JSE reaches new heights as rand strengthens
Image: Nicola Mawson / Independent Newspapers
The All Share index on the JSE on Friday recorded a week high level for a third consecutive week. The index improved over the week by 1.38% to a new record level of 97 128 points. For the first six months of the year the index gained 15.2%, increasing by 18.6% in the last quarter.
This despite the geo-political woes from the rampant Trump tariff spree, the Trump-Ramaphosa meeting in the US, the Israel-Iran conflict up to tension in the Government of National Unity.
All and all it seems that South Africa is isolated and far away from the Middle East fiasco, with the precious-metals bonanza of gold, platinum and palladium leading the appetite for investments in shares and bonds.
The Resources 10 index led the charge, gaining 2.6% last week, 24.5% over the last quarter and a massive 47.7% since the beginning of the year. The Rand exchange rate also continues to recover week by week.
In intra-trade last week, the currency improved to R17.50/$, R23.87/£ and R20.72/€. This is a 22 cents improvement against the Dollar, 44c appreciation against the Pound and 21c strengthening against the Euro.
Against the US dollar the Rand has improved by R1.09/ $ since the beginning of the year. The strong improvement in the Rand/$ last week and the return of the Brant oil price to levels much lower than $70 (R1 232) per barrel are likely to reverse the sudden strong increase in fuel prices at the beginning of August.
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After the first week of the new month calculating the over-recovering for petrol is around 20c per liter although the price for diesel remains under pressure with an under-recovering of 60c per liter. The US share market recovers strongly but lower interest rates are still in balance.
With in two weeks after President Donald Trump send in the US bombers to eliminate Iran's nuclear facilities, equity prices on Wall Street recovered quickly and sharply. During this time, the S&P 500 index gained 5.0% and with the 1.7% increase last week reached a new all-time high.
Although US bond yields have been moving lower over the past few weeks, there was a strong increase in new jobs of 147 000 in the non-farm job market in June. With the unemployment rate moving lower to 4.1% from 4.2% in May 2025, and expectations that the US core inflation rate will remain on 2.80%, the Federal Reserve may abstain yet again in lowering its bank rate during its July meeting. On Friday just after the jobs report, the odds of a cut at the Fed's July 28-29 meeting fell to 5% from an earlier 25% possibility.
Prospects for this coming week
Investors will await the release of the US Federal Open Market Committee meeting's minutes on Wednesday. The minutes will shed light and prospects for lowering the Federal Reserve's bank rate in months to come.
Domestically Statistics South Africa will publish the May manufacturing production data. It is expected that the annual manufacturing production decreased by 3.0% after a disappointing annual growth of -6.0% in April. The manufacturing sector suffered during the first quarter of 2025 with a negative growth rate of -2.0%, contributing -0.2 of a percentage point to the very week GDP growth of only 0.1%.
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Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ 'Without access to sufficient and affordable electricity, we expect that Mozal will be placed on care and maintenance at the end of the current agreement,' it said. Proctor said the primary stumbling block has been the electricity tariff. 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Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Another farmer said: 'I would like to know what criteria the Land Reform Department uses to award land. I have been applying for such a long time to no avail. I am a poultry and bee farmer, and I'm also a vegetable farmer. I have grown from five village chickens to thousands of broiler chickens. The challenge is that I am only using 2,700Sqm of land for residence and farming. 'I farm what I can with limited resources, but grow from there. I would really like a bigger piece of land. The main purpose is to grow at least 40,000 broilers per cycle and bring in goats for milk, and be able to grow the required feed myself.' Dr Lennox Mtshagi, president of the Black Farmers' Association of South Africa (BFASA), said they are fully aware of the frustration expressed by their members regarding the slow and often opaque process of accessing agricultural land. 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'We are lobbying for policy change to prioritise ownership models, establishing partnership frameworks with private landowners willing to lease or sell directly to black farmers, using legal channels to challenge unfair allocation practices, and launching a national land reform tracker to monitor DLRRD performance. 'BFASA believes that land reform success depends on partnerships. We propose a multi-stakeholder Land Reform Council with the government, private sector, and farmer organisations. Blended finance models where banks, government grants, and private equity co-fund land acquisition and development, and public-private training hubs to ensure land recipients have the skills to farm commercially,' Mtshagi said. He added that BFASA remains committed to ensuring that land reform is not a political slogan, but a lived reality for black farmers. 'Access to land is the foundation of food security, rural development, and economic transformation. Our position is clear: redistribution must be transparent, timely, and supportive of farmers' growth from subsistence to full commercial scale,' Mtshagi said. Linda Page, spokesperson for the Department of Land Reform and Rural Development, said there is a transparent process for applications for land, which begins with an advert published on the department's website and other platforms, including newspapers. She referred to the Beneficiary Selection and Land Allocation Policy, which lists key aspects, as prioritising specific previously disadvantaged groups, ensuring a fair and transparent process, the policy providing a standardised national land application system. The policy also seeks to ensure that selected beneficiaries have the necessary skills and capacity to maintain and utilise the allocated land productively, among others. On the land that is in the hands of the government, Page said: 'The 2.5 million hectares are already leased out to black farmers and individuals, in line with the policy mentioned above. Therefore, the land in question is already in the hands of black farmers and other black individuals, and it is being used. The department acquired this land through the Pro-active Land Acquisition Strategy, and as indicated, it is leased out for different land use purposes.' She added that this land is not merely acquired and held by the department; it is in use through leaseholds. In 1994, total farm land with title deeds, thus outside what the apartheid government set aside for black people, covered 77.58 million hectares of South Africa's total surface area of 122 million hectares. During his 2024 State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa said: 'Through redistribution, around 25% of farmland in our country is now owned by black South Africans, bringing us closer to achieving our target of 30% by 2030.' This gives a total of 19.3 million hectares or 24.9% of the total of all freehold farmland in South Africa, previously owned by white landowners, that has been restored, redistributed to black South Africans, or moved away to state ownership, according to agricultural experts from Stellenbosch University. Professor Johann Kirsten, the director of the Bureau for Economic Research at Stellenbosch University, said the issue of concern is that the state is now a major owner of agricultural land with more than 2.5 million hectares, which had been acquired by June 2023. This is through the Agricultural Land Holding Account Trading Entity, which acquires land and property under the Proactive Land Acquisition Scheme, implemented in 2006 to allow state ownership for programme lessees. 'Most of the roughly 2,500 beneficiaries have a 30-year lease agreement with the state. There are several farms where no agreement has been signed. The arrangement makes reference to the leasing of land. But there's no mention of the transfer or sale of land to beneficiaries,' he said. In a piece co-authored by Kirsten and Wandile Sihlobo, a senior fellow at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University, and published by The Conversation, they highlight that calls for the state to redistribute the 2.5 million hectares of land to black farmers have fallen on deaf ears, and black farmers continue to despair. 'The government has been slow to distribute the land it has acquired. 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