JOHANNESBURG – President Cyril Ramaphosa said today that South Africa could not let the economy be held back by the US-China trade war, and referred directly to the recent controversial developments around the Chinese company Huawei. “This standoff between China and the US where the technology company Huawei is being used as victim because of […]

A 21-year-old from Durban, South Africa, was the youngest out of 120 entrepreneurs named by Forbes Africa in its latest Top 30 Under 30 awards. Avthar Aniruth won in the business category. An innovative, self-taught 21-year-old, Aniruth is founder of Epic Motion Pictures and Audience Networks. “My obsession with making videos, prompted me to learn […]

STOCKHOLM – South Africa’s Naspers is further extending its global reach after securing 30 million euros ($34 million) in a fundraising effort led by itself and EQT, both existing investors in the European startup Dott, to launch an electric bike-hiring business and roll out new generations of its electric scooters. Naspers, which describes itself as […]

South African Reserve Bank (SARB) expects to sell its 50% stake in African Bank in a year or two, the central bank’s deputy governor said on Thursday. African Bank was placed under SARB control after nearly collapsing in 2014 due to the weight of bad loans. The bank was hived off from African Bank Investments Ltd (Abil) when […]

The man whose name was synonymous with the success of Mango, the low-cost airline wholly owned by South African Airways, is to take over the CEO post again after leaving three years ago. Nico Bezuidenhout, who helped found Mango in 2006, led the upstart airline until 2016, during which time he also served two short […]

JOHANNESBURG – The South African government is weighing up additional options to support Eskom, including swapping the state power firm’s debt for government bonds and moving it to a special purpose vehicle, a senior official said. Discussions are at an early stage, and it is not yet clear which option will be chosen to help […]

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has warned tax dodgers they will face prosecution and other dire consequences for not submitting returns or defrauding the system. The warning was fired by SARS Commissioner Edward Kieswetter during the opening of the 2019 tax season in Pretoria on Monday morning. From 1 July 2019 until 1 December […]

Billions in mining royalties intended to uplift poor communities are potentially being squandered, stolen or diverted due to in-fighting and maladministration of these funds. That’s the conclusion of Mmashudu Masutha and Deborah Mutemwa-Tumbo, authors of Corruption Watch’s Mining Royalties Research Report 2018, which examined communities in Limpopo and North West provinces and found that the payment […]

The world’s a sorry mess. How do thoughtful people make sense of it all? David Everatt, Head of the Wits School of Governance in Johannesburg, explains why the book The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by American author and historian Timothy Snyder is a good place to start. If there’s one book to help […]

Scrapyard innovator to Netflix hero, William Kamkwamba inspired social trailblazers at a week-long innovation get-together that has just ended in Durban, and encouraged those who had moved abroad to come back to help Africa with their inventions. Kamkwamba has been inventing since he was a child in Malawi when he gained global attention for building […]

President Cyril Ramaphosa has responded to a notice issued by the Public Protector regarding an investigation into his alleged violations of the Executive Ethics Code. The investigation relates to a payment of R500 000 from Bosasa CEO Gavin Watson to the President’s election campaign for the ANC presidency. At the end of May 2019 the […]

JOHANNESBURG – Last year, gin consumption in South Africa grew by an astonishing 50 percent, to half a pint for every man, woman and child. No wonder that distilleries are mushrooming, trying to give a colonial tipple a distinctive flavour of the fynbos. If the British made use of the freely available local juniper berries […]

Google on Friday announced a new subsea cable dubbed “Equiano” that will connect Africa with Europe – starting with South Africa and Portugal, as it boosts its cloud computing infrastructure. Equiano, fully funded by Alphabet Inc’s Google, is the company’s third private international cable. The search engine giant, which has invested $47 billion in improving […]

Throughout the world, people who follow politics are fixating on leaders. South Africa follows the trend and so President Cyril Ramaphosa has become an obsession. Ramaphosa, of course, replaced Jacob Zuma, who was associated with patronage politics and “state capture”, handing over public power to (wealthy) private people. Ramaphosa’s presidency was greeted with brief enthusiasm […]

Increased foreign investment in South Africa will be high on the agenda when President Cyril Ramaphosa joins other international leaders for the annual G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, tomorrow and on Saturday. It is the G20’s twentieth anniversary. In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Presidency said South Africa would try secure financial and other […]

Twenty-six police officers in South Africa have been killed since the beginning of 2019, and the government has pledged to take action to find the guilty parties and bring them to justice. Nine people have already been given life sentences for these crimes. Addressing a post-Cabinet media briefing in Pretoria on Thursday, Minister in the […]

Daniel Mminele will retire as deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank at the end of the month after 10 years in the job, the Reserve Bank said on Thursday, making him the third member of its policy committee to quit the regulator recently. Mminele’s retirement follows the departure of fellow deputy governor Francois […]

The delivery of life saving blood has been taken to new heights by the South African National Blood Service (SANBS) with the launch a new drone blood delivery service. Launched in May, the Tron Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) drone, features a wing design suited for maximum efficiency and allows for long travel time with minimal […]

Wine is a massively confusing and intimidating subject for many who drink it even on a fairly regular basis. Can you imagine what it’s like for the millions of South Africans whose culture doesn’t include wine – or didn’t, for decades – and for whom the very concept of fermented grape juice is unheard of? […]

SABRIC, the South African Banking Risk Information Centre, on behalf of the banking industry has released its annual crime stats for 2018. “We are concerned about some of the increases, which clearly reflect that criminals will take every opportunity to get their hands on bank customers’ money,” says SABRIC CEO, Kalyani Pillay. Combined gross card […]

Contrary to popular belief, more South Africans are returning home than public perception. When SAPeople published a blog recently from an expat who was moving with her young family back to SA after several years in the UK, there was an outcry. How could she do such a thing? But it turns out – according […]

Competition is stiff between the men who push trolleys for vendors in the Cape Town city centre. Just before 7am Malk Gabriel is wading through peak-hour traffic in the Cape Town city centre, pushing a heavily-laden trolley to an informal stall. While making his way from a storeroom in Caledon Street to the Grand Parade, […]

African countries running up debt they won’t be able to pay back – including to China – should not expect to be bailed out by western-sponsored debt relief, the United States’ top Africa diplomat warned. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank began the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative in 1996 to help the […]

In an April 2019 episode of the Money Show on talk radio 702, host Bruce Whitfield explored why South Africa’s economy was “in trouble”. “Brain drain” – the long-term departure of skilled people from a country – was part of the discussion. “For every one professional immigrating to South Africa, eight professionals are leaving our shores,” said Johannes Wessels, a guest […]

South Africa’s Reserve Bank will probably cut interest rates next month or in September to boost the country’s economy, a Reuters poll found on Friday. A median forecast from 24 economists, polled this week, suggests the economy will grow 0.6% this year, slower than last year’s 0.8% and weaker than the 1.1% predicted in a […]