President Cyril Ramaphosa has unveiled two statues of the late former President Nelson Mandela, one in Mthatha and the other in Qunu in the Eastern Cape, as part of Nelson Mandela Day celebrations. The two statues unveiled at Bhunga Building in Mthatha and Youth and Heritage Centre in Qunu, serve as a tribute to Nelson […]

As the country and the world at large commemorate President Nelson Mandela’s birthday, President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on everyone to promote peace across the globe. In his weekly newsletter to the nation, President Ramaphosa said everyone is called upon to get involved in peacemaking and peacebuilding processes, which is the fruit of Nelson Mandela’s […]

If you fell on the ice, you had to make fists because some super-jock speed skater would almost certainly skate past you at that exact moment and chop your fingers off. An arm if you were super unlucky. Everybody said so. It happened to people who knew people. No, really. No matter. We were in. […]

A powerful new book on Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has just been published. Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage is at once a double biography of South Africa’s two famous liberation leaders and a historical love story about their personal lives. Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years during apartheid and went on to […]

Most people know Robertson either as a small, drive-through town, or as the place of four fabulous wine festivals with names like Wacky Wine Weekend and Wine-on-River Festival… writes Cindy September. The town is aptly known as “The town of Wine and Roses”. But Robertson is so much more than that. It’s the town I […]

82-year-old South African-born Elsa Perez stars in the documentary called “Get Riel” featuring Perez dancing as well as footage sent through by South African riel dancers. The Sunnyside Up Film Festival in Ardmore Oklahoma, USA will be screening ‘Get Riel’ next month in its competition, and you can show your support by voting on their […]

Jazz performer, composer and recipient of the National Order of Ikhamanga, Dorothy Masuka has passed away at the age of 83. Mama Masuka passed away on Saturday after more than 50 years of being feted globally as an artist whose performances directed the spotlight at the injustices of apartheid, said the Presidency in a statement […]

On this day in 1990, Nelson Mandela left Victor Verster Prison in Cape Town a free man, after spending 27 years in prison. Accompanied by his then-wife Winnie, Mandela was enthusiastically received by the throngs of people who gathered to see him outside Cape Town’s City Hall. Mandela spent 18 years on Robben Island and […]

It was in the late 1980’s that apartheid negotiations reached a sensitive stage. Former President Nelson Mandela had been diagnosed with Tuberculosis and was transferred to a house at Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. Just two years later at the SONA of 1990 the then President F W de Klerk announced that he was to […]

The first language has always been thought to hold a privileged status in the mind, but the question of how well it really holds up under the pressure of an ever-increasing dominant second language is of great interest to linguists and bilinguals alike. The process whereby a bilingual forgets their first language is a normal […]

South African expat Nitanja Steyn has lived in the Netherlands, the US and Germany since leaving SA in 2014. But no matter where she lives… her heart belongs back home in South Africa. Yesterday she penned a poignant poem ‘Die Verlanging van ‘n Suid-Afrikaner’, in Afrikaans (see below). Here she has kindly translated it into […]

Yesterday, South African musician Seb Goldswain shared the following inspiring encounter he had with road accident victim, Kobus, on Facebook. Here is Seb’s account, in his words: “Yesterday I received a phone call from Brett Nydahl, a psychologist friend, asking if I would consider playing a few songs for one of her hospital patients on his […]

When we were young and the days were long, the corner cafe was the place to meet and greet and make up and break up… writes South African expat, author and motivational speaker Trevor Romain. It was the place where you stole at least one piece of liquorice or one of those yellow plastic sherberts […]

I know it isn’t prudent to declare one’s love on Facebook, but I simply cannot keep it in… writes Viv Vermaak. I have been in love only a few times in my life. Truly, madly, deeply in love, so this is a special occasion. Mostly, the love was fleeting. Only two of those loves have […]

For a number of reasons, round about this week every year, I share this life-changing experience… writes Trevor Romain. One reason I post it annually is so that I remember to read it again because it’s something I don’t ever want to forget: It happened a long time ago. A time when people actually did […]

SOUTH AFRICA – Yesterday was the 115th anniversary of the birth of the author Alan Paton, who was honoured in a Google doodle that showed him looking pensively out of a train window at hills that are lovely beyond any singing… writes Gus Silber. The doodle quite brilliantly captured Paton’s flinty, thin-lipped severity of countenance, […]

People who live in the desert love rain. They love it in ways city people don’t understand. In the Karoo and the Kalahari, the horizons are so wide you can see the weather coming while it is still hours away. You can see clouds coalesce and darken over the mountains, then advance, walking on legs […]

Little Joe, who had adored his ‘outgoing’ father Ira, had been withdrawn and sulky since the accident, venturing out of his room only at mealtimes. With the funeral behind them and his parents’ mutual friends having long since returned to their busy lives, Joe and his mother Mary were left pretty much on their own now.  […]

South African tourists, Peter and Michelle Roos, captured these poignant photos and the mood of a cemetery in Italy that became the last resting place for so many young South African soldiers… Michelle says that in the “midst of hedonistic pleasures” in Italy, the graves provided “a somber dose of other things that happened in […]

So one day when I was a journalist at Scope, I realise that due to various family commitments and unforeseen bills I need to generate some extra cash. I would take a few days’ leave and head off somewhere with photographer Les Bush and we would find some stories and sell them off to various […]

It was confirmed today that legendary singer and songwriter Rodriguez will be returning to South Africa early next year. This time he will be performing in Johannesburg and Cape Town again, as well as in Durban and Port Elizabeth. His last tour to the country was sold out within minutes of bookings being opened…so if you’re keen for […]

It was May, 1976…and as a lowly young reporter for the Pretoria News, I discovered that Siberia comes in many forms. Because I had disgraced myself and gotten a TV review horribly wrong, I was assigned a new position in life: Magistrates Court reporter. The position was seen as the grubby, greasy little bottom rung in the […]

Groot Marico, 1979 – It’s a lovely Saturday out here in the Bushveld…I’m sitting under a fever tree on a farm in the Western Transvaal (now Northwest Province) talking to a Marico family and drinking their mampoer very slowly and, if I may say so, quite thoughtfully. It’s all so very Herman Charles. [The late […]

Hillbrow, Jo’burg’s inner city Tenderloin district, was never a nest of angels… In the late 1970s and 80s, it was the most cosmopolitan piece of real estate in South Africa. You had your excellent Hillbrow Records, your Mi-Vami shawarma place, Estoril Books, your globe-trotting tattoo artist down in the basement shopping area on Pretoria Street […]

A poem by Faieza Mx, now living in Queensland, Australia… I want to wake up to the Majestic Table Mountain Always standing, Always there, Never failing Its beauty astounding As it watches over Cape Town The ocean so blue… Camps Bay, Strand, Boulders Sea Point I want to go home to gaardtjies shouting ‘hullo, hullo, […]