Dear Sowetan reader,

The SowetanLIVE comments system, powered by Viafoura, has a number of features that we are sure you will love. You can follow articles that are trending, follow your favourite commenters and be alerted by email when someone replies to a post you’ve made.

You can even follow your favourite reporters and columnists on SowetanLIVE by clicking the "Follow" button next to their bylines in their articles. You'll then see an alert (see details below) whenever we publish a new article by that writer.

The comments system will automatically disable comments that include images, banned words, and spammy links or content. However, we also ask that you flag comments that violate our commenting rules.

To start commenting or to reply to other SowetanLIVE fans' comments, you simply have to sign in on SowetanLIVE and you'll be ready to comment. If you haven't signed in before, register now – it's quick and free.

You don't need to sign in just to read comments from other readers. While reading, you can sort the comments to see the newest, oldest or most liked, or the comments with the most replies.

You'll also see a bell-shaped icon in the bottom right corner of your screen. Click it to open a tray where you can get updates on the comments you are following along with other useful notifications. You'll also be able to upload an avatar for yourself there, if you like.

The comments area picks up your name and surname from your SowetanLIVE profile. If you edit your details there (you can access your profile after you have signed in), your name and surname in the comments area will change after a short while once you have refreshed the page. 

To follow an interesting conversation, just click the "Follow" link and you won't miss a thing. And if you like what someone is saying, vote it up!

Rules for commenting on SowetanLIVE

We welcome debate and dissent, but personal attacks on authors, other users, organisations or any individual will not be tolerated.

We will not tolerate racism, tribalism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such.

Spam will be removed. We also do not approve of any commercial entities passing themselves off as individuals, in order to post advertising material or links.

Inappropriate and/or pornographic profile images/avatars will also be removed.

>> Read our full comment policy here

Please do not:

• Make unfounded or unproved allegations against a person, organisation or group.
• Use vulgarity/profanity or language which may offend.
• Break the law, or encourage/support breaking the law.
• Incite violence.

Keep the intelligent discussion going

We love receiving feedback from our readers and hearing your views on different topics, and we would like to maintain a welcoming space for intelligent discussion.

Please respect other people's views and beliefs and consider your impact on others when making your contribution. We don't want to keep you from discussing topics you are enthusiastic about, nor do we wish to dictate how you should air your views, but we do ask you to find ways of sharing your views without offending or insulting others.

Help us keep SowetanLIVE clean

Although we will do our best to moderate the comments and remove the unwanted "trolls" from the SowetanLIVE community, we ask that you help us in this by notifying us of potential problems and clicking on the "Report abuse" button when offensive comments start popping up.

If you spot something problematic, please report it and we will deal with it. That being said, we would like to thank you for your continued support and we promise to keep delivering content that is informative and entertaining for all our readers.