JOHANNESBURG – The South African central bank – the Reserve Bank – said on Tuesday that it has started the process of winding up VBS Mutual Bank, which was caught up in a corruption scandal earlier this year. A report commissioned by the Reserve Bank this month titled “The Great Bank Heist” found that R1.9 […]

The brilliantly talented, insightful and always frank Viv Vermaak has perfectly summed up the feelings of so many people in South Africa (and the world) who suffer from anxiety and depression. Responding to Viv’s words, posted Tuesday morning, one parent said “you wrote this today for my daughter, who is very dear to my heart. Thank […]

A 50-year-old father was gunned down outside his son’s school in Green Point on Tuesday morning at 07h35. His eight-year-old son was injured in the incident and has been taken to hospital, said the South African Police Service (SAPS). According to local reports the man has been named as Advocate Peter Mihalik, who has represented […]

BEIJING – China unveiled new rules on Monday that would allow the use of rhino horn and tiger parts for some medical and cultural purposes, watering down a decades-old ban in a move conservation group WWF said could have “devastating consequences”. China’s State Council issued a notice replacing its 1993 ban on the trade of […]

The Garden Route District Municipality has confirmed seven fatalities in Karatara, in the Knysna Municipality, in South Africa on Monday evening. The Municipality updated the figure from four to seven just after 20h00 on Monday evening. (The death toll was later reported at eight.) They were all killed in the same house that caught fire. […]

New satellite data reveals the world’s largest air pollution hotspot is in South Africa – in Mpumalanga… which is home to a cluster of 12 coal-fired power plants, with a total capacity of 32 gigawatts owned and operated by Eskom. The data also revealed that millions of people in Johannesburg and Pretoria are also being […]

JOHANNESBURG – South African lender Nedbank said on Monday it would appoint Ernst & Young as joint external auditors in May 2019, becoming the latest firm to drop the scandal-hit KPMG’s local unit. The auditor’s South African unit has been under close scrutiny since 2017 over work done for a company owned by the Gupta […]

JOHANNESBURG – South African Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Sunday that efforts to clean up corruption in state-owned companies (SOCs) faced “dangerous” resistance which threatened the country’s sovereignty… and hinted that the Gupta family is behind this resistance. Gordhan, a former finance minister, has been tasked by President Cyril Ramaphosa with cleaning up […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s former finance minister Malusi Gigaba said on Sunday a private video was leaked after his phone was hacked, and he had faced blackmail threats over it when he headed the Treasury. Gigaba, now Home Affairs minister (again), was thrust into the finance post in March last year after former President Jacob […]

Social media has tracked down possibly the unhappiest Western Cape supporter, after the Sharks – who won Saturday’s Currie Cup Final – sent out a message searching for him. https://www.facebook.com/TheSharks/photos/a.268468059849653/2374264172603354/?type=3 On Sunday morning the Sharks posted a photo of the man, looking incredibly down in the dumps as the score shows Western Province trailing 9-17 […]

Several fires have raged in the Western Cape, South Africa, this week, claiming the life of one firefighter pilot and destroying at least 10 homes in the Southern Cape, and leaving thousands homeless in Cape Town informal settlements, as the region has been gripped by a heatwave… and tonight flames continue to burn in the […]

JOHANNESBURG – Former South African president and Nobel Peace Prize winner FW de Klerk has been hospitalised for a lung condition, but is recovering and is expected to be discharged next week, his foundation said on Saturday. De Klerk, 82, South Africa’s most recent white president, became Nobel laureate jointly with his successor, Nelson Mandela, […]

South African businessman Andre Hanekom is still missing in Mozambique under mysterious circumstances. On Thursday his wife of 36 years, Francis, took to Facebook to urge people to sign a petition to the Government and Mozambique police to free him. The petition claims Hanekom, who had been living in Mozambique for 25 years, has been […]

CAPE TOWN – South African Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said on Thursday that the country had to act swiftly on its debt levels to avoid turning to the International Monetary Fund for help. “Whether or not you like the IMF, ideologically or practically, it doesn’t matter. When you get into a debt trap that’s where […]

On the advice of the State Librarian one fine day in the 1970s, a truck transported thousands of books and magazines from Pretoria’s Central Police Station to a dark hall at the Iscor state steel company, just outside the South African capital. A large mechanical shovel scooped up and dropped them into a 20-metre high […]

Tributes have poured in for South African firefighting pilot, Nico Heyns (65), who lost his life in the line of duty on Tuesday in Vermaaklikheid, in the southern Cape. Early on Thursday evening, Working on Fire posted the following moving video tribute to a man who was loved and respected by all who knew and worked […]

Hip-Hop legend, Jabulani “HHP” Tsambo has sadly passed away on Wednesday afternoon. Details surrounding the veteran’s death are still sketchy at this stage, although he was known to have been suffering from depression for some time. ‘Jabba’ had spoken honestly in interviews about his battle, and had told The Sowetan in 2016 that he had attempted suicide […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s rand weakened more than 1 percent on Wednesday after new Finance Minister Tito Mboweni forecast wider deficits and slower growth in his maiden budget speech. At 1247 GMT, the rand traded at 14.4200 versus the dollar, 1.1 percent weaker on the day. Mboweni delivered the medium term budget to parliament as […]

Police in South Africa have shot and killed two men in KwaZulu-Natal in a ‘blaze of bullets’ who were allegedly responsible for the murder of two security guards in a stationary vehicle in Soweto two weeks ago. This was confirmed by South African Police Service (SAPS) spokesperson Vishnu Naidoo in a statement on Tuesday. Chilling […]

N’DJAMENA – Two of six critically endangered black rhinos – relocated to Chad in May – have tragically died, Zakouma National Park’s management said, undermining efforts to restore their population in Chad after a nearly 50-year absence. Before the transfer of the six rhinos from Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa in May, the […]

A heartbreaking photo of a bottlenose dolphin mother was captured in South Africa this weekend. Amongst a school of around 600 Indo-Pacific dolphins, the cow can be seen carrying her dead baby, reluctant to let it go… It’s a phenomenon known to marine scientists. Raggy Charters’ Lloyd Edwards, who took the tragic photo, said it […]

JOHANNESBURG – Wiping out corruption in South Africa continues with an announcement that Transnet’s board of directors has removed Chief Executive Siyabonga Gama, who has been accused of misconduct in a multi-million-dollar deal. State-owned Transnet, which operates nearly three-quarters of the African rail network – most of which is in South Africa – has been […]

Urgent help is being sought from South Africans, locally and abroad, after a devastating fire ripped through Khayelitsha township in Cape Town in the early hours of Saturday morning. While most of us were peacefully sleeping, a fire raged through the township – fuelled by strong winds in the Western Cape –  claiming the life […]

The case of the South African student activist and #FeesMustFall campaign leader, Mcebo Dlamini has been officially postponed to next year April. The student leader, who was confident that his trial would finally start, appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s court on Friday morning. Dlamini is facing numerous charges including assault, public violence and malicious damage […]

South Africans were blown away – in the wrong way – this week when the SARS Chief Officer for Digital and IT Mmamathe Makhekhe-Mokhuane appeared on SABC to “clarify” the halt to the SARS modernisation programme in 2014… after news that it could cost up to R1-billion to fix the South African Revenue Service’s IT infrastructure. […]