South Africa's first "Drive for Charity" event - initiated by the South African Guild of Motoring Journalists (SAGMJ) - is gaining momentum. A prizefund-raising campaign has just been launched, celebrity and charity competitors will be announced on 28th October 2003, and on Valentines Day, 14th February 2004, at least 16 top South African celebrities and their benefiting charities will vie for the largest portion of a R1m plus pool of prize money.

So far, during the current financial year, the Lottery has generated R1.6bn for "good causes". The bulk went to charities, with the arts and culture sector as the second largest recipient and sports and recreation as the third.

BuaNews reports that the National Development Agency (NDA) has earmarked R67 million for poverty alleviation projects in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Limpopo, funded by the European Union (EU) as part of the European Programme for Reconstruction and Development.

Civil society and private business are making invaluable contributions to the war against HIV/Aids, national health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Saturday.

Thousands of attacks on white farmers in South Africa over the last 12 years were motivated by an intent to rob - fueled by poverty and unemployment - not by racism, a special committee investigating the attacks said.

Taking on board the World Bank’s advice to introduce a "credible threat of cutting service" the Johannesburg City Council has been cutting off citizens who cannot afford to be consumers. Several poor communities across Johannesburg, with the active assistance of the Anti Privatisation Forum, have launched Operation Vulamanzi in which the ‘control’ measures such as trickler systems, re-routed water piping and pre-paid meters have been by-passed by community residents in order to retain access to water. ANC politicians have publicly labelled community residents resisting water and electricity privatisation, ‘criminals’ and ‘anarchists’.

The Generic Anti-Retroviral Procurement Project and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) Treatment Project asked multinational pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim this week for permission to import generic nevirapine for use in combination antiretroviral therapy, failing which they will seek compulsory licenses in court.

For the past six weeks, health officials and specialist advisors have been working late into the night to meet a deadline set by Cabinet to come up with a "detailed operational plan on an anti-retroviral treatment programme". While cynics say the urgency is being fed by the 2004 general election, few in the HIV/AIDS field doubt that South Africa has reached the point of no return on the provision of ARV drugs.

"I cannot see why it is that if an individual uses violence against a state it is seen as terrorism, but if a government uses violence and intimidation against its people it is often viewed as something else. What applies to the one should apply to the other,” says senior researcher at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Anneli Botha. She is arguing that terrorism in Africa cannot only be tackled with tighter security and anti-terrorism legislation.

The National Directorate of Public Prosecutions urged Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Monday to present the Hefer Commission with evidence that Bulelani Ngcuka, head of the NDPP, was abusing his power. "If Mr Zuma has any evidence of abuse and of ulterior motive, he is challenged to present such evidence to the Commission of Enquiry established by the President for this purpose," said acting NDPP spokesperson Rudolf Mastenbroek.

The apartheid regime herded the Makuleke off their ancestral lands in a huge game reserve, leaving only white shards of broken dishes and the concrete foundation of a general store as reminders of their presence. It took nearly two decades, until after the introduction of South Africa's multiracial democracy, for the impoverished tribe to win back ownership of the land near the junction of the Limpopo and Luvuvhu rivers.

Shock and outrage has erupted across South Africa in response to President Thabo Mbeki's denial that he knew anyone with Aids. "Personally, I don't know anybody who has died of Aids," Mbeki told the New York Times while at the United Nations General Assembly last week. Asked if he knew anyone who was HIV-positive, he responded, "I really, honestly, don't know."
Related Link:
* Government clarifies statement
http://allafrica.com/stories/200309300400.html

Empowerment has been a key term in South African business over the past decade. While the focus has been on black economic empowerment, women disadvantaged by socio-cultural discrimination are demanding recognition of the inequity that long denied them various opportunities in business life.

News24 reports that the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives has awarded R250 000 to the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). The grant will be used to train health care and community workers in the Eastern Cape in preparation for the mother-to-child transmission prevention programme and the antiretroviral therapy rollout.

The South African government has entered into a partnership with Microsoft Computers to develop software in IsiZulu and Afrikaans.

The community in Phiri, after a mass meeting held on the 13th September, decided to organise a march to the Soweto offices of the Johannesburg Metro. During the week 13-19 September community members alongside activists from the APF, SECC and several other APF affiliates conducted a door-to-door campaign in Phiri to mobilise support for the struggle against the pre-paid meters. This campaign was buttressed by an APF-initiated meeting of several progressive organisations and movements (during the same week) in order to form a broad coalition against water privatisation.

On a sandy shore whipped by fierce winds and punishing waves, sits Africa's only nuclear power plant. The two reactors here at Koeberg, which came online in the last days of apartheid, pump out 6.5 percent of South Africa's electricity and light most of Cape Town, 12 miles down the coast. This could become ground zero of a revolution in the way Africa - and the world - are powered. South Africa's state energy provider, Eskom, is leading a $1 billion project to develop a new technology that it says will give nuclear power new life, both here and abroad.

An African National Congress Women's League delegation is scheduled to depart for Nigeria at 2pm on Tuesday as part of the organisation's campaign to save Amina Lawal, the ANC Youth League said. Lawal (31) is a Nigerian citizen facing death by stoning for having a baby outside wedlock.

This paper seeks to explore some pressing issues related to the consequences of the old age pension in households affected by HIV/Aids in South Africa. The paper examines the policy of the South African government to provide the elderly with a means-tested non- contributory old age pension, intended to be a poverty relief programme for the aged.

An arms deal worth about 3.9 billion U.S. dollars concluded between South Africa and several European multinationals has plunged South Africa into its worst post-apartheid political crisis. Last Thursday President Thabo Mbeki announced a judicial commission of inquiry into allegations that the chief investigator of alleged corruption in the course of the deal, Bulelani Ngcuka, was an apartheid spy.