The 5th International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation (IWRM) is an annual workshop organised by the Resource Alliance. The workshop is taking place at the Birchwood Executive Hotel, Johannesburg, South Africa, 26th-28th March 2004. 220 attendees from 45 countries worldwide have already booked to attend this year's IWRM making it the largest and most international to-date. The reputation of the IWRM is obviously spreading worldwide, as delegates from countries ranging from Malaysia and India to Egypt and Ecuador are travelling to South Africa to attend this leading international forum for training and policy discussion on local resource mobilisation.

To date, there are less than 2,500 people on the national ARV programme country-wide - and nearly all of them are in the Western Cape. The National Department of Health has admitted that it will miss its target for the end of March. TAC believes the primary reason for the failure to meet this target is the Minister of Health's lack of political will. Her justification for delaying treatment is that the tender process for antiretroviral medicines is not complete and therefore these medicines will only be available in the public health system by the end of June. But there are mechanisms in South African law allowing for emergency procurement without tender that the minister could use to secure an interim supply of ARVs. The TAC demands that the Minister does so.

Driving through Lusikisiki one is struck by the green rolling hills, the healthy looking cattle grazing in village pastures and the endless fields of maize. For those in the know, the extraordinary biodiversity of the area – with its over 1700 indigenous plants – is as impressive as the rolling hills and the maize fields. This high rainfall and fertile part of the picturesque Wild Coast is very different from so many other communal areas in South Africa that regularly experience drought. But the statistics show that not all is well in Pondoland. The district, like so many parts of South Africa, has an extremely high HIV infection rate of 24% - high for rural areas in the Eastern Cape. It also has an under-resourced provincial health department.

The following are excerpts from an interview that was conducted in September 2003 between CINSA, Africa Pulse and the station manager of a Soweto Community radio station, Jozi FM. The station manager takes us through a journey the station endured to sustainability, which serves as a lesson for establishing or strengthening similar initiatives in the SADC region.

"The Landless People’s Movement (LPM) – a national movement of poor and landless people struggling for land reform – will launch a national rolling mass action strategy this week as part of it’s “No Land! No Vote!” campaign in response to the 14 April election. The campaign, which aims to raise the voice of millions of poor and landless people who say that “10 years of failed land reform is enough” through an organised boycott of “ballot-box democracy” in a context of broken promises, will include local, provincial and national actions culminating in a national march on election day. These actions will include a series of marches, demonstrations, assemblies, pickets, land occupations and occupations of government buildings."

Dan Ndzabela, aged 82, stood at the foot of Table Mountain and looked out to the sparkling blue sea. He smiled. "It's good to be home," he said quietly. Mr Ndzabela was standing in District Six, the scene of one of apartheid's most notorious travesties. Now, in his dying years and a decade after the end of white rule, some justice is finally his. Until the 1960s District Six was Cape Town's most vibrant quarter. Blacks, coloureds, Jews and immigrants from all over the world bustled through its cobbled streets and crammed into colonial-era houses. Its diversity represented everything apartheid opposed. In 1966 the area was declared "whites only" under the hated Group Areas Act, and the first bulldozers rumbled in. Houses were levelled, streets wiped from the map, and an entire community dismembered and banished to squalid townships on the marshy Cape Flats.

“To most people, nuclear physics may seem very far removed from Indian classical music - but not to South African Indian scientist Raju Kala…”

The successful candidate will work with the project head on a research project aimed at contributing towards the implementation of the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (Palermo Convention) in the SADC region and at supporting SADC with the implementation of the SADC Protocol against Corruption through applied policy research.

The publications co-ordinator serves as the editor of the African Security Review, the flagship quarterly journal of the ISS, and manages the production of all other ISS publications through outsourcing arrangements with typesetters, designers and printers.

A special investigation into the financial affairs of the Aids Consortium has found gross mismanagement of donor funds to the tune of about R1,1-million. As a result, the top management of the non-governmental organisation has been suspended and its executive committee is preparing to step down following the findings of the investigation. The Aids Consortium is a non-profit organisation made up of about 1 000 bodies (mainly community-based organisations) working in the field of HIV and Aids.

Dear sisters,
Happy International Women's Day to you. The 8th of March is meant to be a day to celebrate how far we have come as women worldwide. But for us North of your border, we have no cause to celebrate. I am writing this letter to talk to you, woman to woman. I believe in other women. I don't buy into the now oft heard refrain that "women don't support one another". I celebrate your presence in the highest offices of your land, and I want to continue to have faith in other women.

But, I am making a lot of assumptions in writing this letter to you; that you are in leadership to promote and protect the rights of women. I assume that you feel for other women. Yes it is an assumption that those of us who have worked as feminists know so well. We vote for women to get into high offices and assume that they will stand up for our collective rights.

We think that because one woman has gone through a particular struggle she will easily identify with the struggles of others. That like I said is an assumption that has since been proved to be just that, an assumption. So I am writing this with these huge assumptions that you are interested in the rights of women wherever they are, whoever they are. If you don't, stop reading here.

Sisters you are letting us down. The women of Zimbabwe are hurting. Thousands have been physically abused, raped, are unable to survive from day to day, and millions are groaning under the weight of oppression.

Honourable Zuma, I am not talking about the British's "kith and kin", that you like talking so much about. I speak only of YOUR kith and kin. Black women.
Women who have never owned land in pre-colonial times or post colonial times and who still have not been given any of the celebrated land that was redistributed.

But what all these women know is that their rights are violated day in and day out in the name of this land. Our President is on record for saying that women cannot be given land in their own capacity, unless they don't want to get married. On the former commercial farms all poor black women know is that they have lost their means of survival. You and I can argue from the safety of our good jobs that they were being exploited by the Rhodies. But to them it was a question of half a loaf is better nothing. Now it's a case of no bread is better than half a loaf! In the absence of alternatives they resort to commercial sex work, with all the dangers that it now entails, (your government's denialism around HIV/AIDS not withstanding here. In Zimbabwe we are quite clear that one in every three people has HIV).

Hundreds of female nurses and teachers fled from their rural posts since the 2000 elections till now, because of the politically motivated and organised violence that engulfed our country. Most of them are still unemployed as we speak, because the government refuses to allow them to "transfer".

Those who stayed continue to endure emotional and physical violence from so-called war vets and the Green Bombers. Young girls some as young as nine or ten, have been raped and infected with HIV by gangs of marauding state sponsored thugs. There are no figures of how many black women and their families have been displaced from their homes.

Have you never wondered what life must be like for an ordinary black Zimbabwean woman right now? Let me share with you what I know, bearing in mind my class status. A packet of 10 sanitary pads costs Z$10 000. A domestic worker in Highfield township earns Z$15 000 if she is lucky. I leave the horrors of her monthlies to your active imagination. Saying hello to a doctor is now $50 000. 10 good pain- killers will cost you Z$15000. A one- way trip into town from the nearest township by combi is $500.

Most walk back and forth every day. The woman still has to cook, clean and take care of everyone. Add to all this, the impact of the HIV crisis. It is women who still care for the sick, who have to care for their babies and who are still denied their reproductive rights. We are now back to the good-old system of pulling girls out of schools, because poor families can’t afford to pay fees for both girls and boys. Our gender roles and rights questions haven't gone away simply because we are in a political crisis. They just get worse.

You have probably seen various videos and read countless stories about what is going on in Zimbabwe. I know many of you doubt the authenticity of these stories given the "messengers" who put them out. But let me go back to the woman thing; you and I know the price that women pay for publicly speaking about any human rights violations that they suffer. We know the questions that are asked; What had she done? What was she wearing? Where was she going? Who is she? Can we really believe her? In the case of Zimbabwe's political violence against women add another set of questions; Which party is she from? Are you sure she wasn't paid by the British? Is it really true that Robert Mugabe a whole liberation war leader can do that? And in the case of the socio economic crisis: Surely these figures are exaggerated?

Isn't this just Western propaganda?

That my dear sisters, is why I said you are letting us down. We are dismayed, by the comments that some of you, particularly Nkosazana have made about our situation in Zimbabwe. As any woman in a violent situation will tell you, there are no prizes awarded for speaking out. If anything you are ostracized by your own family/community. You are branded a bad woman, and worse you are violated several times over for daring to open your mouth.

Your public denials and accusations against those of us who dare to speak hurts. Telling us that what we are going through is "British propaganda" is the same as accusing any South African woman who is raped of telling lies.

Your silence and quiet diplomacy does more harm to us emotionally than the physical wounds we carry. Those of you who have ever experienced domestic violence, (and I am sure there are a few among you), or rape must be quite familiar with this; the pain you feel when your own family doubts your story. The anguish you go through when his and your own family accuse you of being the bad woman. The anger when they literally tell you to change your behaviour.

That is what you and your government are doing to the women of Zimbabwe.
Partly blaming the victims, mostly silencing them. As you celebrate International Women's Day, think about the women and girls of Zimbabwe. We are over six million nameless, faceless individuals. Go beyond Bob and Morgan. Talk to us. We are here. As our rights continue to be violated in the name of "national sovereignty", all we ask of you is not to deny our pain. Don't silence us and deny us the space to name our violations and our violators. May none of what we are going through EVER happen to any one of you or any woman of South Africa.

* Everjoice J. Win is a Zimbabwean feminist activist. She is a former Commonwealth Adviser to the Commission on Gender Equality, (CGE). This letter was first published in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper. It is reproduced here with kind permission of the author.

* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to

* Please see the Women and Gender section of Pambazuka News for more information on International Women's Day.

The Constitutional Court has brought government in line for the second time in less than a week with regard to the treatment of foreigners. The court held that illegal immigrants were entitled to the same rights as South African citizens when visiting SA. Justice Yacoob overturned laws that allowed illegal immigrants entering the country by ship or aircraft to be detained for more than 30 days without a court order, adding that detainees could not be held under intolerable or inhumane circumstances. This ruling, and the one last week that social grants may no longer be limited to South African citizens, has placed obligations on the state to make special provisions for foreign nationals.

Radical civil society is returning to a vision that aims to diffuse power rather than to seize it. It is a vision that aims to steadily limit the power of parliament and managers by building people's power from the bottom up. It is a spark in the ashes, write academics and activists Ashwin Desai and Richard Pithouse in South Africa's The Mercury newspaper.

According to the Natal Witness, the National Lotteries Board has distributed R2bn in grants to 4 700 beneficiaries nationally since its inception in 2000. The National Lotteries Board spokesperson, Sershan Naidoo, indicated that the board has also allocated R1bn to 1 300 beneficiaries between April 2003 and March 2004.The biggest grant ever allocated thus far has been to the Children's Hospital Trust and other major beneficiaries include the South African National Council for Child and Family Welfare, South African Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, National Institute for Crime Prevention and Reintegration of Offenders, Project Literacy and the Association for People with Disabilities.

The South African treatment advocacy group Treatment Action Campaign on Monday threatened to file a lawsuit against the government before the country's April 14 elections unless the government begins its national HIV/AIDS treatment program, Reuters reports.

With fist in the air, Virginia Setshedi shouts “Amandla!” The crowd gathered in a University of Alberta classroom raises fists in the air and responds “Awethu!” – “Power to the People,” the cry of South Africa’s liberation movement. But this cry is in opposition to a new form of oppression – privatization. Virginia Setshedi, a founding member of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee in South Africa, and Rudolf Amenga-Etego, the national campaign coordinator of the Coalition Against the Privatization of Water in Ghana, visited Edmonton as part of a cross-Canada speaking tour organized by the Halifax Initiative. Setshedi and Amenga-Etego spoke of the detrimental effects of the privatization of electricity and water services and other neoliberal policies foisted on poor countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

With the world marking International Women's Day this week, women in South Africa might find themselves asking what benefits 10 years of democracy have brought them - especially in the important area of reproductive health. "Women have different levels of access to reproductive health services at a range of levels," says Martha Molete, Communication Officer at the Planned Parenthood Association of South Africa (PPASA). She told IPS that urban women generally had more access to health care than their rural counterparts. However, women in rural areas were undoubtedly more aware of their contraceptive options than they had been a decade ago.

Campaigning for South Africa's general elections, to be held next month, has moved into top gear - with politicians scrambling for an endorsement from the country's 20.7 million registered voters. "The parties are now in full-swing campaign mood,” says Khabele Matlosa of the Johannesburg-based Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA). Two of the country's nine provinces are the site of especially heated electioneering. "The major parties seem to have set their eyes on KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape,” notes Matlosa, adding "In the rest of the places, I think it will just be ceremonies, nothing much.”

The High Court in Pietermaritzburg has been asked to make a ground-breaking ruling to protect the interests of all landowners in South Africa whose constitutional rights are said to be threatened by an ongoing illegally "orchestrated mass land invasion" at Mangete in northern KwaZulu-Natal. The application is being brought by Durban human rights advocate and civil rights activist Jenny Wild and the Mangete Landowners' Association. The latter is involved in a dispute, dating back to 1993, with members of the Macambini tribe led by Chief Khayelihle Mathaba, over the alleged illegal settlement of land claimants on property owned by the descendants of English settler John Dunn.

This is a lucid analysis of neoliberal economics as formulated by the World Bank and IMF and imposed on Africa and South Africa in particular. It shows the economic and human damage wrought by these policies, and how they have displaced the originally radical and pro-people orientation of the ruling African National Congress. The leadership's change of heart has cost the South African people a million jobs, stymied their hopes of sustainable access to housing, water, electricity, health and education, dramatically worsened income inequality, and opened up a dangerous gulf of disillusion between voters and government.