Health

Fifa’s new secretary-general is an African, and just as extraordinary, a woman. Senegal’s Fatma Samba Diouf Samoura’s appointment is being greeted with optimism in the football world with Fifa’s president Gianni Infantino believing she is the best person to help him rebuild the organisation.

With canoe-cracking rocks, steaming rapids, broiling heat and arduous terrain, the Dusi Canoe Marathon makes for a race that truly tests mental and physical strength. The 62-year-old competition still attracts serious endurance athletes and old warriors.

While most people are tucked up warmly indoors during winter, a group of dedicated extreme athletes is out riding the Freedom Challenge. The mountain bike race takes riders more than 2 000 kilometres across some of South Africa's harshest but most beautiful scenery.

Some of the world's most extreme races are held in South Africa, where elite athletes – and ordinary people – pit themselves against the unforgiving elements and huge distances. Perhaps the most well-known is the Comrades Marathon, a gruelling 90km run between Durban and Pietermaritzburg.

The 2010 football World Cup in South Africa may be a distant memory, but its legacy lives on through the Fifa World Cup Legacy Trust. In the first allocation of funds, 14 organisations got some financial assistance. This has had a huge impact on the lives of some of the country's poorest children.

Breathe in, breathe out: practising yoga is improving the lives of many impoverished and sick people in the townships around Durban. They are feeling more peaceful, more hopeful and healthier, they say. And now the Township Yogi Project plans to expand its work to Joburg and Cape Town.