October 2026

One community member said unemployment is a high concern in Ward 47 of Vosloorus. The resident said many young unemployed people sit at home and are idle. The resident called youth unemployment a clear sign of high unemployment in the area.

The same resident said: "It's a very huge concern, especially for someone with a university degree." Residents said unemployment will be among the key issues that influence their votes.

Radio 702 is hosting an Ekurhuleni mayoral debate at Nguni Hall on Thursday.Share

The department is also investigating alleged violations by taxi associations it has identified. Mobility Minister Isaac Sileku met the taxi industry in Cape Town on Thursday. He said: "We met with the taxi industry today because enough is enough."

Sileku said no dispute over routes or operating rights is worth a human life.

Johan Brandt, Commissioner of the City of Cape Town Safety and Security Directorate, said the city would make sure people get to work and back safely. He said the city supports the South African Police Service and that both would address the issues together.Share

The NPA's asset forfeiture unit obtained a preservation order against Sibanyoni and his co-accused in an extortion case. One co-accused is taxi fleet owner Oupa Sindane. The order freezes their assets.

Western Cape police said they will crack down on taxi violence in Cape Town. They said the killings will be met with the full force of the law.

In Spain, 68 people died in a high-speed rail collision. The country declared three days of mourning. Spain's transport minister said an error and inexplicable circumstances led to the crash.Share

Zuma-Sambudla, a former MK Party MP, faces charges of incitement to commit terrorism and public violence over her social media posts during the July 2021 unrest. She wants the court to discharge her under section 174. Naidu said the state presented a strong case, especially on count one, and that its witnesses gave strong testimony.

Naidu argued that the tweets became more escalating and must be read cumulatively. He said the charges are drafted the same way.

Her lawyer, Advocate Dali Mpofu, said the state's case is weak and must be discarded. He said state witnesses conceded that none of her posts amounted to incitement of violence. He also said the state targets her because she is the daughter of former president Jacob Zuma.

Mpofu called the state's evidence on her "We See You" tweets laughable. He said many people retweeted her posts but were not charged. Reports put the deaths in the July 2021 unrest at 354 and the damage at about R50bn.Share

Ramaphosa said the money would help ease overcrowded classrooms. He told teachers government agreed with SADTU on teacher vacancies, Grade R wages and school safety.

He was responding to a SADTU march in Durban earlier in the month. Thousands of teachers marched through the central business district.

Ramaphosa said: "My wish this is a clear determination from my part our focus on education must be to appoint more teachers, to lessen the number of learners in the classroom"Share

The draft is called the Numbering Plan Fifth Amendment Regulations, 2026. It would apply to new and existing subscribers. Operators would check biometric data when a number is activated or reactivated and when a SIM swap takes place.

Icasa councillor Dikeledi Catherine Mushi, who chairs the Numbering Resources Committee, defended the plan in an interview on The Money Show. She said Icasa had no choice but to introduce biometric verification. She said the authority must make sure every number has a person behind it.

Mushi said the authority chose a less disruptive option. In her words: "We could have chosen to completely overhaul the numbering plan regulations and say, 'let's press a restart button'."

She said biometric checks could verify a person within seconds, as with a fingerprint held by Home Affairs.Share

The three suspects are accused of passport fraud at the Bothaville home affairs office in the Free State in 2023. Home affairs said 10 passport applications were processed fraudulently. The Counter Corruption Unit investigated the case with the Hawks.

The department said the fraud used weaknesses in outdated systems. Photographs were swapped to obtain South African passports. Home affairs said it has introduced biometric verification to close these loopholes.

The suspects appeared in the Bothaville magistrate's court on Monday. The case was postponed to 20 January 2027.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said: "Our approach is twofold: pursuing corruption without fear or favour, while using technology to eliminate opportunities for corruption in the first place,"Share

The interdict bars threats, assaults, intimidation, looting, arson and property damage. It also bars forced business closures and blocking access to buildings. It covers the Department of Home Affairs Refugee Reception Centre along Moore Road.

Ngobese-Zuma criticised the order. She said March and March was not involved in any violence and that the government will not silence the group. She said police from almost every province use tactics at Moore Road that she had never seen before.

In her words: "It’s going to set a bad precedent for the courts to interdict people without having heard their side of the story". Reports of plans to burn the Moore Road centre were unconfirmed.Share

Parliament set up the Ad Hoc Committee last year to probe alleged criminal infiltration, corruption and political interference in the criminal justice system. The committee is at its final stage, and a draft report has gone out for comment.

Bloem criticised the repeated extensions and said Speaker Thoko Didiza granted the committee six of them. He claimed she is complicit in an embarrassing situation. He also claimed the committee was a stillborn project from the start.

Bloem said: "The Speaker must tell the country how much money was spent on the Ad Hoc Committee." He claimed millions of rand of taxpayers' money went to the committee. He also said Parliament's credibility and integrity are severely damaged.Share

Sizakhele Dyantyi, the provincial police commissioner, linked the rise in taxi violence to route disputes between rival taxi associations. At a police briefing on Thursday she warned those stirring violence: "They will be dealt with harshly." Reports said one person was also gunned down earlier in the week at the same Delft rank.

Charles George, a community activist and pastor in Delft, said the violence makes voters question whether they can reach a voting station and get home safely. The ANC Dullah Omar region said the violence comes at a critical moment. It warned that the violence will intimidate voters if it goes unchecked.

Michael Hendrickse, the IEC provincial electoral officer, said police are assessing high-risk areas as part of election preparations. He said the commission remains concerned about crime that could affect voters' ability to reach voting stations.Share

The JSE All Share index closed at 110,039 points on Thursday, up 0.3%. The Top 40 index rose to 101,876, up 0.3%.

The rand ended at R16.61 to the US dollar, stronger than R16.64 the day before. Gold was at $4,008 an ounce, down 1.1%. Brent crude was at $112.30 a barrel, down 2.6%.Share

Professor Hugh Herr and graduate student Christopher Shallal tested the method in three people with below-knee amputations. Today's prostheses rely on skin electrodes, which Herr's team says have not proved reliable enough for safe walking. Shallal says the method is minimally invasive, because only two beads go into the muscle. The study was small, and the team's hope of commercial development has not yet been met.Share

In an article on The Conversation, the archaeologists say most bones came from small animals that people hunted close to the site. Many finger and toe bones had been broken open for marrow. The team links this to cooperation within a group and a limit on how far people ranged. They say they published a paper on the work. The conclusions about social life are interpretation, and they come from one site.Share

The authors say this fits the idea that evolution favoured protein sequences with lower energy. The work links the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere to the chemistry of proteins in living things. The study is peer-reviewed. The authors describe the result as consistent with that idea, not as direct proof, and only a short summary of the work was available for this post, so the strength of the evidence is not clear.Share

In the simulation, hydrogen re-ionization was likely driven by light from early galaxies and stars. Helium re-ionization was fuelled by early supermassive black holes. Professor Mark Vogelsberger of MIT says the volume is 100 times larger than the previous best simulations. The paper appears in the peer-reviewed Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Lumina is a model, so it does not observe the early universe directly.Share

The team added a randomised trial to a face-to-face survey of 1,210 small businesses in December 2022. In 119 urban and peri-urban wards, a tax officer sat in silently on interviews, while the other wards had none. The researchers then compared survey answers with tax records covering about 40,000 businesses. They say trust and compliance moved together. The authors wrote about their work in an article, and the page we read does not show the full results or a peer-reviewed journal.Share

The authors are Martin, Leece, Baker, Herries and Strait, and the work is peer-reviewed in the journal Annals of Human Biology. The Homo erectus specimen adds support for the species living in southern Africa about 2 million years ago, roughly 200,000 years earlier than traditionally thought. The team also describes a new jaw feature that helps tell the Drimolen Paranthropus apart from other South African samples. The Homo erectus finding rests on one adult specimen, so it adds support but does not settle the date.Share

A man interviewed said he bought a solar pump in South Africa for R8,000. He said he was supposed to pay R2,500 in duty at the border. He said he negotiated and paid a customs officer R500, and got no receipt.

A woman interviewed said a truck load can earn R1,000. She said young men hide in bushes to watch for soldiers, and she pays them R50. Two soldiers at a roadblock said they now turn Zimbabweans around instead of detaining them.

Hermanus Schoeman owns a game farm on the border and has had to close it. He said many cattle that cross onto the farm have foot-and-mouth disease. He said South Africa cannot control the epidemic while animals keep crossing.

Schoeman said about 100 donkeys appeared on his farm the day after he put out lucerne. In his words: "As soon as it’s dry, donkeys and cows cross into the farm."Share

Creecy gave the answer in a written reply to questions from MK Party MP Adil Nchabeleng. She said the staff involved were distracted by unrelated tasks and did not stay alert while the aircraft was towed. An SAA Airbus A320 hit a stationary Safair Boeing 737-800 at OR Tambo International Airport on 11 November 2022.

Creecy said the tug driver and engineer were formally reprimanded. She said they also had to attend human factors refresher training. SAA Technical (SAAT) is the SAA maintenance unit whose personnel were involved.

Safair first claimed about R7.43 million for repairs and around R53.71 million for lost income. Insurers for SAAT manage the revised claim. One report said Safair filed the claim in the Gauteng High Court in September 2026.Share

EFF mayoral candidate Sinawo Thambo said there is no political violence in Zwide and that parties live in harmony there. He also said Zwide is an EFF stronghold. Thambo said he was "quite surprised" that the area was calm.

Rozario Frolick, the DA Ward 25 councillor candidate, said political leaders want to lead the city out of its governance problems. He said this means there will always be synergy during the campaign. Parties in Nelson Mandela Bay have not held talks before the election.

Thambo called such talks a defeatist political mentality. UDM councillor candidate Luxolo Namethe said the party expects to pull significant numbers because it has fielded a candidate in all 60 wards.

Violence has hit other areas. Michael Thulani Mbana, the DA caucus leader in Metsimaholo, was killed in a shooting. An earlier report counted at least 42 people killed in suspected political assassinations since January.Share

More than 140 families displaced by the 2022 floods have moved into the Cornubia houses, near Phoenix. Premier Thami Ntuli and Human Settlement Minister Thembi Simelane went with Ramaphosa on the visit.

Ramaphosa urged beneficiaries to look after their homes and not sell them. He said houses fall down a month after being built when there is no way to repair them. He called for a facility management entity, paid a fee, and said black businesses should be encouraged into that space.

The 2022 floods killed more than 440 people in KwaZulu-Natal and completely destroyed 4 000 homes. More than 8 300 homes were partially damaged. A 62-year-old woman who received a new home said she is moved to tears each time she looks back on the floods.Share

The court found that the father played virtually no role in his son's upbringing. The father did not oppose the application. The mother had asked the court to declare him a non-parent.

The judge refused that request but agreed that the father should not inherit. Legal practitioner Minenhle Khumalo explained the finding on radio. She said: "The court decided to say, no, he is still a parent, but he's not worthy to benefit from the estate."

Khumalo said such cases are very rare. She also said the ruling was unusual, but not unprecedented.Share

The province credits tighter spending controls, better cash management and a Provincial Financial Recovery Plan. It puts the improvement at 74%. The main provincial budget in June 2024 was R150.488 billion.

Rodgers said the recovery process needs sustained discipline, consistency and institutional reform. He said: "Our task is not simply to spend less, but to spend better." The province says it still faces spending pressures in health, public works and education.

The province also cites gains in service delivery. The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure reported that it completed 70 of 100 planned capital projects. KwaZulu-Natal had a 90.6% pass rate in the 2025 National Senior Certificate, the first in the country.

In health, the province says it added 44 ambulances and appointed more than 240 nurses and 238 doctors. It says more than 1.1 million active patients collect chronic medication closer to home. It also says it traced over 210 000 defaulted patients and returned them to care.Share

Detective Services and Forensic Services get 739 vehicles. Another 200 go to the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences units. Visible Policing and Operations get 290 vehicles.

The Eastern Cape gets 163 vehicles and Gauteng gets 151. Mpumalanga gets 147, KwaZulu-Natal 135 and the Western Cape 113. The Free State gets 103, North West 84, Limpopo 79 and the Northern Cape 54.

Masemola said vehicle availability is crucial. He said that when mobility is compromised, communities face delayed responses and lose confidence in the police.

He also called for strict oversight of how the vehicles are managed. "These vehicles belong to the people of South Africa. They are not instruments of personal convenience or symbols of privilege."Share

Moodley leads the CSIR's work on natural language processing and is a principal AI specialist. He said the challenge is enormous and that organisations cannot address it in isolation. The Government Communication and Information System helped host the roundtable.

Moodley said a flood of content has created an environment not seen in earlier elections to this extent. He said it is likely to grow in future. In his words: "You do not know what is real and what is AI-generated."

He described the CSIR's election monitoring process and two tools. The Informed Fake News Advisor Project could benefit fact-checkers, but Moodley said it is still a work in progress. He said the audio search technology could be a game-changer for multimodal content.Share

SAA Group Executive for Corporate Affairs Mphilo Dlamini said the airline links the staggering to cash flow pressure from rising jet fuel costs. He said aviation fuel costs have risen sharply since the war in Iran started. SAA expects to pay October salaries by Saturday.

Dlamini said the airline chose the step to keep flying while still paying staff. He said: "It was purely because we wanted to do what I can call trade-offs to make sure that we keep the airline running".

Reports said Parliament has raised concerns about developments at the national carrier.Share

The study appeared in the journal Indoor Air. Researchers took air samples in 40 areas of the clinic in central Johannesburg. They also grew 77 moulds from the air, and 22 were different enough to be identified by DNA testing.

Among Gram-negative bacteria, 85.7% were resistant to cefuroxime and 67.5% to ceftazidime. Some 31.2% of bacteria were resistant to ertapenem and 26% to meropenem. About 3.9% of Gram-negative bacteria were extensively drug-resistant. More than 85% of Eskape bacteria in the neonatal intensive care unit were multidrug-resistant.

Lead author Dr Lee Heine, of the university's Water and Health Research Centre, said the findings are concerning given South Africa's high rates of HIV and TB. She said resistance to antibiotics is rising for all bacteria in South Africa and worldwide. Heine called for air quality monitoring to become routine in infection prevention and control in healthcare facilities.

The researchers said the findings cannot be assumed to reflect conditions at all healthcare facilities. They also said unreliable water supplies are a challenge, because shortages can affect disinfection and infection prevention.Share

Makhubela will go to Weskoppies Hospital for evaluation. A district surgeon will test Mkhwane and Mnguni. The three appeared in the Atteridgeville Magistrate's Court.

Mkhwane is 36 years old and faces charges of rape and murder. Makhubela is 25 and is accused of killing the baby. Mnguni is 32, is Mkhwane's wife and is accused of fraud.

Police and the prosecution allege that the group first conspired to kill the mother to claim funeral policy benefits. The suspects were arrested about three weeks ago.Share

The 2005 guidelines of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) widened the criteria for prosecuting apartheid-era human rights abusers. Ackermann, head of the Priority Crimes Litigation Unit, argued that they were unconstitutional. He also said they amounted to a back door amnesty for people who had not applied to the original Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Mpshe relieved Ackermann of his role soon after his appointment in September 2007. Mpshe said he did this to protect Ackermann from stakeholders who did not want him to head the unit.

Mpshe said: "When I went through them myself then I realised that he may have had some merit on his attitude towards the guidelines".Share

The programme sought to buy 2000 MW of generation capacity. The department received the four bids on 29 May 2026. It issued the revised request for proposals on 20 October 2025.

The department said no generation capacity was awarded in Bid Window 1. Minister of Electricity and Energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said: "South Africa is not retreating from our gas-to-power objectives."

The department said it will share more information on any later procurement before the end of the calendar year. It said it and the IPP Office remain committed to procurement integrity.Share