The publication examines some of the key actors and issues informing contemporary South African foreign policy. It does this through the prism of four foreign policy challenges: conflict diamonds; NEPAD; Zimbabwe and the Middle East. The final chapter makes a number of recommendations designed to strengthen the role and efficacy of parliament and the Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs in particular South African foreign policy.

In early November 2004, the Human Sciences Research Council Press annual State of the Nation publication, now in its second year, was published. State of the Nation: South Africa 2004-2005 asks, quite simply, if government is performing. Are politicians delivering? Are programmes, funded by tax-payers' money, working? Are the poor, living on electoral promises, surviving? Is the economy alive, is black empowerment kicking, are school kids learning? It asks such questions, explores the evidence, and comes to conclusions. It makes critical, as much as constructive, suggestions. The current volume is a project of the Democracy and Governance research programme of the HSRC, but also draws on work undertaken elsewhere in the organisation as well the research of analysts and social scientists from universities and civil society. Chapters in the 2004-2005 edition are broad-ranging, covering many of the most pertinent issues facing South Africa today.

"As organisations within civil society that are concerned with enhancing transparency and accountability of both our public and private institutions we would like to have our voices heard on the matter of whether the Directorate of Special Operations (DSO) or the "Scorpions" should be moved from the National Prosecuting Authority to the South African Police Services. We believe that to date the Scorpions have played an invaluable role in successfully tackling highly complex criminal cases in South Africa. They have demonstrated that they possess the will and capacity to investigate serious allegations of criminality and corruption without fear or favour. In doing so they have provided the public with the reassurance that even criminals at the highest levels of government and commerce can be held accountable for their actions. The Scorpions have done much to give us hope that in South Africa no one is untouchable and we can achieve the constitutional vision that all shall be equal before the law."

The Skills Africa Summit 2005 is being held at Gallagher Estate, Midrand, Johannesburg from 10-13 May 2005 as our continent’s response to global competitiveness. Learning innovations, training interventions, educational initiatives, competency acquisition, performance improvement and skills development is the key to Africa’s progress. These are also the answer to mitigating the perpetual cycle of poverty and the solution to ending the incessant marginalisation of Africa from the global arena. Africa can and will compete globally! The future of our continent rests in the hands of capacity-building enablers.

SAARDHE 2005 is being held at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College Campus, Durban, South Africa from 27-29 June 2005. The organisers encourage any participants who :
- is involved in research project links to other African countries
- is supervising postgraduates from the rest of Africa
- is re-curriculating teaching programmes for African issues/knowledge
- is engaged in African Language or Culture Programmes
- is interested in comparative governance of Higher Education Institutions
One of the Keynote Speakers is Adebayo Olukoshi who is a co-editor of the new Journal of Higher Education in Africa. We will also be looking for and planning other publication outlets for selected papers.

The opportunities for education in public schools are still unequal between Black and White children, even after apartheid, and unless the government actively strengthens its support to former Black schools in allocating both budget and personnel, a vicious cycle of poverty and low quality education will persist, says a paper from the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Talk is cheap, but carrying out the promises you make less so. That being the case, has all the talk about ensuring equality between men and women in South Africa resulted in action where it counts most: the allocation of funds along gender lines in the national budget? Nearly a decade ago, the Ministry of Finance promised to provide a breakdown of ways in which the budget promoted gender equality. It still hasn't happened, but finance ministry spokesperson Thoraya Pandy was unable to comment on the reasons for this. "There's a wall of silence on this issue," says Penny Parenzee of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, a Pretoria-based think-tank, noting that this may - at least in part - result from fears that men will lose out in a budget which makes a nod to women's needs."

It has crept into the daily news bulletins - about a thousand Phomolong residents at Hennenman blocking access roads; the situation in Bronkhorstspruit; the Westville campus closing after a heated protest; and students threatening to render Tshwane University ungovernable after talks with management over fees fell through. A growing number of isolated riots have turned into what appears to be a current of protests across the country. Just a decade after the streets were burning, analysts are seeing evidence of a new season of symptoms of exclusion and frustration.

Biowatch South Africa achieved a major victory last week in a five year battle to gain access to important information about genetically modified (GM) crops in South Africa. The Registrar of GMOs was ordered to release this information to Biowatch by no later than April this year. Acting Judge Eric Dunn upheld the right of access to information, enshrined in the Constitution. He reaffirmed that Biowatch has a Constitutional right to the information, and that access to this information was in the public interest.

One effect of the HIV epidemic in South Africa has been increasing numbers of orphans and of households headed by children. This article from the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand argues that laws which currently prevent child headed households from accessing benefits violate the country's Constitution. It provides a background on child headed households and the South African legal approach towards families, and then examines constitutional obligations on the rights to equality and social security, and children's socio-economic rights, in order to analyse how these obligations relate to the provision of child support grants to child headed households.

SANGONET is looking to appoint a Senior Information Co-ordinator for PRODDER, a new web-based database of South African NGOs and development organisations.

Sajida Khan is a soft-spoken, dignified but intense Durban resident who opposes the World Bank's methane-to-electricity project at the Bisasar Road Landfill. Her passion is fighting - and almost palpably winning, now - against awesome forces, including environmental racism, global warming and international economic power.

It is a story that needs telling. But not before another - more personal - story, one which merges seamlessly with the history of the municipal dump whose closure Khan has been fighting for years.

In 1980, Bisasar Road Landfill in the Indian suburb of Clare Estate officially opened its gates to rubbish-dumping trucks. I was just three years old at the time and living in the suburb next door. During the course of my entire childhood, the Bisasar Road landfill was a regular topic of discussion, as my mother and I made trips to visit my grandmother nearby.

Clare Estate was the bridge between our familial residences. I vividly remember the preparations, as we hit that short stretch. Car windows had to be rolled up. Nostrils had to be squeezed tight with tiny, pincer-gripped fingers. Breaths needed to be held. The stench was reminiscent of my public school toilet on a really hot Durban day.

I would also marvel at the big houses on the hill lining the road on the opposite side of the dump (we lived in a block of flats). They stood majestically like something out of Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, in sharp contrast to the huge stinking dump right in from of them. A few houses were owned by one of the wealthiest Indians in Durban, my mother used to boast, as if they were members of our own family.

I could never quite work out why rich people would live right across from a refuse dump. Little did my premature mind comprehend that everyone, including the rich Indian, could only live in an area designated under apartheid's Group Areas Act. Since Clare Estate had a large quarry, it was deemed unsuitable for white people. Indians were allocated that area.

A few years after the opening of the dump at the site of that quarry, I remember my mother excitedly telling me that the Bisaser Road facility would be shut and transformed into a park for the community. As a child whose life was spent riding a bike around our tar-covered parking lot the idea of a park in our vicinity was just too thrilling.

Perfume and toxics

It's now 2005 and I'm 27 years old. We live in a non-racial democratic South Africa today. But Clare Estate's notorious dump is still there, although approaching it, I notice something very different.

The stench has changed markedly, into a kind of 'mutant funk', as comedian Jerry Seinfeld describes the combination of body odour and perfume deodorant. Bisaser Road landfill now exudes the stink of dump rot mixed with an artificial sickly-sweet smell, emanating from long 'perfume rods' lining the road on the outer rim of the landfill. These rods were installed to merely mask the fumes arising from the dump; but the effect is quite nasty. Again I pinch my nose.

This time, instead of driving past, I enter one of the Gatsbyesque houses on the hill, Khan's residence. The city councilor in the area had just announced to the media that the landfill was, finally, to be closed. So again, as in my youth, I felt almost ecstatic at the thought of this old dream now coming true.

But there is more to the story than met the nose.

Khan welcomes me warmly into her home. Her lounge is framed by glass doors overlooking the entire landfill below, and beyond to the informal shacks and formal homes directly adjacent to the landfill, and a technikon campus at the bottom end of the dump. Just out of eyesight are two primary schools, a secondary school and a home for the safety of abandoned children, all in close proximity to the Bisaser Road dump.

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As student protests over various issues escalated in Johannesburg and Pretoria on Tuesday, education authorities strongly condemned campus violence. The unrest continued on Tuesday at branches of the University of Johannesburg, and at the Mamelodi campus of the University of Pretoria. In both cities, protesters were sceptical about efforts to resolve their grievances through talks.

Between 1997 and 2002, according to a new report from Stats SA, South Africa's official statistics agency, the number of recorded deaths in the age group from 20 to 45 more than doubled, from a little over 100,000 to more than 200,000. Although most deaths likely to be linked to AIDS are officially recorded as due to associated diseases such as TB and pneumonia, the age and disease pattern provides strong evidence of the growing impact of AIDS. Other previous studies, such as those from South Africa's Medical Research Council, have provided similar indications. But the issue is still contentious, as AIDS denialists have used the relatively low numbers attributed directly to AIDS to claim that researchers are exaggerating the problem. The latest issue of the AfricaFocus Bulletin contains postings that examine the issues in detail.

The South African HIV/AIDS advocacy group Treatment Action Campaign last Wednesday led about 2,000 people in a march outside the South African Parliament in Cape Town to demand that the government provide antiretroviral drugs at no cost to 200,000 HIV-positive people in the country by 2006. The South African Cabinet in November 2003 approved an HIV/AIDS treatment plan that aims to provide antiretroviral drugs to 1.2 million people - or about 25% of the country's HIV-positive population - at low or no cost by 2008.

The environmental impacts of the mining industry have been devastating to some areas of the Witwatersrand, the country's most densely populated region. Some of the gold deposits located here have been mined for more than a century. According to South African geographer Malcolm Lupton and South African urban planning expert Tony Wolfson, mine shafts - the deepest is 3,793 meters - have made hillsides and ridges less stable. Pumping water from subterranean aquifers has caused the natural water table to subside, and the resulting cavities within the dolomite rock formations that overlie many gold deposits sometimes collapse, causing sinkholes. Moreover, these impacts of the mining industry could worsen over time.

The Lancet, a leading international scientific journal, has lambasted the South African government for being defensive and urged it to “show backbone and courage to acknowledge and seriously tackle the HIV/AIDS crisis of its people”. The comments followed an editorial in this week’s Lancet on the findings of a Medical Research Council study that attempts to quantify misclassification of HIV/AIDS deaths concluded for the year 2000-01.

The Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal presents a seminar and the 1st Wolpe lecture in the 2005 Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture series. Gregory Elbo will be speaking on "Contesting Neoliberalism: Conceptual and Political Divisions" and on "The Global Social Justice Movement: Old and New Socialist Projects" on Monday 21st February.

Every year, thousands of Africans fleeing war and economic hardship make a perilous journey towards the tip of the continent - their sights set on a better life in the regional powerhouse, South Africa. But while South Africa is grappling with the challenge of providing anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to those of its citizens who are HIV-positive, less is said about how best to treat AIDS in the country's substantial population of refugees and illegal immigrants. As a result, the few who do qualify for ARVs often miss out on the opportunity of taking these life-prolonging drugs - while those who don't find the hardships of migrant life compounded by HIV.

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation invites applications for the position of Fundraising Manager. The incumbent will be responsible for implementing a fundraising strategy to secure the resources needed for successful implementation of CIVICUS programmes. This position will involve extensive work in developing and writing grant proposals, based on CIVICUS' strategic and operating plans and current and new programming.