702, Wednesday evening

Been on and then off again, and the subject of court disputes is now actually something that has been signed, settled. I'm not sure what we should actually call it. Let's welcome to 702 Drive Ferial Haffajee, Associate Editor at Daily Maverick, who's been following this story very closely indeed. Feral, very good afternoon to you, and thanks for making your time available on an extremely busy day. What do we know about the Joburg Mill?

No, John, that it was pushed through last night and surprised many of us when it popped up as a press release. If you read the press release, you'll see that it's really, really opaque. It says that an addendum to the agreement has been struck, and it doesn't say what that includes or how much has been agreed by the unions. What we do know is that one billion rand of the politically facilitated agreement has been paid for the

Year. This means adjustments to wage grades. It's different to the annual increase when about 5 billion rand was promised as part of the agreement which was negotiated by advocate Terry Motow. So the original settlement, I've got a number in front of me: 10.3 billion. Over three years. It's correct. Okay, so over three years, National Treasury has

Stepped in. I don't know if they've stepped in in a way that says we're going to stop this going ahead, but they've certainly made it clear Johannesburg doesn't have the money. Would this agreement be binding on the next administration? I assume it would. So I think this is going to be the big report, the big first reporting after the results come out. I do believe that agreements are binding on the next administration, which would explain why it was so quickly put through. You'll see many examples.

Of this, I think, emerging in the coming weeks. I don't think the Treasury is going to allow this because you would have seen that at the weekend, the Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana threatened us section I think 39 intervention if Johannesburg didn't come right, if it didn't start managing its finances properly. We don't always get flattering comments made about municipal workers when their work is discussed or when wages and protests.