JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba should be disciplined for lying under oath about the wealthy Oppenheimer family’s attempt to open a private airport immigration facility, the country’s official anti-corruption watchdog – the Public Protector – said on Wednesday. This is the latest setback for Gigaba, who said on Sunday that he […]

Investigations by Werksmans Attorneys on mismanagement at the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) for the 2014/15 financial year have raised more red flags about security at the beleaguered state-owned entity. The leaked reports substantiate previous investigations by the Public Protector, Auditor General and National Treasury. They reveal that hundreds of millions of rands […]

CAPE TOWN – South African former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner FW de Klerk was discharged from a three-night hospital stay after recovering from a lung ailment, his foundation said on Monday. De Klerk, 82, was hospitalised over the weekend for treatment of pneumothorax, “an abnormal collection of air in the pleural space between […]

It is common cause that the performance of South Africa’s government, led by the African National Congress (ANC), has been worse than abysmal. Under former President Jacob Zuma, ANC functionaries pillaged numerous institutions of state. They enabled state owned institutions to be looted, mismanaged the provision of basic services and presided over an alarming downward […]

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 […]

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, […]

Chinese business tycoon Jack Ma has three main pieces of advice for South Africa: improve the education system, invest in entrepreneurs and ensure clean governance. Speaking at the inaugural South Africa Investment Conference business dinner on Friday night, Ma said for any country to develop it has to pay attention to those three elements. Ma […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa used an investment summit on Friday to reassure investors that his government was committed to protecting property rights as it pursues plans to accelerate the pace of land redistribution. “We are committed as government to pursuing a comprehensive approach to land and agrarian reform which ensures transformation, […]

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s parliament has approved senior diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde as the country’s first female president, proceedings on state television showed, cementing another shift in the country’s political system from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Sahle-Work is at present U.N. under-secretary-general and special representative of the secretary general to the African Union. She replaces […]

It’s been a fantastic day for South Africa as local and international businesses have come to the inaugural South African Investment Conference bearing gifts in the form of investment commitments to the tune of R290 billion ($20 billion). “This R290 billion is what we have now in our hands and these are in addition to […]

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 […]

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 […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s state pension fund and a local black investment firm have bought a majority stake in Africa’s biggest cattle company for R5.2 billion. The Public Investment Corp. (PIC), Africa’s largest investment fund and the biggest investor in South Africa’s economy, said on Tuesday it had bought a majority share in Karan Beef […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s new finance minister will target spending on agriculture, infrastructure and job creation projects in his inaugural budget speech on Wednesday in a bid to haul the economy out of a recession. With the government facing a ballooning debt, stubbornly high unemployment, struggling state companies, and dwindling coffers, Tito Mboweni, a […]

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 […]

This week’s episode of Carte Blanche investigates some of the hottest current topics in South Africa –  how millions were siphoned off at VBS bank, painful decisions around fighting for the right to choose to die, the bankrupt municipality, Maluti-A-Phufong, and if DNA Phenotyping can really help pinpoint the identity of an unknown assailant? The show […]

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday appointed a judicial inquiry into the R2 trillion rand ($142 billion) state pension fund, a government gazette said, following corruption allegations. The PIC is Africa’s biggest pension fund and the biggest investor in South Africa’s economy holding a large volume of bonds issued by government and […]

JOHANNESBURG – Ratings agency Moody’s said this week that it expected new South African Finance Minister Tito Mboweni to keep the government’s broad policies intact in the medium-term budget speech due next week. Lucie Villa, Moody’s lead analyst for South Africa said in a research report that while the change in ministers “may lead to […]

Civil rights organisation AfriForum on Tuesday made a presentation regarding farm murders in South Africa to members of the Parliament of Western Australia… in an attempt to persuade the Australians that farm attacks (346 so far this year) and farm murders (46 this year) are a serious issue and that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s denials are […]

CAPE TOWN – South Africa will struggle to finance the public services that form the largest part of its budget… due to falling revenues and an economic recession, the National Treasury told lawmakers on Tuesday. South Africa slipped into recession in the second quarter for the first time in nearly a decade; and the political […]

JOHANNESBURG – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday rejected a newspaper report that he failed to stop R1.9 billion ($132 million) being illegally siphoned from VBS Mutual Bank. City Press reported on Sunday that sources close to a major VBS shareholder said the shareholder had informed Ramaphosa about what was going on when he […]

President Cyril Ramaphosa says the South African government is intensifying the implementation of land reform and restitution programmes so that South Africans can leverage land for the betterment of their lives and the growth of the economy. Ramaphosa led a land restitution ceremony on Sunday. He handed over 4 586 hectares of land to the […]

Pik Botha, South Africa’s former Foreign Minister during the apartheid era, has died at the age of 86 after a lengthy illness. Botha’s son – Piet – confirmed to local media that his father had died during the night. Born Roelof Frederik Botha in 1932 in Rustenburg, Pik Botha served as Foreign Minister for 17 […]

The DA has challenged the EFF to set the record straight and publicly confirm whether or not it has ever received money from VBS Mutual bank to fund its operations.   DA National Spokesperson Solly Malatsi said in a media statement: “The EFF has not been shy in their repeated and public defence of VBS […]