Stephen Keet News Today

Tears flowed as nine triumphant Grandads were welcomed home on Sunday. The stringy Grandads Army troopers had pounded out 1,500km over 14 days to raise thousands of rand from an admiring public.

The River Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed is a powerful, earthy and harrowing story of how, in the early 2000s, a community in northern El Salvador fought together with international allies to prevent the Canadian gold mining giant, Pacific Rim, from destroying their country’s main water source, the Lempa River.

Residents in the seaside village of Kidd’s Beach outside East London have been rattled by a sudden crime surge in which 11 homes have been broken into in a week-and-a-half — with three targeted on Tuesday night. An octogenarian who stays alone in a beach house in the area said he feared for his life after he was assaulted and partially blinded by pepper spray during a recent burglary.

Frustrated BCM residents have expressed concern that they have not received their municipal bills for several months. The metro’s online billing system is also not working. This further compounds already serious billing flaws where scores of residents have complained about astronomical accounts due to incorrect water meter readings and problems with the newly-introduced, so-called smart meters.