As the issue of repatriation of foreign nationals from China grabs the headlines in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent in the wake of the spread of COVID-19, there are some important lessons that can still be drawn from events 102 years ago in 1918 when an earlier epidemic, of so-called Spanish flu, arrived […]

Bitcoin has been traded for some time and here we look at the CFD trading strategy and its relevance to bitcoins trading. Bitcoin CFD Trading Strategy CFD stands for Contract for Difference, which means that one trades a derivative product of the underlying asset. This trading allows one to make profits due to changes in […]

Just 3,500 people – 0.01% of the population – own 15% of total wealth in South Africa, according to a new study. And, there has been no decrease in wealth inequality in the 26 years since democracy. South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world in terms of wealth, according to […]

Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula announced on Thursday the start of the refurbishment process for Cape Town’s Central Line, which has been closed since October 2019. The Central Line serves over a million people, running from Kapteinsklip station in Mitchells Plain and Chris Hani station in Khayelitsha to Cape Town station. Mbalula’s launch follows President Ramaphosa’s […]

On Sunday morning over a hundred law enforcement officers took part in an operation on Greenmarket Square to remove the belongings of the refugees who are living outside the Central Methodist Mission, and usher them away from the area. This was an attempt by the City of Cape Town to end a nearly six-month long […]

Beyers Coetzee had a dream to see the elephants of Mawana Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, live out their days in peaceful co-existence… writes Louzel Lombard Steyn. He hoped to establish a reserve where ecology and community thrived. In the end, it was a dream he gave his life for. The 45-year-old conservationist was […]

Between Germiston and Benoni is an open metal dump where more than 20 women survive by collecting scrap metal. Daily they pick through heaps of metal waste dumped by companies on the East Rand, looking for copper, stainless steel, zinc and brass. There are no ablution facilities and the women have to use the bush […]

Small informal retailers are a ubiquitous feature of any developing country’s urban landscape. Known as spaza shops in South Africa, they are an important, even vital, component in the townships. Numbering over 100,000 across the nation, they make critical contributions to local food security, self-employment and community cohesion. In the last decade, the sector has […]

“Things often just look like they’re falling apart and there can be a lot of finger pointing and blaming. But Help Up has opened up people’s imagination to the fact that things can actually be fixed if everybody gets involved,” says Georgia McTaggart, founder of a small and growing river cleanup initiative called Help Up. […]

FW De Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid-era president, and his foundation have learnt the hard way the dangers of the comparative politics of sin. He recently gave an interview to mark his historic speech to parliament on 2 February 1990 when he announced the freeing of Nelson Mandela and unbanning of political organisations. During the […]

Nearly six years after the Lottery gave R13 million to establish a “Carnival Heritage Museum” intended to celebrate the colourful history of Cape Town’s minstrels, the museum still does not exist. The annual minstrel parade through the streets of Cape Town dates back to 1890, with South Africa’s minstrels inspired and influenced by American minstrel troupes who visited Cape Town […]

Dear Family and Friends, I am writing this letter to you on Robert Mugabe Youth Day (21 Feb), a recently proclaimed public holiday… writes author Cathy Buckle in her latest Letter from Zimbabwe. It’s a beautiful day under a hot sun and bright blue sky but it’s hard to see what our youth have got […]

Heritage Western Cape has slammed the study on which the developers based their proposed R4-billion property development at the River Club in Observatory, Cape Town. The Heritage Impact Assessment conducted by Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust, which owns the land, is inadequate, flawed, unsubstantiated, problematic, and fails to address the requirements of the Heritage Resources Act, […]

The United National Transport Union (UNTU) has accused the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) of failing to provide and maintain a safe and healthy work environment for employees, after a train driver was stoned while on duty. According to a statement released by UNTU on Tuesday, Nonhlanhla Dlamini was the driver of a […]

An existing wind farm is crying foul after the government last month gave the conditional go-ahead for a massive new wind farm project on an adjoining property on the West Coast Peninsula near Vredenburg. The West Coast One wind farm, that has been operating since 2015, says the huge turbines of the recently approved Boulders Wind Energy […]

Residents of Christine Village in Uitenhage say they don’t want a large pothole on the corner of John Dissel Drive and busy Kamesh Road fixed. Motorists drive past it carefully, not only because of the hole, but because the pothole is used by local residents to wash their children and their dishes. The seven-shack settlement, […]

The man who produced one of the greatest performances in athletics history in 2016 is back! South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk continued his return from a career-threatening knee injury suffered in 2017 with a low-key win in Bloemfontein. The win itself, in a hand-timed 10.20sec in a 100m race on grass at a University of […]

In December, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the sentences of thousands of prisoners were being shortened. Since the announcement, Pollsmoor Prison has released 887 offenders, according to Ntobeko Mketshane, area commissioner of the prison. On Thursday, a large contingent of Pollsmoor officials, accompanied by senior police and officials from the Department of Home Affairs, hosted […]

Joseph Shabalala was the affable leader of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a men’s group that sang isicathamiya, a traditional Zulu genre of South African a cappella. Even with heavy hearts at his passing, a lot of South Africans know they are much richer for his time in the world. For the group he formed, for making […]

Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) has demanded that the City of Cape Town take immediate action against the sewage pollution in Milnerton lagoon. OUTA announced on 11 February that it had sent a letter to the City to ask for a meeting. The objective of the meeting is to present residents’ solutions to the pollution […]

Democratic South Africa has skeletons in the closet that it needs to address. One of these is the death of Dag Hammarskjöld, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) in a plane crash shortly after midnight on 17 to 18 September 1961. The plane went down as it approached Ndola, a mining town in Northern […]

Dear Family and Friends, When I put my fingers into a black china bowl of water in the sink to scoop out what I thought was a leaf, I found myself holding a small black scorpion… writes author Cathy Buckle in her latest Letter from Zimbabwe. A yelp of alarm, a few unrepeatable swear words […]

The results of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the fourth quarter of 2019 show that the official unemployment rate remained unchanged at 29.1%, compared to the third quarter of 2019. Releasing the survey results on Tuesday in Tshwane, Statistician General Risenga Maluleke said this was the first time since 2008 that the unemployment […]

Chameleons (Chamaeleonidae) are a family of unique lizards with unusual characteristics: rapidly extendable tongues, feet with two toes pointing forward and two backward, a prehensile tail, and eyes that can move independently of each other. Many species also have the ability to change the colour of their skin. There are about 213 species of chameleons […]

The South African men’s hockey team closed out an emphatic series whitewash over the United States with a convincing 5-1 victory in Ballito, KZN, on Wednesday. The Proteas scored in each quarter to gain 20.6 ranking points for the series and close the gap on Ireland who are currently ranked 13th to just 30 points, […]