Johanesburg - South Africa has sold a million doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine for distribution in 14 fellow African nations, the health minister announced Sunday.

Nongoma - South African politicians, traditional leaders and celebrities gathered Thursday to bid farewell to Zulu king Goodwill Zwelithini, with tributes led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who declared "a huge tree has fallen.

Johanesburg - Goodwill Zwelithini, the controversial but revered king of the Zulus, South Africa's largest ethnic group, died Friday aged 72 after weeks in hospital for a diabetes-related illness, the royal palace announced.

Tembisa - After a year battling coronavirus, exhausted health workers in South Africa are celebrating a drop in cases but dread another wave of infections -- a scenario that could strike just months from now.

Johanesburg - Jihadists, government forces and a "private militia" backing the authorities have indiscriminantly killed hundreds of civilians in troubled northeastern Mozambique, Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.

Johanesburg - South Africa will unveil government spending plans for the 2021 financial year on Wednesday, as the continent's most industrialised economy grapples with recovering from the coronavirus and a pre-pandemic recession.

Pietermaritzburg - South Africa's scandal-tainted former president Jacob Zuma and French arms dealer Thales, accused of graft in a case going back more than two decades, will go on trial in May, the High Court ruled Tuesday.

Port Shepstone - South African police said Monday they had arrested a suspect for attempting to sell rock art that may have been ripped from the wall of a cave.

Johanesburg - Africa on Thursday recorded more than 100,000 deaths from Covid-19, a grim milestone likely to understate the real toll, as the continent of 1.2 billion people battles a second wave of infections.

Johanesburg - South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers his annual address to the nation on Thursday while appearing increasingly fragile politically, hit by massive health and economic crises as well as a divided ruling party.

Johanesburg - South Africa will begin its coronavirus inoculation campaign with Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the health minister said on Wednesday, after withholding the Oxford/AstraZeneca formula over doubts about effectiveness.

Johanesburg - At the very mention of the word "vaccine", 82-year-old Josefine Hlomuka vehemently shook her head, her face clouding with worry as she gazed at the storm bearing down on her home in the Johannesburg township of Soweto.

Johanesburg - South Africa's beleaguered ex-president Jacob Zuma vowed Monday to not appear before a judicial panel probing corruption during his nine-year tenure, defying a court order compelling him to testify.

Johanesburg - A new variant of the coronavirus first identified in South Africa is more contagious than earlier versions, experts said on Monday, but there is no evidence that it is more deadly.

Johanesburg - "This place is definitely not what it used to be," said Eben Uys, gently wiping the dust from the counter of his bar.

Johanesburg - South African police have arrested more than 7,000 people caught without face masks in public since the end of December, the government said on Wednesday.

- "They're basically curtains of death," said shark diver Walter Bernardis as he reached over the side of his zodiac inflatable boat to pull up a net bobbing in eastern South Africa's subtropical waters.

Johanesburg - South Africa banned alcohol sales and made masks mandatory in public from Tuesday after a surge in coronavirus cases, as the World Health Organization warned that pandemics far more deadly than Covid-19 may lie ahead.

Johanesburg - The prime minister of Eswatini, Africa's last absolute monarchy, died in a South African hospital on Sunday after contracting coronavirus, the government said in a statement.

Johanesburg - Localised coronavirus outbreaks in parts of South Africa have raised fears that the country could see a resurgence in cases compounded by gatherings during the upcoming festive season.