HIV-positive foreigners living in SA are discriminated against by health professionals, according to Francois Venter, president of the HIV Clinicians’ Society. Venter said xenophobia was “a huge problem” that extended to the professional clinicians in government’s health facilities.

International communications company BT is to invest R20m in education in SA, China and India over the next three years in terms of a partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

The Kennedy 5 Are now on hunger strike in Westville prison, and will appear in court on 13 April to ask for bail. This means that they will have already been in jail for one month before they even get a chance to ask for bail.They were arrested along with four others at 3:00 in the morning on Human Rights day, 21 March, 2007.

South Africa has become a safe haven for many people fleeing from war, persecution and more recently homophobia as many African countries deplore homosexuality. Gay people from countries such as Nigeria, Uganda, Burundi, to mention a few, relate their stories of facing prejudice for being gay.

This study, from the South African Medical Research Council, evaluates the impact of Stepping Stones on new HIV infections and on new genital herpes infections, sexual behaviour and male violence. Stepping Stones is an HIV prevention programme that aims to improve sexual health through building stronger, more gender-equitable relationships with better communication between partners.

An increasing number of black women want to formally own their own homes and land in the cities where they settled informally under apartheid. But the system is still stacked against them. Anna Weekes hears the incredible story of one woman’s fight to secure her own home in Cape Town.

Illiteracy, hunger, abuse and other challenges confronting rural women around the world will become focal issues at an international conference late next month in South Africa, a South African official said on Thursday.

The AIDS Law Project (ALP), a section 21 non-profit company and a registered law clinic, is formally associated with the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The ALP seeks to appoint an attorney from May 2007 or as soon as possible thereafter. Deadline for applications is 5 April, 2007.

The Mail & Guardian Online has created a new service that tracks the South African blogosphere.

In an article by Thomas Rehle et al. in the March 2007 edition of the South African Medical Journal (SAMJ), an unparallelled large sample of 15 851 blood specimens was analysed to estimate HIV incidence on a national scale for South Africa, indicating that the availability of laboratory-based tests for recent HIV infection now offers a direct measure for tracking the epidemic and evaluating the impacts of prevention interventions.

Contrary to widespread public perception, arising largely from moral and cultural concerns, there is no evidence that provision of the Child Support Grant (CSG) is a cause of increased youth fertility, conclude Monde Makiwane and Eric Udjo in an Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) report prepared for the Department of Social Development.

Toward an Africa Without Borders is dedicated to opening borders, both physical and metaphorical, and to promoting unity and solidarity between groups in the Diaspora and Africa by facilitating strategic alliances and discussions that lead to partnerships for positive action in the name of Pan-Africanism. The conference [to be held in Durban from 5th-8th July] will feature discussions on issues such as “Activism Across Borders”; “Africa and the Media: Borders of Perception”; South Africa's Role in Africa and the World; Literature of Africa and the Diaspora; African Women: Struggle and Strength; Language and Africa; Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Africa and the Diaspora; and much more.

South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has dismissed claims that China's involvement in Africa is of a colonialist nature. She commented that China's trade with Africa has increased by 40% per annum since 2000 and this has had an encouraging effect on Africa.

New research on the rate at which HIV is spreading through the South African population has once again underlined the fact that women under the age of 30 are at much greater risk of getting the disease than young men, sending a warning to government that it needs to dramatically improve prevention campaigns aimed at this group.

After failing to persuade its young people to change their sexual behaviours, the South African government have announced a five-year plan to cut by half the number of new HIV infections in the country. South Africa has one of the world's highest HIV infection rates.

Fleeing war-ravaged Somalia for the relative peace and security of South Africa is not paying dividends for the many refugees who find themselves singled out for xenophobic attacks, which the Somali Association of South Africa claims have left more than 400 people dead in the past decade.

The long awaited world summit on the media and children will kick-off in South Africa towards the end of March 2007 to map out strategies on the representation of children in the media. The conference is expected to address the representation of children in the media and how the media in general have contributed to the way children are seen.

South African education minister Naledi Pandor is expected to draft legislation which would spell out the circumstances under which schools can test pupils for drugs, according to a report by the Pretoria News.

Any person who wants to sell land may in future have to give the state first option to buy their property, as part of the government's plans for land reform. That could be the effect of new legislation aimed at speeding up land reform in South Africa, according to Glenn Thomas, head of the department of land affairs, quoted in a report carried by the Beeld newspaper.

The Thembeka High School in Mpumalanga unveiled three new classrooms Thursday, designed entirely by three innovative learners in the province. Thulani Ndlovu, Mbali Dladla and Mduduzi Mashigo won the Public Works National 2014 Youth Foundation competition last year and were given an opportunity to improve the existing structure of their own school.