Democratic Alliance premier of the Western Cape Helen Zille is a well-known and pithy Tweeter, and her recent response in her Inside Government newsletter to SONA2016 is no exception. Zille said she hadn’t been more optimistic in years, and South Africa had made 300 years of progress in just a week. The extract was part of a speech she […]

CAPE TOWN – South Africa should start a register that names anyone who is caught faking a degree, the Minister of Higher Education Blade Nzimande said on Tuesday, according to news reports. Talking to journalists before the resumption of the SONA2016 debate, he raised the issue of dealing with the growing number of people forging or misrepresenting […]

DURBAN – Police reinforcements have been sent to Westville Prison after an officer locked himself in the armoury and threatened to take his own life, it was reported on Tuesday. The Department of Correctional Services confirmed that a male officer was involved, and said that it was an ongoing situation being dealt with by a task […]

Radlyn Naidoo is a 19-year-old in Pretoria with Tourette Syndrome, but he doesn’t let that stand in his way of living his life and promoting a message that is brilliant, even for people without Tourette. In his first video (see below) Radlyn not only explains what he’s trying to achieve with his Facebook page, but he […]

For the second time at least, someone has sneakily put President Jacob Zuma’s controversial home Nkandla up for sale on a free classifieds page, listing it as a “Luxury African Homestead”. The ad on the site OLX listed the price at R260 million and described it as a “3.83ha luxury compound with world-class security & entertainment […]

HARARE – An American plane carrying cargo destined for the SA Reserve Bank has been impounded in Harare after a dead body was found on board, reportedly after blood was seen dripping from the plane during a refueling stop. ​”The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is aware of an aircraft carrying a SARB consignment that stopped in Harare […]

A UK-based news site has named two “allies” of the Zuma-associated business family the Guptas, saying the two were closely aligned with the short-lived minister of finance Des van Rooyen, and were the reason he was appointed in a bid to greenlight a nuclear deal that would benefit the Guptas. The two men were named in […]

A UK-based production company has announced that it will begin filming a documentary about the circumstances leading to the murder of Reeva Steenkamp by Oscar Pistorius. The shooting of Steenkamp through the locked bathroom door of Pistorius’ house took place on 14 February three years ago, and Pistorius later claimed he thought he was shooting an intruder. […]

CAPE TOWN – A small Southern Right whale carcass washed ashore on to the rocks in Bantry Bay on Sunday and was successfully removed by the National Sea Rescue Institute of South Africa, the city said. The public was urged to avoid the area while the whale removal was taking place. The carcass was taken to Granger Bay for […]

JOHANNESBURG – Africa’s biggest economies have been hammered by the collapse in commodity prices over the past 18 months but there are still investment bright spots to be found. In cities such as Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Kinshasa and Johannesburg, growth remains robust and investors are prospering in the retail, financial services, technology and construction sectors. […]

BERLIN – The latest movie from South African director Oliver Schmitz, called “Shepherds and Butchers”, a courtroom drama about a man on death row, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday. The movie also has a theme song, “Angels”, produced by Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb and Vusi Mahlasela. (Watch clips of the movie and […]

It is the 22nd year of our beloved South African flag. And here, on its birthday year, are 22 ways we love it. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

A lot of numbers were mentioned by President Jacob Zuma during the State of the Nation Address on Thursday. The government has released a list of all the numbers extracted from the speech. These range from what the government will spend to promote domestic tourism (R10 million) to the growth rate set to be achieved […]

A deaf four-month-old baby in Cape Town has become one of the youngest people in the world to get a cochlear implant, allowing her to hear for the first time, it was reported this week. The operation on Neave Barrett was carried out at the Vergelegen Mediclinic in Somerset West by a team from the Tygerberg Hospital Stellenbosch University Cochlear […]

A bizarre story involving two South Africans on the tiny South Pacific island-nation of Fiji – a diplomat reportedly involved in a fatal drunken-driving accident and the chief of police – has taken a new turn after the death of the diplomat. A Department of International Relations and Cooperation spokesman in Pretoria was reported as saying this week that the diplomat, Theo Mostert, […]

When the Eastern Cape Department of Education failed to provide their children with a school, a group of parents in Gotyibeni in Xhorha took matters into their own hands. In 1994, Gotyibeni residents decided they needed a primary school for their children. Other primary schools were far from the area and children had to wait […]

JOHANNESBURG – Two new hominin fossils have been found in a previously uninvestigated chamber in the Sterkfontein Caves, just northwest of Johannesburg, Wits University announced this week. The two new specimens, a finger bone and a molar, are part of a set of four specimens, which seem to be from early hominins that can be associated […]

You could call it a Johannesburg hat trick. The latest travel pages of the British Guardian newspaper have posted a trio of major articles about the City of Gold, including 1) some fantastic readers’ pictures of the city shared on Instagram, 2) the paper’s own alternative guide and 3) some insightful readers’ tips. Here’s a taste of the […]

Kite boarders from 11 nations waited for the windiest day for the perfect conditions to fly high – and on Wednesday and Thursday they got it. “With iconic Table Mountain as backdrop – both wind and sea delivered some pumping conditions,” said the organisers of the Red Bull King of the Air 2016 competition. Watch some […]

BLOEMFONTEIN – Only three days after President Jacob Zuma’s case over Nkandla and whether he should #PayBackTheMoney came before the Constitutional Court, his lawyer is back arguing, in Bloemfontein this time, over the government’s decision not to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he was visiting the country in 2015. The adversaries in court, even though they […]

President Jacob Zuma might want to move Parliament from Cape Town to Pretoria to cut costs – many of which some would say have been created by himself and a bloated, inefficient government – but we have found a few reasons why maybe it might not be a bad idea. Pretoria needs the attention, Cape Town doesn’t. Pretoria […]

The latest Vanity Fair cover is an annual event where the most talked-about stars in movies grace the cover, and one of them is Gugu Mbatha-Raw, whose father is South African and whose name is actually short for Gugulethu. Mbatha-Raw was born in Witney, a rural and typically quaint Oxfordshire town, of a South African doctor […]

The walkout from Parliament on Thursday night by the Economic Freedom Fighters has already got lot of attention in the media, although some people have started sharing videos of the sign language interpreters who had to repeatedly interpret “Zupta Must Fall!” which the EFF chanted before and while leaving the chamber. “They did a great job,” […]

There were numerous highlights in President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address on Thursday, starting with almost an hour of very vocal interruptions, mostly by the Economic Freedom Fighters, who finally walked out of the chamber shouting “Zupta Must Fall! Zupta Must Fall!” Outside Parliament the EFF’s leader Julius Malema delivered what he called […]