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Over 40 000 police officers will secure South Africa's skies, streets, stadiums and accommodation venues during the 2010 Fifa World Cup, backed up by state-of-the-art surveillance cameras, helicopters and unmanned aircraft.

At just 36 years of age, the Eastern Cape's inimitable Phindi Kema is the first and only black person to breed thoroughbred horses commercially in South Africa. To top it off, she also grows lucerne and runs a citrus farm, a small dairy and a popular adventure camp.

The town of Kimberley, a centre of the world’s diamond industry located in the Northern Cape, is set for major expansion with the announcement of a new gold jewellery factory to be developed at a cost of R100-million.

The South African National Roads Agency has awarded seven contracts for the first phase of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement project, which will see 125.5 kilometres of highways in the highly urbanised province being upgraded at a cost of R11.5-billion.

On 27 April 1994 the world watched in awe as South Africans voted in the very first democratic elections. This year, South Africans commemorate 14 years of freedom with an array of planned events.

Canadian firm Alcan has signed a power supply deal with state electricity company Eskom that paves the way for the construction of a US$2.7-billion aluminium smelter in the Coega Industrial Development Zone in the Eastern Cape.

The Zambian government has announced the discovery of the country's first-ever reserves of oil and gas, opening up the possibility of an economic boom similar to that of neighbouring Angola, which is now Africa's second-largest oil producer.

Five days after Nelson Mandela's 86th birthday, Johannesburg gave its most famous resident the Freedom of the City at a ceremony at the Orlando East community hall in Soweto - used by Mandela for political meetings and for boxing training half a century ago.

Alexandra township in Johannesburg has been under threat of demolition many times in its 100-year-old history - particularly in the height of the apartheid period, when other "black spots" in the middle of white suburbs met their deaths beneath state bulldozers. Of these, Alex alone survived. Thanks to a friendship.