The Van Der Merwe’s are literally cleaning up in England, as are other South Africans like Jorge Santos who moved to London, aged 24, to seek his fortune. “Twenty plus years later and I still love this city – its culture, energy, and opportunity,” he told SAPeople. A South African of Portuguese descent, Jorge was […]

South Africa should be applauded for having alerted the world about the Omicron variant that is now beginning to spread around the world, says President Cyril Ramaphosa. The President has criticised countries who have imposed travel bans on South Africa, following the identification of the COVID-19 variant last week. “We reject that in the strongest […]

A well known German clinical epidemiologist, who’s pegged to possibly be Germany’s next Health Minister, says that Omicron may in fact be an early Christmas gift… and hasten the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Professor Karl Lauterbach tweeted that if Omicron is a less severe version of Covid-19, as has so far been seen in […]

The United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, today (Tues 30 Nov) praised South Africa for identifying the new variant, Omicron, and the way in which the country shared the news with the world. Blinken said: “I really want to applaud and express gratitude to South Africa and its government for its extraordinary transparency and also […]

Three terrified eco-students had a miracle escape in South Africa when their safari truck was attacked by a six-tonne elephant bull in musth, and rammed off the road. The elephant became enraged when two vehicles came a little too close to its breeding herd on the Selati Game Reserve near Hoedspruit and the Kruger National […]

With knee-jerk travel restrictions causing havoc to the sum of nearly R1-billion for the South African tourism industry, one passionate South African abroad is calling for South Africans around the world to make lemonade out of the sour situation by doing what they can to support local tourism on home soil. Hayley Reichert, a London […]

Restaurant Klein JAN has won the World Hidden Gem award at the prestigious La Liste gala evening in Paris, France, tonight. Proudly South African Chef Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen took to social media to say: “So proud to have just won World Hidden Gem at the La Liste awards in Paris.” He congratulated the […]

KIGALI, RWANDA: In the largest single rhino translocation ever undertaken, 30 white rhinos have been successfully translocated from &Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in South Africa to Akagera National Park in Rwanda. andBeyond Travel revealed in a post today – 29 Nov – from Rwanda: “30 years ago, when our dream started, there was not […]

Gauteng is seeing continued high levels of COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions, as the fight against the Omicron variant begins, according to Dr Waasila Jassat of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. She said the majority of patients admitted in Gauteng were not vaccinated, with a smaller proportion of patients admitted being fully or partially […]

The #Action4Inclusion campaign was started in 2020 and hopes to raise R2 million by Christmas to help those who can’t afford registration, accessing marks and other material. By Marecia Damons. About 50 people joined a 16 kilometre walk at the weekend to raise funds for a campaign to help Stellenbosch University students pay off their […]

The Blouberg beach community in Cape Town has created a ‘pension fund’ to reward a humble 71-year-old Ice Cream man’s ‘sweet’ service. George Phontshe Peni (71) from Khayelitsha, Cape Town, has made an honest living selling ice creams, whilst capturing the hearts of Bloubergstrand residents and beachgoers for more than 4 decades. ‘Uncle George’, who […]

The strange story of the house Fikile Mbalula offered to buy… By Raymond Joseph and Masego Mafata Upbrand Properties, linked to suspended National Lotteries Commission chief operating officer Phillemon Letwaba, bought a house in an upmarket Johannesburg suburb, days after Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula and his wife made an identical offer on the same house. […]

The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) has confirmed the transfer of convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius to a correctional centre in Gqeberha to start a dialogue with the family of his victim, model Reeva Steenkamp. The disgraced Paralympic gold medalist was transferred from the Kgosi Mampuru Correctional Facility in Tshwane where he is serving a 13-year […]

South Africa reacted with outrage to travel bans, first triggered by the UK, imposed on it in the wake of the news that its genomics surveillance team had detected a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa has been monitoring changes in SARS-CoV-2 since the pandemic first broke […]

The travel and tourism industry has responded with joy to this evening’s announcement by President Cyril Ramaphosa. The South African president called on overseas countries to reverse their travel bans on southern Africa; and maintained Coronavirus Alert Level 1, encouraging South Africans to get vaccinated rather than putting the country into another strict Lockdown. Here […]

While South Africa will remain on the Coronavirus Alert Level 1, President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on citizens who have not vaccinated to do so immediately. “In taking the decision not to impose further restrictions at this stage, we considered the fact that when we encountered previous waves of infection, vaccines were not widely available […]

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on all those countries that have imposed travel bans on South Africa, and other Southern African countries, to urgently reverse their decisions… and to rather help in making sure everyone gets vaccinated. “There is no scientific justification for keeping these restrictions in place. We know that this virus, like all […]

British Transport Police have confirmed that they are investigating an incident on the London Underground in which a man with a South African accent shouted at a Muslim man to stop praying because the noise was invading his privacy. The video has been viewed over 1.1-million times on Instagram, where user ‘imjustbait’ uploaded it 24 […]

South Africa’s tourism and hospitality sector claim they have lost over R1-billion in travel bookings for travel between December 2021 and March 2022 in the past 48 hours, as a result of the travel bans instituted globally against the destination since it announced that it had sequenced a new variant, now known as Omicron. However […]

Dr Angelique Coetzee, who was one of the first South African doctors to suspect a new Covid-19 variant was in the country, says the “hype” around the variant – now known as Omicron – is out of proportion as the symptoms are mild. Dr Coetzee, who is also the Chairperson of the South African Medical […]

The Dutch National Institute for Public Health (RIVM) has confirmed that it has identified the Omicron variant in at least 13 of the 61 Covid-19 positive passengers who arrived in Amsterdam, from South Africa, on Friday. RIVM said in a statement on its site on Sunday that of the 624 passengers who arrived on two […]

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he chatted with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday, to discuss the challenges posed globally by the new COVID-19 variant – Omicron – and ways to work together to deal with it and reopen international travel. Last night in addition to the bans on southern African travel, England […]

Oscar Pistorius has been secretly moved to a prison in Gqeberha (previously Port Elizabeth) in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, so that he can have a meeting with the parents of the late Reeva Steenkamp whom he was convicted of murdering. The disgraced Paralympian, who shot the former model to death in the early hours […]

Johannesburg, 27 November 2021: The following are the latest requirements for travel to or via the Netherlands from South Africa, as issued by the Dutch government, following the detection of a new Covid-19 variant, Omicron. Test requirements for travellers from South Africa on KLM All passengers travelling on KLM from South Africa, irrespective of their […]

An Airbus A340 plane has landed in Antarctica for the first time in history, according to Hi Fly, the boutique aviation company behind the flight. On Monday (November 22), Captain Carlos Mirpuri and his crew flew the aircraft from Cape Town in South Africa to Antarctica and back, in a 2,500 nautical miles journey that […]