August 17, 2026.

For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Halima Frost.

Making headlines:

Ramaphosa calls for common market in SADC to develop industries

Mavuso not confident in commitment of Eskom leadership to reforms

And, Zambia says it arrested opposition figures on night of elections

The 16 Southern African Development Community countries, with a combined population of nearly 400-million people, have abundant natural resources, a youthful population and the means to produce everything that its people need, says South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

SADC needs to create a dynamic common market in which countries trade. No country in the region can build an integrated power system, develop cross-border corridors, manage shared water resources or withstand the full force of climate change on its own, he said.

Southern Africa has abundant energy resources, minerals and land, skills, technology, industrial capabilities and strong financial institutions.

However, the region imports much of the goods and services it needs. Trade among SADC countries accounts for only about 20% of their combined total trade.

South Africa hosted the forty-sixth Summit of SADC, in eThekwini, KwaZulu-Natal, on August 17, starting the country’s turn as chair of SADC.

Business Leadership South Africa CEO Busisiwe Mavuso – who has had an ongoing public disagreement with Eskom’s chairperson Mteto Nyati over the creation, with the transmission assets, of an independent Transmission System Operator – says she does not have confidence that the current Eskom leadership is committed to government’s reforms.

Writing in her weekly newsletter, Mavuso slammed those who she described as “reform resisters”, taking particular aim at the Eskom board’s current approach to the unbundling of the TSO, as well as the National Union of Mineworkers’ legal challenge to the restructuring.

She argued that the board continued to foreground obstacles rather than solutions.

Eskom, which is highly indebted, values the grid assets at some R110-billion and, in December, proposed that the TSO be established without those assets, which it said should remain part of an Eskom subsidiary to avoid any potential default.

That position was overruled by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation Address in February, when he set up an Eskom Restructuring Task Team to assess ways of creating a TSO, with the assets.

In a report that the President subsequently endorsed, the task team confirmed the desirability and viability of creating a new State-owned entity with the transmission assets, triggering a second phase during which it would move to find implementation solutions.

Zambian police arrested several leading opposition figures on the night of national elections last week, accusing them of posing a threat to state security, the government said.

Votes were still being counted today from Thursday's presidential and parliamentary elections, with partial results showing President Hakainde Hichilema in the lead.

The election is widely seen as a test of whether Hichilema's economic gains since a pandemic-era debt crisis are enough to win him a second term in the major copper producer.

His main rival, opposition leader Brian Mundubile, said heavily armed personnel had raided his residence after the election in what he described as an attack on his life.

The government said in a statement released yesterday that Mundubile had been at the scene when 11 people were apprehended, and that shots had been fired from the premises at law enforcement agents, resulting in an exchange of fire.

It said individuals had been found "in possession of high-grade military weapons, ammunition and other materials for use in armed insurrection" and that they had been under surveillance for months.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today

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