The City of Cape Town is considering treating up to 39-million litres of essentially raw sewage pumped out to sea daily via three marine outfalls, the first of which was built 122 years ago. The City of Cape Town’s permits to discharge sewage at three marine outfalls, two of them in Marine Protected Areas, have […]

At the Tourism Portfolio Committee today, it was revealed that the three South African Tourism Board members that replaced those who recently resigned have been irregularly appointed by the Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu. “By her own admission, the three resignations were submitted at the beginning of February on a Wednesday and she replaced the resigned Board […]

South Africa is set to have a new deputy president in Paul Shipokosa Mashatile, the deputy president of the governing African National Congress (ANC). He’ll replace the incumbent, David Mabuza, who announced he would step down. Who is Mashatile and what does he bring to the position? Mashatile (61) is a veteran politician from the […]

The South African government is to challenge a Pretoria High Court order that directs Home Affairs to grant asylum to 22 asylum seekers from Afghanistan. Home Affairs minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi blames an American NGO – The Lifeline Foundation – for the High Court’s ruling, and says the NGO is trying to undermine South Africa’s […]

South Africa’s electricity utility Eskom has made it clear that “load shedding” – rolling scheduled power cuts – isn’t going to end any time soon. This reality, and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement during his annual state of the nation speech on 9 February 2023 that tax incentives for solar power use are imminent, means that […]

Eskom has announced that Stage 6 load shedding will be implemented until further notice. This as the power utility has buckled under the pressure of the breakdown of some eight power generation units at power stations and coal supply challenges. “Since Sunday afternoon, a generating unit each at Arnot, Hendrina, Lethabo and Majuba [power stations] […]

Eskom will ramp up load shedding to Stage 6, on Sunday evening from 8 pm the power utility confirmed. This was after Eskom on Saturday warned of the possibility. In a statement, the power utility said: “Stage 4 load shedding will continue to be implemented until further notice while Stage 6 will be implemented at […]

Here’s what’s coming up on Carte Blanche this week. You can watch the show on Sunday 19 February in South Africa on DStv Now OR stream it overseas in most countries on Showmax from Tuesday 21 February if you’re abroad. Ella’s Triumph In 1943, at the height of Germany’s occupation of Poland during the Second World War, […]

The Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town has won a significant victory against the Minister of Home Affairs in the Western Cape High Court, which has declared sections of the Refugees Act unconstitutional. Western Cape High Court Deputy Judge President Patricia Goliath has declared sections of the Refugees Act unconstitutional. Asylum seekers who do not renew […]

President Cyril Ramaphosa says the proposed Minister of Electricity will assume “full responsibility for overseeing all aspects of the electricity crisis response” and will drive the action of the National Energy Crisis Committee to end load shedding “as a matter of urgency”. The President was replying to the debate on the State of the Nation […]

President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to announce the changes to his cabinet after the Minister of Finance delivers his budget speech on Wednesday, 22 February. Ramaphosa is also likely to reveal who will be the Minister of Electricity. Members of the African National Congress (ANC) 27-member National Working Committee (NWC) were reportedly informed of Ramaphosa’s […]

Cybercrime, problems verifying bank details, interrupted connections: on Wednesday Parliament heard a litany of reasons why payments of the R350 Social Relief of Distress grant are erratic. Between 7.4 and 7.8 million people are approved for the R350 grant. However, only 85% of them are being paid. During a parliamentary briefing on Wednesday, SASSA said […]

South Africa’s annual consumer price inflation (CPI) dropped to 6.9% in January 2023, down from 7.2% in December 2022, Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke has revealed. This was the third consecutive month in which the CPI recorded a decrease. In a note on the statistical release published on Wednesday, Maluleke said the CPI decreased by 0.1% month-on-month […]

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola promised that more will be done to protect whistleblowers who expose corruption. This is a welcome announcement from Lamola, whose former law firm has in the past represented the corruption-ridden National Lotteries Commission against two whistleblowers in its ranks. Sello Qhina and Mzukisi Makhatse were fired for exposing corruption at the NLC. Addressing […]

The Democratic Alliance (DA) will be heading to the Supreme Court of Appeal on 23 February to continue – and for many South Africans abroad, hopefully win – its legal battle with Home Affairs concerning thousands of South Africans who have inadvertently lost their SA citizenship. Over the past few years SAPeople has been inundated […]

The National Lotteries Commission (NLC) has introduced stringent new protocols for the allocation of grant funding, including the establishment of a new division to prevent the rampant corruption that has overwhelmed the organisation in recent years. The NLC’s new board has introduced a number of measures to prevent corruption, including establishing a new anti-corruption division. […]

Government has declared a national state of disaster to enable an intensive, coordinated response to the impact of floods that are affecting Mpumalanga, the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, the Northern Cape and North West provinces. The declaration, made in terms of the Disaster Management Act of 2002, was on Monday gazetted by Cooperative Governance […]

Eskom’s financial reports from December 2022, read by candlelight as they may have been, paint a picture that may surprise. The embattled utility has been able to bring its debt burden down to about R400-billion, from a peak well over R500-billion in 2020. It has trimmed its other liabilities enough to bring its losses down […]

Here’s what’s coming up on Carte Blanche this week. You can watch the show on Sunday 12 February in South Africa on DStv Now OR stream it overseas in most countries on Showmax from Tuesday 14 February if you’re abroad. Loving with Convict(ion) A series of telephone encounters with a kind stranger leads a woman to love. […]

South Africa’s nascent social housing sector is facing systemic struggles. Rising construction costs, slow release of land, and insufficient grant funding are compromising the sector’s ability to deliver new units at the pace and scale needed. Social housing is the key to moving beyond apartheid urban planning, but it is faced with myriad challenges. GroundUp […]

President Cyril Ramaphosa says government is working on mechanisms to improve protection for those who blow the whistle on corruption. “We are working to capacitate the Witness Protection Unit and will introduce amendments to the Protected Disclosures Act and Witness Protection Act to strengthen protection for whistleblowers,” he said on Thursday. Delivering the State of […]

The DA has already briefed its lawyers to challenge in court tonight’s announcement of a National State of Disaster in South Africa. DA leader John Steenhuisen said in a statement on Thursday night: “In the absence of any real solutions to the permanent loadshedding crisis created by the ANC, President Cyril Ramaphosa during his SONA […]

OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, has taken the world by storm and quickly reached 100 million global users between its launch on 30 November and late January 2023. It is the fastest-growing consumer application. CHATGPT TALKS TO US ChatGPT is an advanced language model. It uses cutting-edge machine-learning techniques to generate human-like text based on the input […]

All eyes will be on President Cyril Ramaphosa this evening as he takes to the podium to outline government’s programme of action through his 2023 State of the Nation Address (SONA) at the Cape Town City Hall. UPDATE Thurs 9 Feb, 20h30: President Ramaphosa has announced that load shedding has been declared a national State of Disaster. […]

With the State of the National Address (SONA 2023) taking place later today, Thursday, 9 February, Members of Parliament (MPs) have been asked to DRESS DOWN and respect ordinary South Africans. SONA 2023 FASHION DISRESPECT TO SA CITIZENS Activist Lorenzo Davids took to Twitter to make the appeal to politicians who have turned the SONA into a glittering […]