difficulty keeping their shelves stocked.
On Monday, chairman Mike Bosman and deputy chair Shirley Zinn resigned with immediate effect. Lwazi Koyana has stepped in as interim chairman while a permanent chairman is found. It is the latest change at a company that has had more than its share of boardroom movement.
The SPAR model is one of its great strengths. A 2025 Supreme Court of Appeal judgment described SPAR as a wholesaler supplying independent Guild retailers, with the Guild established to facilitate, promote and regulate the voluntary trading system.
The shopkeeper is the entrepreneur. SPAR is supposed to make the entrepreneur better.
That sounds almost quaint in an age when listed companies are expected to become international groups, buy things in foreign countries and produce a strategy document thick enough to stop a door.
SPAR did all three.
The result has been expensive.
The group has been retreating from its international adventures. Poland, Switzerland and the UK are now classified as discontinued operations. In 2025, discontinued operations contributed to a loss of about R6.1bn.
Meanwhile, the South African business has had its own problems.
The infamous SAP implementation at the KwaZulu-Natal distribution centre is a good example of what happens when corporate machinery gets in the way of the people actually selling the groceries. SPAR estimated that the botched implementation cost R1.6bn in lost turnover and R720m in lost profit in 2023.
That is quite a lot of groceries to lose because a computer system didn’t behave itself.
The latest numbers are hardly comforting.
For the six months to March 2026, revenue from continuing operations increased 3.6% to R67.5bn. Operating profit, however, fell 45.3% to R740.5m. Operating margin dropped from 2.1% to 1.1%, while headline earnings per share fell 53.9% to 199.9 cents. Net debt rose to R7.3bn.
In other words, SPAR can still sell a great deal of groceries. It is just finding it considerably harder to turn them into profits.
That brings the discussion back to the listing.
SPAR was listed on the JSE in 2004 after being unbundled from Tiger Brands. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. In its earlier years as a listed company it delivered impressive growth.
The more interesting question is whether a business built around independent entrepreneurs benefits from being managed like a conventional listed conglomerate.
Public companies like growth. Management teams like acquisitions. Investors like earnings. Boards like strategy.
And somewhere between all those requirements, a good supermarket can become surprisingly complicated.
SPAR’s executive remuneration is another reminder of the difference between the shop floor and the boardroom. Chief executive Angelo Swartz’s total remuneration for 2025 was about R18.2m.
That is a lot of rolls, milk and chicken.
It is also about 169 times the remuneration of SPAR’s lowest-paid employee, according to reporting based on the company’s annual report.
The independent retailer, meanwhile, still has to get up early tomorrow morning and make sure the hot food is ready.
There is a temptation, when a share price falls and profits come under pressure, to change the strategy, change the executives and change the chairman.
There is, of course, a tempting solution. Take SPAR off the JSE. If the public market has become such an uncomfortable place for a business whose real strength lies with independent retailers, perhaps it should return to private ownership.
Except that delisting is not a magic trick.
The debt does not disappear when the share listing does. SPAR would still have to service its borrowings, and somebody would have to buy out the existing shareholders. With the share price already battered, that would not be a cheap exercise. A private buyer would be taking on a sizeable balance sheet at precisely the time when SPAR is trying to repair it. The shareholders might have to sell for a song. The lenders would still want their money.
So SPAR is caught in an awkward middle ground. It may be too unwieldy for the stock market and too heavily indebted for a graceful escape from it.
Perhaps that is the real price of becoming a listed conglomerate: getting out can be almost as difficult as getting in.
The irony is that the people at the counter appear to have held on to the SPAR idea rather better than the people in the boardroom.
The retailers know what they are selling. They know their customers. They know that a good supermarket is a local business, not an international strategy.
The corporate SPAR has spent years discovering that lesson the expensive way.
So perhaps it is time to stop asking whether SPAR should be bought, sold, delisted or restructured.
Perhaps it should simply become more like the businesses it was created to serve.
That might be the best way of getting the SPAR back into SPAR. For a company whose business is selling groceries, it may be time to stop moving the top dogs around and concentrate on the people actually filling the baskets.
Enjoyed this article? Keep up with our daily coverage effortlessly.
You don’t need another email cluttering your inbox to stay informed. To receive daily updates from Financial News Daily and Idea Accelerator, simply add our site URL (ideaaccelerator.co.za) to your favorite news reader or app: • All-in-one bookmarking & news saving: Raindrop.io • Web-based feed readers: Feedly, Inoreader, or NewsBlur • Apple users (Mac/iPhone): NetNewsWire or Reeder • Android & Blog app users: FocusReader or Jetpack It’s completely free, keeps your reading organized, and delivers our latest analysis straight to your feed every day.
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 platforms, 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.
If you blinked over the weekend, you might have missed the latest salvo in the AI wars. Anthropic just made a power move: the company announced it’s making Claude Sonnet 5’s introductory pricing permanent — that’s $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, scrapping a planned September price hike that would have pushed costs up by 50%. The reasoning? Keep developers locked into their ecosystem ahead of a rumoured IPO and, more importantly, fend off the Chinese AI onslaught.
And what an onslaught it is. In just the past week alone, we’ve seen Grok 4.6, DeepSeek V4 Pro, GLM 5.3, and Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-27B all hit the market in rapid succession. OpenAI has slashed GPT-5.6 Luna prices by 80%, while Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5 at half the price of its flagship Fable 5. Even DeepSeek — once the undisputed “price” leader — has raised prices fourfold, yet still remains cheaper than most Western competitors.
The message is clear: the AI battlefield has shifted from who has the smartest model to who can offer the best value. And the Chinese players are winning on price.
On the JSE This Week
Thungela Resources (TGA) kicked off the week with a bang this morning, releasing its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2026. The numbers are impressive:
· Revenue rose 2% to R15.17 billion · Profit for the period surged 461% to R1.39 billion · Headline earnings per share jumped 150% to 480 cents · The group declared an interim dividend of R5.50 per share — up 175% from last year’s 200 cents
Also worth watching: Efora Energy (EEL) remains under a cautionary announcement after its board decided to defer court proceedings related to provisional liquidation while it pursues a potential transaction. And the JSE itself welcomed a new actively managed ETF listing today — the PWM Extra Interest Prescient Feeder AMETF (PWMEXI) — bringing the total number of ETFs on the exchange to 141, with a combined market cap exceeding R273 billion.
Trivia Corner: The Weird and Wonderful
A giraffe in a sinkhole? Yes, you read that correctly. Over the weekend, the Democratic Alliance decided to draw attention to South Africa’s pothole crisis by… stuffing a real giraffe’s head and placing it in a sinkhole in Mogale City. The plan backfired spectacularly when wildlife rescuers rushed to the scene believing a live animal was trapped inside. The party has been widely slammed for the stunt. One has to admire the creativity, even if the execution was… questionable.
Sardine mystery solved? Scientists have detected pilchard herpesvirus genetic material in the mass sardine deaths along the West Coast. While the virus appears to be a factor, researchers believe environmental conditions may also have played a role. The first samples were collected off Saldanha Bay on 1 August.
And if you’re in Cape Town, keep an eye out for a giant corn flakes bowl that was reportedly blown off a shipping container in Nyanga by strong winds. It’s become an unlikely social media sensation.
On this day in South African history: 17 August 1920 — Bevil Rudd won the first of his three Olympic medals, taking bronze in the 800m at the Antwerp Games. And in 1969, Dr Philip Blaiberg died in South Africa, 19 months and 15 days after receiving a heart transplant — a survival record at the time.
Enjoyed this article? Keep up with our daily coverage effortlessly.
You don’t need another email cluttering your inbox to stay informed. To receive daily updates from Financial News Daily and Idea Accelerator, simply add our site URL (ideaaccelerator.co.za) to your favorite news reader or app: • All-in-one bookmarking & news saving: Raindrop.io • Web-based feed readers: Feedly, Inoreader, or NewsBlur • Apple users (Mac/iPhone): NetNewsWire or Reeder • Android & Blog app users: FocusReader or Jetpack It’s completely free, keeps your reading organized, and delivers our latest analysis straight to your feed every day.
Should foreigners be allowed to buy South African property without restriction? It is a question being asked with growing urgency in local communities, particularly here in the Western Cape.
While headlines focus on the eye-watering sums paid along the Atlantic Seaboard, the reality goes much deeper. In coastal villages like Kommetjie and Scarborough, foreign buyers have changed the landscape. Five decades ago, Kommetjie was a sleepy holiday town, and Scarborough was barely developed. Today, luxury houses and sprawling developments dominate parts of the coastline, changing the character of communities where generations of local residents have lived. Giant mansions block sea views.
And this trend is no longer confined to affluent coastal suburbs.
Earlier this year, while visiting Vanrhynsdorp, locals told me how many international buyers are buying property in the town. The same pattern is playing out in parts of the Karoo, where small farms and lifestyle plots are being snapped up by foreign buyers.
SADC neighbours take a far more protective stance. While countries such as Namibia permit foreigners to buy urban residential property, they impose strict controls on foreign ownership of agricultural land. In South Africa, by contrast, foreign buyers can participate in the property market with relatively few restrictions.
The core driver of this squeeze is the difference in purchasing power created by the currency.
A foreign buyer looking at a R5 million home in Scarborough sees a property priced at roughly $270,000 or €250,000 — the cost of a modest one-bedroom apartment in parts of Europe or North America. To a South African earning in rands, however, that same property represents a life-changing financial commitment.
Armed with stronger currencies, international buyers can sometimes afford to pay considerably more than local buyers, pushing prices beyond the reach of South African families.
The human cost of this open-door policy falls particularly heavily on the younger generation. Young South Africans starting families and hoping to buy a starter home and build some generational wealth can find themselves priced out before they even begin.
Compounding the problem is the rise of empty properties and short-term holiday rentals. In places like Scarborough, Kommetjie and Cape Town, some properties owned by foreigners sit empty for much of the year, while others are converted permanently into short-term tourist accommodation.
That removes long-term rental stock from the market, pushes up rents and can turn close-knit coastal communities into seasonal ghost towns.
Of course, there is another side to the argument.
Local homeowners in places like Kommetjie, Scarborough and the Atlantic Seaboard who bought properties decades ago, or inherited them, have benefited enormously from rising valuations. Some have effectively become millionaires simply because they own property in an area that has become highly desirable.
Local municipalities also welcome the expanding rates base that comes with higher property valuations.
So this isn’t simply a question of whether foreign buyers are good or bad for South Africa. They bring money into the country, spend locally and can contribute to the development of areas that might otherwise have attracted less investment.
The question is whether South Africa has the right balance.
Many other countries have introduced targeted controls without shutting the door on foreign investment entirely.
Foreign surcharges and duties: Countries such as Singapore, Australia and Canada impose additional taxes or duties on certain foreign or non-resident property buyers. These measures can discourage speculative buying while generating revenue for government.
Primary residence restrictions: New Zealand has restricted non-residents from buying existing residential property, while allowing exceptions and investment in certain new developments. The principle is that foreign capital should, where possible, add to housing supply rather than simply compete for existing homes.
Agricultural protections: South Africa could also consider a framework that gives greater protection to agricultural land, particularly where productive farmland risks being converted into lifestyle properties.
So where does South Africa’s current trajectory end?
Foreign investment is not the enemy. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with an overseas buyer purchasing a South African home.
But when people with substantially greater purchasing power compete for a finite supply of property, the consequences for local residents cannot simply be ignored.
South Africa needs to decide whether an entirely open property market is really in the country’s long-term interests.
Because if young South Africans continue to be pushed further away from home ownership, the price will be high.
They will not only struggle to buy a home. They will struggle to build the wealth that previous generations built through owning one.
That is a price South Africa’s young people should not have to pay.
Enjoyed this article? Keep up with our daily coverage effortlessly. You don’t need another email cluttering your inbox to stay informed. To receive daily updates from Financial News Daily and Idea Accelerator, simply add our site URL (ideaaccelerator.co.za) to your favorite news reader or app:
All-in-one bookmarking & news saving: Raindrop.io
Web-based feed readers: Feedly, Inoreader, or NewsBlur
Apple users (Mac/iPhone): NetNewsWire or Reeder
Android & Blog app users: FocusReader or Jetpack It’s completely free, keeps your reading organized, and delivers our latest analysis straight to your feed every day.
For no rhyme or reason I’m celebrating Rory Gallagher the Irish Blues rock guitarist. Actually, I do have a reason – I heard “Racing the Breeze” on one of the older Chris Prior Rock Professor podcasts. And it just uplifted me. I was so filled with energy and happiness, I can’t describe it. That’s the power, the emotional power of Rory Gallagher’s music to me – I can’t describe it, but I love it.
I first heard Rory Gallagher in the early 1970s, probably at Cavendish Square in Cape Town where I used to buy my records. And from the album Irish Tour ’74, I absolutely loved “When the Crow Flies”. I know it was a Tony Joe White song, but the energy that Rory Gallagher put into it is amazing. Over the years I’ve listened to many guitarists and loved many of them. But for me, among them all, Rory Gallagher stands out. I just find his career amazing, his dedication to his music amazing.
I was saying to someone the other day, you know, you get many musicians, and as the world’s population has increased in size since the early 1970s, there are so many more musicians, but why does a musician like Rory Gallagher stand out for me? I think – and this is very subjective – I think it’s because you can almost sense and feel that he’s got music in him. He is a musician. I listen to a lot of other music on the radio and other places, and often you find the singer, the guitar player, the saxophonist – there’s just something missing. With Rory Gallagher, for me, there’s nothing missing. It’s the same as his countryman Van Morrison – I don’t want to go into Van Morrison now, but that tour de force of an album Astral Weeks, which my late friend Alfie Caplan played for me for the first time. And ever since then, anything that Van Morrison has done is fantastic. He’s also a musician. He has music in his soul. Anyway, back to Rory Gallagher. We’re taking a deep look at his life today.
The Early Years – A Promise Revealed
Rory Gallagher was born William Rory Gallagher on March 2, 1948, in the small town of Ballyshannon, County Donegal, in the northwest of Ireland. He didn’t grow up in a musical vacuum – his father was a musician, and his mother was a singer, so the family home was always filled with records and live performances. That early exposure lit a fire in young Rory.
He got his first guitar at the age of nine – a cheap acoustic that he quickly outgrew. By the time he was twelve, he had already won a local talent contest, and he used the prize money to buy himself a better instrument. But the real turning point came when he was just fifteen years old. With money earned from odd jobs and a hire-purchase agreement, he bought his legendary 1961 sunburst Fender Stratocaster – the very same battered, weather-beaten guitar that would become his lifelong companion and one of the most recognisable instruments in rock history.
Even as a teenager, he was already playing professionally in Irish showbands, cutting his teeth in front of live audiences. You could say he was born to play – and he never stopped.
The Bands – From Taste to Solo Stardom
Rory’s first major band was Taste, a power trio formed in the late 1960s. Taste was raw, loud, and intensely bluesy – they gained a massive following in the UK and Ireland, even opening for bands like Cream and Fleetwood Mac. They released a couple of studio albums and a legendary live album, Live at the Isle of Wight, which captures Rory at his most ferocious. But by 1970, the band had run its course, and they disbanded.
That same year, Rory launched his solo career – and that’s when his legend truly took off. From 1970 until his untimely death in 1995, he released a steady stream of studio albums and toured relentlessly. His solo discography comprises roughly twelve studio albums and three official live albums, with Irish Tour ’74 standing as his absolute masterpiece – the album I remember buying in Cape Town.
Outstanding Career Highlights – Awards and Recognition
Rory may have been shy offstage, but onstage he was a force of nature. In 1971, he was voted “Top Musician of the Year” by the influential British magazine Melody Maker – beating Eric Clapton in that poll. The very next year, 1972, he was named “Guitarist of the Year” by the same publication. At a time when the world was overflowing with guitar heroes, Rory was consistently voted above giants like Clapton, Page, and Beck.
He is often referred to as “Ireland’s first rock superstar” – a title he earned not through flashy antics or manufactured image, but through sheer musical brilliance and relentless hard work. He played thousands of gigs, often multiple shows a night, and gave everything he had to every single one.
The Man Himself – Personal Life
Rory Gallagher was famously private and deeply shy. He never married and had no children. Some say he was married to his music – and that’s not just a cliché. He lived for the stage and the studio. His brother, Donal Gallagher, served as his manager for most of his career and remains the steward of his estate to this day. Rory’s shyness was so pronounced that he would often hide backstage before shows, letting Donal do all the talking, and then walk on stage and transform into a completely different animal.
Financially, exact figures of his personal income were never made public, but he enjoyed a comfortable and successful career. Since his passing, his estate has continued to earn substantial royalties from reissues, streaming, and licensing – a testament to his enduring legacy.
Record Sales, Popularity, and His Most Beloved Albums
Globally, Rory Gallagher has sold over 30 million albums across his entire catalogue, both during his lifetime and posthumously. And here’s the beautiful thing – he is still incredibly popular. New generations of guitarists discover him every year, and his music keeps finding fresh ears. Record labels regularly reissue his albums with bonus tracks and remastered sound, and box sets continue to sell.
His most popular and best-selling albums include:
· Rory Gallagher (1971) – his powerful solo debut. · Deuce (1971) – which cemented his style. · Blueprint (1973) – a fan favourite. · Irish Tour ’74 (1974) – the iconic live album that captured his raw, sweaty, brilliant stage presence. · Photo-Finish (1978) – a hard-rocking return to form. · Top Priority (1979) – another muscular blues-rock classic.
What Was So Good About His Music? And How Did He Do It?
Rory’s playing was raw, passionate, and completely improvisational. He never played a song the same way twice – every live performance was a unique, one-off creation. He fused blues, rock, folk, and jazz into a fiery, soulful brew that sounded completely organic. There were no studio tricks, no overdubs, no pretence. What you heard was what you got – a man pouring every ounce of his being through his amplifier.
Technically, how did he get that sound? He used a heavy right-hand strumming attack, often using his fingers rather than a pick, which gave him a warmer, more percussive tone. He played his 1961 Stratocaster almost exclusively, and he achieved his signature cutting, singing tone by cranking his Vox AC30 and later Fender amplifiers to their absolute limit – he ran them so hot that they were nearly breaking up. He also used a treble booster pedal to slice through the mix. But really, the secret wasn’t in the gear. It was in his hands and his heart. When Rory played with his eyes closed, head down, completely lost in the moment, he was communicating something that words simply cannot capture. That’s why “Racing the Breeze” made me feel so uplifted – it wasn’t just a tune; it was a transmission of pure human energy.
His Famous Guitars – Including That Steel Guitar
His undisputed number one was the 1961 Fender Stratocaster – sunburst finish, so heavily worn that the paint had almost completely worn off from years of sweat and strumming. That guitar has become an icon in its own right.
But he owned several other beauties:
· A 1958 Fender Stratocaster. · A 1966 Fender Telecaster. · A 1959 Fender Esquire. · A 1968 Gibson Les Paul Junior (a single-cutaway with a P-90 pickup). · A 1959 Gretsch Chet Atkins hollow-body. · A striking 1965 Airline “JB Hutto” – a res-o-glass guitar with a very distinctive futuristic look.
And yes, he did play a steel guitar – specifically a lap steel guitar, which he used on certain tracks to get that crying, sliding country-blues sound. He also played slide guitar, and he wasn’t limited to six strings – he also played mandolin, harmonica, and even saxophone on some recordings. He was a multi-instrumentalist who simply loved making music on anything he could get his hands on.
Trivia – A Few Bits and Pieces
Here are some nuggets about Rory:
· He was a devout Catholic and made a point of attending Mass regularly, even while on tour in foreign countries. · He had an obsession with detective novels – he would devour them backstage and on long bus rides, always carrying a stack with him. · He had a notorious fear of flying. He often travelled by boat, ferry, or tour van to avoid getting on aeroplanes. This made touring the US particularly stressful, but he did it anyway because he loved his fans. · He was incredibly humble and shy – despite his fame, he never acted like a rock star. He hated interviews and would rather let his guitar do the talking. · Sadly, he struggled with alcoholism in his later years, and his health deteriorated significantly. In early 1995, he underwent a liver transplant in London. Tragically, complications arose, and he passed away on June 14, 1995, at the age of just forty-seven. The world lost him far too soon.
How Other Guitarists Rate Him – Praise from the Greats
A measure of Rory’s genius is how he is regarded by his peers.
· Eric Clapton once said: “The guy who made me go back to the blues was Rory Gallagher.” · Jimmy Page (of Led Zeppelin) said: “I really liked Rory. He was a fantastic guitarist, singer, and a lovely man.” Page rarely gives such warm personal endorsements. · Ritchie Blackmore (of Deep Purple) called him: “Probably the most natural player I’ve ever seen. I never heard him play the same thing twice. He was the ultimate performer.” Coming from a guitarist known for his own improvisational brilliance, that’s high praise. · Brian May (of Queen) called him a “genius” and said his playing was “beyond the beyond.” · Slash (of Guns N’ Roses) has repeatedly cited Rory as a major influence on his own style. · Joe Bonamassa, the modern blues powerhouse, flatly states: “Rory Gallagher is the greatest blues guitarist that ever lived.”
Music inside
So why does Rory Gallagher stand out among the millions of musicians who have come and gone? You can sense the music living inside him. There’s no affectation, no empty showmanship, no glossy production covering up weaknesses. When he played “When the Crow Flies” or that electrifying “Racing the Breeze”, you aren’t just hearing a guitar – you’re hearing a man pour his entire soul out through six strings.
He was born in a small Irish town in 1948, he picked up a guitar at nine, he won a talent contest at twelve, he bought his beloved Strat at fifteen, he played in Taste, he went solo, he never married, he sold over thirty million records, he died too young at forty-seven, and he left behind a body of work that still lifts people’s spirits decades later. That’s not just a musician. That’s a force of nature.
Rory’s music still fills us with energy and happiness – and that’s a legacy no amount of record sales can ever measure.
Friday seems like a good day to put the serious stuff to one side for a few minutes.
So here are a few things that caught my attention this week. Some are useful. Some are interesting. And some are simply here because I thought they were funny.
A little business
South Africa’s mining industry had a less-than-sparkling week. Stats SA released its June mining production figures yesterday, with the sector under pressure despite some stronger commodity prices.
Meanwhile, Eskom has found itself in the rather unusual position of having electricity to spare. After years of load-shedding, it is now looking at data centres as potential big customers for all that spare capacity. South Africa already has around 70% of Africa’s data-centre capacity, and the market is expected to grow rapidly.
It is a remarkable turnaround. Eskom once couldn’t supply enough electricity to keep the lights on. Now it is trying to persuade the people running the computers to use more of it.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world…
The Strait of Hormuz continues to cause headaches. Shipping traffic through the strategic waterway has fallen sharply as tensions between the United States and Iran continue. Two UAE-linked tankers were also attacked this week, according to the UAE.
And oil remains caught between geopolitics and economics. Despite all the tension around the Gulf, oil prices actually fell this week as concerns about weaker global demand and rising US inventories took hold.
So the oil market, like the rest of us, appears to be having difficulty deciding what to worry about first.
Rock ’n’ roll birthdays
Today would have been David Crosby’s 85th birthday. The Byrds, Crosby, Stills & Nash and a substantial contribution to the California sound of the 1960s and 1970s.
Also born on August 14 was Dash Crofts of Seals & Crofts, best remembered for “Summer Breeze”.
Kevin Cadogan, guitarist and songwriter with Third Eye Blind, is 56 today. He co-wrote several of the band’s best-known songs.
And a couple of writers
Two writers also have birthdays worth mentioning.
Daphne du Maurier, author of Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, was born on this day in 1907.
And Ernest Thayer, the American writer best known for the wonderfully titled baseball poem Casey at the Bat, was born on August 14, 1863.
I think I’ll leave it there before this starts looking like a literary encyclopaedia.
A couple of things you probably didn’t know
Frogs can use their eyeballs to help push food down their throats.
I don’t know what frog research tells us about the economy, business or artificial intelligence. But I do know that I will never look at a frog quite the same way again.
And here’s another one: giant swallowtail caterpillars can disguise themselves as bird droppings to avoid predators.
Nature, it seems, invented both camouflage and comedy.
Friday’s little quiz
Apparently, 7% of people would rather give up something for a year than give up the internet.
What is it?
You’ll find the answer at the end of this article.
Deep thought
The trouble with common sense is that it isn’t nearly as common as its name suggests.
And finally…
Three things I learnt this week:
I don’t understand what is happening in the Middle East.
I don’t understand why anyone would want to eat kale.
And I am beginning to suspect that the internet may be less essential than we think.
Have a good weekend.
And remember: if you think you have everything under control, you probably haven’t looked at your inbox yet.
Quiz answer: Showering.
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 platforms, 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 liquidated 1,361 businesses in the first half of 2026. That number is slightly lower than the same period last year. But don’t be misled by the 0.9% decline. Behind the headline figure is a far more disturbing story: small and medium-sized businesses are being squeezed from both sides, by rising costs and weakening demand.
Data released by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) shows that 1,361 businesses were liquidated during the first six months of 2026.
On the face of it, the 0.9% decrease from the same period in 2025 might appear encouraging.
It isn’t.
The more important story is what lies beneath the number.
South Africa is quietly losing the small and medium-sized businesses that form the backbone of local economies and provide a substantial share of employment. Their disappearance rarely makes national headlines. But hundreds of closures, spread across towns, suburbs and business districts, gradually drain communities of jobs, spending and tax revenue.
Small Businesses Bear the Brunt
A common assumption during an economic downturn is that business failures are driven by large corporations.
That isn’t how liquidation generally works.
Large industrial groups and major listed companies have access to considerably more capital and restructuring options. They can sell assets, refinance debt or enter business rescue long before liquidation becomes inevitable.
Clarification on Tongaat Hulett: Despite the company’s high-profile financial difficulties, Tongaat Hulett has not been liquidated. It remains under Business Rescue, initiated in October 2022, while it implements a restructuring plan under the Vision Consortium.
The liquidation figures tell a different story at the smaller end of the economy.
Private companies (Pty) Ltds) account for approximately 95% of categorised business closures, while close corporations continue to experience high failure rates because they generally have much thinner cash-flow buffers.
The hardest-hit sectors include finance, real estate and business services, followed by trade, catering and accommodation.
This matters.
When a major corporation fails, thousands of jobs can be lost in one highly visible event. When hundreds of small businesses disappear quietly, the damage is spread across the economy and becomes much easier to ignore.
But the economic effect is no less real.
Compulsory Liquidations Are the More Ominous Signal
There is another warning hidden in the figures.
Roughly 91% of liquidations in the first half of 2026 were voluntary, meaning that owners chose to wind up their businesses.
But compulsory liquidations increased year-on-year.
That is a much more worrying indicator.
A voluntary liquidation can mean that an owner has decided that the business is no longer viable and would rather close it down than continue losing money.
A compulsory liquidation is different.
It means creditors have gone to court because they cannot recover what they are owed.
By the time that happens, cash reserves have generally been exhausted and conventional attempts to restructure the debt have failed.
In other words, the business has run out of road.
This Is More Than the “Cost of Doing Business”
It is easy to blame business failures on the familiar phrase “the cost of doing business.”
And there is plenty of evidence to support that argument.
But rising costs are only one side of the problem.
The real pressure on South African SMEs comes from a vicious squeeze.
Fuel and energy costs continue to put pressure on operating margins.
The cost of borrowing remains another problem. Even where interest rates have eased from their peaks, debt remains expensive for businesses that need working capital to survive or expand.
Then there is SARS.
The South African Revenue Service has a legitimate responsibility to collect taxes. But aggressive debt-recovery action can leave a struggling small business with very little room to negotiate its way through a temporary cash-flow crisis.
For a large company, a financial squeeze can sometimes be absorbed.
For a small business operating on thin margins, it can be fatal.
The Demand Problem
There is another side to the equation that receives less attention.
Customers have to spend money.
A business can survive rising costs if its revenues rise with them. But when household disposable income is under pressure, consumers cut back.
They postpone purchases.
They trade down.
They stop eating out.
They buy less.
That leaves small businesses caught between rising costs and declining revenue.
No amount of clever management can indefinitely overcome that combination.
Then There Are the Problems That Don’t Appear on the Balance Sheet
The liquidation figures also have to be viewed against South Africa’s broader structural problems.
Policy uncertainty has made it difficult for businesses to plan with confidence. The country still lacks the sort of clear, coherent economic growth strategy that would encourage sustained investment and give local businesses greater certainty about the future.
Then there are the logistics problems.
Freight transport, ports and municipal infrastructure remain sources of friction and additional cost. Decades of underinvestment and inefficiency effectively impose another tax on businesses that move physical goods.
And then there is crime.
Small businesses increasingly have to contend with theft, extortion, protection rackets and the cost of security simply to protect their premises, staff and stock.
These costs rarely appear as a single line item called “failure of the state.”
They are scattered through the accounts as security, insurance, lost working hours, damaged equipment, delayed deliveries and lost sales.
But they are real costs.
Traditional economic commentary tends to describe these problems in sanitised language such as “headwinds”, “infrastructure constraints” and “operational challenges”.
Ask the owner of a small business trying to keep the doors open and the language is likely to be rather less diplomatic.
Where Does This Leave South Africa?
The obvious question is: What can actually be done?
The first step in fixing any crisis is acknowledging that it exists.
That is precisely what seems to be missing.
The government appears deaf to the warning bells coming from the trade and service sectors. Instead of decisive economic relief and structural reform, businesses are confronted with policy inertia while the pressures continue to accumulate.
There is no magic solution.
South Africa needs stronger economic growth, reliable infrastructure, functioning logistics, greater policy certainty and a far more hostile environment for organised crime and corruption.
It also needs an economy in which consumers have enough disposable income to spend.
Those are not quick fixes.
Meaningful structural reform may ultimately require a fundamental political realignment. But political change does not happen overnight, and there is no immediate prospect of a change of government solving these problems.
In the meantime, the country’s business engine is being slowly stripped of its smaller components.
The 1,361 liquidations recorded in the first half of 2026 are therefore more than a statistic.
They are a warning.
South Africa’s small and medium-sized businesses are being squeezed from both sides. And unless something changes, the quiet death spiral will continue — one liquidation at a time.
Years ago — and I’m speaking a long time ago — you could buy a software package called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This was made by Nuance. The software got more and more expensive, and the hardware to run it — a microphone with a long cable, a docking station for the dictation recorder, and all the rest — eventually became out of reach. Only doctors, lawyers and perhaps some other professionals could justify the cost.
When I moved home, most of that equipment had to go. It was outdated anyway. Then I started using the speech-to-text app on the iPhone, which is Siri, but that was as bad as the first version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking — I think it was version four. Unfortunately, Siri has never really improved.
But there are now new apps and ways of doing dictation and transcription using AI, which I’ll come to in a moment.
Right now, the information I can find is that Nuance isn’t doing particularly well, although it is still around. Apparently, it was bought by Microsoft and has been charging even more outrageous rates for its software packages. So these dedicated transcription software packages are really only for the select few — not the ordinary professional who needs to do a lot of dictation.
But today you can use an app like Otter AI, or the one I’m using now, Google AI Edge, and get a pretty accurate transcription. If you’re a lawyer or a journalist who needs absolutely precise transcription, that might still require the old-fashioned human way, where a transcriptionist transcribes the recording for you. You would then need to go over it and check that everything is right, especially where legal matters are concerned.
If you have specialised professional dictation and transcription requirements, two companies I used to deal with are still around, so contact them for more information: Powerhouse Dictation and Martin Murdoch Dictation Technology.
For the desktop user, there are one or two amazing transcription programs now. One is Whisper AI. The other is a little app that you put on your laptop, and it will transcribe without being connected to the internet.
This app is as accurate as even the best Dragon NaturallySpeaking program I ever used. This program is called Handy.
Yes, markets change. Technology changes.
I was reading how even Mark Twain had some sort of cylinder that he could dictate to, although he didn’t really enjoy it. It could have been made by Edison.
Another person famous for dictation was Earl Stanley Gardner. Many other authors have used dictation for their written work, including, I think, Barbara Cartland as well.
Today, transcription from voice is available to everyone. You just need to go and look for software or an app that can do what you want it to do.
The market you’re stepping into in 2026 is huge and growing fast. The global cloud dictation solution market alone is now measured in billions of dollars and is growing at double-digit rates. Other estimates put the broader voice and transcription market even higher.
What is driving all this growth?
Remote and hybrid work. With so many people working from home, the need for efficient, voice-powered documentation has exploded.
AI is everywhere. Deep learning and large language models have made transcription more accurate, even with different accents and background noise. AI isn’t just transcribing anymore. It can summarise, remove filler words, identify speakers and increasingly automate entire workflows.
Healthcare is one of the fastest-growing areas of the market, which helps explain why Microsoft was prepared to pay billions for Nuance. The big opportunity is no longer simply selling dictation software. It is integrating voice recognition into professional workflows.
So where do all the apps I mentioned fit into this?
Nuance, now Microsoft. The old Dragon model is fading. The consumer version, Dragon Home, was discontinued, while the professional desktop version remains a substantial purchase and is Windows-only. Microsoft’s real focus is increasingly on the enterprise and healthcare market. Its Dragon Copilot combines dictation with AI to help doctors produce clinical notes. This is where Nuance’s future lies — not in selling you a boxed piece of software, but in selling high-value integrated services to hospitals and other large organisations.
Whisper AI. This is the new breed. It is powered by OpenAI technology and is accurate. It is an example of how AI has democratised high-quality transcription. What once required expensive specialist software and hardware can now be done with a relatively inexpensive app.
Handy. This is the little offline app I mentioned, and it is a perfect example of the privacy-focused, no-subscription model. It runs on your laptop, without sending your recordings to the cloud. For anyone worried about privacy, that is a big deal.
Otter AI. This is the meeting specialist. It is particularly good at transcribing conversations, meetings and calls. It uses a freemium model, with paid plans for people who need more capacity and features.
Google AI Edge. This is another fascinating development because it brings AI-powered transcription onto the device itself. It can work offline and, depending on the application, can even clean up speech by removing some of the verbal clutter that inevitably creeps into spoken language.
That brings us back to the ordinary user. It is no longer about expensive, one-time software purchases that require dedicated hardware. Instead, there is now a spectrum of choices: free or inexpensive offline tools for the casual user; powerful AI services for professionals; and specialised, expensive enterprise solutions for organisations such as hospitals.
But for the first time, you can get a transcription tool that fits your needs and your budget without having to be a lawyer or a doctor to afford it.
And why dictate in the first place?
You can speak at anything from 90 to 120 words a minute, which is faster than most people can type. You just have to be careful because the spoken word can become verbose. When you speak, it is very easy to keep going.
After practising dictation for a while, however, you start to become more careful about the number of words you use. And, of course, with modern word-processing software, you can simply cut out the words you don’t want.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement
1 year
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
__hssrc
session
This cookie is set by Hubspot. According to their documentation, whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser. If this cookie does not exist when HubSpot manages cookies, it is considered a new session.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Cookie
Duration
Description
__hssc
30 minutes
This cookie is set by HubSpot. The purpose of the cookie is to keep track of sessions. This is used to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. It contains the domain, viewCount (increments each pageView in a session), and session start timestamp.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Cookie
Duration
Description
hubspotutk
1 year 24 days
This cookie is used by HubSpot to keep track of the visitors to the website. This cookie is passed to Hubspot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts.
__hstc
1 year 24 days
This cookie is set by Hubspot and is used for tracking visitors. It contains the domain, utk, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session).
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
