Nelson Mandela, leader of the movement to end South African apartheid, is released from prison after 27 years.

Ruan Gates, a third-year game design student at Witwatersrand University, is lost in the dirt roads of Johannesburg. He’s trying to make it back to campus, where Wits is hosting a presentation on mobile game design. His GPS picks up the location, but each route it maps leads to a metal gate. He's in Northgate, an upper middle-class suburb. Every house is walled off and topped with barbed wire and advertisements for private security companies...

At the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa, a 3,106-carat diamond is discovered during a routine inspection by the mine’s superintendent. Weighing 1.33 pounds, and christened the “Cullinan,” it was the largest diamond ever found.

Now 28 years old, the South Africans we first filmed as children give a unique insight into their adult lives and relationships.

An image of convicted murderer Oscar Pistorius has reportedly been used to promote this summer's Paralympics by tournament organisers. Earlier today, the official Rio2016 Twitter account posted a video of the South African winning gold in the London 2012 Games - a tweet that was later deleted according to Mail Online.

Yasiin Bey, the hip-hop artist formerly known as Mos Def, has been arrested in South Africa for attempting to use a "world passport" — which doesn't exist. A government spokesman said that Bey attempted to use a false passport when leaving the country on Thursday, the Associated Press reports. Bey has 14 days to leave the country and is now banned from returning to South Africa for five years.

Renewable energy arrived in South Africa as a green luxury. But this year, wind and solar farms turned out to be economy-saving necessities.

The world’s fastest land animal serves as a handy patrol on military bases near wildlife reserves.

53-year-old Lewis Washkansky receives the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. Washkansky, a South African grocer dying from chronic heart disease, received the transplant from Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old woman who was fatally injured in a car accident. Surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who trained at the University of Cape Town and in the United States, performed the revolutionary medical operation.

When a black South African student threw a bucket of excrement over a statue of Cecil Rhodes, it kicked off a protest movement that is shattering the way the country sees its past. By Eve Fairbanks.

Tyler Fairbank

Kenyan officials have come under fire from LGBT activists in the country over a case where authorities allegedly forced two men to undergo HIV and anal testing to verify whether or not they were gay — considered a crime in Kenya that can land someone in jail for up to 14 years. The Nairobi-based National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (NGLHC) filed a lawsuit this week against a judge and police station in the small coastal town of Msambweni...

South African soccer has a long tradition of players using traditional medicine and black magic to gain a psychological edge. By Nick Kariuki.

"All videogames that I saw, until I left, were either grey-market imports from America and Japan, or bootlegs from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong."

When Tim Butcher's father died he left him a ring - but Tim lost it on a South African beach and there seemed little hope of finding it, until a stranger with a metal detector offered to help.

World Cup, Group B, Brighton – South Africa. Japan produced the biggest shock in the history of the sport to beat Pool B favourites and rugby giants South Africa 34-32 in Brighton. The Cherry Blossoms had gone a record 18 World Cup matches without a win heading into this game – their first ever meeting with the Springboks, who had won all of their tournament openers since 1995.

At a time when the Iran agreement is in the headlines and other Middle Eastern countries—notably Saudi Arabia—are making noises about establishing their own programs for nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, it is worth giving renewed scrutiny to an event that occurred 36 years ago: a likely Israeli-South African nuclear test over the ocean between the southern part of Africa and the Antarctic.

South African liberation leader Steven Biko meditates on his life, just months before his death on 12 Sept., 1977.

Scientists have discovered a new human-like species in a burial chamber deep in a cave system in South Africa. The discovery of 15 partial skeletons is the largest single discovery of its type in Africa. The researchers claim that the discovery will change ideas about our human ancestors. The studies which have been published in the journal Elife also indicate that these individuals were capable of ritual behaviour.

The top secret historic fossil discovery was unveiled at the Cradle of Humankind in Maropeng today.