Take a walk {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? A YouTuber built a wheelchair with legs instead of wheels. It can climb stairs and navigate tough terrain, etc. It's a one-off built by strapping a chair to one of those Unitree robo-dogs, but the idea maybe has, well… legs. 🦿

In This Open Letter

This weekend (1 and 2 August 2026) is the final voter registration weekend before our local government elections on 4 November, but voter turnout is down drastically, so this local platform helps SA make sense of its politics…

With 508 parties to choose from and 28.7 million voters already on the voters' roll, the question is how many will actually turn out? The numbers say you're not gonna like the answer:

Why SA has stopped voting

You could argue many things, but the clearest number we found is that SA voters feel politically homeless. Half (50%) of SA voters say no party represents them at all.

Maybe it's too hard to understand what parties stand for: their manifestos are 100s of pages long and the IEC hasn't done much to educate voters (despite spending 294% more on elections in 2024 than in 1994). So a local founder took it into their own hands…

The platform making sense of SA's 508 parties

CivicLens is a free, nonpartisan website that puts South Africa's political system in one place, with info on every party, cabinet, budgets, our full elections history, constitution and more in plain language (no narrative, no spin, just verified facts).

Built by Kyle Brijder (also founder of Bag Drop), a Cape Town volunteer auxiliary law enforcement inspector, who put it together in his spare time using AI app-building tools after he got frustrated with seeing how every political source comes with its own angle and agenda.

A standout feature is the policy tracker that holds parties to their word: you promised that before the election, here's how far it got. As Kyle says: "You should look at political parties the way you'd look at any service provider. If your internet provider isn't delivering, you go to someone else."

What we like about it is that it does one hard thing well: it takes a system almost designed to confuse and makes it legible without ever telling you what to think.

We're watching this space…

Have your say…

Somewhere along the line, "we raised" became the scoreboard. But most great businesses never take a cent of venture capital.

That's why Sizwe Nxumalo from 3 Capital Ventures makes the case for building the best version of what you actually have: fund growth from profit, stay in control, and skip the treadmill entirely. He also gets into why, in South Africa, venture-scale software is almost always B2B.

🗺️ A Google World-First. SA's Aura (the software behind Namola, FNB's GuardMe and the Gauteng e-Panic app) is the first emergency response provider authorised to embed Google Maps navigation straight into its dispatch stack across SA, Kenya, the UK and US. Noice.

☀️ Solar That Floats. Boplaas 1743 Landgoed, SA's oldest family business, has the country's first commercial floating solar array on a citrus farm dam near Ceres. Very cool, and we bet the structure creates safe breeding for fish and animals. Would love to see more of this in SA.

📺 TV Licences On Notice. The SABC is planning to scrap TV licences entirely, with the non-payment rate now at 85% (up from 72% in 2018) and a draft funding-model bill due in parliament by the 2028 financial year. Twenty years late, but nice to see someone finally admit the model is dead.

📞 WhatsApp Goes Desk. WhatsApp is rolling out five new calling features: web calling with screen sharing (free, encrypted, no time limits, no download), call transfer between devices, waiting rooms, QuickHD and noise suppression. Sounds lekka, and we can't help but think these move it closer into the online meetings space.

🌍 Taking SA Companies Global. Seeing how hard it is for SA founders to take companies global, Dommisse Attorneys worked with the SA SME Fund, SAVCA and Endeavor to create an open-source framework to establish your IP offshore called IP Strategy Flow.*

⚙️ Engineers, Not Developers. From connected agricultural platforms to fintech to SA's most-used tax assistant, Octoco builds across hardware, software and embedded systems. And their fractional CTO service gets you senior technical leadership without the full-time cost.*

* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.

Yesterday, we showed you OfferZen's technical skills assessment, asking whether a "developer" has ever bluffed you. Half of you found out the hard way, long after they'd already gone…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🕵️ Never, I ask to see the actual commits (25%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🫠 Yes, and I only found out after they left (50%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👨‍👩‍👦 Define "developer". I hired my nephew (25%)

Small sample, brutal result. Nobody's checking the commits until it's already too late. 🕵️

🛠️ Senior OutSystems Developer

🔌 Intermediate Backend Developer

🧪 QA/Test Engineer

☕ Snr Java Spring Boot

👥 .Net Team Lead

Faith in the Workplace, 4 Aug, Pretoria: Ashburton's founding CEO and Ogilvy SA's group MD on leading with conviction at the top. Get tickets

Work Rewired: Hiring, Skills and Careers in the AI Economy, 13 Aug, Cape Town: What future-ready talent actually looks like when CVs stop being the signal. Register free

The Lekker Network Mauritius Wine Tasting, 18 Aug, Mauritius: Klein Welmoed's winemaker pours, Carrick's founder talks, and the room does the rest. Join here

Powered by Radi. Want your business event in front of 36,000 The Open Letter readers? Host it on Radi, and it lands here.

🎲 Tool to Try: Game mAIster turns leading AI models into responsive Game Masters for RPG adventures like D&D.

⛵ That's Interesting: In November 1872, the ghost ship Mary Celeste was found adrift in the Atlantic, completely seaworthy, with six months of provisions aboard, and all 10 people on board vanished without a trace.

🏎️ Next Level: Did you know F1 drivers have insane neck strength? See how it compares to normal people.

🏭 Wow Site: Climate Villains shows you the world's most polluting companies, countries and facilities.

Eek!… our beloved Cape Town startup is basically out of runway. They’re not a unicorn (yet). What will happen now? Find out next Friday…

Got a favourite? Meet all the South of Series A characters here.

☝ Send this to a friend you'd build a startup with. 🦄