Author: Toby Shapshak

As a mental health excursion on a Saturday morning during lockdown, my wife and I would get a cappuccino and a croissant, and take our three-year-old son for a walk. We have old people in our families – my mother is 92 – and our priority has been to make sure we don’t inadvertedly give it to them. This was the middle of August. There was none of the strange certainty that would emerge by October, and now November, about this “novel coronavirus pandemic”. As us South Africans emerged from the harshness of level five lockdown, we tentatively ventured out,…

It’s fantastic news for small businesses that some of the country’s largest firms have committed to paying SMEs on 30 days. It’s really great. As any small business owner will tell you, managing cashflow is your biggest headache, caused usually by a bigger company with lumbering, painfully slow internal processes and scant regard for the impact on suppliers. Called the #PayIn30 campaign, it was launched by Business for South Africa (B4SA), the South African SME Fund and Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA); and also involves Business Unity South Africa (Busa), the Small Business Institute (SBI) and the Black Business Council (BBC).…

Like all big businesses with a loyalty scheme, Pick n Pay is the latest to try its hand at expanding its program. Announced this week the retailer is launching a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), called PnP Mobile. It differs from a mobile network operator (MNO) like Vodacom or MTN because it is a virtual operation that piggy backs on the MNO’s network. It’s not only notable that the second largest retailer in the country is expanding its Smart Shopper program but that it’s partnered with MTN. Previous MVNOs – including the original Virgin Mobile (now in business rescue), FNB…

The ANC still thinks it lives in a pre-internet age. When Ace Magashule stood outside the Bloemfontein court last Friday spewing his political conspiracy theories and refusing to step down as secretary general of the ruling party, he thought he was talking to his supporters. But the whole world was listening, including any potential investors wondering if the unprecedented charging of such a senior official meant a sea of change in wanton state capture bequeathed to us by the lost decade under Jacob Zuma. Like #PresidunceZuma before him, who used a similar scotched earth political strategy, Magashule isn’t just trying…

This may be the crucial moment in history when the age of the desktop computer is truly replaced by the age of mobile. On Tuesday night, without much surprise, Apple announced its new laptop line-up proudly running on its own Apple Silicon processors. The new range of M1 chips are faster, more powerful, use less electricity, and everything else promised in an Apple launch event, where hyperbole is as essential as tech specs. Notably, the M1 processors are based on the mobile chips that power the iPhone and iPad ranges. For a long time, it’s been unfolding before our eyes…

It turns out there is a way to get Donald Trump off Twitter. All that has to happen is him losing the US presidency. Now we know. It’s heartening to know that Facebook and Twitter, two of the greatest titans of this current tech empire, have found their spines at last. The Washington Post calculated that Trump had told 25,000 lies in the last few years. Most of those, until now, have never been factchecked by social networks too afraid of #PresidunceTrump – as one hashtag has already labelled the Tweeter-in-chief no longer. Finally, instead of the rampant lies and…

I didn’t really believe that Checkers would actually take sixty minutes to deliver the groceries I had just ordered, but I was happy to get them on the same day. I’d heard people raving about the new Sixty60 app even before that economic elephant called the Covid-19 lockdown that trampled on us. But the reason I had downloaded it was because I’d seen the advert in the Daily Maverick newspaper. Not only was I pleased to see the launch of a new newspaper (a good democracy needs all the voices it can get), but a decent share of advertising, including…

He may have left the building but the ghost of Hlaudi Motsoeneng lives on in the SABC headquarters. Or, sadly, his convoluted, irrational attempts at logic remain. In fact, over in Auckland Park, sanity itself has left the building. We know it is in short supply, along with rationality, over at the Department of Communications and Other Redundant Technologies and Deadwood Deputies. I’ve often wondered what they smoke at this department, certainly in the minister’s office, given the inexplicable and unintelligible decisions that are made there. The latest hair-brained scheme was announced by Deputy Communications Minister Pinky Kekan, who last…

Let’s use a sports analogy to understand President Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic recovery plan. It’s not the game plan that we should be most worried about (albeit it’s the same one, recycled with new words and loftier goals) but the players themselves. Any good coach can tell you the game plan is irrelevant if the players can’t play it. Looking at the current South African Cabinet, it doesn’t inspire many choices. In the communications ministry, we have a minister who has broken the law and been fined for lockdown breeches. Broken the law. And yet Stella Ndabeni-Abrahms is still in her…

In the week Facebook so proudly announced its integration of backend messaging between Messenger and Instagram, US lawmakers trumped that with a searing report suggesting breakups for Big Tech which has abused its monopoly position. It was schadenfreude for many Facebook critics who have long accused the world’s largest social media network of breaking the competition agreements it made when it bought Instagram in 2012 for $1bn and WhatsApp in 2014 for $19bn. Quite a difference two years makes, you might be inclined to observe. And you’d be perfectly right. We now know from Mark Zuckerberg’s emails – subpoenaed as…