The village of uMhlwazi, which sits among the rolling mountains of uMhlumayo in KwaZulu-Natal’s uThukela district, feels forgotten. With barely any services and almost entirely cut off from the rest of the predominantly rural district, daily life in the impoverished village is marked by isolation and hardship. The Mail & Guardian witnessed first-hand the struggles faced by residents trying simply to move in and out of the community. After more than three hours on a heavily potholed tar road that ends halfway, the journey continued along a punishing gravel route leading to the village. uMhlwazi lies roughly three hours from the seat of the Alfred Duma local municipality, headquartered in the town of Ladysmith, known to locals as eMnambithi. Running through the middle of the village is the Indaka River, both a lifeline and a danger to residents. With no water infrastructure, villagers rely on the river as their only source of water, sharing it with livestock. But locals say the river has also claimed six lives over the years, earning it the grim nickname: “the river of death”. Community leader Khanyisani Sibisi initially appeared reluctant to speak to the M&G. “Nizohlekisa ngosizi lwethu,” he said angrily. “You’re here to make a mockery of our struggles. People are perishing here.” Village elder Mboniseni Mazibuko later explained the source of Sibisi’s frustration. “Please pardon him. He lost his younger brother in these waters,” Mazibuko said, pointing at the river. “Government officials have come here and made a lot of promises. People are angry.” Pupils not only walk kilometres to reach Mandlakhe High School, the only secondary school serving several surrounding villages but must also risk crossing the Indaka River, which residents say is infested with crocodiles. The community has never had a bridge connecting it to the other side. Local councillor Bongani Nicholas Madondo said the provincial department of transport must take responsibility for the community’s ongoing suffering. “Government officials and the department of transport have visited this area several times and made many promises,” Madondo said. “The first was former KwaZulu-Natal transport MEC Willies Mchunu, who presided over a sod-turning ceremony and promised a bridge would be built. Nothing came from that. The current education MEC, Sipho Hlomuka, also conducted a sod-turning ceremony in 2023.” Madondo said residents remained traumatised by repeated drownings, including the death of 36-year-old Lungeleni Shabalala. Shabalala had travelled to Ladysmith, the nearest town serving the surrounding villages, to buy household items when she drowned while attempting to cross the river, he said. Her body was recovered the following afternoon. “Two learners have also died in similar incidents,” said Madondo. “Parents sometimes keep their children at home during rainy days because they fear for their safety. The situation is catastrophic.” He said the lack of a bridge also stripped grieving families of dignity during funerals. “During burials, families are forced to carry coffins across the river,” he said. “It completely takes away their dignity.” Mncedisi Maphisa, chairperson of the transport portfolio committee in the KwaZulu-Natal legislature, described the situation as “a travesty of justice”. “We will seek answers about what happened to the funds meant for the construction of this much-needed bridge,” Maphisa said. “If there are people who must be held accountable, heads will roll.” In the nearby village of Mbondwane, about 15km away, residents described similar hardship. The only bridge serving the community was damaged during floods, forcing parents to carry children on their backs across dangerous sections so they can reach Mnyanda Primary School. Villagers also told the M&G that there are no nearby clinics and that poor cellphone reception leaves them isolated.  “We are shut off from the world because there’s no network in our village,” said resident Sphelele Gumede. “We have to climb the mountains just to make calls or receive important ones.” uMhlumayo falls under the traditional leadership of eMangweni. KwaZulu-Natal transport department spokesperson Ndabezinhle Sibiya said he was uncertain about the status of the bridge project. “I will have to check with the engineers regarding the status of the bridge,” he said.

A court case that most South Africans probably scrolled past this month deserves a lot more attention than it got. On 30 April 2026, the Western Cape High Court ruled that Cape Town’s fixed charges for citywide cleaning, water and sanitation were unlawful and unconstitutional.  The South African Property Owners Association (Sapoa) brought the case and won. The city has since decided not to appeal, which tells you everything you need to know about the strength of its legal position. The issue was that Cape Town had structured the fixed service charges so that the amount you paid was calculated based on your property’s value. The more expensive your property, the more you paid for cleaning and basic water, regardless of how much water you used or how much rubbish you generated.  The court found that linking a service charge to property value converts it into a property tax in disguise. Municipalities don’t have the legal authority to introduce new property taxes. That power sits with the national government. What looked like a service charge was, legally speaking, an unlawful levy. The city is scrambling to rework a budget that depended on roughly R2 billion in revenue from those charges. A new draft budget goes out for public comment on 27 May 2026. Sapoa has said citywide cleaning should be funded through property rates, the mechanism that exists for broad-based municipal expenditure. The city appears to agree. Why does this matter beyond the Western Cape? The ruling is a mirror being held up to every municipality in the country. Municipalities have a problem and it is one that few are willing to talk about honestly. They are over-reliant on a small group of people to fund their budgets — property owners. Property taxes and rates make up a disproportionate share of municipal income in most of our major cities.  When you add surcharges and service fees that get stacked on top of rate bills, a significant portion of what municipalities collect comes from the same pool of ratepayers. That is not a sustainable funding model and it creates a political temptation that is almost impossible to resist. To put it another way, if you need more money, you look at property owners because they’re paying, their properties are registered and they’re relatively easy to bill. Cape Town’s value-linked charges were a version of that temptation. Instead of going through the proper legislative process to increase rates, which requires alignment with the national framework and public consultation, the city found a creative workaround.  Link the service charge to property value, collect more from higher-value properties and achieve the revenue outcome without technically calling it a rate increase. The court said no. Here is what the data tells us about the broader problem. According to research compiled from the National Treasury’s local government data, property rates as a share of municipal operating revenue have climbed steadily over the past decade. In the metros, rates income has in many cases grown faster than inflation — and significantly faster than the property values being taxed.  The City of Cape Town’s budget shows rates income growing at compound rates that have consistently outpaced CPI. The same pattern holds in Johannesburg, Tshwane and eThekwini, where property rate increases have run between 8% and 12% annually, even during periods when inflation was at 4% or 5%. For property owners, this is not an abstract policy conversation. It lands on your doorstep in the form of a municipal account that seems to grow faster than almost anything else in your cost of living. Being a property owner in South Africa in 2025 is sometimes not as glamorous as it looks. The romanticised version of buying a property, building wealth, collecting rent and retiring comfortably has become something different. The costs of owning, maintaining and managing property have escalated dramatically while the income from that property has often not kept pace. Think about what goes into owning a property. You start with transfer duty on acquisition, which applies at a graduated rate to purchases above R1.1 million, plus conveyancing fees, bond registration costs and potentially an estate agent commission.  That’s before you’ve switched on a light. Then come the monthly costs of the bond, levies if you’re in a complex, property rates, building insurance, maintenance and repairs.  If you’re a landlord, add vacancy periods, property management fees if you use an agent, the cost of tenant disputes and the risk of a non-paying tenant you cannot remove quickly because the Rental Housing Tribunal moves at its own pace. As for the effectiveness of the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 19 of 1998, let me save the rant for another article. Rates alone have become a material line item. A property valued at R3m in Cape Town can attract a monthly rates bill of R2 500 to R3 500 or more, depending on the category and the valuation cycle. The number was lower five years ago.  In Johannesburg, where property values in many areas have gone flat or backwards in real terms, rates bills have kept climbing. You are paying more for a municipal service in a city where the roads are worse, the water infrastructure is under pressure and load shedding, while recently improved, has cost property owners significantly in generator investments and electricity surcharges. The cumulative effect on affordability is real and underestimated. When first-time buyers do the maths on whether they can afford a property, they typically look at the bond repayment and maybe the levy. Rates often get underestimated. The cost of maintenance, which, for an average freestanding house, is roughly 1% of the property value a year almost never features in the calculation.  The true cost of owning property is considerably higher than the headline price suggests. Municipalities raising their rates above inflation year after year are making that calculation worse. None of this is an argument against municipalities collecting revenue. They need it. Roads, water reticulation, waste removal and electricity infrastructure cost money and property owners benefit from them. A well-run city with reliable services and maintained infrastructure is the most important driver of property value. I have made this argument in this column before: the reason Cape Town properties appreciate the way they do is not just the mountain and the ocean. It is the fact that the city’s lights stay on, the sewage system mostly works and the streets get cleaned. That is worth paying for. But paying for it and being exploited are two different things. When a municipality creates a charge that is linked to the value of your asset and not to your usage, not to the cost of the service but to how much your property is worth, it has crossed from taxation into something that looks more like a wealth levy applied to an illiquid asset.  You cannot sell 10% of your house to pay your rates and you cannot easily liquidate equity. You are being asked to fund the municipality based on a notional value, while the municipality often fails to justify how the number translates into service delivery. Sapoa is engaging Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality on the same issue. Other municipalities had better take note because the precedent is set. The lesson is not complicated. Property rates and proper service levies are legitimate. They are the clean, constitutionally sound way to fund shared municipal services. Sapoa has said it supports the mechanism.  What is not legitimate is using property values as a proxy for ability to pay, packaging it as a service charge to avoid legislative scrutiny and then running a R2bn hole in your budget when a court calls it out. Municipalities need to do the hard work of broadening their revenue bases rather than returning to the same well. They need to improve billing and collection rates and be transparent to ratepayers about how their money is being spent.  Property owners are carrying more than their fair share of an increasingly heavy load. They are not an inexhaustible revenue source.  As this court case has reminded us all, they are not without legal recourse either.

The National Freedom Party is preparing to oppose legal action by expelled member and KwaZulu-Natal MEC Mbali Shinga, who is challenging her removal from the party. Shinga argues her appeal was improperly handled and plans to seek court intervention as the NFP moves to replace her in the provincial cabinet.

Fans are left eager for more as Dua Lipa and Callum Turner prepare for a luxurious wedding celebration in Italy following a surprise courthouse ceremony, redefining modern romance for pop culture enthusiasts everywhere.

Once, necessity was the mother of invention, which is when the big important things came about, like the wheel and the dishwasher – and so it was, until we had everything we needed. After this, convenience became invention’s adoptive parent. And now? Well, sometimes an anecdote explains things best: I wear a custom-made bite plate to bed because I grind my teeth. Every year I gnaw through another of these shields and then my dentist makes me a new one. It’s a simple process: he presses alginate – a jelly-like substance extracted from seaweed – against my teeth to form a mould, lets it harden, then pops it off, creating a perfect impression. This goes to the lab where they make my new customised bite plate, which arrives a week later. But a curious thing happened at the dentist on Thursday. This time, Dr Paul proudly wheeled over a shiny new computer on a stand, with a probe attached. This, he told me, was a 3D scanner that he would use to map the inside of my mouth. It took a few minutes of him rooting about, then he pushed some buttons and declared: “Done! It’ll be at the lab in 20 minutes.” And when would I get my new bite plate? In a week. So, nothing had really changed except that now, instead of a minor investment in a bag of alginate, he had made a major investment in cutting-edge technology which required rare earth minerals, electricity, internet connection, a greedy data centre chewing up resources, updates, maintenance… And yet the time, effort and result remained exactly the same as before: I get a new bite plate in a week. So, what was that about necessity, or even convenience, being the mother of invention? Perhaps the axiom has changed; perhaps, in fact, invention has become the mother of necessity. Things come into being, and we see them as a novelty or a luxury, and then we grow reliant on them and forget how we did things before. I mean, there was a time when we met up successfully with friends, followed the news, read maps, managed our banking, took photographs and made dinner without needing an electronic device. Now, we get cellphone separation anxiety. But did anyone ask for a 3D mouth scanner? Does anyone need yet another over-engineered solution to a problem we never had in the first place?

The DA in Tshwane said it will strongly oppose any attempt to reverse disciplinary processes involving misconduct linked to violence and criminality after the city’s mayoral committee announced its intention to rehire 43 ex-employees who were axed during the violent, unprotected strike of 2023. ‘Violence is not a legitimate form of negotiation’ DA Tshwane mayoral candidate Cilliers Brink said the illegal strike caused immense damage to the city. “The DA-led government at the time took a firm stance by dismissing staff involved in this criminality. “We sent a clear message that violence is not a legitimate form of negotiation and intimidation and destruction would not be tolerated as bargaining tools inside the municipality,” he added. Brink said the DA has written to the city manager, warning that should these reports prove true, and should the city proceed with any unlawful reinstatements, the DA will consider legal action. ANC welcomes move ANC regional secretary George Matjila welcomed the move to reinstate the 43 workers who were fired.

For more than a year, both the Springboks and Stormers have sorely missed the services of double World Cup winner Frans Malherbe, who is still recovering from a recurring back and neck injury. It’s believed these chronic injuries have been compounded by a recent hip setback, and so understandably the Stormers have not rushed the 35-year-old back into action as his health and safety come first. Malherbe’s Stormers contract expires at the end of the season, and although the Cape franchise would love to retain his services, it remains to be seen if this would be financially viable. The good news, though, is that the burly prop is expected to soon begin scrum training again, and that will be the true litmus test as to whether he can possibly return to frontline action and avoid a dreaded injury-enforced retirement. Will we soon see the Springbok legend back on the field? Understandably, the Stormers are keeping in regular contact with the Springbok coaches, who are believed to still be interested in having Malherbe available for the 2027 World Cup. “Frans’ rehab is not complete yet,” Stormers boss John Dobson said last week, as he considered the team’s tighthead prop stocks, with incoming Springbok Wilco Louw joining current front-rowers Neethling Fouché, Zachary Porthen and Sazi Sandi. “Then at tighthead it is just crazy with Frans Malherbe injured, Wilco Louw is obviously not here yet, and Sazi Sandi is not playing; then we still rate Herman Lubbe very highly, and there is still Hencus van Wyk,” Dobson added. Could the veteran play for Boks this year? The Springboks have a long season ahead, and there will be hope that Malherbe could be available before the end of the year. If not, it would also be impossible for the Springbok stalwart to be considered for the World Cup as Malherbe has not played at a high level for the better part of the last 18 months.

Making money is great but making it tax-free in South Africa is the ultimate goal. Most people assume you need a lot of money to start investing. But here’s a simple way to start small and grow your savings without giving a cut to the taxman. TAX-FREE SAVINGS ACCOUNT It all hinges on a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA). You put money in, it grows, and when you take it out, you don’t pay any tax on what you’ve earned. That’s correct, every rand earned is yours, because the South African government introduced these accounts a decade ago to encourage people to save more. Tax-Free Savings Accounts are available through all major banks and investment companies. And they’re all about ‘compounding.’ This is when your money earns returns, and then those returns also start earning returns. Think of it like a football rolling downhill, the longer it rolls, the faster it gets. JUST GIVE IT TIME You can new set aside R46 000 per year without the taxman getting involved. Image: File The key to tax-free investing is giving it time. The longer you leave your money invested, the harder it works for you. This is why starting early, even with a small amount, matters more than waiting until ‘the time is right’ with a big one. Interestingly, FNB took two people, both who invested in Tax-Free Savings Accounts for ten years, each earning an 8% annual return: Investor 1 put away R3 000 a month. After ten years, they had invested R360 000 in total and ended up with R540 000. That’s R180 000 in tax-free growth. Wealth out of thin air. Investor 2 could only afford R500 a month. They invested R60 000 in total and ended up with R90 000. That’s R30 000 in tax-free growth. For mahala. DO WHAT YOU CAN WITH TAX-FREE INVESTING Of course, the point isn’t that you need to find R3 000 a month. The point is that whatever you can afford, a Tax-Free Savings Account ensures every cent of growth belongs to you. Better still, the government has now raised that limit to R46 000 per year, or an extra R833 per month. That’s a sizeable increase over the maximum of R36 000 per year before. The total amount you can contribute over your lifetime stays at R500 000. But here’s why the higher annual limit matters. Because the faster you reach that R500 000, the more years your money has to grow tax-free from that peak. The bottom line is you don’t need to be wealthy or win the lottery. What you need is consistency. Put in what you can, as early as you can, and leave it alone. The tax-free growth takes care of the rest over time. But what do you think? Is this just wishful thinking? Do you have enough leftover each month to consider investing in a Tax-Free Savings Account? Let us know in the comments section below …

The aggressive pricing push shows Dell competing across every tier of a squeezed consumer PC market.

Lesaka CEO Lincoln Mali has gone from expelled schoolboy to one of Africa’s most decorated business leaders.