A decision was handed down on Monday in the bail hearing for five of the eight accused in the Thabo Bester saga. Prison wardens Senohe Matsoara, Motenyani Masukela and Tieho Makhotsa, and CCTV technician Teboho Lipholo were denied bail. Former prison warden Nastassja Jansen was granted R10,000 bail. Four former prison employees accused of helping […]

Animal welfare organisations are celebrating the National Lotteries Commission’s (NLC) decision to include animal welfare in its call for applications for funding in 2023/24. The National Lotteries Commission has reintroduced animal welfare funding in its call for applications for 2023/24 after it withdrew funding for 2022/23. Animal welfare organisations are celebrating the reintroduction of lotteries […]

Helping one another in a time of crisis is perhaps one of the world’s most widely understood languages. In April, the South African Police Service’s K9 search and rescue team was honoured for their courageous work, following a deadly earthquake that rocked Türkiye and neighbouring Syria. The world responded to the disaster by sending rescue […]

More than 80% of South Africa’s grade 4 pupils – who are on average nine or 10 years old – cannot read for meaning. That means they can’t answer basic questions about or draw inferences from a text they’re reading. This worrying statistic emerged from the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), which […]

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 South Africa has proclaimed a policy of non-alignment in that conflict. This position was placed in doubt when US Ambassador Ruben Brigety claimed recently that he had evidence that South African arms and ammunition were loaded on a Russian ship in December 2022. Brigety concluded that South […]

Zelda Carlamarie Eberson (40), a single mother from South Africa, and her 17-year-old son, Jordan, find themselves in a dire situation and make a desperate plea for help to return home. After facing a series of challenges and hardships during their stay in the Philippines, Zelda, who battles with mental illness including depression and severe […]

Marcelle Viljoen, a longstanding member of the Ouskip Caravan Resort community for the past nine years, has taken a proactive step to support three families devastated by a recent fire. Viljoen has launched a crowdfunding campaign on BackaBuddy, appealing for assistance in rebuilding the lives of those affected. On May 15, 2023, tragedy struck when […]

Eskom is expected to implement Stage 4 and 5 load shedding over the coming week. Stage 4 will be implemented during the day with Stage 5 between 4pm and 5am. By Sunday afternoon some 18 144MW of generating capacity was offline due to breakdowns and maintenance outages rendered at least 3427MW offline. “Over the past 24 […]

President Cyril Ramaphosa has congratulated Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after he was re-elected to office in a runoff election. Erdoğan has been President of the European country since 2014. “Türkiye held its presidential and parliamentary elections on 14 May 2023, followed by a runoff in the presidential election on Sunday, 28 May 2023. President […]

One repeated theme of the memoir Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom, by Andre de Ruyter, former CEO of South Africa’s troubled power utility, Eskom, is that “negligence and carelessness had become cemented into the organisation”. Dirt piled up at even the newest power stations until it damaged equipment, which stopped working – […]

A group of about 25 people living at the old circus school in Observatory have to leave the property by 31 July, the Magistrate’s Court has ruled. A four-year battle against eviction by the Willow Arts Collective has been dealt a blow by the Magistrate’s Court’s ruling. The court has ruled that the Culemborg Safe […]

More than 200 schoolchildren in Limpopo have been trained to capture precious data about water quality from boreholes and rivers near their schools in a project linked to the United Nations and run by the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Citizen scientists trained through a University of the Western Cape project are helping to […]

The South African Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has hiked the repurchase rate (repo rate) by 50 basis points to 8.25%. The increase means that the repo rate will now be 8.25% per year from 26 May 2023, with prime now at 11.75%. This was announced by South African Reserve Bank (SARB) Governor Lesetja […]

Andries Booysen’s family has lived on their farm in Greater Chatsworth, near Malmesbury, for more than 100 years. Small farmers near Malmesbury in the Western Cape are facing eviction from homes they have lived in all their lives. The government’s Housing Development Agency says it only plans to evict three individuals who it says are […]

The inflation statistics revealed by StatsSA on Wednesday are not merely numbers – they are glaring symptoms of an unrelenting cost of living crisis gnawing at the core of South African households, according to the DA. DA Shadow Minister of Finance Dr Dion George says the official inflation rate, which surpassed 6.8% on a year-to-year […]

GroundUp has won a case against the Legal Practice Council (LPC), with a ruling that it must properly investigate a complaint against attorney Lesley Ramulifho who is implicated in the misuse of funds from the National Lotteries Commission (NLC). Attorney Lesley Ramulifho, implicated in looting at the National Lotteries Commission, attempted to prevent publication of […]

A cholera outbreak such as is occurring in Hammanskraal, where 17 people have died from the disease so far, was just a matter of time given South Africa’s failing sewage systems. 17 people have now died due to a cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria. The pollution of Hammanskraal’s water source by upstream failing […]

The Road Accident Fund (RAF) is refusing to hand over crucial documents required in a court challenge by the Law Society of South Africa (LSSA) and the National Council of and for Persons with Disabilities (NDPD) against drastic changes to what the fund will pay road accident victims. The Law Society of South Africa and […]

If you’re baking fish, roasting vegetables or preparing a piece of meat for dinner tonight, chances are that you’ll wrap your food in aluminium foil. What you may not realise is that some of the foil will leach into your meal – and this could be bad for your health. Research that I conducted with […]

Sign language is on its way to becoming the 12th official language in South Africa after parliament recently agreed to amend the constitution to this end. The move will bring to fruition three decades of a struggle to empower the country’s deaf community. An official language has legal status in a state and serves as […]

In Parliament on Tuesday, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) blamed poor literacy rates and the failure of its National Reading Plan (implemented in 2019) on the Covid pandemic. Briefing Parliament on Tuesday, the Department of Basic Education blamed poor literacy rates on the Covid pandemic. Last week the Progress on International Reading Literacy Study […]

Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has concluded a signing agreement to make Cape Town and Nairobi sister cities, with a shared mission to be the ‘undisputed economic hubs’ of their respective regions on Tuesday. The ceremony took place in Nairobi with the Governor of Nairobi City County Johnson Sakaja in attendance. Mayor Hill-Lewis was adamant […]

Experts are advising healthcare workers to treat all diarrhoea cases as suspected cholera until proven otherwise. This is while government is working tirelessly to contain the spread of the disease that has already claimed 15 lives in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria. Head of the Centre for Enteric Diseases at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases […]

Natural landscapes are continually transformed to make room for agricultural and urban developments – often at the expense of important habitats and species. That’s why, to avoid unnecessary species extinctions, it’s crucial to know which habitats to protect. In a recent paper we studied how changes to the landscape affected butterflies in a grassland area […]

Over 100 people waved rainbow flags and sang as they marched to the Harare police station in Khayelitsha, Cape Town at the weekend. The march marked 10 years of Khumbulani Pride. Khumbulani, “Remember” in isiXhosa, was started in 2013 to raise awareness about queer rights in townships. It also serves as a commemorative event for […]