The Congress of South African Trade Unions has expressed concern at a report, commissioned by the Department of Labour, that reveals that 36% of children in South Africa are involved in child labour, as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Parliament's public accounts committee (Scopa) began 2002 deeply divided and maligned over the multi-billion rand arms deal, but new chairman Francois Beukman is now confident Scopa is back on track for 2003.

Scores of township schools are facing closure or are standing empty despite widespread overcrowding of classrooms around South Africa. Hassan Lorgat, spokesman for the South African Democratic Teachers' Union, said pupils were leaving township schools because they thought schools in the suburbs offered better education and were less dangerous.

President Thabo Mbeki made an eloquent call last Friday for the Iraq question to be resolved peacefully through the United Nations, and not through war. Mbeki said South Africans had an interest in the peaceful resolution of the Iraq question, and "an obligation to stand up and join the struggle for peace.

Just four months after the infamous World Summit on Sustainable Development, world leaders and corporates (such as Shell) gathered this week in Davos, Switzerland, to further entrench globalisation and its associated ills, says environmental NGO groundWork.

The preparations for the SAHR 2003 are underway. The theme for this year is equity. We would like to invite you to submit your suggestions on what you think should be covered in this Review, by 15 Feb 2003.

The National Director of Public Prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka, has launched a multi-sectoral anti-corruption task team for the Eastern Cape. The team is being deployed in the province at the directive of President Thabo Mbeki.

The New National Party's leadership has suspended the party membership of Social Development Deputy Minister David Malatsi and former Western Cape premier Peter Marais pending an internal party investigation. Earlier in the week the pair were suspended from party activities pending a probe by the Public Protector into their role in the controversial Roodefontein golf estate development.

A group of Guguletu youth - some victims of domestic violence and some affected by it - say perpetrators of rape, women and children abuse should be punished more harshly. National Adolescent Friendly Clinic Intiative 's Sbongile Pilane and his peers, all adolescent youth, are educating thousands of other youth them about their sexual rights and the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

What is the role of Northern NGOs within the context of development aid to South Africa? This report examines what a selection of Northern NGOs have been doing in South Africa, particularly since 1994. It also looks at what their priorities have been and how they have changed. This also includes the question of what they see as their future roles and contributions towards development in South Africa, in coming years.

Jeanne Nolte was sleeping fitfully in her hospital bed while waiting to undergo major head surgery, when a blood-soaked woman was brought into the ward. She told Nolte that three Afrikaans men had beaten her until she lost an eye. Three days later Nolte decided not to undergo the operation at Garankuwa Hospital to remove an aneurism on her brain, because it would cause her to lose her memory. Instead, she wanted all her faculties so that she could establish and run the Anti Racist Movement (ARM) in the city of her birth, Polokwane, in Limpopo. Today, if you drive through Polokwane, you'll find business and government offices displaying bold stickers declaring: "Right of Admission Reserved, No Racists Allowed."

Any person infected by a life-threatening sexually transmissible disease who failed to disclose that to his or her partner before having sex is guilty of rape, the SA Law Commission (SALC) said on Tuesday. "Intentional non-disclosure by a person that he or she is infected by a life-threatening sexually transmissible infection in circumstances in which there is a significant risk of transmission of such infection to that person prior to sexual relations with another (consenting) person amounts to sexual relations by false pretences and would therefore constitute rape," it said in a statement.

Aids dissident Roberto Giraldo, in South Africa for the second time in two months to talk to health officials, says Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang agrees with his controversial views. But the minister of health denies this. Giraldo, who has given a talk on HIV and nutrition to the health ministers from the 14 Southern African Development Community countries during his latest visit, also claimed that the 14 ministers believed correct diet could cure Aids.

The Whittlesea Anti-Aids Youth Campaigners (WAAYC) are still waiting to receive an NDA grant allocated to them in 2001, reports the Daily Dispatch. The NGO is working with people affected and infected with Aids and it also helps with home-based care to those living with the virus. The organisation was supposed to have received the allocated grant in April last year.

Latest media reports about the Mandela SOS music concert reveal that it's not "all systems go" for the concert as reported earlier on Thusanang. According to the Sunday Times, the concert was called off on Friday last week due to contractual problems. The Nelson Mandela Foundation's head, John Samuel, cited the inability of US producers to come to a satisfactory agreement with the foundation as the main reason for the cancellation of the concert. Revenue generated from TV rights from around the world was to be donated to the Foundation and the UN for the fight against Aids.

The South African-based Africa Foundation and US-based Kids for Africa have struck a partnership to encourage students to raise funds for rural schools. Their "Lights for Learning" initiative is targeting US$10,000 to electrify a rural school near Durban. Other partnership initiatives in the pipeline will fundraise for environmental projects.

South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma ended on Thursday a four-day visit to Ethiopia and Burundi to gather support for the deployment of an African mission force in Burundi.

A strange phenomenon in the shallow waters of South-western Africa - regular eruptions of toxic hydrogen sulphide - is about to be mapped and studied. These gas discharges change the ocean's blue colour into turquoise and result in extensive fish deaths. The research vessel (Meteor) has left Cape Town to find out why.

Thank-you very much for the newsletter. The valuable information given has struck up hot debates amongst my colleagues and I. Being a South African, and things going fairly well in our country, we tend to be naive and forget what is happening on the rest of the continent. Thanks again for allowing access to such vital information.

The political controversy in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province is continuing, even if the "political crisis" has been called off. The Inkatha Freedom Party, which governs the province, is blamed by the local ANC opposition of blocking food distribution to communities that are being ravaged by hunger and poverty.