The stories that interested our readers in 2025

History will probably list 2025 as a good year for SA. The government of national unity survived, the rand strengthened, the low oil price kept people happy, interest rates declined, food prices are not increasing at double digits anymore, and the stock exchange hit a few records.

Ignorance and/or denial of the pressing problems of high unemployment, high crime, low economic growth, international tensions and the uncertainty of elections in 2026 were pushed to the rear of the stove.

People focused on what affected them personally, gauging by the most popular stories on Moneyweb in 2025.

The headline that grabbed the attention of the most readers – The best medical aid in South Africa – showed that readers are concerned about medical care.

Unfortunately, the very first paragraph brought bad news.

“You cannot join the best medical aid in South Africa, which has practically unlimited benefits, because it’s a restricted scheme. Well, you can … but to do so, you need to be elected as a member of parliament, a member of a provincial legislature, or become a judge.

“Parmed, or the Parliamentary and Provincial Medical Scheme, was established in 1975 by an act of parliament. Initially, the scheme was only set up for members of parliament (MPs), but in 1976, an amendment was passed to include judges,” it said, adding that the rules were changed again in 1996 to include serving and retired provincial politicians, municipal councillors, magistrates and traditional leaders.

Other articles dealing with medical aid schemes also featured on the list of the best-read articles during the year, including Discovery Health Medical Scheme member loss continues and Two medical schemes fail to maintain prescribed solvency ratio.

WeBuyCars

The growth and listing of WeBuyCars, and complaints against it, had this company in the news just about every other month during 2025.

The car dealer’s unique approach of pushing high volumes – effectively making used cars a standardised commodity – made it the biggest used car dealer in SA.

It also attracted many complaints, largely from buyers questioning the accuracy of the Dekra vehicle inspections and reports.

Following a few articles about complaints, the top story about WeBuyCars (and one of the best read on Moneyweb in 2025) discussed that the National Consumer Commission (NCC) has received and considered 46 complaints against WeBuyCars in only nine months.

“NCC spokesperson Phetho Ntaba confirmed to Moneyweb that these consumers made various allegations about WeBuyCars, mainly alleging that it had supplied them with defective vehicles,” we reported.

Retirement

Another popular category of stories year after year are those that deal with retirement.

The top article on the subject in 2025 was written after a reader posed the question ‘How can I invest R1.3m to generate a monthly return of over R20 000?‘.

“I have R1.3 million available to invest. My initial thought was to purchase a car wash franchise, but this seems questionable due to the method of accounting. What would be the best investment approach to achieve a reliable monthly return of more than R20 000?” he asked.

Unfortunately, Nerina Dreyer, financial advisor at PSG Wealth, had bad news for the potential pensioner. “It’s important to be realistic and avoid taking excessive risks when deciding how to invest.

“Let’s start with a simple calculation. If you want to draw R20 000 per month, that works out to R240 000 per year. With R1.3 million available, you would be targeting a return of around 18.5% per year.

“While this is an understandable goal, it is a very ambitious expectation given current market conditions,” Dreyer added, noting that returns on most investment fall in the range of 8% to 12% per annum.

Spur and the meat plant

Interestingly, the dispute between JSE-listed Spur Corporation and the South African subsidiary of GPS Food Group was followed closely with two articles about the matter counting among the top 20 stories.

The first related that Spur was confident about the outcome of the multi-million-rand high court dispute, to the degree that it did not think it was necessary to make provision for an adverse outcome of the R167 million claim (and more).

Basically, its defence was that there was no formal contract with GPS Food to build a dedicated meat processing plant to supply Spur restaurants, with GPS arguing that the oral agreement is valid.

The parties agreed to refer the matter to arbitration, which Spur lost on one count – which was the second popular story about Spur on Moneyweb (Spur takes first blow in GPS Food damages dispute).

The matter is still not settled.

Tax

Another group of articles that stood out among those that were best read related to tax.

There was a long and very informative article about the South African Revenue Service (Sars) hitting an individual with a R30m tax bill because of the way he accounted for loan accounts.

Megan Langton and Mornay Bornmann from Tax Consulting South Africa said in the article the court reaffirmed that the burden of proof, as set out in Section 102(1) of the Tax Administration Act, lies squarely with the taxpayer.

“In this case, not only did the taxpayer fail to discharge the burden of proof, but his failure to testify also suggests that if he did, his testimony would elicit facts unfavourable to his case. Therefore, the court also ruled that drawing an adverse inference was warranted.”

Referring to the amount, the judgment reads: “The amounts are large. It called for an explanation from the taxpayer, but he did not come to give one [in the tax court].”

Then there was the matter of how tax affected those who took advantage of the new pension fund rules to withdraw money from their retirement savings.

The headline said it all: Two-pot: ‘Sars took it all’ say many claimants.

“Many South African retirement fund members who opted to withdraw money from their savings components under the two-pot retirement system were taken aback by the tax implications, according to a survey done by personal finance platform JustMoney,” Moneyweb writer Liesl Peyper reported.

“The survey participants felt the taxes imposed were ‘unfair’ as [Sars] ‘took it all’,” according to the article.

This surprise came despite extensive awareness campaigns in the media and via retirement funds’ communication channels. A substantial number of members seemed to not fully grasp the extent of the tax they would pay on their withdrawals.

Before the implementation of the two-pot system on 1 September 2024, fund members were warned that accessing funds from the savings pot is “a costly way” to get money, as withdrawals are taxed at a significantly higher marginal tax rate.

The question of whether taxpayers should blindly accept Sars’s auto-assessments of taxes came up too.

“With tax season starting on 7 July 2025, [Sars] will again issue auto-assessments to selected taxpayers. While accepting an auto-assessment may seem convenient, here are some important considerations before you accept,” warned Mahmood I Surty, senior lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand and a registered tax practitioner.

He said that the automatic assessment does not take into account donations to public benefit organisations, home office deductions, travel allowances or use of a company vehicle, use of personal assets for work and out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Another hot potato – the finance minister’s proposal to increase the value-added tax (Vat) rate in the 2025 budget – created a stir, as did our headline when reporting on the proposal: Calm down, raising Vat to 17% has its benefits.

Readers’ comments on the article were brutal, as was the public backlash against the proposal.

Two more stories about the Vat saga made it onto the list of the 20 most popular stories of year:

Tupperware returns to South Africa

An SAfm Market Update with Moneyweb interview with accompanying transcript about Tupperware returning to SA – and presumably Tupperware parties – proved popular.

TuppAfrica MD Ahmed Bull told host Duduzile Ramela: “We still have the opportunity to provide the hundreds of thousands associated with the business the opportunity to earn and put food on the table.”

However, readers’ comments about Tupperware were not flattering, with most saying there is already too much plastic in the country, and also that one can wash and reuse the plastic most food products come in.

Bullies

Articles where citizens felt that they were being bullied by authorities were well received too, ranging from tax cases and e-tolls to the new Aarto (Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act) system and unequal enforcement of township planning.

A Moneyweb@Midday podcast and transcript in which host Jeremy Maggs interviewed Carel Ballack, president of the Association for Renewable Energy Practitioners, was shared widely after Eskom suggested new regulations on rooftop solar systems.

“As South Africa grapples with energy challenges, many households and businesses have turned to solar power solutions. However, recent action by Eskom has raised concern within the renewable energy community,” said Maggs.

“In December 2024, you might remember, Eskom began visiting customers with grid-tied solar systems, demanding that additional equipment installations and new approvals [were] needed to ensure compliance, and they’ve warned of hefty fines for non-compliance.

“Eskom says that an unregistered grid-tied solar system is illegal even if they don’t feed electricity back into the grid. That doesn’t sound right.”

Ballack noted that the new rules could add as much as R30 000 to the installation cost of a solar system.

Eskom canned the idea a few months later after public outcry.

An article by Anathi Madubela revealing that the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality could arrest ratepayers if they drill boreholes without approval also caught the attention of many Moneyweb readers.

Read: CoJ: Illegal borehole drilling can lead to jail time

In the article, City of Johannesburg (CoJ) Public Safety councillor Mgcini Tshwaku said that drilling a borehole without approval is illegal, and anyone found wanting will be arrested, have their equipment confiscated, and face the full might of the law.

“This comes after drilling on private property caused soil and water to leak into the Gautrain tunnel, halting train services between Park Station and Rosebank,” wrote Madubela.

“According to the CoJ, prior to borehole drilling, a hydrogeological study must be conducted by a registered hydrogeologist. Additionally, a permit must be obtained, and all relevant stakeholders, including City Power, Johannesburg Water, Emergency Management Services and the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department, must be notified.”

The threat of jail time came as Gauteng suffered under water shortages, mainly due to municipal failures to maintain infrastructure.

Cape Town residents felt victimised too. In Long-time Cape Town home owners face forced sales, Liesl Peyper quoted city residents wo complained that the municipality is raising property taxes unfairly on the basis that property prices have increased sharply.

“The City of Cape Town’s proposed tariff reform, which introduces fixed charges for water and sanitation alongside a new city-wide cleaning tariff – all of which will be determined based on property value – will lead to municipal bill increases of more than 20% per month for owners of higher-valued properties,” Peyper reported

“Residents who live in properties valued above R2 million, many of whom are retired or earning a fixed income, say they will not be able to afford the aggressive hikes in tariffs that the city wants to implement from 1 July. The proposals have led to an outcry from ratepayer associations and individual home owners across the metro, including an online petition distributed by the Cape Town Collective Ratepayers’ Association that drew more than 1 000 signatures in a single day, according to a social media post.”

The story also elicited 46 comments from readers, and Cape Town officials promised a few weeks later to relook the issue.

Crooks

Moneyweb did its part to inform people of dubious investment schemes.

One of the largest involved tracing fake online videos to Banxso, which the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) later described as a “criminal enterprise”.

Moneyweb editor Ryk van Niekerk also unearthed that the same promoters tried to create a new scheme after Banxso failed, but both schemes were outlawed by the FSCA.

Readers were even more interested in the failure of nursery school franchise KleuterZone. A reader’s question, and complaints by others, led to a closer look at the promises of high returns by the founders (who quickly fled SA).

Court stops Bougas brother from selling R2.7m Audi became the best read article in the saga – and the fifth best read article on Moneyweb in 2025.

“The Western Cape High Court granted an urgent interdict on Friday, preventing John Bougas, KleuterZone founder and director Anthonie Bougas’s brother, from selling his luxury vehicle.

“Rikus Hartman, the provisional liquidator of KleuterZone Operations, brought the application, arguing that the vehicle should be preserved as part of the insolvent estate’s assets as it had been purchased with investor money,” the story read, noting that KleuterZone Operations was placed in provisional liquidation on 18 March 2025.

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