Category: Africa

President Cyril Ramaphosa says the 2026 Budget, tabled by the Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana last week, will accelerate the momentum of inclusive growth, create jobs and tackle poverty.

“Every budgetary allocation is a developmental choice: ensuring there are teachers in classrooms, nurses and doctors in clinics, electricity and basic services in homes and businesses, infrastructure to grow the economy, and employment opportunities for communities. 

“After a prolonged period of economic uncertainty, this Budget builds on the progress made over the last few years to stabilise, reform and transform our economy,” said the President, addressing the nation is his weekly newsletter.

He said improvements in public finances, stabilising debt, a narrowing budget deficit, credit rating upgrades and improved market confidence all signal the beginning of an economic recovery. 

A stable macroeconomic environment boosts investor confidence and increases government’s capacity to invest in both growth and poverty relief without compromising sustainability. 

“The stabilisation of public finances gives us space to accelerate public investment, sustain the social wage, and direct resources to reforms that drive growth and job creation. 

“The social wage accounts for over 60% of government spending after interest payments. The allocation for this financial year will enable us to provide healthcare services to 84% of the population, social grants to 26.5 million beneficiaries and free basic services to over 11 million indigent households. It will support approximately 13.6 million learners at school.

“This is a redistributive budget that reduces inequality, builds the capabilities of our people and strengthens the foundations for inclusive growth,” said the President.

Basic education is one of those key foundations. “We will be allocating additional spending to employ more educators. Additional funds have been allocated to the early childhood development grant to reach an additional 300 000 children and to align the National School Nutrition Programme to food inflation.”

The Budget supports inclusive growth by accelerating public investment, particularly on infrastructure. The President noted that improved infrastructure lowers the cost of doing business, raises productivity and supports the country’s exports. 

Over the next three years, public spending on infrastructure will exceed R1 trillion to build and maintain roads and rail lines, expand energy infrastructure, and build and maintain water and sanitation infrastructure.

“Government alone cannot finance the scale of infrastructure our country needs. We are therefore mobilising investment from private and other sources, and opening the space for public-private partnerships. As we encourage private investment in electricity, rail and port operations, we are maintaining state ownership of strategic national infrastructure,” he said.

Under Operation Vulindlela, government departments and public entities are undertaking impactful reforms in energy, telecommunications, water and logistics. 

The President said the Budget acknowledges that many municipalities are in financial distress, driven by weak revenue collection, poor management and substantial service delivery backlogs. 

“Many municipalities are not spending appropriately. For several years, water and electricity revenue has not been invested in infrastructure maintenance or expansion, but has been redirected to cover other municipal costs.

“Local government finances have to be placed on a more sustainable footing to support the delivery of basic services. Over the medium term, R19.2 billion will be reallocated to the reform of electricity, water, sanitation and solid waste trading services in metros. These allocations will be linked to performance against clear targets. 

“The Municipal Infrastructure Grant is being reformed to address underspending and misuse of funds. Over the next three years, R86.9 billion has been allocated to support the provision of free basic services to indigent households” said President Ramaphosa.

He further said that the budget reflects government’s goals of inclusive growth and job creation through additional support for mass public employment programmes and relief for small businesses. 

An additional R4.1 billion has been allocated to the Presidential Employment Stimulus to provide work opportunities to more young South Africans. 

To ease the regulatory burden for small businesses, the threshold for business to register for VAT has been increased by more than double. For small business owners who wish to sell or transfer their businesses, the capital gains tax exemption has also been significantly increased. 

He said together, these measures will help small and informal businesses to grow and employ more South Africans.

“This year’s Budget focus on three imperatives: maintaining fiscal sustainability, driving inclusive growth and protecting society’s most vulnerable. It is a balanced budget that reflects the realities of our economy, limited financial resources, high unemployment and urgent infrastructure needs. 

“As we build on the momentum of our recovery, we will continue to be guided by fiscal discipline, structural reform, targeted investment and an overarching commitment to improving the material conditions of every South African,” said President Ramaphosa. – SAnews.gov.za
 

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Thirty years after South Africa chose the rule of law over division and human rights over rule by exclusion, the country on Monday began the commemoration of 30 Years of the Constitution – a world-renowned document born from negotiation, compromise and public participation on an unprecedented scale.

Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Mmamoloko Kubayi, on Monday led the national launch, which also marked the commencement of Human Rights Month at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.

“Because of the adoption of the Constitution 30 years ago, we now have a foundation upon which we can strive towards the common vision of unity in diversity, whilst strengthening the culture of respect for human rights and the rule of law in South Africa,” Kubayi said.

Making of a miracle

The Constitution is a product of collective negotiations with a number of politicians, legal scholars, intellectual architects and negotiators participating in its formulation.

Often overlooked is the mass public participation that saw some 1.7 million submissions from individuals and civil society organisation – making it an inclusive body of legal work.

“The Constitution-making process was one of the most inclusive processes in modern times.

“The inclusivity of the process is best described by Justice Albi Sachs when he said the following about the Constitution: ‘We wanted a Constitution that was smiling to the people – but it mustn’t be a sneer smile, or an insincere mask of a smile. The smile must come from inside, that people may believe in it, because it’s authentic. And the smile contains tears, and sadness, and a knowledge of imperfection’. 

“The Constitution is a testament that wise men and women of all races, religions and diverse cultures freely came together to weave a new nation in a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, both black and white,” Kubayi said.

Decisive break with the past

The Minister noted that to truly appreciate the “magnitude of what the Constitution… represented, one must first reckon with what preceded it”.

“For over three centuries, colonialism and then apartheid did not merely discriminate — it institutionalised and systematised human degradation, and in particular, of the black South African majority. Both colonial and apartheid regimes implanted racial hierarchy into the fabric of law itself, so that the very institutions that ought to have protected citizens became instruments of oppression. Justice was not blind; it was deliberately sighted, and it saw race. 

“What the negotiated transition of the early 1990s accomplished, therefore, was not merely a political handover but a civilisational reorientation. The Interim Constitution of 1993 described the moment as a historic bridge, as it symbolised a passage from strife and injustice to peaceful coexistence premised on open democratic governance and the pursuit of universal human rights.

“That bridge led, in 1996, to the final Constitution, a document that did not simply list rights but rooted them as the supreme law of the land, binding the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary alike,” the Kubayi said.

When law outruns life

The Minister acknowledged that the years following the adoption of the Constitution have not been “seamless or without contradiction”.

“What the record of these 30 years also reveals, however, is that the communities that bore the heaviest cost of apartheid’s deliberate impoverishment have not experienced the pace of transformation that the Constitution’s provisions reasonably implied.

“Those who were systematically denied access to property, education, and the basic conditions of a dignified life have found that, while the legal order has been fundamentally recast, their material circumstances have not shifted with commensurate decisiveness,” she said.

The Minister cited “corruption, persistent resource constraints, and uneven implementation” as some of the core challenges that have “drawn the pace of delivery away from what the legal framework envisioned”.

“The consequence is a Constitutional democracy in which the law has advanced with considerably greater speed and clarity than the material reality it was expressly designed to transform, not because the framework is wanting, but because the administrative and financial conditions necessary to give it full effect have not been consistently sustained.

“This is the central tension that three decades of Constitutional democracy has not yet resolved. The framework has proven its durability in the courts, the legislature and in the institutions created to give it effect. 

“What has not kept pace is the translation of that framework into the daily lives of those it was most urgently intended to serve. That remains the most consequential measure by which this Constitutional project will continue to be assessed,” Kubayi said.

A living document

Despite these challenges, the Minister emphasised that the Constitution itself was never designed to be a “static”, unresponsive document.

“From its inception, it was conceived as a living framework, one capable of responding to an ever-changing legal, social, and political context.

“As reflected by the Reconstruction and Development Programme’s insistence on integrated, people-driven, sustainable development, the Constitution built into its very structure the expectation that the work of transformation would be ongoing, that rights would be progressively realised, and that the institutions of justice would continue to evolve in response to the demands placed upon them,” she explained.

Bastion of human rights

The Minister cited the “structural integration of the justice system” as one of the Constitution’s most consequential achievements.

Alongside that is the advancement of human rights that the document provides.

“[It] is here that the Constitution’s responsiveness is perhaps most vividly demonstrated. At the nub of the Constitutional dispensation lies the Bill of Rights. Chapter 2 does something ambitious that, thirty years on, still deserves appreciation, specifically in that it refuses to treat civil and political rights as somehow more real or more pressing than socio-economic rights.

“The right to equality, to human dignity, to privacy, and to freedom of expression are articulated alongside the rights to housing, healthcare, food, water and education. These rights are far beyond aspirational ornaments; they are justiciable entitlements, enforceable in courts of law. What makes their entrenchment particularly significant is that it does not freeze them in time,” Kubayi stated.

She added that the Constitution interpretive framework “obliges courts to develop the content of rights in a manner that responds to present-day circumstances and evolving understandings of human dignity”.

“Legislation giving effect to this vision has progressively extended the Constitution’s reach into the everyday encounters citizens have with government, addressing unfair discrimination, protecting access to information, and insisting on transparency, lawfulness, and reasonableness as conditions of legitimate administrative action.

“Our Constitution has set out the framework for our human rights realisation discourse and the Constitutional Court has been a pillar that has interpreted the core minimum of these provisions, as set out by the Bill of Rights,” she said.

The Constitution also makes provision for the hard-fought rights it protects to have independent guardians in the form of Chapter 9 institutions like, amongst others, the South African Human Rights Commission and the Commission for Gender Equality.

“Chapter 9 of the Constitution recognised, with considerable foresight and accordingly established a set of independent State institutions, whose specific mandate is to strengthen and sustain constitutional democracy.

“These institutions represent a deliberate constitutional choice to institutionalise oversight rather than leave the protection of rights to the discretion of those in power. They were built into the Constitution itself, rather than created by ordinary legislation, and this reflects a deliberate choice to implant oversight at the highest level of the legal order,” Kubayi noted.

National commemoration

The Minister revealed that the national commemoration of the birth of the Constitution will bring together all parts of society.

“Just like the Constitution-making process, the national commemoration we envisage, will be an inclusive initiative involving multiple stakeholders, including government departments, Chapter 9 institutions, civil society, organised labour, business, traditional and religious leaders, youth formations, and educational institutions, women and people with disabilities,” said the Minister. 

Cabinet has approved a concept document that guides this yearlong celebration and an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) chaired by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has been established to oversee this work.

“The programme will include public dialogues, civic education, cultural events, youth engagements, symbolic events at historic sites such as Sharpeville and Constitutional Hill, and other community driven initiatives to deepen Constitutional awareness and social cohesion,” she said.

South Africa will also host an International Conference on Access to Justice to reflect on the “journey travelled, and renewal our commitment to the principles of our Constitutional democracy”.

“We call on all South Africans to join us in these initiatives so that we can collectively reflect on the 30 years of our Constitution, progress and challenges, and recommit ourselves to the democratic project,” Kubayi said. – SAnew.gov.za

 

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Government has welcomed the arrest of three senior officials from the Department of Health in connection with an ongoing investigation into allegations of theft and fraud involving a tender worth more than R1 million.

“The fight against corruption remains an apex priority for government as part of its commitment to building a safer, ethical and corruption-free South Africa,” the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) said on Monday.

It’s alleged that in 2023, more than R1 million was unduly awarded to a service provider in contravention of the Public Finance Management Act.

The three – aged 67, 46, and 55 – were arrested by members of the Hawks’ National Serious Corruption Investigation unit. 

They will soon appear in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court following an in-depth investigation launched in April 2024.

The company of one of the suspects is also charged as the fifth juristic person, as the monies were paid to the company.

The fourth suspect, the service provider, and her company are yet to be arrested.

As the matter is under active investigation by the Hawks, no further details can be disclosed at this stage.

“[The arrests] aligns with the 2026 State of the Nation Address by President Cyril Ramaphosa in which he underscored the need to intensify efforts against organised crime and systemic corruption, identifying these as critical threats to democracy and economic stability.

“Government further emphasises that all individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and urges the public to allow the investigative and judicial processes to proceed without interference,” the GCIS said.

Members of the public are urged to report corruption and fraud anonymously via the National Anti-Corruption Hotline: 0800 701 701 (toll free number) or email: integrity@publicservicecorruptionhotline.org.za. – SAnews.gov.za

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The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has advised that parts of the country will experience isolated to scattered showers and thundershowers this week.

These weather conditions will affect the North West, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Limpopo.

“South Africa will this week experience a surface trough that will dominate the western interior, with a high-pressure system continuing to ridge over the eastern areas of the country throughout the week.

“The South African Weather Service will continue to monitor the weather conditions and issue severe weather warnings when the need arises.”

This week’s weather conditions are as follows:

• Monday: Cloudy and cool conditions will persist over the eastern parts of the country, with scattered to widespread rain and thundershowers. Otherwise, the weather will be partly cloudy and warm. Severe thunderstorms are possible from the afternoon over Limpopo and Mpumalanga. 
• Tuesday: Cloudy and cool conditions will persist over the eastern parts of the country, with scattered to widespread rain and thundershowers possible over Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and KwaZulu-Natal into the afternoon. Otherwise, partly cloudy and warm conditions are expected with isolated showers and thundershowers over the North West, Gauteng and Free State.

Possible flooding due to heavy downpours:

• Monday: low to medium chance (40 – 60% ): Limpopo and Mpumalanga.
• Tuesday: low to medium chance (40 – 60%): Limpopo (South western regions) and eastern parts of the North West.
• Wednesday: Low (40%) chance: Northern Cape and escarpment of Mpumalanga.
• Thursday: Low to medium chance (40 – 60%): Northern Cape, Free State, Eastern Cape, and eastern parts of the Western Cape.
• Friday: Medium chance (60%): Free State, North West, Gauteng, eastern half of the Eastern Cape and Limpopo(southern parts) and Mpumalanga.
• Saturday: Low to medium chance (40 – 60%): Gauteng, North West, KwaZulu-Natal (especially the northern parts), Mpumalanga, Free State and Limpopo.
• Sunday: Low to medium chance (40 – 60%): Limpopo and Mpumalanga.

Possible severe thunderstorms:

• Monday: low to medium chance (40 – 60%): Limpopo and Mpumalanga.
• Tuesday: low to medium chance (40 – 60%): Limpopo (South western regions) and eastern parts of the North West.
• Wednesday: Low chance (40%): Northern Cape and escarpment of Mpumalanga.
• Thursday: Low to medium chance (40 -60%): Northern Cape, Free State, Eastern Cape and eastern parts of the Western Cape. 
• Friday: Medium chance (60%): Free State, North West, Gauteng, eastern half of the Eastern Cape and Limpopo(southern parts) and Mpumalanga.
• Saturday: Low to medium chance (40 – 60%): Gauteng, North West, KwaZulu-Natal (especially the northern parts), Mpumalanga, Free State and Limpopo. 
• Sunday: Low to medium chance (40 – 60%): Limpopo and Mpumalanga. – SAnews.gov.za

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The South African Police Service (SAPS) has arrested a 64-year-old man who is allegedly linked to 42 cases of armed robberies that date as far back as 1998.

The arrest by the police at OR Tambo International Airport follows an armed robbery of three high-ranking senior police officials from one of the African countries.

Three senior officers were making their way to the airport in an e-hailing service on Saturday afternoon when the vehicle they were travelling in was pulled over by four men travelling in a silver Suzuki Swift.

Once the e-hailing driver had pulled over on the side of the R24, the men posed as police officers and thereafter robbed the police general and two other officers of money, watches, and cellphones.

Within a few hours, police traced the vehicle and arrested the serial robber. Police have impounded the vehicle. 

The Suzuki Swift has reportedly been used numerous times in the commission of crimes on the R24 near the Barbara off-ramp towards OR Tambo International Airport.

“During the investigation, police found that the serial robber has 42 other cases where he was arrested and charged for armed robbery, the possession of an unlicensed firearm, fraud, and impersonating a police officer. These cases date as far back as 1998,”  SAPS said.

Police believe they have broken the back of a syndicate operating at the airport.

The suspect is expected to appear in the Kempton Park Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, 03 March 2026.

Police are searching for three other suspects involved in this crime. –SAnews.gov.za

 

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The Hawks’ National Serious Corruption Investigation unit arrested three suspects this morning after warrants for their arrest were executed for fraud and theft in pursuance of common cause.

The three suspects, aged 67, 46, and 55, are set to appear in the Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court.

The arrests followed an in-depth investigation launched in April 2024 after it was alleged that in 2023 over R1 million was unduly awarded to a service provider in contravention of the Public Finance Management Act, the Hawks said in a statement. 

The company of one of the suspects is also charged as the fifth juristic person as the monies were paid to the company. 

A fourth suspect, the service provider and her company are yet to be arrested. – SAnews.gov.za

 

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