Indian Ocean

The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’s business school has been named an international leader at the third annual Asia’s Best Business Schools award ceremony, held in Singapore in July.
• SA business schools get top rating

One of South Africa's leading resorts, the Pezula Resort Hotel & Spa in Knysna in the Western Cape, is set to join the luxury portfolio of Conrad Hotels & Resorts, part of the Hilton Worldwide brand.

Now that the long wait is over and the co-hosts of the Square Kilometre Array have been announced, South Africa and Australia can get on with the business of building the world’s biggest scientific instrument.
• Great astronomy, with or without SKA

South Africa has become the 19th signatory to the International Maritime Organisation's Djibouti Code of Conduct, aimed at tackling the escalating pirate activity in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.
• Maritime piracy under the spotlight

A decision on the site of the Square Kilometre Array has been delayed to allow a scientific working group to explore ways of maximising investments already made by rival bidders South Africa and Australia-New Zealand - raising the possibility that the hosting of the world's biggest radio telescope could be shared.

South Africa will host 32 member states of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium and various international parties with interests in these waters when the third such event takes place in Cape Town in April 2012.
• SA enters military pact with Argentina

With its indigenous forests and rocky shores, the Harkerville Trail on the southern Cape coastline can pack the punch of a longer hike in just one weekend.
• Garden Route's new national park

Scott Ramsay swapped his city slicker life in Jozi to live in the beautiful South African wilderness, travelling around the country and promoting its natural riches.
• Cape Town gets new nature reserves

South Africa has launched a "Full Moon Fever" campaign as part of a series of events leading up to the announcement of the host of the €1.5-billion Square Kilometre Array - arguably the country's most important contest since its successful bid to host the 2010 Fifa World Cup.

It will be capable of probing the edges of our universe. It will search for gravitational waves, predicted but never detected. It will be a virtual time machine, enabling scientists to explore the origins of galaxies, stars and planets. And South Africans are at the heart of its development.