The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has provided funds to thousands of students from poor and working-class families, so they get an opportunity to study at one of South Africa’s 26 public universities or 50 technical and vocational education and training colleges (TVET colleges).
In 2023 alone, more than 760,000 people received NSFAS funding, 500,000 of them women. NSFAS paid out R44.6-billion in funds that year, most of it to university students.
Nearly half (47%) of the just over a million students enrolled at public universities in 2023 were receiving NSFAS funds, according to Department of Higher Education and Training statistics.
The average bursary for a university student was R73,830, compared with R28,188 for TVET college students.
Before 2018, NSFAS funding was mostly loans. But in December 2017, then president Jacob Zuma announced that the government would subsidise higher education for students from households with annual incomes of up to R350,000. Since 2018, funding has been in the form of bursaries.

South Africa’s 21 Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) are supposed to help workers gain new skills, grow their careers and boost productivity in sectors like agriculture, banking, energy, health, media, mining and transport, to name a few. Sounds good, right?
But the SETAs have long been plagued by inefficiency and red tape. A recent report by the Bureau for Economic Research notes that billions of rands collected for skills training are sitting idle rather than being put to use. That’s a serious problem when you consider South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis and skills shortage. SETAs should be part of the solution.
But the numbers tell a different story. Back in the 2011/12 financial year, about 135,000 people signed up for SETA learnerships, internships and skills programmes. Twelve years later, that figure had risen to about 149,000. Yet the number of people finishing their SETA programme and getting a certification has fallen from 117,600 to 84,100.

South Africa’s 21 Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) are meant to help workers gain skills, grow careers and boost productivity across sectors from agriculture to mining. Sounds good, right?
But inefficiency and red tape have long dogged the system. It’s a major issue in a country battling youth unemployment and a critical skills shortage. Employers contribute 1% of their wage bill to the National Skills Development Levy, which raised R22.4-billion in 2023/24. Of this, nearly R18-billion went to SETAs, according to the Department of Higher Education and Training.
Government now says it will restructure the SETAs, tighten oversight and ensure they deliver real value. On 19 August 2025, Higher Education Minister Buti Manamela placed three SETAs under administration over governance failures and procurement irregularities.

If you’re an interpreter, writer, customer service rep, or data scientist, you may want to pay attention. A Microsoft Research study found these are among the jobs people consult AI tools about.
An analysis of 200,000 conversations with Microsoft Bing Copilot found that information gathering, writing, and communicating are the most common user goals for AI assistance. The study looked at three variables for jobs to predict how ‘applicable’ AI would be to replace these roles: coverage (how many of the tasks in a particular job could be done by AI), scope (how many hours of a work day could AI cover) and completion (how well could AI complete tasks) to come up with a composite score.
Unsurprisingly, jobs deemed the ‘most at risk’ by the study were those that entailed knowledge work or communication, which is very much the domain of large language models (LLMs). Jobs that involved more manual labour or a human touch scored very low on the replacement score.
Of course, the study has caveats: it examined a single LLM and only what users asked about. But that may be the point; these are exactly the tasks people are already turning to AI for.

South Africa’s 16-point loss to Australia (22–38) on 16 August 2025 was one for the rugby history books – and not in a good way. You’d have to go back to 2008 in Durban, when the Aussies beat the Boks 27–15, to find another defeat by that kind of margin.
Since 1995, the Springboks and Wallabies have squared off 64 times. Twenty-nine of those games have been on South African turf, where the Boks usually own it, winning close to 80% of the time.
Some stadiums have been impenetrable fortresses: the Boks have never lost to Australia in Cape Town or Pretoria in the last 30 years. Last week’s clash at Ellis Park in Johannesburg marked the Wallabies’ first win there since 1995. Before that the Wallabies last beat the Boks at Ellis Park in 1963.
Durban, on the other hand, has never been the happiest hunting ground for South Africa. Against Australia, they’ve only managed one win in four matches.

South Africa’s 16-point loss to Australia (22–38) on 16 August 2025 was one for the rugby history books – and not in a good way. You’d have to go back to 2008 in Durban, when the Aussies beat the Boks 27–15, to find another defeat by that kind of margin.
Since 1995, the Springboks and Wallabies have squared off 64 times. Twenty-nine of those games have been on South African turf, where the Boks usually own it, winning close to 80% of the time.
Some stadiums have been impenetrable fortresses: the Boks have never lost to Australia in Cape Town or Pretoria in the last 30 years. Last week’s clash at Ellis Park in Johannesburg marked the Wallabies’ first win there since 1995.
Durban, on the other hand, has never been the happiest hunting ground for South Africa. Against Australia, they’ve only managed one win in four matches.
Bloemfontein has been a mixed bag for the Boks. When the Boks faced the Australians there on 30 September 2017, they drew 27-27.

Prepaid airtime and data are the most used value-added services, with 95% of the South African population purchasing this VAS.
The majority of low-income households prefer to buy airtime and data through spaza shops.
This recent research into consumer behaviour by Electrum suggests that accessibility is a strong driver. Spaza shops have the highest daily transactions for airtime and data and they are more accessible in low-income areas than larger retailers.
In a country where mobile access is often the first and only digital touchpoint, prepaid airtime and data are no longer luxuries – they’re lifelines that support every level of human need.
The research into how South Africans purchase value-added services such as prepaid airtime and data, prepaid electricity, and betting vouchers took place in November last year. Fieldwork took place across all nine provinces, in both urban and peri-urban areas.

• Electrum is the next-generation payments software company, powering payments for banks and retailers.

More than a million five- and six-year-olds walk to school. Nearly half (48%) walk for up to 15 minutes, and about 569,200 spend 15–30 minutes on foot. Another 78,500 walk for over half an hour, according to Statistics South Africa’s 2024 General Household Survey.
Nationally, the share of young children walking 30 minutes or more has dropped since 2010. But in Mpumalanga, it has more than doubled, from 5% in 2010 to 12% in 2023, according to a Department of Basic Education report.
For many in rural areas, these long walks remain a physically demanding and potentially unsafe part of the school day, especially where public transport is scarce and early learning centres are far from home.

It’s a truism that education is the path to a good job. Parents save for years so their children can get a degree or qualification, giving them the best possible start. But when employment numbers are broken down by education level, the stark reality hits home.
According to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, people with tertiary education are most likely to be employed (71%), with only 15% unemployed and 14% classified as ‘not economically active’, meaning these are people who are unemployed and have not taken steps to look for work or to start a business in the four weeks before the survey was conducted.
For those without any schooling, the picture is reversed. Only 22% have jobs, while 71% are not economically active. Even finishing high school makes a significant difference: 44% of matriculants are employed. The data shows that education, especially beyond high school, greatly improves a person’s chances of finding work.

There were 3.6-million new entrants to the job market among the unemployed in Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey for April to June this year. These are people who have never worked before but are currently looking for jobs, most of them likely young and searching for their first opportunity.
As the population grows, more young people enter the labour market every year. But the share of new entrants among the unemployed has also risen, from 41% a decade ago to 43% today. That small percentage shift translates into a massive jump in numbers: from 1.9-million to 3.6-million. It’s a clear sign that South Africa is not creating enough entry-level jobs for people without work experience.

South African enterprises are integrating Generative AI (GenAI) into their operations fairly quickly, but most are doing so without formal strategies, says Arthur Goldstuck from World Wide Worx.
In the latest South African Generative AI Roadmap 2025, Goldstuck says that GenAI usage in large enterprises has increased from 45% in 2024 to 67% in 2025.
The GenAI report surveyed over 100 mid-sized and large enterprises across industry sectors.
From a benefit point of view, most users cited an increase in competitiveness (86%) as a reason for using AI, followed by improved productivity (83%) and enhanced customer service (66%).
But only 14% of the companies surveyed had a formal, company-wide GenAI strategy, according to the report.

South Africa’s police service has more than 2,000 unfilled detective positions.
In a written response to Build One South Africa’s Mmusi Maimane, the minister of police, said that the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were the worst off, reporting 902 and 639 vacancies, respectively.
The Eastern Cape was the only province where the number of filled detective posts exceeded the number funded, a rare surplus.
Without enough detectives, investigations stall, and justice is delayed. In March 2025, nearly half a million case dockets (499,873) were more than two years old, including 79,401 murder cases, according to a parliamentary response.
Adding to the problem is the fact that even when cases make it to court, only 12% result in a guilty verdict, according to criminologist Guy Lamb.

Tourist arrivals at Cape Town International Airport show clear seasonal swings, peaking at 118,205 international visitors in February 2025 before dropping to 47,943 in June, according to Statistics South Africa. This trend reflects the city’s strong appeal during the southern hemisphere summer, from November to March, when warm weather and scenic coastlines draw tourists and airlines ramp up flight frequencies. Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk

In Africa, only one in five of the sources quoted in the news is a woman, according to the most recent Who Makes the News?, Global Media Monitoring Project, a study done every five years.
South African media is better at quoting women than those in Kenya and Nigeria, but still, 75% of those quoted are men.
Quote This Woman+ is working to change this.
QW+ connects journalists from around the world with African women experts. This August, they’re running an #EachOneReachOne campaign to add 100 new experts to their database, which already contains more than 700 woman+ experts in fields ranging from gender rights, politics, economics and crime to AI, tech, education and climate change.
Help them reach that goal by nominating yourself or a woman+ whose expertise you know deserves to be heard.

There are about 13-million vehicles on South Africa’s roads. Less than 1% of them are plug-in electric vehicles, said Hiten Parmar of non-profit Electric Mission in a webinar hosted by EE Publishers on 6 August 2025. That doesn’t sound particularly positive, but car sales data shows that South Africa is on the right track.
Sales of battery electric vehicles in South Africa have accelerated from just 160 in 2019 to 1,200 in 2024. Add plug-in hybrids, and the 2024 total approaches 2,000.
For South Africans, the cost of electric vehicles is a factor. That and anxiety about there being enough charging stations. Eighty to ninety percent of charging takes place at home, says Parmar. Plus, there are 385 charging stations in South Africa at present, according to Plugshare. So, that road trip from Jo’burg to Durban is doable; our highways are covered.

Last year, about one in every five cars sold globally was an electric vehicle. Norway leads the charge, with 92% of new cars sold being electric. China is close to 50%, while the United States sits at 10%. In South Africa, it’s just three in every 500, a small share, but the trend is heading in the right direction.
Sales of battery electric vehicles in South Africa have accelerated from just 160 in 2019 to 1,200 in 2024. Add plug-in hybrids, and the 2024 total approaches 2,000.
Two big hurdles remain: price and concerns about charging infrastructure. Most charging, 80% to 90%, happens at home, says Hiten Parmar of non-profit Electric Mission in a webinar hosted by EE Publishers on 6 August 2025. Still, there are now 385 charging stations in South Africa, according to Plugshare, making road trips from Jo’burg to Durban feasible.

South Africa failed to broker a last-minute deal to avoid the 30% trade tariff imposed by US President Donald Trump, which will come into effect on 7 August 2025. It is a development that has become a source of “great anxiety” for citrus growers in the Western and Northern Cape, according to the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa (CGA).
The two provinces export around 7-million 15kg cartons of citrus to the US each year. But rerouting that fruit is no simple task.
Diverting fruit to other markets could depress prices in those markets through oversupply, which would negatively impact the entire Southern African citrus industry, explained the CGA.
South Africa is the world’s second-largest exporter of citrus. In the 2024 season, more than 2-million tonnes of oranges, mandarins, grapefruits and lemons were shipped overseas. The two biggest markets are Europe (36%) and the Middle East (19%). North America, which includes the United States and Canada, takes 9% of the exports.

Despite the state of municipal services, or lack of them, the chief executives of 13 Johannesburg municipal companies in charge of delivering them earn over a million rand a year, according to data from the City of Johannesburg Medium Term Budget 2025/26 to 2027/28.
The biggest annual package of R4.84-million goes to the chief executive of City Power – that’s without a bonus. The CEO of Pikitup’s R4.36-million package does include a ‘performance bonus’ of R536,000.
Johannesburg Water’s CEO has a package of R3.6-million. The Johannesburg Roads Agency’s CEO gets R3.5-million, despite both entities being blamed for the giant hole on Republic Road in Randburg, which marked its one-year birthday in July.
Both executives’ remuneration packages include ‘performance bonuses’: R218,000 for Johannesburg Water’s CEO and R191,000 for the JRA’s.
As the bucks get passed around, the hole just gets deeper.

Cape Town developers continue to out-earn their peers in other parts of South Africa. According to the latest OfferZen State of the Software Nation report, experienced developers with more than ten years of experience in Cape Town earn about R100,000 per month. That’s roughly R12,000 more than their coastal counterparts in Durban, who earn around R88,000. In Johannesburg and Pretoria, senior developers earn similar amounts, R95,000 and R94,000, respectively.
Interestingly, Durban developers start strong, with entry-level salaries averaging R27,000 a month, only slightly behind Cape Town’s R29,000. But over time, Durban developers appear to fall behind their peers elsewhere in the country.
For mid-level developers (those with four to six years of experience), Pretoria offers the highest average salary at R54,000 per month, followed by Cape Town at R52,000 and Johannesburg at R48,000.

How much you earn can determine where you will pay your bills. Banks are a popular choice for households earning above R8,000 a month, according to recent survey research by Electrum Software. But if your household earns less than R8,000 a month, you’re more likely to pay your bills at a retailer.
Electrum found that different consumers pay their bills in ways that fit into their day-to-day lifestyles and budgets.
Their survey, conducted in November 2024, examined how South Africans purchase value-added services (VAS) such as prepaid airtime and data, prepaid electricity, and betting vouchers. With fieldwork taking place across all nine provinces, in both urban and peri-urban areas, Electrum says the findings highlight how VAS purchasing has become ingrained in everyday behaviour, with growth potential remaining for all businesses selling these services.

• Electrum is the next-generation payments software company, powering payments for banks and retailers.

More than 200 corruption probes by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) have been authorised by South African presidents in the past 11 years.
The SIU’s job is to recover government losses from financial crime. When there are serious allegations of corruption, malpractice and maladministration in state institutions, the presidency can authorise the unit to investigate with a presidential proclamation.
The presidency has issued a total of 300 presidential proclamations since 2001 and 55% of those were by Cyril Ramaphosa since he became president in February 2018.
The 2024/2025 financial year was particularly prolific with 49 proclamations issued.
Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk

The Special Investigating Unit is “one of South Africa’s most effective anti-corruption agencies”, says the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in a policy brief titled The future of South Africa’s Special Investigating Unit.
The unit’s job is to recover government losses from financial crime. When there are serious allegations of corruption, malpractice and maladministration in state institutions, the presidency can authorise the unit to investigate with a presidential proclamation.
How effective are these investigations? “It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of anti-corruption agencies, and reputation is often used as an indication of effectiveness,” says the ISS.
But one measurable metric is the value of cash and assets recovered. Over the past five years, the SIU has recovered nearly R5-billion in assets. Another R19.5-billion worth of contracts were set aside because of SIU investigations.
The 2023/24 financial year was particularly successful, with R2.3-billion in assets recovered, most of which were from two major investigations into Transnet and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme.
Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk

SA’s biggest news sites are blocking AI bots.
News24, IOL, and TimesLIVE, along with their sub-brands, have updated their robots.txt files to block scrapers from OpenAI, Google AI, Perplexity, and Claude. Most smaller publishers haven’t followed suit. Many don’t even have a robots.txt file at all.
So, what is robots.txt? It’s a small text file that tells bots and web crawlers which parts of a site they’re allowed to visit. But it’s not enforceable. It’s more of a polite request. Reputable bots usually listen. Others don’t.
Still, the presence (or absence) of AI-blocking rules in the file is telling. If a publisher hasn’t added them, it likely means AI scraping isn’t a major concern, or hasn’t been considered yet.
There are good reasons for concern. Publishers that invest heavily in original reporting have little incentive to let their work be scraped, paraphrased, and served up in chatbots, especially when that means fewer clicks, less traffic, and no attribution. The costs are real too: sites like Wikipedia have reported massive spikes in bandwidth usage from AI scraping bots.

Beef mince is at its highest price in eight years, according to Statistics South Africa’s Consumer Price Index. It was R14/kg more expensive in June than it was at the beginning of the year.
The increase is largely due to a widespread outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), a highly contagious virus that affects cattle, which has caused supply shortages. Infected cattle have been quarantined, and animal movement has been restricted until herds are vaccinated. There have been 270 reported outbreaks of the disease across five provinces.
South Africa currently relies on Botswana to supply its FMD vaccines. The Botswana Vaccine Institute is one of just five FMD vaccine producers in Africa.
At the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Indaba on 21 July 2025, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen admitted that South Africa had been unprepared. “The national FMD vaccine bank was depleted,” he said.
“Onderstepoort Biological Products [a state-owned vaccine manufacturer] currently lacks the infrastructure to produce FMD vaccines at the scale and speed required to respond to outbreaks,” said Steenhuisen.

City Power customers endured months of power cuts, even after Eskom stopped loadshedding in March last year. But instead of “loadshedding,” it was called “load reduction.” That ended in Johannesburg in February this year, but power outages certainly haven’t.
City Power publishes data on reported power faults, and the numbers tell a worrying story.
The most serious faults, on high-voltage power lines, began rising toward the end of 2024. These outages affect large areas and are classified as “critical,” City Power says.
But the steady increase has been on the medium-voltage distribution network – the system that carries electricity from high-voltage lines to the low-voltage network that powers our homes. Medium-voltage outages usually hit an entire suburb or even multiple suburbs.
In March alone, 494 medium-voltage outages were reported.
City Power does provide real-time updates on the progress of repairs to high- and medium-voltage faults via its various public channels.
Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk

City Power customers endured months of power cuts, even after Eskom stopped loadshedding in March last year. But instead of “loadshedding,” it was called “load reduction.” That ended in Johannesburg in February this year, but power outages certainly haven’t.
City Power publishes data on its low-voltage outages, which tend to affect individual households or a few houses on a street or a block.
In March 2025, City Power received 9,200 outage reports, which sounds bad, but a year-and-a-half ago, in July 2023, the worst year of Eskom’s loadshedding, it received more than 18,000 outage reports. Low-voltage outage reports regularly top 10,000 a month.
The reported figures of low-voltage outages refer specifically to the number of logged outage calls, not the actual number of unique fault incidents on the electricity network, says City Power. “For instance, 300 calls from residents on the same street could all stem from one technical fault.”
Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk

Equipment failure is behind roughly 60% of City Power’s medium-voltage outages, but it’s the outages caused by thieves and vandals that anger Johannesburg residents the most.
On the bright side, there has been a sharp drop in theft and vandalism-related outages on the medium-voltage network since Eskom’s loadshedding ended in March 2024. In the last six months of 2023, theft and vandalism were the cause of 17% of the outages, which dropped to 9% in the last six months of 2024. Only 4% of medium-voltage outages in March this year were caused by thieves and vandals.
A light at the end of that tunnel, perhaps?
But falling crime-related outages don’t explain why overall outages on the medium-voltage network are still rising, from 462 in July 2023 to 494 in March 2025.
Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk

US President Donald Trump’s 30% tariff on South African imports has dealt a blow to the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which is set to expire in September 2025. AGOA allows eligible sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to the US market for thousands of products, aiming to boost economic growth through exports.
In 2024, South Africa accounted for nearly half ($3.8-billion) of the $7.9-billion in US imports under AGOA. The country’s top export under the agreement is transport equipment. That year, South Africa exported 24,681 vehicles to the United States, according to the Automotive Business Council (Naamsa).
“The US tariffs directly threaten thousands of jobs in our sector, disrupt hard-won industrial capabilities, and risk devastating communities such as East London, where the auto sector forms the economic heartbeat of the town,” said Naamsa CEO Mikel Mabasa. “If we cannot retain export markets like the US, we risk turning vibrant industrial hubs into ghost towns.”
South Africa’s automotive industry supports over 110,000 formal sector jobs, according to Naamsa.

US President Donald Trump’s 30% tariff on South Africa has dealt a blow to the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which is due to expire in September 2025. AGOA provides duty-free access to eligible sub-Saharan African countries for thousands of products, aimed at promoting economic growth through exports.
Thirty-two countries are eligible for AGOA.
In 2024, South Africa accounted for almost half ($3.8-billion) of the $7.9-billion in US imports under AGOA, followed by Nigeria ($1.6-billion) and Kenya ($567-million), according to US International Trade Commission data.
Nigeria mainly exports crude oil, while Kenya’s key exports are textiles.
Roughly 25% of South Africa’s total exports to the US fall under AGOA, according to a 2025 Parliamentary Budget Office report.
South Africa’s top AGOA export is transport equipment.

South Africans don’t trust the police. About one in five people surveyed by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) earlier this year said they ‘trust’ or ‘strongly trust’ the police, but three in five said they ‘distrust’ the police.
Trust in the police has almost halved, from 41% of the people surveyed in 1998 to just 22% in 2024/25, according to an HSRC report, National and provincial trends: Trust in the police, 1998-2025.
The most recent survey results are the lowest recorded levels of trust in 27 years, said the HSRC.
The survey found that trust eroded when people felt they were treated unfairly or disrespected, or believed the police lacked impartiality, transparency, or effectiveness.
Why does this matter? The HSRC says, “The risk is that low and diminishing confidence in the police, if left unchecked, will also continue to negatively shape views of key elements of police legitimacy.”

Trust in the police has dropped in every province of South Africa.
There was a time when more than 60% of people in the Northern Cape, Free State, and Eastern Cape said they trusted the police. But in a survey conducted in early 2025, not a single province recorded trust levels above 30%.
Nationally, trust in the police has nearly halved, from 41% in 1998 to just 22% in 2024/25, according to the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) report National and provincial trends: Trust in the police, 1998-2025.
“While provincial levels and trajectories have varied, the trend points to a deepening legitimacy crisis for SAPS across the country,” the HSRC says. “Historically higher-trust provinces are converging downward towards the levels of deep scepticism observed in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.”
“The risk is that low and diminishing confidence in the police, if left unchecked, will also continue to negatively shape views of key elements of police legitimacy,” warns the HSRC.

South Africa’s imports of lithium-ion batteries have fallen sharply since the peak of electricity outages in 2022 and 2023.
In 2023, the country imported R32.4-billion worth of lithium-ion batteries. This dropped to R8.1-billion in 2024. In the first quarter of 2025, imports amounted to R1.9-billion, putting the country on track to match last year’s total. Most of these batteries are imported from China.
Despite the decrease in imports, South Africa remains invested in battery energy storage.
Eskom began its battery energy storage project in 2018, planning to install 12 grid-connected storage systems. According to Eskom’s 2024 annual report, three systems have been commissioned so far, one in Worcester, Western Cape, and two in KwaZulu-Natal, with a combined capacity of 68MW/292MWh.
These large-scale storage systems rely on lithium-ion technology, the same type used in the smaller batteries found in the rooftop solar systems installed by households, businesses, farms and factories across the country.
Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk

Long seen as a nice-to-have, value-added services (VAS) are now a vital part of South Africa’s payments ecosystem. New research by payments software company Electrum estimates the VAS market to be worth almost R500-billion per year.
In a November 2024 survey of economically active South Africans who manage personal or household payments, the company found that domestic money transfers made up a third of the annual R498-billion spend. This was followed by bill payments, prepaid airtime and data, prepaid electricity and betting vouchers.
The survey was conducted across all nine provinces, with fieldwork in both urban and peri-urban areas. Respondents were selected using quotas based on province, race, age and gender.
Electrum says the findings highlight the growing importance of VAS in everyday financial behaviours.

• Electrum is a next-generation payments software company and trusted partner to leading banks and retailers.

The South African government launched its Battery Energy Storage Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme in March 2023. Since then, it has opened three bid windows and announced 18 preferred bidders. The map above shows the locations of these 18 projects.
Five of the projects have reached ‘financial close’, the stage at which financing is secured and construction can begin. These five are expected to be built and operational by the end of 2026, adding a combined 513MW/2,023MWh of capacity to the national grid.
Why is this kind of grid-connected battery storage important? There are a few reasons, three of which are:

• It supports the expansion of renewable energy on the national grid. Battery storage can store the electricity generated by wind and solar when their electricity output is high and release it when it is low.
• Batteries increase the available grid capacity.
• Batteries can be charged from the grid and can store a substantial amount of electricity. This can be used to boost the electricity network during peak hours, reducing the strain on the network.

Connecting battery energy storage to the grid is also a way to alleviate loadshedding, says Eskom.
Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk

Nearly three-quarters of South Africans go online using a mobile device, with KwaZulu-Natal leading the provinces at 78.5%.
At the other end of the spectrum, just 67.2% of people in the Eastern Cape access the internet via mobile, the lowest rate in the country, reflecting possible challenges in infrastructure or service availability, according to Icasa’s March 2025 State of the ICT Sector in South Africa report.
Access to fixed home internet remains far more limited. Nationally, only 14.5% of South Africans have a home internet connection. The numbers are skewed by relatively high access in the Western Cape (40.1%) and Gauteng (21.5%), while most other provinces are below 10%. In Mpumalanga, just 3.1% of people have fixed home internet.
Beyond the home, South Africans also access the internet through a range of public and workplace options: 14% connect at work, 8% use public Wi-Fi, 6.9% visit internet cafés, 4.6% connect at educational institutions and 3.5% use library networks.

Almost all of South Africa’s urban residents are currently covered by 3G and 4G, according to data from Icasa’s March 2025 State of the ICT Sector in South Africa report.
5G coverage is highest in the Western Cape (78%) and Gauteng (76%), and significantly lower in the Northern Cape (38%) and Free State (26%).
3G networks are being phased out in South Africa, and all 2G and 3G networks should be shut down by December 2027. Networks have been prohibited from introducing new 3G devices since December 2024.
4G offer download speeds of around 100Mbps (depending on conditions) while 5G networks are capable of speeds around 10 times that.

The global average cost of battery storage fell by 40% between 2023 and 2024, according to the Volta Foundation Battery Report 2024. Battery energy storage systems are like giant rechargeable batteries that store excess electricity generated by sources, such as solar or wind, so they can be used when needed. In 2024, 69GW of battery storage was deployed around the world, just over half of it in China, followed by the United States.
In 2019, the cost of battery storage was $375 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). By 2024, that price had dropped to $165/kWh. The price decrease has driven a surge in the number of new battery storage projects being built around the world.
South Africa is no exception. In the last year and a half, 18 preferred bidders have been appointed to build grid-linked battery storage capacity under the government’s Battery Energy Storage Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme.

BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and new members Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates – together accounted for half (51%) of global solar electricity generation in 2024, according to energy think tank Ember’s report “Solar BRICS: Emerging economies now lead the world’s clean energy race.”
China alone generated 39% of the world’s solar power in 2024, up from just 12% a decade earlier. South Africa contributed 0.9%.
Five BRICS countries featured among the world’s top 20 solar power producers. China led globally with 839 terawatt-hours (TWh), followed by the United States (303TWh) and India (137TWh). Brazil ranked sixth with 71TWh, and South Africa placed 16th with 20TWh. The United Arab Emirates, which joined BRICS in 2024, was 20th.

Five of the world’s top 20 solar power producers in 2024 were BRICS countries, led by China, which generated 839 terawatt-hours (TWh) of solar electricity – more than any other nation. India ranked third globally with 137TWh, after the United States at 303TWh. Brazil followed in sixth place with 71TWh, while South Africa placed 16th with 20TWh. The United Arab Emirates, which joined BRICS in 2024, was 20th.
According to the energy think tank Ember’s report Solar BRICS: Emerging economies now lead the world’s clean energy race, the expanded BRICS group – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the UAE – together produced 51% of global solar electricity in 2024.
China alone accounted for 39% of global solar generation in 2024, up sharply from just 12% a decade earlier. South Africa’s contribution was 0.9%.

United States President Donald Trump’s reciprocal trade tariffs, first announced on 2 April, were set to take effect on 9 July. However, he extended the 90-day moratorium to 1 August and sent letters to more than 20 countries informing them that their tariffs had been revised. South Africa, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya were the only African countries to receive letters so far.
South Africa and Algeria’s tariffs remain unchanged at 30%. Tunisia’s was slightly reduced from 28% to 25%. Libya’s was marginally reduced from 31% to 30%.
A fact sheet on the White House website, which claims President Trump is “the best trade negotiator in history”, hints at a willingness to pursue further trade talks.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said South Africa would continue its “diplomatic efforts towards a more balanced and mutually beneficial trade relationship”.
South Africa’s platinum, gold, coal, manganese and chrome are among the products that have been excluded from the US tariffs.

Alcohol use has previously been linked to an increase in femicide, but research on this in lower- and middle-income countries has been relatively scarce. A 2025 study using South African data from the Covid-19 lockdowns offers new insight.
During periods when alcohol sales were completely banned, the number of women killed – by both intimate partners and non-partners – fell by 63% compared to periods without restrictions. Researchers compared national data from 2017 with the first year of the pandemic (2020–21), during which varying lockdown restrictions, including bans on alcohol, were enforced.
The pattern of fewer reported femicide cases was most obvious in the early stages of the Covid restrictions, between April and May 2020.
From the report: “The findings support alcohol use as a significant risk factor for femicide and underline the need for alcohol harm reduction policies as part of gender-based violence prevention strategies.”

Gauteng has the second-highest number of learners enrolled in its public schools. Only KwaZulu-Natal has more. But Gauteng does not have the second-highest number of public schools. It ranks fourth, with 2,068 schools – behind KwaZulu-Natal (5,753), the Eastern Cape (4,990), and Limpopo (3,590).
Those three provinces tend to have many small rural schools.
South Africa’s Schools Act classifies schools by size, ranging from ‘micro primary schools’ with fewer than 135 learners to ‘mega primary schools’ with more than 930 learners. High schools are similarly classified, with ‘micro’ high schools having fewer than 200 learners and ‘mega’ high schools more than 1,000.
When averaging the number of learners per school by province, the contrast becomes clear: Gauteng has the highest average of 1,127 learners per school, followed by the Western Cape at 823 learners. In the rural provinces, the average is much lower. Eastern Cape has 343 learners per school, KwaZulu-Natal has 492, and Limpopo has 482.

Gauteng needs around 200 new schools to accommodate the fast-growing number of schoolchildren, according to Matome Chiloane, the province’s education department head. It’s looking to the private sector to help fund this monumental building project.
This year Gauteng reportedly received money from the National Treasury to build 18 schools, but that’s not enough to meet even the immediate need for new schools identified by Gauteng’s education department.
Over the past decade, the number of learners in Gauteng’s public primary and high schools has increased by 20%, from 1.9-million in 2014 to 2.3-million in 2024.
The Western Cape is the only other province that has seen such a rapid rise in learner numbers of 18% from 1-million to 1.2-million. Meanwhile, the Eastern Cape has gone in the opposite direction, with enrolment dropping 9%, from 1.9-million to 1.7-million between 2014 and 2024.

Learner enrolment in Gauteng’s schools rose by 20% in the past decade from 1.9-million in 2014 to 2.3-million in 2024, but its school-building programme hasn’t kept pace. Only 48 schools were built between 2015 and 2024, according to provincial education reports.
Many of the “new” schools were replacements for old, unsafe structures. Gauteng hasn’t completed a single new school in five years – only replacement schools have been built, a March 2025 presentation to the National Council of Provinces shows.
In contrast, the Western Cape – where learner numbers have also surged – has responded more proactively, completing 97 schools, with five more planned for 2025/26. Three provinces have outpaced Gauteng’s school building.
Even the Eastern Cape has built (or replaced) more schools than Gauteng, completing 74 by 2024. This is despite the number of learners decreasing by 176,000 over 10 years.

Out of South Africa’s 257 municipalities, one in four (66) is considered high risk of being dysfunctional. Only 30 – about one in 10 – are classified as stable.
The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta)assesses municipal risk by examining political stability, governance, administrative capacity, service delivery, and financial health.
When a municipality experiences ongoing dysfunction, national or provincial governments can, as a measure of ‘last resort’, intervene under Section 139 of the Constitution.
In a report entitled ‘Exploring possible interventions into dysfunctional local government in Gauteng’, Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s Dr Claire Franklyn, draws on Cogta’s data to show just how many municipalities are at risk.
The chart above, based on 2022 data, shows the proportion of local municipalities in each province that are considered at risk of dysfunction – and the small share classified as stable. The Western Cape stands out as the best performer.

Public satisfaction with local government in Gauteng is collapsing.
Nearly two out of three people who were part of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) Quality of Life survey, and 13,795 people were interviewed, said they were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the province’s local governments (aka municipalities).
No surprise there, given the string of service delivery failures. From potholed roads and dry taps to power outages caused by ageing infrastructure, residents have also had to endure a cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal, Tshwane, a deadly fire in the Johannesburg CBD at 80 Albert Street and a gas explosion on Lillian Ngoyi Street, all in 2023.
Frequent mayoral changes since the 2021 local government elections have not helped either.
Public dissatisfaction is unlikely to ease anytime soon. Both Tshwane and Emfuleni have been in concerning financial positions for three and four consecutive years, respectively.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa jumped by a record 75% in 2024, according to UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2025.
The increase was driven by a $35-billion megaproject backed by the United Arab Emirates, which aims to transform a stretch of the country’s Mediterranean coastline into a major tourism, residential, business and financial hub. The size of the investment made Egypt the top African recipient of foreign direct investment and the ninth-largest globally.
Meanwhile, South Africa, which typically vies with Egypt for the top spot for foreign direct investment, fell to seventh place, behind Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
South Africa’s strong showing in 2021 was largely due to a one-off share exchange between Prosus NV and Naspers, which inflated its foreign investment figures.
Angola’s FDI has been in negative territory for the past few years due to the repatriation of investments by foreign companies, especially in the oil sector.

Only 32 countries in the world host AI-focused data centres and fewer than 20% of those are in the Southern Hemisphere. The vast majority of data centres are clustered around Europe and the UK, in the United States and China. 90% of the world’s AI data centres are controlled by either the US or China.
A new study from Oxford University has sparked much-needed debates about the future of AI, and who ultimately controls it and who has access to it. The entire continent of Africa, apart from South Africa, and most of South America has none of the infrastructure required to build, train and run AI models.
As University of Pretoria’s ABSA Chair of Data Science Vukosi Marivate says: “This divide isn’t just about technology. It means limited innovation, lost competitiveness, brain drain, lack of data sovereignty, and the economic benefits of AI flowing elsewhere. Access to compute is no longer optional – it’s essential for digital sovereignty and for shaping our own AI future.”

South Africa imports most of its petroleum and crude oil from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. In 2023, it imported $2.28-billion (46.1%) from Nigeria and $1.62-billion (32.7%) from Saudi Arabia, according to Harvard’s Atlas of Economic Complexity.
In June 2025, Saudi Arabia was exporting 7.2-million barrels of oil per day through the Strait of Hormuz. It is one of six major oil producers – alongside Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman – that rely on Hormuz to ship oil, much of it destined for Asian markets.
The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s second-busiest oil transit chokepoint after the Strait of Malacca. In 2023, 20.9-million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products passed through Hormuz each day, compared to 23.7-million through Malacca.
Any blockade or disruption in the strait would likely push up global oil prices – and South Africans would feel it at the pump. Higher fuel costs would ripple through the economy, raising the transport prices, food, and other essentials.

Iran is one of the world’s top crude oil producers, averaging 5.1-million barrels per day in 2024. When Israel launched its war with Iran, oil prices spiked amid fears of supply disruptions.
Part of that anxiety stems from geography: Iran borders the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes en route from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.
Six of the world’s biggest oil producers – Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman – rely on Hormuz to export their oil, most of it bound for Asian markets.
Tensions escalated further when the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities on 22 June 2025. Fears mounted that Iran would retaliate by blocking the strait.
The Strait of Hormuz is the second-busiest oil transit route in the world, after the Strait of Malacca. In 2023, 20.9-million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products moved through Hormuz daily, compared to 23.7-million through Malacca.

Iran is one of the world’s top crude oil producers, averaging 5.1-million barrels per day in 2024. When Israel launched its war with Iran, oil prices spiked amid fears of supply disruptions.
Part of that anxiety stems from geography: Iran borders the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes en route from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.
Six of the world’s biggest oil producers – Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman – rely on Hormuz to export their oil, most of it bound for Asian markets.
Tensions escalated further when the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities on 22 June 2025. Fears mounted that Iran would retaliate by blocking the strait.
The Strait of Hormuz is the second-busiest oil transit route in the world, after the Strait of Malacca. In 2023, 20.9-million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products moved through Hormuz daily, compared to 23.7-million through Malacca.

The severe weather that hit the Eastern Cape in early June has been classified a national disaster.
Devastating floods killed more than 90 people, with Mthatha the hardest hit. On 9 June 2025 alone, the town recorded 129mm of rain – breaking a 28-year record set in 1997, when 76.6mm fell on the same date.
The head of the Disaster Management Centre classified the event as a national disaster, which allows different levels of government to step in and coordinate response and recovery efforts.
Since 2015, 76 events have been classified as disasters at various levels of government – more than a third of them due to severe weather, including floods, hailstorms and strong winds. The Eastern Cape has been affected by 11 of these weather-related disasters.
This is the second disaster to hit the province in 2025. In January, heavy rains also triggered a disaster classification.

When disasters strike, the National Disaster Management Centre, under the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, can disburse two types of grants: response grants for emergency relief – such as urgent repairs to infrastructure and emergency provision of goods and services – and recovery grants to support the longer-term rehabilitation and reconstruction.
In the 2023/24 financial year, R873-million rand in disaster response grants was allocated to 75 municipalities. Yet only 25 municipalities spent 80% or more of their funding. Thirty municipalities didn’t spend a cent. By year-end, just R220.5-million – 25% of the total available – had been used.
King Sabata Dalindyebo local municipality was one of 22 municipalities in the Eastern Cape that received disaster relief funding in the 2023/24 financial year. It was granted R5.4-million and spent 94% of it, which is encouraging.
Unspent funds may be reallocated by the National Treasury unless already committed to projects.

President Donald Trump banned travel to the United States for citizens of seven African countries and restricted access for another three countries from 9 June.
In a separate list, he included an additional 24 African countries that may be subject to travel restrictions if they didn’t provide ‘remediation plans’ for concerns identified by the US government that include security vetting and people overstaying their US visas, according to the New York Times.
The 34 countries are:
Banned: Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia and Sudan.
Restricted travel: Burundi, Sierra Leone and Togo. People from these countries cannot go to the US permanently or get tourist or student visas.
May be restricted: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

An increasing proportion of people say they avoid reading, watching or listening to the news. According to this year’s edition of the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report, 40% of people say they sometimes or often avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017. At 41%, the South Africans who took part in the survey were in line with the global average.
The top eight reasons people avoid the news are:
– It has a negative effect on their mood
– They are worn out by the amount of news
– There is too much coverage of conflict/war
– There is too much coverage of politics
– There is nothing they can do with the information
– It leads to arguments they’d rather avoid
– It doesn’t feel relevant to their lives
– It’s too hard to understand

South Africans wagered more than R1-trillion in 2024.
Betting on sports and other contingencies is driving this surge. Half the gross revenue from gambling is from online betting, according to National Gambling Board statistics.
In the 2023/24 financial year alone, the gambling industry generated R59.3-billion in gross revenue. The Western Cape overtook Gauteng as the top-earning province, pulling in R18.78-billion, compared to Gauteng’s R13.01-billion. Mpumalanga followed closely with R12.98-billion.
A survey conducted by ,a href=”https://themediaonline.co.za/2025/05/upping-the-ante-tracking-the-year-on-year-growth-of-gambling-in-sa/”>InfoQuest in April 2025 – a follow-up to its March 2024 study of roughly 300 South African gamblers – found that nearly half (48%) reported gambling more frequently than they had a year ago.
“This surge in frequency points to growing engagement, possibly fuelled by the rise of easily accessible online platforms, aggressive marketing, and shifting social norms,” said Claire Heckrath, managing director of InfoQuest. But how are people funding their gambling? According to Heckrath, a third of gamblers claim to use surplus funds. “This means that a concerning 63% are likely using money meant for essentials, savings, or other financial commitments,” she said.

People in South Africa wagered more than R1-trillion in the 2023/24 financial year.
Two-thirds of that total was spent on betting, mainly on sports and horse racing, according to the National Gambling Board.
Of the nine provinces, Mpumalanga recorded the highest gambling spend at R359.3-billion, followed closely by the Western Cape at R353.2-billion. Gauteng trailed at R173.7-billion.
In Mpumalanga and the Western Cape, betting is the clear favourite, accounting for 96% and 84% of gambling spend respectively. In contrast, Gauteng remains a stronghold for casinos, where 77% of its gambling turnover was recorded. Casinos also led in KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and the Eastern Cape.
Nationally, betting now far outpaces other forms of gambling, generating a turnover of R761-billion – more than double that of casinos, which brought in R297-billion.
All this activity contributed R4.8-billion to government revenue through taxes and levies in the 2023/24 financial year.

People in South Africa wagered more than R1-trillion in the 2023/24 financial year.
Of the nine provinces, Mpumalanga recorded the highest gambling spend at R359.3-billion, followed closely by the Western Cape at R353.2-billion. Gauteng trailed at R173.7-billion.
In Mpumalanga and the Western Cape, betting is the clear favourite, accounting for 96% and 84% of gambling spend respectively. In contrast, Gauteng remains a stronghold for casinos, where 77% of its gambling turnover was recorded. Casinos also led in KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and the Eastern Cape.
Bingo, while a smaller slice of the pie nationally, is relatively popular in the North West and Eastern Cape, where it contributes around a quarter of gambling turnover.
Nationally, betting now far outpaces other forms of gambling, generating a turnover of R761-billion – more than double that of casinos, which brought in R297-billion.
All this activity contributed R4.8-billion to government revenue through taxes and levies in the 2023/24 financial year.

The highest-paid city manager in 2023/24 was in Ekurhuleni, with a remuneration package of R4.57-million. Cape Town’s city manager followed closely at R4.49-million, while eThekwini and Johannesburg paid R3.84-million and R3.36-million respectively.
City managers typically out-earn mayors. In Johannesburg, for example, the mayor earned R1.58-million – nearly half of what the city manager received.
Mangaung’s city manager earned significantly less, but only because he took office on 1 November 2023 and did not serve the full financial year.
Why the high salaries? City managers are effectively the chief executives of municipalities. They are responsible for implementing policies, managing service delivery, and ensuring that local governments comply with legislation – making them key to a city’s performance.

Even though it’s been more than five years since the first major Covid lockdown, the effect of the pandemic remains. One of the sectors most affected by the global lockdown was tourism and travel.
Five years after Covid, international arrivals in South Africa are much improved but not yet back to pre-Covid highs.
Arrivals in 2024 were almost 9-million, still 13% down on the highs of 2017 and 2018. Kenya, in comparison, has recovered and even exceeded pre-Covid arrivals in the time since the lockdowns, albeit off a smaller base.
The vast majority of arrivals in South Africa are from within Africa, especially SADC (Southern African Development Community) countries. In 2024, 6.6-million arrivals in SA were from SADC countries, or 74% of the total.
The majority of SADC visitors to South Africa stayed in the country for 2 to 4 days. Visitors from overseas spent an average of 8 to 14 days in the country.

People in South Africa wagered more than R1-trillion last year. Two-thirds of it was spent on betting, mostly online, on things like sports and horse racing. The money spent on betting has been going up since around 2021. The turnover from betting now far surpasses casinos, which used to be the most popular way to gamble.
Betting on sports and other contingencies is driving this surge.
“Gambling has transitioned from a pastime enjoyed by small pockets of society to being a commonplace activity,” notes the National Gambling Authority.
In an April 2025 survey conducted by InfoQuest – a follow-up to its March 2024 study on approximately 300 gamblers in South Africa – nearly half (48%) said they are gambling more often than a year ago.
According to Claire Heckrath, managing director of InfoQuest, “This surge in frequency points to growing engagement, possibly fuelled by the rise of easily accessible online platforms, aggressive marketing, and shifting social norms.”
Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk

South Africa has long been Africa’s leader in motor vehicle production, but that dominance is now being challenged by Morocco, while Algeria is starting to ramp up production from a smaller base.
In 2024, South Africa produced 599,755 vehicles, only slightly ahead of Morocco’s 559,645. Morocco has already overtaken South Africa in passenger vehicle production, manufacturing 524,467 units – about 174,000 more than South Africa.
Morocco is increasingly focusing on the electric vehicle (EV) sector. In early June, officials in Morocco announced plans to boost EV production by more than 50% this year, targeting 107,000 EV units by the end of 2025.
Morocco’s proximity to the EU market is a clear advantage, while South Africa faces a number of challenges including stricter EU emissions targets on traditional combustion vehicles, transport costs and often unstable infrastructure.

State salaries are under fresh scrutiny as budget pressures mount and government debt soars – but the pay at state-owned enterprises is particularly staggering. The Development Bank of South Africa CEO tops the list, earning R15.5-million a year, nearly R1.3-million a month. The next highest earners are Transnet’s CEO at R8.5-million a year, closely followed by South African Revenue Services’ CEO at R8.2-million.
We’ve compiled the remuneration packages of the 122 state-owned enterprises CEOs using responses from 18 government ministers to parliamentary questions. The electricity and energy minister’s response was incomplete due to a broken link, so Eskom’s financials were used to estimate its CEO’s pay.
The top 15 earners all take home R6-million a year or more – not including performance bonuses. None of the 122 CEOs earns less than R1-million a year.

It won’t come as a surprise that the five richest people in the world are tech billionaires based in the United States, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
At number one – as of the close of business on 5 June 2025 – is Elon Musk (yes, born in South Africa, but now an American citizen), with a net worth of $368-billion. To put that in perspective, only two African countries have economies larger than Musk’s fortune – South Africa, with a GDP of $400-billion, and Egypt, at $383-billion.
The graphic above compares the net worth of the world’s top five richest men to the GDPs of Africa’s five largest economies, based on the IMF’s World Economic Outlook (April 2025).
Altogether, the combined net worth of the top 10 on Bloomberg’s latest billionaires index stands at $1.97-trillion – exceeding the entire GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa, which the IMF estimates at $1.88-trillion for 2024.

The number of people using South Africa’s trains is slowly recovering, driven by improvements in the commuter rail service network.
In March 2024, Statistics South Africa recorded 4.7-million train journeys. A year later, that figure had risen to 7.4-million. But this is still nowhere near the highs of 2009, when there was an average of 52-million journeys per month.
Over the past year, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) has significantly expanded the number of operational lines. By March 2025, 34 of PRASA’s 40 commuter service lines were running – up dramatically from just four in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Train services ground to a halt in late March 2020 during the country’s initial hard lockdown. Although operations resumed as restrictions eased, the recovery was hampered by widespread vandalism and theft at rail stations and along the tracks. The revival of the rail network is a critical step in restoring affordable public transport.

Around 24,000 runners entered the 98th Comrades Marathon in 2025, with the largest group made up of men aged 40 to 49 (8,171 entries), followed by senior men aged 20 to 39 (5,329), and men aged 50 to 59 (4,395).
On Sunday, 8 June, roughly 22,000 runners completed the approximately 89km Down Run from Pietermaritzburg to Durban. The gap between entries and actual participants is typically due to injuries, personal circumstances, or failure to meet qualifying standards.
Entry fees were set at R1,200 for South African citizens, R2,000 for entrants from the rest of Africa, and R4,500 for international runners.
Tete Dijana claimed victory with a time of 5:25:28, while Gerda Steyn was the first woman over the finish line with a time of 5:51:19.
First held in 1921, the Comrades is the world’s oldest and largest ultramarathon. The race alternates annually between the up run (Durban to Pietermaritzburg) and the down run (Pietermaritzburg to Durban).

Since the 2021 local elections, metro leadership across South Africa has been volatile.
Johannesburg has had six mayors, driven by resignations, court rulings, and no-confidence motions. Dada Morero currently holds the position. Ekurhuleni and Tshwane have each seen four mayoral changes, the latter due to scandals, poor audits and no-confidence motions. ActionSA’s Nasiphi Moya now leads Tshwane.
In the Eastern Cape, Nelson Mandela Bay also had multiple shifts. The current mayor is ANC’s Babalwa Lobishe. Buffalo City saw one change, with Princess Faku replacing Xola Pakati.
Cape Town remains the most stable, with Geordin Hill-Lewis continuing since 2021. Ethekwini had one change in 2024, and Mangaung had two mayoral changes.
Things were not much more stable after the 2016 elections. Johannesburg, Tshwane, and Nelson Mandela Bay each cycled through four mayors during that term, often due to motions of no confidence, resignations, or death in office.

In 2024, over 695,000 Schengen visa applications from across Africa were denied, resulting in more than $70-million lost in non-refundable fees. West Africans bore the brunt of these visa rejections.
A Schengen visa, which allows short stays in 29 European countries, costs €90 (about R1,800) per application and is non-refundable, even if the visa is denied.
Nigeria was hit the hardest, with 45.3% of its 111,201 applications rejected. Only 58,808 were approved – meaning Nigerians lost over $5-million in fees for unsuccessful applications.
Other West African countries followed closely:
– Senegal: $3.3-million lost
– Côte d’Ivoire: $2.6-million
– Ghana: $2.5-million
In East Africa, 28.5% of Kenyan applications were rejected, resulting in $1.9-million in lost fees.
South Africans fared far better, with just 5.6% of 193,768 applications rejected. Still, that relatively low rate translated into more than $1-million in lost fees.

Africans lost over $70-million in rejected Schengen visa fees in 2024. Nigerians were hit hardest, with 45.3% of applications denied, followed closely by Ghanaian applicants at 44.5%.
A Schengen visa, which allows short stays in 29 European countries, costs €90 (around R1,800) and is non-refundable.
Data from the European Commission shows that there were 111,201 applications by Nigerians for Schengen visas in 2024, and only 58,808 of those were granted. That means that over $5-million was spent (and lost) by Nigerians whose visa applications were turned down.
South Africans fared much better, only 5.6% of the 193,768 applications were rejected. Still, that translates to over $1-million (or R19.7-million) in lost fees. People travelling from the United States and China had 4% and 4.5% of their Schengen visas rejected.
The average rejection rate for Schengen visas for all countries is 16.9% while the rejection rate for African applications is 27%.

In the world of computer programming, Stack Overflow was a giant.
For more than a decade, it was the go-to site for asking tech-related questions.
At its peak, more than 300,000 questions* were posted on Stack Overflow every month, and many of them had dozens, if not hundreds, of responses. Stack Overflow was massive.
That’s why Naspers-owned Prosus paid $1.7-billion to acquire it in August 2021. Many argued it was an overpriced deal, but given Stack Overflow’s influence and reach, it could have made sense.
But it didn’t.
In November 2022, ChatGPT was launched – and new data shows Stack Overflow activity plummeted over the next two years, dropping from over 200,000 questions a month to just a few thousand, as developers increasingly turned to AI for answers.
Today, most of Prosus’s investment in Stack Overflow has been written off. The once-dominant platform is now all but dead.
*Note: The question data includes all posts, including deleted posts, as an indicator of activity.*  The data is from here.

Mozambique is South Africa’s largest African trade partner, with exports reaching nearly R120-billion in 2024. According to the South African Revenue Service, it ranks among the top five destinations for South African exports. Key goods include chromium ore (26%), ferroalloys (17%), iron ore (8.5%), coal (7%), electrical energy (5%), and cleaning products (2%), along with motor vehicles, corn, cereals, and soya beans.
Trade with Mozambique has grown significantly over the past 14 years, rising from just R13.8-billion in 2010 to nearly R120-billion in 2024. While Mozambique leads among African trade partners, it still lags behind global export destinations such as China (R220-billion), the United States (R157-billion) and Germany (R154-billion).
South Africa’s other major African trade partners are, unsurprisingly, its immediate neighbours: Botswana (R78.9-billion), Namibia (R70.4-billion), Zimbabwe (R69.2-billion), and Zambia (R55.6-billion).
On the import side, Nigeria is South Africa’s largest African source, with imports totalling R46.7-billion in 2024 – comprising almost exclusively crude petroleum, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.
Get the data used in the chart on DataDesk.

Most murders do not happen on South African farms – despite claims by US President Donald Trump that white farmers are under attack – a narrative not supported by the country’s crime data.
In the last quarter of 2024, more than 6,000 murders were recorded nationwide, according to official police statistics. Just 96 took place on farms, plots, and small holdings – a broad category that likely includes farm workers and nearby residents, not just landowners or “white farmers.” In contrast, 244 murders took place in pubs, taverns, and bottle stores. Public places saw the highest number of murders (3,821), followed by private homes (1,966).
The majority of South Africa’s murder victims are young Black men. As Gareth Newham of the Institute for Security Studies explains,“Murder victimisation is far more correlated to class, gender and location than race.”

In the 2023/24 financial year, only 41 of South Africa’s 257 municipalities (16%) received a clean audit, meaning their financial and performance reports were credible and reliable. Cape Town was the only metro to achieve this.The rest had concerning audit outcomes:– 99 unqualified with findings: Material misstatements were corrected, but issues like weak capacity and poor internal controls remained.
– 90 qualified opinions: Financial statements had material errors and couldn’t be fully trusted.
– 6 adverse opinions: Statements were deemed “not useful” for decision-making.
– 11 disclaimed opinions: The Auditor-General couldn’t assess the finances due to a lack of evidence.
– 10 audits outstanding: Yet to be finalised.
Audit opinions are a critical measure of whether councillors, residents, and higher levels of government can rely on a municipality’s reporting to make decisions and ensure accountability.

South Africa’s metros are expected to set the standard for good governance – but most are falling short. Despite serving nearly half the country’s households and having larger budgets and capacity, Cape Town was the only metro to receive a clean audit in 2023/24, according to Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke.
Audit opinions are a key test of whether councillors, residents, and higher levels of government can trust a municipality’s financial and performance reporting. But metro audit outcomes are deteriorating.
Buffalo City, Mangaung, Nelson Mandela Bay, and Tshwane all received qualified audits, meaning their financial statements contained material errors and could not be fully trusted. Even more concerning, Tshwane and Mangaung disclosed “significant doubt” about their ability to continue operating.
In her report, the Auditor-General was blunt: metros are “plagued by poor revenue management, debt collection and budgeting practices, coupled with financial losses due to poor-quality spending.”

The petrol levy is now R4.01 per litre, its first increase since 2021/22, when it rose from R3.70 to R3.85. The fuel levy had remained unchanged for three years after it was last raised from R3.70 to R3.85 in the 2021/22 financial year. According to the May 2025 Treasury Budget Overview, the freeze was intended “to provide consumers with relief from high fuel price inflation.”
The latest hike – 16c for petrol and 15c for diesel – may seem minor to some, but it hits poorer communities hardest.
When fuel prices rise, so do transport costs. According to the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity Group, a person earning minimum wage and taking two taxis to and from work can spend more than a third of their monthly income on transport.
Higher fuel costs also push up the price of goods and services across the economy, meaning the impact goes far beyond the pump.
The only silver lining? Despite the levy and carbon tax increases, June’s petrol price decreased – thanks to a lower basic fuel price.

The fuel levy hike is expected to bring in R23-billion by 2028, following increases of 16c for petrol and 15c for diesel. This comes after Treasury opted not to raise value-added tax to 15.5%. In his May 2025 budget speech, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said the levy hike was the only new tax proposal being introduced.
The fuel levy had remained unchanged since the 2021/22 financial year when it rose from R3.70 to R3.85. Treasury said the pause was intended to ease pressure from high fuel price inflation.
But the latest increase hits low-income South Africans hardest. Rising fuel prices drive up transport costs – a major expense for the working class. According to the Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice & Dignity Group, someone earning minimum wage and taking two taxis to and from work can spend more than a third of their income on transport alone.

South Africa’s consumer price index (CPI) rose slightly from 2.7% in March to 2.8% in April 2025. The main contributors to the uptick were housing and utilities, food, beverages, tobacco, and restaurant and accommodation services.
The rise in food prices was “mainly due to higher meat prices, particularly for beef products such as stewing beef, mince, and steak,” according to Statistics South Africa.
Over the past year, the prices of several everyday items have increased significantly. A kilogram of apples is up 22.4%, rising from R22.46 in April 2024 to R27.48 in April 2025. Instant coffee increased by almost 18%, from R61.99 for 250g to R73.09. Other hot beverages also saw price hikes: Ceylon tea rose by 13.6%, while rooibos tea was up 6.9%.
Not all prices rose, however. A six-pack of eggs, for example, is now 5.3% cheaper than a year ago, down from R25.25 to R23.92.