Five South Africans were killed when a small medical plane crashed in a nature reserve east of Cape Town on Sunday, the emergency services said.

"A Namibian medical plane which was carrying five South Africans crashed this morning. The pilot, his co-pilot, a paramedic, the patient and his daughter were all tragically killed," a statement from the emergency services said. 

Four houses were destroyed and dozens of people evacuated from their homes on southern peninsula of South African city Cape Town as wildfires whipped up by strong winds raged over nearby mountains on Monday, firefighters said.

A massive firefighting operation has been launched, with helicopters water-bombing blazes threatening seaside villages from Muizenberg to Noordhoek, Cape Town Disaster Risk Management said on Monday.

When Nelson Mandela made his first public speech after nearly three decades in apartheid jail, Sihaam and Moutie Abrahams were in the elated crowd outside Cape Town's city hall.

On Friday, more than 20 years later, they returned to say a final farewell to the hero who carried the hopes of a bitterly divided South Africa into all-race freedom.

Six of 19 pilot whales that were stranded Sunday on a beach in the South African city of Cape Town have died and authorities said they planned to euthanize some of the surviving whales.

Police and other rescue workers had hosed down the surviving whales at Noordhoek Beach to try to keep them alive.

Several unrelated fires ripped through informal settlements in Cape Town killing at least three people and leaving at least 4,000 homeless on New Year's Day, officials said.

"The cause of these fires has not been established, however it is alleged that they were caused by negligence by persons under the influence of alcohol," said city disaster management official Wilfred Solomons-Johannes.

Baboons in Cape Town are being paintballed to drive them out of residential suburbs and stop them from pillaging homes and cars on brazen food raids, an official said Tuesday.

The animals are shot by monitors who shadow the city's several primate troops, which are notorious for causing havoc in areas bordering their natural mountain habitat.

Smoking drivers will have to watch their butts in South Africa's tourist draw card Cape Town after a new hotline was launched for motorists to report those who throw cigarette ends out the window.

"We are getting quite a lot of calls on the butt line," said an operator who answered the hotline on Wednesday.

Ian Walker's Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing team looks set to rejoin the Volvo Ocean Race on Wednesday after the shore crew worked around the clock to repair their dismasted boat Azzam following a devastating first 24 hours in the world's toughest professional sailing event.

The 39,000-nautical mile, nine-month race claimed two victims on the first day after launching the opening leg between Alicante, Spain and Cape Town on Saturday with Walker's and Team Sanya representing China both forced to suspend racing.

A South African police officer has been arrested for stealing from his boss, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, who is tasked with bringing down high crime levels, his spokesman said Tuesday.

A laptop and cellphone were taken from the minister's home in Cape Town.

A sexy dose of jazz and the refined strains of Western opera and traditional Xhosa song drive a new opera about South Africa's former president and anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela.

The range of musical styles in "Mandela Trilogy" reflects South Africa's mix of cultures, the production's writer and director Michael Williams said in an interview before a dress rehearsal on Friday.