The death toll from bush fires in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province has risen to 20, an official said on Wednesday, Reuters reported The fires affected 1,100 households, destroyed scores of livestock and left swathes of crop and grazing land smouldering. Lennox Mabaso, a spokesman for the local government ministry, said damages were expected to run into millions of rand (dollars). "So far the official figure that we have at the disaster centre is 20 confirmed deaths, but the figures remain preliminary," Mabaso told Reuters.
