An online Northern Sotho-English dictionary has been launched by a group of academics called TshwaneDJe to promote interest in the official indigenous languages of South Africa. TshwaneDJe is an initiative of Professor Danie Prinsloo, who also heads up the African Languages department at the University of Pretoria, and Gilles-Maurice de Schryver, a Belgian researcher of African languages. Together with David Joffe, who created the website AfricanLanguages.com, they hope to provide language reference and learning materials for the nine indigenous African languages in South Africa.

President Thabo Mbeki is to ask the government for money to help women to play their role in the transformation of Africa. "We have to look at what we can do from government's side, if we are serious about the empowerment of women and the involvement of women in changing the continent," he said.

The South African courts and the Truth and Reconciliation process largely failed to unravel the whole truth around apartheid atrocities, and this left people angry and disquieted, Cape High Court Judge Dennis Davis said on Wednesday. Davis said the acquittal of apartheid-era chemical warfare expert Wouter Basson left people with the feeling that they had been "denied the truth".

“On reading the searing race debate last week between official opposition leader Tony Leon and President Thabo Mbeki, who rebutted so angrily, I wondered what had become of non-racialism,” writes Ferial Haffajee in South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper. “And a saying of my gran came to mind: it seemed well and truly ‘in sy moer in’ - buggered, injured, perhaps fatally so.”

Tokyo Sexwale, the former Gauteng premier, has donated 351 television sets worth around R1 million to the Department of Health during a ceremony at the Alexandra Community Health Centre in Johannesburg.

The Sowetan reports that the South African Sports Commission has received Lottery funds worth R9m. The money will be distributed evenly to sports academies in all nine provinces.

According to the Sunday Times, popular South African artists have signed an open letter and a petition against Arts and Culture Minister Ben Ngubane's running of the state funded arts councils.

Umsobomvu Youth Fund and the South African Council of Churches have launched a R2.5m skills development programme targeted at unemployed youth in churches in all South African provinces.

The United States announced on Tuesday that it has suspended military aid to South Africa because the country will not give Americans immunity from prosecution by the new International Criminal Court in The Hague. South Africa was one of 35 countries blacklisted by the US on Tuesday. It is the only one of the five countries on the itinerary for Bush's African tour to be blacklisted.

"The poor of South Africa did not vote for a government who would bring back laws declaring any dissenting voices as terrorists. We did not vote for the return of detention without trial and the indiscriminate banning of organisations. We did not vote for landlessness, evictions, electricity and water cut-offs and arms sales to an international terrorist like Bush. We did not vote for a government who would contribute weapons to occupying forces to kill thousands of Iraqi and Palestinian and East Timorese people, while at the same time claiming to be anti-War."

The Anti-War Coalition in Johannesburg, South Africa, is ratcheting-up its activities prior to U.S. President George W. Bush's meeting with the president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki. A mass demonstration will take place on Saturday at the Library Gardens, beginning at noon. A protest will also be held at the Union Buildings on Wednesday 9 July 2003 at 11am.
Related Links:
* Mandela avoids Bush meeting
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3032562.stm
* SACP joins protests against Bush visit
http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=11&o=23223

South Africa's first significant female-led political party was launched in South Africa by Patricia de Lille, a former trade unionist and leader of the Pan Africanist Congress. De Lille, one of the country's top ten most popular politicians, is taking the ruling African National Congress head-on with her Independent Democrats. Several surveys show that De Lille is a nationally recognizable politician with strong support across the racial and physical geographies of the country.

MISA-South Africa says it is "deeply concerned" about a proposed upward referral system contained in a draft editorial policy for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). "It is, in our view, an attempt to deliberately compromise the editorial independence of the editors and journalists. While the Draft Editorial Policy document duly acknowledges the essence of time in journalism and programming, we are concerned that the SABC would even consider a system that would clearly violate fundamental principles of editorial independence and compromises the South African public's right to receive and impart information."

Britain's biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, paid millions of pounds in secret commissions to obtain a huge UK taxpayer-backed contract to sell Hawk jets to South Africa. The British government has confirmed the payment, which will fuel the ongoing row about corruption allegations faced by BAE all over the world.
Related Link:
* Govt dismisses new arms deal claims
http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=11&o=23350

While the government holds up its mother-to-child HIV-transmission programme as the continent’s largest, it is turning into a shambles in many provinces. Investigation has revealed that mismanagement within the HIV/Aids sections of the national and provincial health departments could result in the dismal failure of the programme.

The environmental impact assessment of a planned nuclear reactor at Koeberg, near Cape Town, has been approved, the environmental affairs department said last Thursday.

The delay in establishing the Pondoland National Park in the Eastern Cape is due to opposition from the government in that province, Environment Minister Valli Moosa said last Thursday. "The Eastern Cape provincial government is opposed to the establishment of a national park on the Wild Coast," he said in a written reply to a parliamentary question by Democratic Alliance MP Errol Moorcroft.

In a speech to Parliament this week, Opposition leader Tony Leon accused President Thabo Mbeki of using racism as an argument to silence his opponents. The following day, Mbeki responded by saying that transformation of society was the only way that national reconciliation could be achieved. Read Leon's speech by visiting http://allafrica.com/stories/200306220019.html and Mbeki's by visiting http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/2003/06/22/insight/in02.asp. What do you think of this issue? Send your comments to [email protected]

The South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef) says it is concerned at the impact the current version of the draft Anti-Terrorism Bill could have on individuals and broad civil society in South Africa. In a submission to the National Assembly's safety and security committee on Tuesday, it said the draft legislation as it stood lacked a clear and unambiguous definition of what would constitute an act or acts of terrorism.

* The state, civil society and social policy: setting a research agenda
Steven Friedman
* Mergers in South African Higher Education: theorising change in transitional contexts
Jonathan Jansen
* Civil Society and the Democratisation processes in Kenya and Uganda
Juman Anthony Okuku