The Latest Breaking News from Pietermaritzburg

Sweat, tears and camaraderie as 20,000 runners take on world’s largest ultramarathon

For one day every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away at Comrades race

The Guardian - UK · Jun 21

Africa’s longest-running grassland research project offers up a wealth of knowledge

For 75 years, grasslands research conducted just outside Pietermaritzburg, South Africa has informed policy makers and farmers about sustainable management, while training generations of students.

The Conversation · Dec 1, 2025

South African study finds 4 low-income communities can’t cope with global warming: what needs to change

Climate change is not new: temperatures have been rising for decades as a result of global warming. In South Africa’s city of Pietermaritzburg, four low-income urban communities have experienced drought, heatwaves, severe hailstorms, devastating flooding events that killed hundreds of people and displaced thousands, and wildfires as a result of…

The Conversation · Aug 5, 2025

Two security guards brutally beat man who stole just a few jars of peanut butter

A man was forced to hold onto a stairwell at the store in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, before a guard pulls out an 18-inch wooden truncheon and carries out a beating

Daily Mirror · Oct 2, 2022

The 100-year-old story of South Africa's first history book in the isiZulu language

This year marks the centenary of the publication in 1922 of Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona (The Black People and Whence They Came), the first book-length history of black people written in isiZulu. Part of the Nguni language group, there are an estimated 12 million isiZulu speakers in South Africa.

The Conversation · Apr 7, 2022