The designer of the Genoa viaduct that catastrophically collapsed in August also had a hand in several South African bridges, including the one that spans the Storms River.

After the recent catastrophic collapse of Genoa’s Ponte Morandi, killing more than 60 people, Noseweek has discovered that the bridge’s reknowned designer, civil engineer Professor Riccardo Morandi, also designed South Africa’s most famous bridge that spans Storms River on the Garden Route.

Best-selling author Arundhati Roy takes an uncompromising position on capitalist greed, the dark path India has taken, Mohandas Gandhi and the Guptas.

For twenty years after releasing her best-selling debut novel, The God of Small Things, Indian author Arundhati Roy put all thoughts of fiction aside and focused on writing about Indian politics, environmental issues and the effects of capitalist greed on her country and the world.

During that time, she wrote about the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and slammed its champion, the country’s prime minister Narendra Modi; she’s condemned India’s military occupation of Kashmir; she’s travelled to India’s “valleys and forests” to try to make sense of huge, sudden changes that have been taking place post-globalisation; she’s been present during police raids at universities and endless student arrests; and she’s listened closely to the struggles of her fellow citizens in a country where the caste system is alive and well, where Muslims are persecuted and Dalits (so-called untouchables) are lynched.

He may soon be the first black man to be convicted for calling a fellow black man a “k****r”, but businessman Peter-Paul Ngwenya has bigger issues to contend with. Since his fallout with former business partner and current chairman of Investec Bank Fani Titi, Ngwenya has seen a massive source of income dry up – with Titi, by proxy, being the one turning off the taps.

Ngwenya believes he is owed at least R3,7 million by a company controlled by Titi called Tsiya Radio (Pty) Ltd. Tsiya owns FM radio assets such as Heart FM in the Western Cape and Gagasi FM in KwaZulu-Natal.

Visham Panday, gold and diesel dealer, convicted fraudster and brother to the more infamous Thoshan Panday, has demanded that Pietermaritzburg magistrate Ashin Singh make good on his threat to have him charged with defeating the ends of justice. So he told Noseweek when he called to demand a right of reply after getting a mention in a nose227 story titled ‘Foul-mouthed magistrate threatened me’.

As it happens, the alleged threat mentioned in the headline was not directed at Panday, but at The Witness newspaper’s court reporter, Sharika Regchand.

During the Second World War  the British initiated a secret operation to bring back intelligence from those living under Nazi occupation in Europe – using messages folded into tiny canisters tied to the legs of homing pigeons. The following is an extract from Secret Pigeon Service: Operation Columba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Europe by Gordon Corera and published by William Collins, 2018.

Vietnam is the world’s largest recipient of illegal rhino horn from South Africa. To reduce rhino horn consumption and therefore demand, Wilderness Foundation Africa is working with school-going Vietnamese youngsters to create a generation who will grow up to influence their peers, parents and families to reduce and ultimately stop the demand for rhino horn.

Zabalaza Mshengu has died – at 104 years old. As a labour tenant claimant in KwaZulu-Natal, his pursuit of his title deeds was text-book and should have been completed over a decade ago. But the fact that he died penniless and landless can be placed firmly at the feet of the ANC-controlled KZN Department of Rural Development and Agriculture.

Despite an explicit 2017 court order over and above two previous orders in 2011 and 2016 demanding that the matter be expedited, the department failed to finalise the matter. The reason put forward for the nearly 12 years of delays  was that more families had laid claim to the land. However the department deliberately conflated the two issues; Mshengu’s claim was quite separate – and there is a clear record of this.

South African businessman Zunaid Moti is languishing in a Munich jail and could soon find himself in Moscow, facing serious fraud charges and the threat of imprisonment. Although the matter has alr ...