In a followup to a combative interview she had with South African journalist Jane Dutton on Al Jazeera just over a week ago that went viral, the South African minister of foreign affairs said Dutton was not being a journalist during the interview and she was only defending her country. “She took her gloves off and became a South […]

On Friday Parliament opened the nomination process for a successor to Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, whose seven-year term comes to an end in October. Nominations have to be made by 4 pm on 24 June. Members of the public and organisations have been asked to nominate suitable candidates. The community organisation Corruption Watch said on […]

At the 22nd Annual South African Music Awards, the Afro-pop sensation Nathi Mankanyi walked away with five awards, including the well-deserved Best Newcomer and Bestselling Album for “Buyelekhaya”, whose “Nomvula” has pulled in more than a million Youtube views in recent months. The awards were held at a glittering ceremony in Durban on Saturday. At the recent Metro […]

JOHANNESBURG – The United States warned its citizens on Saturday of possible attacks by Islamist militants on U.S. facilities or shopping malls in South Africa during the upcoming month of Ramadan, but the South African government said the country was safe. It was the second such warning in under a year from the embassy, which issued […]

Of the 8.7 million species of animals, plants and fungi thought to live on Earth, we have only named 1.2 million: 86 percent of the natural world is uncharted. For most people, both this incredible richness and our ignorance are hard to fathom. Imagine that each of the 6.5 million species thought to live on land – […]

Nando’s is without a doubt the best example of a company using South Africa’s crazy political trajectory for publicity – and providing laughs at the same time. Here are five of our recent favourite local advertisements, and the incidents that (we think) inspired them. 1. News that almost R9 million of the police budget has been spent […]

The city of Springs boasts the largest number of small-scale Art Deco buildings in the world, outside of Miami in the United States. The style, which has become synonymous with the coastal Florida city, is achieving more and more attention as a potential tourism money-spinner for Springs. The Art Deco style had its hey-days between […]

Cape Town’s well-known adventure park and scary-ride central Ratanga Junction will close and be replaced by a R1 billion development in the successful Century City precinct, according to news reports on Wednesday. The 20-hectare theme park would close by 2018, a spokeswoman for the Rabie property group, developers of Century City, was quoted saying. The […]

The Western Cape has received the highest percentage of clean audits of its municipalities, scoring 73 percent, with the next-nearest provinces, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, getting 30 percent or just over, according to a report by the auditor general released on Wednesday. “Today’s release of the Auditor-General’s (A-G) audit report into municipal financial management for 2014/15 […]

JOHANNESBURG – The world’s largest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev gained conditional approval on Tuesday for its $100 billion-plus acquisition of SABMiller from South African anti-trust regulators, bringing the deal closer to fruition. Conditions attached to the deal include a binding one that no South African employee be laid off because of the merger, the Competition Commission […]

The Democratic Alliance has posted the 60-second video it says the SA Broadcasting Corporation has refused to air. The DA said in a post of Facebook on Monday, “Another DA TV advert they are refusing to show South Africa.” The video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media since it was […]

Almost 300 South African firefighters arrived in Edmonton, Alberta, in western Canada on Sunday night, heading to help battle the massive fires spreading across the province – and their first reaction was to immediately burst proudly into song. The 281 firefighters, who have helped out in Canada before, will join a team from Canada and the United […]

I have been on many tours, and I’ve been to many museums around the world, but I don’t think any of them had me as psyched as the one I did today – the infamous and iconic Ponte City in Johannesburg. Ponte’s designer, the 29-year-old Rodney Grosskopf, probably didn’t start out with the intention of creating something iconic, but because […]

About 300 South African firefighters will leave on Sunday to join a group from the US and Canada to battle the massive wildfire in the province of Alberta, according to news reports this week. The fires, which have been raging for several weeks now, reportedly cover more than 5,000 square kilometres. The 80,000-resident town of Fort McMurray […]

Four suspected poachers were arrested in Kruger Park after a SA National Parks helicopter had been fired on five times, marking a “dramatic escalation” in the fight against rhino poaching, the minister of environmental affairs said in a statement on Thursday. Minister Edna Molewa congratulated the parks and law-enforcement authorities for “averting a catastrophe”. According […]

Photographer and videographer Johnny Miller is quite upfront about what he set out to do when he began filming in April – a series on inequality in three Cape areas – where people of vastly different means live almost side by side, except it’s often easy not to see that. But from the air, the discrepancies become strikingly […]

EAST LONDON – The captains of three Chinese trawlers intercepted by the South African Navy and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries appeared in an East London magistrate’s court on Wednesday over an alleged illegal haul of squid worth R48 million, it was reported. The three were charged with contravening the Marine Living Resources Act and […]

The story of three Chinese chokka long-line trawlers allegedly fishing illegally in South African waters, nabbed by the navy and escorted to East London was one of the highest-read stories on an international website earlier today, with the issue driven by a determined group of “armchair warriors” along the SA coast. The three vessels have […]

CAPE TOWN – Some R9 million of the police budget between 2013 and 2016 has been used to buy 10 vehicles for the wives of President Jacob Zuma, parliament was told on Tuesday. The vehicles – which included Range Rover SUVs, two Land Rover Discovery SUVs and five Audi SUVs and sedans – were necessary “to provide comprehensive protection […]

LONDON – The magnificent display of South African wildflowers put together by the SA National Biodiversity Institute at Kirstenbosch has received a gold medal at the 2016 Royal Horticultural Society’s flower show, which opened today. The team sent out a tweet a few hours ago saying “Our #RHSChelsea Flower Show exhibit received a gold medal!” It […]

In 2014 President Jacob Zuma, while defending state money spent on Nkandla, referred to former president PW Botha having George airport built near his private home in Wilderness – obviously saying that if Botha could do it, so could he. Two years later, the comparisons between the two men have only multiplied. 1. Botha was leader of the ruling […]

Standard Bank has been the victim of a major fraud in Japan, where 1.4 billion yen (R200 million) in cash was stolen from some 1,400 ATMs in convenience stores across Japan over a short period earlier this month, it has been reported. According to Business Day on Monday, Standard Bank confirmed that it was the bank referred to in a story […]

PRETORIA – While dismissing news reports that finance minister Pravin Gordhan was under any threat of arrest, the National Prosecuting Authority on Monday also said it would appeal a High Court ruling last month that fraud and corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma be reinstated. In April the High Court in Pretoria found that a 2009 court decision […]

East Coast Radio asked the kids of KwaZulu-Natal to do their best Suzelle DIY impersonation. For our money, 5-year-old Jake is a winner! Watch the real Suzelle DIY in action, although this is one of our favourites:

The Minister of Defense apparently smuggled a Burundian woman into South Africa after she had acquired illegal documents provided by the minister’s sister, according to the Sunday Times. Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, the minister of defense and military veterans, reportedly flew on a South African Air Force plane from Waterkloof Air Force Base to the Democratic Republic of […]