JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s new Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said on Thursday that struggling state-run South African Airways (SAA) should be closed down, adding however that decisions over the future of the state carrier were not under his remit. SAA, which has not generated a profit since 2011, survives on state guarantees and is regularly […]

JOHANNESBURG – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has fired the suspended head of the South African Revenue Service (SARS) Tom Moyane, the Business Day newspaper reported on Thursday, citing president spokeswoman Khusela Diko. Judge Robert Nugent, who is heading an inquiry into Moyane, had recommended the suspended tax chief should be removed from office for […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africans overwhelmingly support changing the constitution to allow land to be expropriated without compensation, parliament said on Thursday, announcing the findings of a draft report that followed public hearings on the issue. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress has made the acceleration of land redistribution a key issue ahead of 2019 […]

With heavy hearts, the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital announced Thursday morning that the baby pangolin – named Menina – that they were trying so desperately to save with a world first technique, has sadly passed away. “We’ve spent just over a week fighting for a baby pangolin that barely stood a chance due to the […]

The South African Government says it has welcomed the decision by South Sudan President Salva Kiir to pardon death-sentenced South African William Endley. Endley, a former South African National Defence Force (SANDF) colonel, was in February sentenced to death for espionage and conspiring to overthrow the government. He was sentenced along co-accused, James Gatdet, a […]

A top-level police investigation into allegations of a paedophile ring – involving senior members of the apartheid-era National Party government, including former Defence Minister Magnus Malan  – is underway. The allegations are contained in the book The Lost Boys of Bird Island, written by former policeman Mark Minnie – who died in mysterious circumstances just a […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba should be disciplined for lying under oath about the wealthy Oppenheimer family’s attempt to open a private airport immigration facility, the country’s official anti-corruption watchdog – the Public Protector – said on Wednesday. This is the latest setback for Gigaba, who said on Sunday that he […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s biggest insurer Sanlam Ltd announced a series of deals on Wednesday to meet so-called affirmative action rules, including the sale of a 5 percent stake to black investors and staff for up to R8.6 billion ($583 million). Companies in South Africa have to meet quotas on black ownership, employment and procurement […]

Hydrologists from the Department of Water and Sanitation say the country will not experience drought over the next three months, even though below normal rains are forecasted. The experts met in Tshwane recently – as they do annually – to discuss their state of preparedness for floods during the rainy season. “The country will definitely […]

Home Affairs is once more embroiled in a legal battle. On 21 September court papers were filed against the Minister and Director General for declaring a visa application by a Zimbabwean child fraudulent and banning him for five years from returning to South Africa. As a result of the department’s action, Wadzanai Bello has been […]

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 – […]