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 […]

A multi-stakeholder group consisting of unions, political parties and other civil society movements has threatened to “go to court on Friday” if President Cyril Ramaphosa declares a national State of Disaster in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday, 9 February. UPDATE Thurs 9 Feb, 20h30: President Ramaphosa has announced that loadshedding has […]

The African National Congress (ANC) Parliamentary Caucus has announced which members will be sworn in as Members of Parliament (MPs). The party also thanked those who are vacating their positions. OUTGOING MPS THANKED BY PARTY The ANC thanked four MPs who tendered their resignations last week, including Tshilidzi Munyai, Mervyn Dirks, Masefako Clarah Dikgale and […]

A confidential internal poll showed that the ANC’s support dropped to below 40% last week, according to a newspaper report. The country’s leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), said the results show that “massive change” is happening in South Africa. INTERNAL POLL SHOWS DROP IN ANC SUPPORT City Press reported that its sister publication, the […]

The Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) has welcomed about 6,000 crime prevention wardens in an effort to augment crime-fighting efforts made by SAPS and Metropolitan Police Departments. The 6000 recruits – who are all young – will undergo at least three months of training before being deployed to 361 wards in the province including townships, informal […]

In a ground-breaking judgment handed down yesterday by the Johannesburg High Court, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has won its long-running battle to expose the complete records of the ANC’s national cadre deployment committee’s role in the corruption, capture and collapse of South Africa’s public sector. South Africans will now for the very first time be able […]

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has invited South Africans to make inputs on what they would like to see reflected in the upcoming National Budget Speech. In a statement on Wednesday, the Ministry of Finance said Godongwana would deliver the National Budget Speech on 22 February 2023. “As usual, the budget allocation always aims to strike […]

South Africans have been battered by power shortages for several years. These have worsened to the point that towards the end of 2022 the country’s electricity utility, Eskom, had only half of its power generation capacity operational. This has forced Eskom to escalate its rotational power cuts. By mid-January 2023, users were typically without electricity […]

After narrowly escaping a harrowing mob attack on Wednesday near Hoedspruit in Limpopo province, well-known wildlife filmmaker John Varty has taken to social media to share his experience and concerns for the governance – or lack thereof – of South Africa. Varty says: “I fear for myself, I fear for my family, I fear for South […]

The repurchase rate (repo rate) in South Africa reached 7.25% after the SA Reserve Bank’s (SARB) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) agreed to a 25 basis points hike. The increase means that the repo rate will now be 7.25% per year from 27 January 2023, with prime now at 10.75%. SARB Governor Lesetja Kganyago made the […]

Invest Africa CEO Rob Hersov had the crowds chanting ‘Voetsek ANC, Voetsek Luthuli House’ today (Wed 25 Jan), as South Africans joined DA Leader John Steenhuisen in the Power to the People March to the ANC’s headquarters in Johannesburg. Steenhuisen said it was inspiring to see so many people who “still have the spirit for […]

About 60 people marched from Church Square across Pretoria to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) and the Union Buildings on Friday. They were demanding an end to load-shedding and objecting to the recent electricity tariff hikes authorised by the regulator. Not In My Name (NIMN) in partnership with Mamelodi Nellmapius Eersterust Shareholders […]

Today, hundreds of Capetonians are expected to join the DA in the Western Cape in taking to the streets of Cape Town to tell the ANC: “Enough loadshedding! Enough cadre deployment! Enough price hikes! Enough corruption!” The DA says: “We will march to the ANC’s provincial head office in the Western Cape to voice our […]

As media outlets around the world report on South Africa “openly siding with Russia” as the countries prepare for a maritime exercise together with China, SA’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor accused critics of having double-standards. Appearing to ignore Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine, Dr Pandor said “all countries conduct military exercises with friends worldwide”. She […]

President Cyril Ramaphosa has moved to assure South Africans that government is using every means and resource at its disposal to get more capacity onto Eskom’s grid “as a matter of extreme urgency” with the Energy Action Plan at the core. The President was addressing the nation through his weekly newsletter after South Africans have […]

The DA is today fighting in court in Pretoria to have “cadre deployment corruption” declared unconstitutional and unlawful. DA Leader, John Steenhuisen and DA Shadow Minister of Public Service, Dr Leon Schreiber, are at the North Gauteng High Court where the DA is arguing that the abolishment of cadre deployment is a fundamental prerequisite if […]

Home Affairs Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, has welcomed a High Court Gauteng North judgment confirming that Atul Gupta is a fugitive from justice and therefore does not qualify for a South African passport, as the Department had contended. The Court issued the judgment on Friday. On 25 September 2018, having fled South Africa in the […]

Here’s what’s coming up on Carte Blanche this week. You can watch the show today, Sunday 22 January in South Africa on DStv Now OR stream it overseas in most countries on Showmax from Tuesday 24 January if you’re abroad. The Piano Prodigy The piano is one of the most difficult musical instruments to play, […]

The South African government says it has acknowledged the frustration of South Africans, due to a combination of factors, which have led to sporadic protests that occurred on Monday in Parys, Kroonstad, Randfontein and Phoenix. It also called for calm as a series of protests were reported in parts of the country on Monday. In […]