A diamond found in South African in 2014, the Cullinan Dream, has become the most expensive Fancy Intense blue diamond sold at auction, according to Christie’s. The diamond sold in New York this week for $25,365,000. In the audience was Mark Cullinan, an international jewelry dealer and the great-grandson of Sir Thomas Cullinan, who discovered the Cullinan […]

The MyCiti bus service in Cape Town has launched a free WFfi service on a number of its buses, and will continue the rollout gradually. The programme will begin on Monday. MyCiti said in a statement on Thursday the pilot on-board wifi offering will provide each passenger on a number of buses in the city centre with 50MB of data […]

A veritable who’s who of South African politics were at The Gathering in Midrand on Friday, organised by Nando’s and the Daily Maverick. The focus was on the municipal elections, and speakers included everyone from three Joburg mayoral candidates to finance minister Pravin Gordhan to the EFF’s Julius Malema – who, going by the coverage he got, had […]

More than five months after KwaZulu-Natal realtor Penny Sparrow hit world headlines for posting a racist remark on Facebook about the black people on the beach over the festive season, she has been ordered to pay R150,000 to the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation. In her post Sparrow compared the beachgoers to monkeys, unleashing a […]

Working on Fire, the South African group whose team of 281 firefighters went to help fight wildfires in Canada, said on Friday it was “extremely disappointed” with the turn of events this week when its team refused to work for two days over a pay dispute, which then “escalated into an international incident”. “To have a […]

The premier of the Canadian province of Alberta has stepped into the fray over how much 281 South African firefighters there are being paid to fight forest blazes, while the team’s South African managers are apparently on their way to demobilise the men and women who have refused to work for two days. The premier, Rachel […]

After almost 40 years, the days may be numbered for Cape Town’s highway to nowhere. Mayor Patricia de Lille reportedly told a press conference last week that plans are in motion to join the so-called Unfinished Bridge near the V&A Waterfront to the N1. De Lille said plans would be announced later in June. In the […]

One South African airline’s loss is another African airline’s very valuable gain, it seems. Mango, the low-cost sister airline to South African Airways, is losing its CEO Nico Bezuidenhout, who many credit with the airline’s success while SAA stumbles from crisis to crisis. He is moving to the six-year-old African low-cost carrier fastjet, where he will also be CEO. […]

A team from South Africa is heading to Canada to clear up the confusion over the wages of almost 300 SA firefighters who arrived in Canada a week ago but refused to go to work on Wednesday because of a dispute over wages. It was a very different scene in Alberta from the one in late May […]

A guide from the tour group Pelican Point Kayaking in the Walvis Bay area of Namibia came across a stranded baby dolphin during one of their tours, and although he thought it would not survive, he carried it back to the water, only to see it come to life suddenly and dart off into the waves. The […]

After recently banning the footage of violent protests on SABC, it appears that the South African national broadcaster’s COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng has now also banned the reading of newspaper headlines on all SABC radio stations, a practice that is common around the world. The Democratic Alliance (DA) said in a statement that they have been “reliably […]

If you’ve ever wondered how much a member of parliament in South Africa makes a month, or which MPs work hardest for their money, a new breakdown of the figures sets it all out – in hundreds of thousands of rands, cents and hours. The lists, which were released Wednesday by Africa Check and are based […]

In a joint statement Wednesday from SA Rugby and the ANC Youth League it was confirmed that plans to disrupt Springbok Test matches have been cancelled, as a result of “positive engagements between the two bodies”. ANC Youth League Secretary General Njabulo Nzuza said that although rugby still had much work to do, his organisation had […]

Following the decisions by ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s over the past weeks to not downgrade South Africa to junk status, the third important ratings agency Fitch today followed suit. The rand, which has rollercoastered over the last five months, reaching a low of almost R18 to the dollar in January, firmed even […]

The security cluster of the South African government met on Wednesday to discuss a warning by the United States that shopping malls in Johannesburg and Cape Town could be a target for Islamic militants during Ramadan. In a statement, the presidency said it had “noted the security alert that the United States government has issued to its […]

Mobile apps that allows visitors to national parks to share information on exciting animal sightings are resulting in rude, lawless and dangerous behaviour that has led to road kills, according to South African National Parks (SANParks)… and legal channels are being sought to curtail the use of these apps. In a press statement today, SANParks said the […]

On Friday two cyclists wheeled into Cape Town after a 19,000-kilometre trip from London across Africa, while a South African filmmaker readied to finish his bike trip across the US to raise funds for his next feature film. The journey from the UK by Emily Conrad-Pickles and James Davis (pictured above), done under the name london2capetown, was in support […]

South Africa’s CSIR has unveiled the fastest computer in Africa, which has been named Lengau, the Setswana for cheetah, it was announced on Tuesday. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s Centre for High Performance Computing showed off the petaflops (PFLOPs) machine in Cape Town. “This is a supercomputer with processing speed capable of a thousand-trillion […]

Two of South Africa’s best-known actors, Marius Weyers and Sandra Prinsloo, who were seen around the world in the movie “The Gods Must be Crazy”, have teamed up again for a new thriller that is being released in July. The two, who have become sort of acting royalty, have been acting together for a long time, at […]

Pretoria – The number of people that received services from municipalities increased between 2014 and 2015, says Statistics South Africa (Stats SA). Stats SA on Tuesday released the results of the Non-Financial Census of Municipalities (NMCF) for the year ended June 2015. The NFCM measures selected aspects of service delivery, including water, electricity, solid waste […]

A fire has torn down one of Durban’s largest churches. In a message on social media late Tuesday, the eThekwini Municipality said: “A vicious fire has ripped through the popular Durban Christian Centre at Buro Crescent in Durban this evening.” (See Update below.) The municipality said that Durban’s Fire and Emergency teams had done a sterling job and that, […]

Judging by the looks on the faces of President Jacob Zuma and Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan, there’s a lot to smile about regarding the state of South Africa’s economy. The two politicians, and their teams, met today to discuss the economy. The Presidency’s office released these photos (on this page) of the meeting. The South […]

Former premier of Mpumalanga – and still an African National Congress member – Mathews Phosa has said in a wide-ranging interview that corruption is systemic in the ANC. “It’s become systemic in municipal government, provincial government, national government,” said Phosa, one of the few high-profile ANC members to repeatedly criticise the party in public. He was talking to […]

The possibility of a direct air link between the United States and Cape Town seems to be hotting up after discussions between key players, according to news reports on Monday. The city in the US most mentioned in reports for a direct flight to Cape Town seems to be Miami, Florida, which is on the east coast […]

A new six-part mini-series based on the life of Nelson Mandela and starring an international and South African cast has started shooting in Johannesburg. The cast for the BET series “Madiba”, which includes American Laurence Fishburne (the “Matrix” series, “Contagion”, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”) as Mandela and Orlando Jones as Oliver Tambo, will also showcase […]