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.

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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.

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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.

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.

South African supermarket shelves have an extraordinary number of things to put on bread. What we don’t seem to have is much that is genuinely new.

The spreads category is growing, but walk down the supermarket aisle and the same old suspects stare back at you: peanut butter, jam, marmalade, mayonnaise, cheese spread, Marmite, Bovril, liver paste, fish paste and, increasingly, chocolate spreads.

As far as I can see, there has been little innovation in South African spreads for years.

Products that once gave the shelves a bit of character have disappeared or been reduced to much narrower ranges. Rose’s, for example, once had a much broader presence in marmalades and preserves. Today its range is considerably more limited.

What the market has gained is chocolate.

One wonders how so much chocolate spread is arriving on the market at such competitive prices. Maybe economies of scale, global overproduction or aggressively priced imports.

Peanut butter is one of South Africa’s great food products. The country eats huge quantities of it and has well-established local manufacturers.

But quality can vary considerably, particularly with imported products. Peanut butter from India has pronounced oil separation.

As for fish spreads the range is small. Think Peck’s Anchovette. A local manufacturer has introduced a tuna spread in small tins.

A speciality product such as tuna in metal squeeze tubes from Spain can only be found in delicatessens in Johannesburg. But this is not a mainstream product.

Supermarkets offer limited versions of liver paste but most are underwhelming. Woolworths liver-and-onion spread failed to impress. Escort and Renown liver pastes are not particularly tasty.

The liver spreads made by German butchers — or the excellent Heartslief products from Namibia — are in a different category but pricey.

The spreads market is growing. Yet the supermarket shelves seem conservative. There is little that makes you stop and think: That’s interesting. I’ll try that.

Big manufacturers can’t afford to experiment. Too risky. They have to watch nimble operators. When something takes off, they step in.

A small food manufacturer, specialist deli or home industry doesn’t necessarily need to compete with the giants on volume. It needs to make something people crave.

The spreads market may be growing. But innovation is spread thin.

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.

Monday Morning Reckoning

There is something slightly odd about the world economy this Monday morning.

The stock markets are looking remarkably cheerful. Wall Street ended last week at record levels, helped by strong technology earnings and the prospect of lower interest rates. Asian markets followed. Investors seem prepared to look through the clouds.

But look beneath the stock-market numbers and the picture is rather different.

The International Monetary Fund expects the global economy to grow by 3% this year. That is respectable, but hardly spectacular. More importantly, the growth is uneven. Some economies are powering ahead. Others are barely moving.

Here is the economic snapshot.

United States — 2.3%

The world’s largest economy continues to outperform most other developed countries. Technology investment, particularly around artificial intelligence, is providing a powerful lift. But employment growth has slowed, tariffs continue to feed through into prices and inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s target.

China — 4.6%

China is still growing at a rate that most Western economies would envy. But the direction is less encouraging. Domestic demand remains weak and the property slump continues to weigh on the economy. Exports are doing much of the heavy lifting, with July exports up 24% year on year. That is beginning to create a new problem: China is exporting its industrial overcapacity into an increasingly protectionist world.

India — 6.4%

India remains the standout among the major economies. Strong consumption and services activity are keeping growth above 6%. While other large economies worry about ageing populations and weak productivity, India still has a growing workforce and a huge domestic market.

Germany — 0.7%

Germany is the sick man of the major European economies no more, perhaps, but it is certainly not running well. Industrial weakness, expensive energy and soft export demand continue to constrain Europe’s manufacturing powerhouse. The IMF expects only 0.7% growth this year.

Spain — 2.1%

Spain is doing considerably better than its European neighbours. Tourism, services and investment are providing support. Growth of 2.1% makes it one of the stronger performers in Western Europe, although the IMF expects that pace to moderate.

Japan — 0.6%

Japan remains trapped in the slow-growth world created by an ageing population and weak underlying potential growth. The economy is expanding, but only just. At 0.6%, it is a reminder that being a wealthy country does not necessarily mean being a fast-growing one.

United Kingdom — 1.0%

Britain is managing to keep its head above water, but there is little momentum. Growth is being constrained by weak productivity, still-elevated prices and the burden of relatively high borrowing costs. The IMF expects only 1% growth in 2026.

Brazil — 2.4%

Brazil has surprised on the upside. A strong agricultural harvest helped produce better-than-expected growth, prompting the IMF to raise its 2026 forecast to 2.4%. It remains a relatively high-interest-rate economy, however, which limits the speed at which domestic demand can expand.

Russia — 1.1%

Russia’s wartime economy continues to produce headline growth, but the momentum has faded sharply. Military spending and state-directed production are keeping factories busy, while labour shortages, capacity constraints and inflation make sustained growth increasingly difficult. The IMF expects just 1.1% growth this year, compared with 4.9% in 2024.

South Africa — 1.1%

The IMF expects South Africa to grow by just 1.1% in 2026. There are signs of improvement from structural reforms and a better policy framework, but the economy remains constrained by its problems: weak productivity, unemployment, infrastructure deficiencies and the long tail of the energy and logistics crises. 1% seems like a pipe dream.

The world economy in one glance

The numbers tell an interesting story.

India 6.4%. China 4.6%. Brazil 2.4%. United States 2.3%. Spain 2.1%. Russia 1.1%. South Africa 1.1%. Britain 1.0%. Germany 0.7%. Japan 0.6%.

And behind all of them sits a global economy growing at about 3%.

That is not a recession. Nor is it a boom.

It is an economy being pulled in different directions.

Technology and artificial intelligence are generating enormous investment and lifting some markets. At the same time, war, energy prices, tariffs, ageing populations, high government debt and weak productivity are holding other economies back. The IMF says global disinflation has also stalled, with headline inflation now expected at 4.7% this year.

The interesting thing for investors is that the stock market and the economy are not the same thing.

The technology companies can continue producing spectacular profits while Germany struggles with industrial production and South Africa battles to produce 1% growth.

That is why global markets can sometimes look completely disconnected from what is happening on the ground.

But if you have money invested in global shares, pension funds or unit trusts, these numbers matter.

If you have ever wondered why your global investments are performing the way they are, this is the reason.

The world economy is still growing.

It is just having a rather tough time deciding where to grow.

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Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, is getting a lot of attention.

And that’s a good thing.

It is being discussed all over social media and in magazines such as The Week, albeit because of Christopher Nolan’s spectacular new film. The film has now sailed past $1 billion at the global box office, which is not bad for a story that is roughly 2,800 years old.

I must confess something upfront.

Although I have known about Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad for most of my life, I have never actually read either of them.

In my younger days, I was more interested in Dante. I read The Divine Comedy and thought I was doing rather well. But now I discover that, compared with Homer’s Odyssey, even Dante is a mere pup. The Divine Comedy is positively modest beside it. Perhaps I have been reading in the wrong direction all these years.

The Odyssey is one of those books that sits somewhere in the foundations of Western literature. You know all about it without necessarily having read it. Odysseus. Ithaca. Penelope. The Cyclops. Circe. The Sirens. The long journey home.

It has seeped into popular culture so thoroughly that you can probably recognise half the story without having opened the book.

So perhaps I should do myself a favour and finally read it.

I have my eye on Richmond Lattimore’s translation. It is an old-fashioned choice, but that is rather the point.

There is currently a great debate about modern translations of Homer. One of the most prominent is Emily Wilson’s much-discussed version of The Odyssey. Christopher Nolan has said that her translation influenced his thinking about the film, particularly her opening description of Odysseus as a “complicated man”.

Wilson, in turn, has been spectacularly unimpressed with Nolan’s movie.

She has described the screenplay as “abysmal” and said she would be ashamed to have written it. She thinks it lacks much of the psychological, emotional and ethical depth of Homer’s original.

There is something rather entertaining about this.

The translator inspires the filmmaker.

The filmmaker makes the blockbuster.

The translator then tells everyone that the blockbuster is terrible.

And the whole argument sends thousands of people rushing out to buy Homer.

In fact, Wilson herself acknowledges the upside. She says the film is bringing audiences back to cinemas and getting people interested in The Odyssey again.

So perhaps Christopher Nolan should simply accept the criticism and take the victory.

He has probably got people reading Homer.

So what is The Odyssey actually about?

Well, as I understand it, the basic proposition is surprisingly simple.

A man wants to go home.

Odysseus is the king of Ithaca and has been away fighting in the Trojan War. The war itself has lasted ten years. Then, just to make things difficult, it takes him another ten years to get home.

Twenty years.

Imagine leaving home for twenty years and then expecting everything to be exactly as you left it.

It isn’t.

While Odysseus is wandering around the Mediterranean having a remarkably difficult time of it, his wife Penelope is waiting in Ithaca with their son, Telemachus.

And there is a problem.

A large crowd of suitors has moved into the household, eating the food, drinking the wine and attempting to persuade Penelope to marry one of them.

Odysseus, meanwhile, encounters some of the best-known characters in mythology.

There is the Cyclops.

There is Circe.

There are the Sirens.

There are monsters, storms, shipwrecks, temptations and various other obstacles standing between the hero and his front door.

It is, in other words, an extremely long commute.

Eventually Odysseus gets home, disguised as a beggar, and discovers that his household has been thoroughly taken over.

What follows is not exactly a gentle domestic reunion.

And that, roughly speaking, is the story.

It isn’t really a novel. The Odyssey is an epic poem. It belongs to an oral poetic tradition and was composed in dactylic hexameter, the metre used for Greek epic poetry.

That is one reason translations matter.

You are not simply translating a story. You are trying to carry across something that was designed to be heard as poetry.

And Homer is not quite the straightforward historical character we might imagine.

We don’t know very much about him.

We don’t even know for certain whether “Homer” refers to a single historical poet in the modern sense. The poems emerged from a long oral tradition, and the figure of Homer has acquired almost as much mythology as his characters.

What we do know is that the Iliad and Odyssey became enormously influential works of literature.

Their influence is difficult to overstate.

The wandering hero. The long journey. The return home. The dangerous encounters along the way. The temptation to abandon the journey. The struggle between identity and circumstance.

We have been telling versions of them for nearly three thousand years.

And then along comes Hollywood

This is where I find the current Odyssey excitement rather wonderful.

A filmmaker has taken one of the oldest stories in Western literature and turned it into a gigantic cinematic event.

People are arguing about it.

Academics are arguing about it.

Translators are arguing about it.

Film critics are arguing about it.

And audiences are buying tickets.

Meanwhile, Homer is sitting quietly in the corner, having been around for considerably longer than all of them.

The $1 billion box office is almost beside the point.

The really interesting thing is that people are talking about Homer again.

And perhaps that is what great art does. It disappears for a while, gets buried under everything else, and then somebody comes along and reminds us that it was there all along.

I haven’t seen Nolan’s Odyssey yet.

And, rather embarrassingly, I haven’t read Homer’s either.

So I may be about to correct both omissions.

I think I’ll start with Lattimore.

As for the great argument about modern translations, I’ll leave that to the experts.

I have no particular interest in joining it.

This too shall pass.

Homer probably won’t.

Yesterday, I went to the front door and looked outside.

Suddenly I heard the sound of a helicopter overhead. I looked up and saw a large NSRI rescue craft in Fish Hoek Bay. There was also a small NSRI inflatable rushing across the water. Then the helicopter came down, and there was a swirling, brushing movement across the surface of the sea. There was a big buoy in the water.

I wondered whether this was a real-life rescue or a practice run.

Later, I found out it was a practice exercise.

But it got me thinking.

Here in the Cape, particularly in summer, there are often helicopters coming through the valley. They always look beautiful against the mountains and the sky.

At one time there was a Huey helicopter, the same type used in the Vietnam War. I was always tempted to take a ride in one, but I wasn’t living here at the time and never got the chance to arrange it.

When it came through the valley, you could hear the familiar whop-whop-whop of the Huey helicopter.

I don’t like war, but there was something tremendously exciting about that sound.

And then helicopters got me thinking about other helicopters.

I remember Brian Gilbertson, the Genmin executive, in Johannesburg. In the late 1980s he became chairman of Genmin, the mining arm formed under Gencor. He was a well-known figure in Johannesburg’s corporate circles and commuted to work in his twin-engine Messerschmitt helicopter, landing directly on the helipad on top of the Gencor headquarters in central Johannesburg.

His grand chopper arrivals became so familiar that staff used to joke that “the ego has landed” when he touched down.

I was working in Johannesburg at the time, and it was an everyday occurrence.

And we took it for granted.

Johannesburg was like the New York of South Africa in those days. It was exciting. Somebody arriving at work by helicopter seemed perfectly natural. Why not?

Then there was Paul Beresford from Radio 702, “your eye in the sky”, reporting on Johannesburg traffic from the 702 helicopter in the early 1980s.

Those were wonderful days. He did it with such aplomb. Someone else took over the job later, but somehow it wasn’t quite the same.

Helicopters were part of the Johannesburg landscape.

Before I left Johannesburg about four years ago, I remember that there weren’t nearly as many helicopters in the sky. But now, strangely enough, they seem to be back.

Yesterday I heard that around the Randburg and Kensington B areas there are helicopters flying at night, apparently doing surveillance or surveys or something else. Nobody seems quite sure what they are doing. Perhaps they are police helicopters. Perhaps they are doing surveys.

Who knows?

And staying with Johannesburg, I remember taking my two children for a helicopter ride at the Rand Easter Show. Not at the old agricultural showgrounds near Empire Road, but at the new showgrounds out at Nasrec.

It was an extraordinary experience.

We were able to see the city from above, but we also experienced something of the extraordinary difficulty of controlling a helicopter. It looks effortless from the ground. It isn’t.

But the remarkable thing was the view.

That high view.

And perhaps that is what has stayed with me.

How often do we take a helicopter view of our lives?

When you look down from a helicopter, everything changes.

The roads become lines. The houses become tiny boxes. People disappear almost completely. The landscape becomes one enormous thing rather than a collection of thousands of separate things.

I remember once seeing my house from an aeroplane.

It looked tiny.

The people looked tiny.

And then you think: that’s us down there.

These tiny little living beings, moving around, going to work, buying things, worrying about things, arguing about things, accumulating things, falling in love, falling out of love, making money, losing money, getting sick, getting better.

And yet, from above, it all looks completely different.

Perhaps that is what philosophy is for.

I remember growing up and reading those wonderful philosophical books. If you mentioned philosophy to your friends, or even to some of your elders, they would laugh at you.

People scoffed at philosophers.

Philosophy wasn’t in vogue.

It was probably best to keep quiet and find a kindred spirit — of which there were very few — with whom you could discuss philosophy, spirituality, morality and the great questions of life.

That was the way it was.

But something has changed.

Philosophy, in its many forms, Western and Eastern, has penetrated all sorts of everyday practices. Sports. Fitness. Well-being. Meditation. Mindfulness.

You see people walking around with yoga mats rolled up under their arms. People are communing with nature. People are looking for their atman, their inner being, trying to understand what is happening inside themselves.

Perhaps we have finally realised that there is more to life than simply being busy.

A helicopter gives you a spectacular view.

But perhaps the helicopter view is only half the story.

Because there is another way of seeing.

Not Charon, the ancient Greek ferryman who carries the dead across the river to their final destination.

A different ferryman.

The ferryman Siddhartha meets.

He doesn’t take you away from life.

He takes you into it.

Into the river.

Into that smiling, laughing river that is always moving and yet always present.

And perhaps that is what philosophy really does.

The helicopter gives you the view from above.

The ferryman gives you the view from within.

One shows you the landscape.

The other teaches you to listen to the river.

That, perhaps, is the real purpose of philosophy.

Not to provide answers to every question. Not to make you clever. Not to give you something impressive to say at dinner.

But to change the way you see.

Whether you are rich or poor, powerful or powerless, successful or unsuccessful, you are still a human being.

And without some kind of philosophy, some kind of understanding of what it means to be alive, it is very easy to become trapped in desire.

More money.

More possessions.

More status.

More pleasure.

More certainty.

And, underneath it all, worry.

Worry about what has happened.

Worry about what is happening.

Worry about what might happen.

Even worry about your final destination.

The helicopter view can interrupt all of that.

It lifts you above the immediate.

It lets you see where you have come from and where you are.

And perhaps, if you are quiet enough, it allows that small, vital voice inside you to speak.

To show you the way forward.

Sometimes you need a helicopter view of things.

And sometimes you need to get out of the helicopter and sit beside the river.