The number of people being convicted of commercial crimes has dropped significantly in the past two decades, while the number of reported crimes has increased.The National Prosecuting Authority has a dedicated unit – the Specialised Commercial Crimes Unit (SCCU) – to prosecute fraud, corruption and money laundering.In addition to the prosecuting unit, South Africa also has Specialised Commercial Crime Courts. Most of the SCCU’s cases are prosecuted in these courts.Both the unit and the courts ar…

In the first quarter of 2026, South Africa’s unemployment rate rose to 32.7% from 31.4% in Q4 of 2025, according to data from Statistics South Africa.Of South Africa’s nine provinces, the Eastern Cape has the highest unemployment rate at 44.6%, followed by the Free State at 37.8%. The Western Cape, on the other hand, has the lowest unemployment rate of all the provinces at 19.6%. Gauteng, South Africa’s economic engine, has an unemployment rate of 34.1%. KwaZulu-Natal was the only province where…

Private power projects registered with Nersa are inching closer to 20GW, according to the latest information released by Nersa on 13 May 2026. In the first four months of 2026 alone, 132 new projects with a combined capacity of 1.34 GW were registered.Six projects of 100MW or more have been registered so far this year. Four are solar projects, and two are wind. Three are in the Free State, two in the Northern Cape and one in the North West. The projects are:* Lengana Solar PV (250MW), Free State…

Johannesburg has the largest working-age population of any South African metro. It has 4.3-million people aged 15 to 64. Yet fewer than half (45.2%) of them have jobs, placing the city behind Cape Town (56.5%), eThekwini (45.9%) and Buffalo City (45.6%) among South Africa’s metros on the labour absorption rate, which measures the share of the working-age population that is employed, according to the latest Statistics South Africa Quarterly Labour Force Survey (Q1 2026).A decade ago, Johannesburg…

Cape Town added more than 6,000 Airbnb listings in the two years between September 2023 and September 2025, pushing the total to 26,877.The comparison also puts Cape Town's recent growth in sharper relief. While most cities on this list have seen listings plateau or come under regulatory pressure, Cape Town's listings have increased by 31%.The city now has more listings than many of the other major global cities tracked by InsideAirbnb, which tracks Airbnb data around the word. Among 10 cities w…

Cape Town now has more Airbnb listings than Sydney, Toronto, Berlin and Barcelona and the numbers keep climbing. Between September 2023, when we first visited this issue, and September 2025, the city has gained more than 6,000 listings, pushing the total to 26,877.Many of those new listings are in the high-value areas in and around the city centre and on the Atlantic seaboard which are desirable for tourists and other short-term visitors. But for local residents this means long-term accommodatio…

Mobile connectivity has changed from a "nice-to-have" for socialising into an essential tool for managing daily life. Today, over 75% of South African households access the internet through their phones, making the mobile device our most important connection to the world around us.This is why we’re seeing such a strong surge in mobile data subscriptions, which climbed to a record 45.2-million in 2025. While there was a brief dip in numbers back in 2022, the market has since rebounded to new heig…

Cape Town was the third most congested city in Africa in 2025, ahead of Johannesburg, which sits at number six, and Cairo at 12th place.This is an improvement from being the second-most congested city on the continent in 2023.Cape Town has an extensive rail network in Metrorail, but mismanagement and corruption of its management agency, the Passenger Rail Agency South Africa saw passenger numbers drop from a high of about 600,000 per day in 2003, making up more than a fifth of all commuter trips…

The CEO of the Johannesburg Property Company is set to receive a total package of R5.5-million in the 2026/27 financial year, a 62% jump from R3.4-million in the previous year and by far the largest single-year remuneration increase among the City of Johannesburg’s municipal entities. The spike is driven not just by a higher base salary, but by an outsized contributions package of R900,000. No other entity comes close to that 62% jump: Eight CEOs received modest increases of under 10%. City Powe…

South Africans woke up to record-high fuel prices on 6 May 2026. A litre of diesel (50ppm) costs R31.38. It’s the first time ever the price has gone over R30. A litre of 95 Octane in Gauteng reached R26.63, its highest price since July 2022.The fuel prices hit record highs despite the government’s intervention by extending the R3 reduction on the general fuel levy for another month.Fuel prices have risen due to ongoing tensions between the United States and Iran and the partial cl…

Broadband speeds across Brics countries vary greatly, however two stand out from the rest: Brazil and China. The two are ranked 26th and 27th in global fixed broadband speeds and 1st and 2nd among BRICs countries.Based on the Ookla Speedtest Global Index as reported in the annual ICASA State of the ICT Sector Report 2026, Brazil takes the top spot for the fastest median download speed at 222 Mega bits per second(Mbps). China was close behind at 221 Mbps. South Africa rank the lowest of the Bri…

While 82.1% of South Africans have access to the internet in some form, data from the State of the ICT Sector 2026 Report, put out by ICASA, shows that internet usage is heavily dominated by mobile connectivity. In 2024, over 75% of South Africans accessed the internet via mobile data, with KwaZulu-Natal recording the highest usage at 80% and the Northern Cape the lowest at 65.3%.In contrast, the next most-used form of internet access, fixed internet access at home, remains significantly limited…