A father driving on the N7 with his children says he phoned 10111 while watching people being tied up, beaten and pushed towards a fire near the Dunoon off-ramp, and that the operator demanded a street address he could not give before ending the call. Four men were later found burnt beyond recognition in that…
A Johannesburg High Court judgment delivered on 28 July 2026 has become the centre of a political fight over DA federal finance chairperson Mark Burke, whose family company Kastelo is under investigation by the South African Reserve Bank for suspected exchange control contraventions. The figure being quoted everywhere is R4 billion, but that is not…
The ANC launched its 2026 Local Government Manifesto in Diepsloot on 23 August 2026, and the 64 page document contains an unusually frank account of how badly municipalities are performing. It concedes that only 15% of municipalities achieved a clean audit in 2024/25, that no metro achieved one, and that the funding model the ANC…
A week after Cornelius van Dalen was shot dead by police in a standoff on a farm near Robertson, farm owner Karl Smith has provided additional detail on the WhatsApp exchange, notebook and preparations found after Van Dalen’s death, while a separate group has held a public tribute calling him a hero killed for exposing…
The Hawks shut down a suspected crystal meth laboratory on a farm outside Musina late on Thursday, 20 August 2026. Drugs and equipment worth an estimated R600 million were seized, and 5 people were arrested. However, every one of the 5 is a foreign national, and no South African is in custody. The accused appear…
Cornelius van Dalen, a 40-year-old farmer near Robertson, died on 17 August 2026 after a standoff with the SAPS Special Task Force that began on Sunday, 16 August. Before he died, he posted online that corrupt police working for a drug cartel had come to kill him. The SAPS says the standoff started when he…
On 18 August 2026 the Madlanga Commission spent Day 161 reading WhatsApp messages taken off the phone of Jothan Msibi, named in police testimony as the president of the Big Five cartel, who died in January 2024. The day was scheduled only because Vusimuzi Matlala’s testimony had been postponed and no other witness could step…
AfriForum and the March and March movement met at AfriForum’s offices on 18 August 2026 and agreed to form a joint working group. The two organisations identified shared ground on crime, border control, education and community organising, while both sides confirmed they will still disagree on other matters. The meeting comes against a backdrop where…
Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala’s written statement to the Madlanga Commission answered almost none of the questions put to him, leaving out 10 of the 28 people he was asked to explain his relationship with. But under questioning from the Commissioners on 17 August 2026, he gave sworn evidence linking a middleman, a former Minister of Police…
Government celebrated the launch of an AI teaching robot factory in Durban on 13 August 2026. The factory does not exist yet. The robots are built in India. The entry price for a single unit is R250,000, with components that in my assessment cost under R25,000. And the technology was passed over in the country…
