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 […]

Amongst the more depressing aspects of Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s maiden budget speech to the South African parliament on Wednesday (details here), there were some highlights… Sanitary pads are to be added to VAT free items which will come as welcome news to over half the population! Sanitary pads – along with bread flour and […]

Tributes have poured in for South African firefighting pilot, Nico Heyns (65), who lost his life in the line of duty on Tuesday in Vermaaklikheid, in the southern Cape. Early on Thursday evening, Working on Fire posted the following moving video tribute to a man who was loved and respected by all who knew and worked […]

Europe made a step forward in the fight against plastic on Wednesday with a move to ban popular throw-away plastic items like straws and cotton buds… and a greater burden to be placed on manufacturers to recycle; all in a bid to help clear up ocean pollution. Under the proposal by European Union (EU) lawmakers […]

Hip-Hop legend, Jabulani “HHP” Tsambo has sadly passed away on Wednesday afternoon. Details surrounding the veteran’s death are still sketchy at this stage, although he was known to have been suffering from depression for some time. ‘Jabba’ had spoken honestly in interviews about his battle, and had told The Sowetan in 2016 that he had attempted suicide […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s rand weakened more than 1 percent on Wednesday after new Finance Minister Tito Mboweni forecast wider deficits and slower growth in his maiden budget speech. At 1247 GMT, the rand traded at 14.4200 versus the dollar, 1.1 percent weaker on the day. Mboweni delivered the medium term budget to parliament as […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s state pension fund and a local black investment firm have bought a majority stake in Africa’s biggest cattle company for R5.2 billion. The Public Investment Corp. (PIC), Africa’s largest investment fund and the biggest investor in South Africa’s economy, said on Tuesday it had bought a majority share in Karan Beef […]

JOHANNESBURG  – South Africa’s biggest supermarket chain, Shoprite, said on Tuesday it would pay customers for reusing its newly introduced recyclable bag… as it joined domestic rivals in efforts to curb plastic pollution. Supermarkets have come under increased pressure to cut their use of plastic as images of littered oceans and beaches become commonplace, shocking […]