Investigations by Werksmans Attorneys on mismanagement at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) for the 2014/15 financial year have raised more red flags about security at the beleaguered state-owned entity. The leaked reports substantiate previous investigations by the Public Protector, Auditor General and National Treasury. They reveal that hundreds of millions of rands […]

Children in Powerline informal settlement were left without open land to play on after a massive land occupation in December. The children had to play on rubbish dumps or under power lines as the only municipal park is half a kilometre away and caters for hundreds of children from sections NU8 and NU10. To discourage […]

Fires continued to rage across the Southern Cape in South Africa on Tuesday, as firefighters battle against windy conditions that keep changing. In its latest update, the Garden Route District Municipality complimented the South African Police Service (SAPS) for being an asset. The municipality said SAPS “confirmed a lot of information and have been a […]

JOHANNESBURG – The South African central bank – the Reserve Bank – said on Tuesday that it has started the process of winding up VBS Mutual Bank, which was caught up in a corruption scandal earlier this year. A report commissioned by the Reserve Bank this month titled “The Great Bank Heist” found that R1.9 […]

A 50-year-old father was gunned down outside his son’s school in Green Point on Tuesday morning at 07h35. His eight-year-old son was injured in the incident and has been taken to hospital, said the South African Police Service (SAPS). According to local reports the man has been named as Advocate Peter Mihalik, who has represented […]

BEIJING – China unveiled new rules on Monday that would allow the use of rhino horn and tiger parts for some medical and cultural purposes, watering down a decades-old ban in a move conservation group WWF said could have “devastating consequences”. China’s State Council issued a notice replacing its 1993 ban on the trade of […]

CAPE TOWN – South African former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner FW de Klerk was discharged from a three-night hospital stay after recovering from a lung ailment, his foundation said on Monday. De Klerk, 82, was hospitalised over the weekend for treatment of pneumothorax, “an abnormal collection of air in the pleural space between […]

The Garden Route District Municipality has confirmed seven fatalities in Karatara, in the Knysna Municipality, in South Africa on Monday evening. The Municipality updated the figure from four to seven just after 20h00 on Monday evening. (The death toll was later reported at eight.) They were all killed in the same house that caught fire. […]

It’s becoming easier for South Africans living in the UK to travel home for a holiday, with new flights added from London to Johannesburg and Durban this week. With South Africa being a popular destination for holiday-makers from the UK, SA expats get to benefit with British Airways (BA) increasing their direct flights between London […]

New satellite data reveals the world’s largest air pollution hotspot is in South Africa – in Mpumalanga… which is home to a cluster of 12 coal-fired power plants, with a total capacity of 32 gigawatts owned and operated by Eskom. The data also revealed that millions of people in Johannesburg and Pretoria are also being […]

JOHANNESBURG – South African lender Nedbank said on Monday it would appoint Ernst & Young as joint external auditors in May 2019, becoming the latest firm to drop the scandal-hit KPMG’s local unit. The auditor’s South African unit has been under close scrutiny since 2017 over work done for a company owned by the Gupta […]

It is common cause that the performance of South Africa’s government, led by the African National Congress (ANC), has been worse than abysmal. Under former President Jacob Zuma, ANC functionaries pillaged numerous institutions of state. They enabled state owned institutions to be looted, mismanaged the provision of basic services and presided over an alarming downward […]

JOHANNESBURG – South African Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Sunday that efforts to clean up corruption in state-owned companies (SOCs) faced “dangerous” resistance which threatened the country’s sovereignty… and hinted that the Gupta family is behind this resistance. Gordhan, a former finance minister, has been tasked by President Cyril Ramaphosa with cleaning up […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s former finance minister Malusi Gigaba said on Sunday a private video was leaked after his phone was hacked, and he had faced blackmail threats over it when he headed the Treasury. Gigaba, now Home Affairs minister (again), was thrust into the finance post in March last year after former President Jacob […]

Namibia’s desert landscape got a makeover this week as magical water poured down from the heavens. In some parts over 100mm fell according to the Namibia Meteorological Service, flooding rivers (see video below) and finishing with radiant rainbows. Well known Gauteng-based publicist Georg Knoke, who grew up in Namibia, said on Facebook: “Magic in Sossusvlei – […]

CapeNature and SANCCOB Saves Seabirds successfully released 13 rescued and rehabilitated African penguins on Saturday at Stony Point penguin colony in Betty’s Bay, on the Overberg coast of South Africa’s Western Cape province. While the first bunch raced (or waddled) for freedom, watch below as a few stragglers needed to be coaxed into the water… […]

Several fires have raged in the Western Cape, South Africa, this week, claiming the life of one firefighter pilot and destroying at least 10 homes in the Southern Cape, and leaving thousands homeless in Cape Town informal settlements, as the region has been gripped by a heatwave… and tonight flames continue to burn in the […]

JOHANNESBURG – Former South African president and Nobel Peace Prize winner FW de Klerk has been hospitalised for a lung condition, but is recovering and is expected to be discharged next week, his foundation said on Saturday. De Klerk, 82, South Africa’s most recent white president, became Nobel laureate jointly with his successor, Nelson Mandela, […]

The future of Mapoyi Mthetho, the ‘unknown’ opera singer filmed singing outside a Bloubergstrand restaurant on Thursday, is looking a LOT brighter… thanks to Capetonian diner Nicolene Smith capturing the moment on film (see below), and to South Africans who made the video go global (and thanks to Mapoyi’s incredible talent of course!). At midday […]

Chinese business tycoon Jack Ma has three main pieces of advice for South Africa: improve the education system, invest in entrepreneurs and ensure clean governance. Speaking at the inaugural South Africa Investment Conference business dinner on Friday night, Ma said for any country to develop it has to pay attention to those three elements. Ma […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa used an investment summit on Friday to reassure investors that his government was committed to protecting property rights as it pursues plans to accelerate the pace of land redistribution. “We are committed as government to pursuing a comprehensive approach to land and agrarian reform which ensures transformation, […]

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s parliament has approved senior diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde as the country’s first female president, proceedings on state television showed, cementing another shift in the country’s political system from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Sahle-Work is at present U.N. under-secretary-general and special representative of the secretary general to the African Union. She replaces […]

It’s been a fantastic day for South Africa as local and international businesses have come to the inaugural South African Investment Conference bearing gifts in the form of investment commitments to the tune of R290 billion ($20 billion). “This R290 billion is what we have now in our hands and these are in addition to […]

South African businessman Andre Hanekom is still missing in Mozambique under mysterious circumstances. On Thursday his wife of 36 years, Francis, took to Facebook to urge people to sign a petition to the Government and Mozambique police to free him. The petition claims Hanekom, who had been living in Mozambique for 25 years, has been […]

CAPE TOWN – South African Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said on Thursday that the country had to act swiftly on its debt levels to avoid turning to the International Monetary Fund for help. “Whether or not you like the IMF, ideologically or practically, it doesn’t matter. When you get into a debt trap that’s where […]