Update@Noon

The TRC Cases Inquiry public hearings continue today and veteran investigative journalist Michael Schmidt and author of DEATH FLIGHT, apartheid's secret doctrine of disappearance, is on witness stand. Schmidt says that Senior SADF Officer Dirk Marais told him that seven years of meetings aimed at dealing with prosecutions related to TRC Cases, fell apart in 2003 after reaching a stalemate. The inquiry was established by President Cyril Ramaphosa to determine whether attempts were made to prevent the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes.

The South African Police Service has condemned the brutal killing of three people, including an infant, in a shooting incident on Tuesday. The police say at approximately 22:00, police responded to reports of a shooting at Sunbird Court in Athlone. Upon arrival, officers found the bodies of two women aged 25 and 36, as well as a nine-month-old baby, who had sustained fatal gunshot wounds. Two adult males were also shot and injured during the incident and were transported to a medical facility for treatment. The Athlone police in Western Cape say preliminary information indicates that three unknown suspects fled the scene and have not yet been arrested. The motive for the attack is still under investigation. Western Cape police spokesperson Colonel Andrè Traut explains.

U.S. President Donald Trump's pick for ambassador to South Africa, Leo Brent Bozell III, has arrived in the country. He is expected to improve fraught ties between the two states. Bozell III is expected to present his credentials to President Cyril Ramaphosa before officially taking up his post. Relations between Washington and Pretoria have deteriorated in the last year as Trump has accused South Africa of persecuting its white minority, criticised its ties with Russia and China, imposed a steep tariffs on its exports and cut all aid. Sakina Kamwendo spoke to Former US diplomat & Associate Editor at Daily Maverick Brooks Spector

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, an eloquent Baptist minister raised in the segregated South who became a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, has died at age 84. Sakina Kamwendo spoke to SABC specialist correspondent Sophie Mokoena

The official unemployment rate decreased by 0,5-percentage points from 31,9-percent in the third quarter of 2025, to 31,4-percent in the fourth quarter of 2025. That's according to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey released by Statistics South Africa today. Sakina Kamwendo spoke to independent economist Duma Gqubule