The schoolgirl at the centre of last month's alleged racist attack at Edgemead High School in Cape Town on Wednesday formally applied for an Equality Court hearing into the incident. Equality Courts are tasked under South African human rights legislation to deal with unfair discrimination, hate speech and harassment.

Research from the University of Cape Town's Lung Institute has linked the high incidence of asthma in certain Cape Town residential areas to the local petrochemical refinery. The study included more than 3000 children, of which 57% said that they suffered from rhinitis, a year round 'wheeze' characterised by a runny nose and sneezing.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has nominated the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and its chairperson Zackie Achmat for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. TAC chairperson Zackie Achmat, who is gay and lives openly with HIV, has responded to the nomination by saying, "I am deeply honoured. The gains made by the TAC have been due to the efforts of thousands of people. It is the organisation as a whole that must be commended for the achievements thus far."

The Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF) is currently engaging with the South African Council of Churches to implement a Skills Training Project, which will train approximately 450 unemployed youth throughout South Africa. UYF seeks to appoint accredited lead and training providers.

George Bizos - who was a junior member of the ANC defence team in the historic Rivonia trial - has taken up a controversial role in the Hefer Commission, which was set up to investigate allegations that Bulelani Ngcuka, National Director of Public Prosecutions, had been investigated for being an apartheid spy and that he abused his position as the country's chief prosecutor. In this interview, Bizos explains his position.
Related Links:
* Conspiracy theories flourish as the spy story subplot thickens
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2003/11/30/insight/in06.asp

Court papers have been served on South Africa's four largest political parties in an attempt to compel them to reveal the sources of all large private donations made into their coffers since January 1 this year.

"I put it to you that you are a disgrace to your profession" were the last words addressed to former editor of City Press Vusi Mona on Friday by a member of the Hefer Commission. "You are entitled to your opinion," Mona replied to senior counsel Marumo Moerane, representing National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka. But this rejoinder was delivered without spirit and in a small voice. Mona had just spent two days being verbally torn apart by Moerane.

This review sets out to assess the extent to which the new democratic dispensation since 1994 has redirected the purpose and content of government policy and seeks to describe the impact of these changes on South African society.

Judge Essop Patel delivered a ruling last month that should give some relief to media operations and journalists who are harassed by sources and others threatening litigation to obtain copies of news articles before they are published, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) said. Judge Patel ruled in the Pretoria High Court that it would be an unnecessary burden for newspapers to hand over copies of articles and reports for public preview.

Africa has given birth to her own Linux distribution, Impi Linux, free for all at the Linux website. It was not an easy birth. Two years and two false births, Impi Linux was finally born to South Africa's Gauteng Linux Users Group, www.glug.org.za. Impi is the Zulu word for 'a group of warriors' and Impi Linux is one with a host of proven open source software.

The new anti-corruption law due to be passed by parliament this week is wide-ranging in its ambit and attempts to tackle corruption which was previously difficult to prosecute. A long 18 months in the making, the complex bill, now called the Prevention of Corrupt Activities Bill, extends the current legal definition of what constitutes a corrupt practice in a bid to widen the net on corruption.

Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme (TVEP) is inviting tender applications for the development of monitoring and evaluation tools and strategies.TVEP is an NPO striving to create an attitude of zero-tolerance towards rape and domestic violence in the Thulamela Municipality.

On the one side is Bulelani Ngcuka and his Scorpions investigative unit, whose powers Ngcuka is alleged to have abused in an attempt to settle old scores with certain prominent ANC members. On the other side is struggle icon and former transport minister Mac Maharaj and the former head of the ANC's internal counter-intelligence unit, Mo Shaik. This week the two accusers, Maharaj and Shaik, who have accused Ngcuka of being an apartheid-era spy, were humiliated in public at a commission to investigate the claims.

President Thabo Mbeki has denied allegations that Deputy President Jacob Zuma once tried to solicit bribes from the French arms manufacturer Thales to shield it from a corruption probe. "There is no scandal," he told a French radio station. "There is not anybody, anywhere - in South Africa or anywhere in the world - who can produce one single fact to demonstrate corruption.

It was Rule 2.9 that finally sparked the revolt. On the evening news, cameras bobbed and weaved through a heaving crowd of furious, toyi-toying Technikon Witwatersrand students, as they demanded that management stop curtailing their personal freedom. That was August this year shortly after management issued the offending Rule 2.9 decreeing that students were not to receive visitors (of the opposite sex) in their residence rooms. While there are no formal surveys, guesstimates are that about 22 percent of South African university undergraduate students are HIV positive.

The Parliamentary Millennium Project is designed as a nation-building intervention that will assist South Africans in recognizing how their diverse past experiences and the perspective resulting from those experiences have shaped their views of the present. The project is currently compiling a database of potential service providers for their media campaign and seeks expressions of interest from service providers who have commendable expertise in the following key areas: design and implementation of a comprehensive and integrated communication strategy; development and management of a comprehensive media liaison programme.

Much has been made of late of the notion of two countries in one. Yet this is one country characterised by combined and uneven development and gross unequal distribution of wealth. A country in which industry, labour and working class communities collide on a daily basis. All dependent on each other yet all treated unequally. A country in which, as in Wentworth, families live amidst unemployment of 50 per cent, the sole bread winner supports up to seven people, asthma rates are double the global average, yet living next to an industry in which it is not unusual for a CEO to earn over R 6 million a year.

After 18 months of painstaking deliberation Parliament's justice committee has approved the new anticorruption bill with a new provision which makes it an offence to offer or receive "gratification" which has not been earned.

The town of Kuruman in the Northern Cape turned into a battle field following an assault on a black customer by a white business owner. A mob from the black community then ran amok in what was believed to be revenge and caused serious damage to the nearby businesses, vehicles and injuries to locals.

South Africa and Namibia are the only two southern African countries included in the ‘medium access' list of the world's first Digital Access Index, which measures an economy's access to information and communications technology.