A bad week for Astral Foods CEO Chris Schutte

A good week for Javier Milei

Even in a world of Trumpian politics, Javier Milei is an iconoclastic oddity. A month ago the 53-year-old former economist, footballer, TV pundit and rock star was laughed off as just another eccentric politician famous for a 1960s hairstyle (like another former outsider further north), but now he’s Argentina’s next president. Milei’s landslide win owes much to a wave of political anger in Argentina against the entire establishment. In a Catholic country that is also football’s world champion, he dared to call the Pope an “imbecile” and to prefer Pele of Brazil to Argentina’s own Maradona.

A bad week for Chris Schutte

Chris Schutte runs a business where the upkeep is hardly chicken feed. Astral Foods is the country’s biggest poultry producer and has suffered from the inefficiencies of local government at its main factory in Standerton, power cuts and, more recently, the outbreak of bird flu. This week the CEO reported the company’s first loss in its 23-year history. All of the above has led to R2.1bn in added costs. Schutte also had more bad news: water, “like electricity”, will be South Africa’s next challenge. He should know, having coughed up nearly R200m to ensure the chickens don’t die of thirst.