AIDS is the leading killer of women in South Africa and is claiming increasing numbers of lives every year, according to a government study released last Thursday. AIDS-related illnesses were responsible for 9.8 percent of female deaths in South Africa in 2001, up from 5.6 percent in 1997, the survey by Statistics South Africa showed.

South Africa has one of the worst TB epidemics in the world, with an incidence rate of 362 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. In the rural areas of the Eastern Cape Province, where there are 500 cases for every 100,000 people, this fact is hard to miss. Various factors - poverty, HIV/AIDS, and lack of infrastructure - all contribute to rising TB rates. But a new project is using modern technology to fight the scourge.

Despite Cabinet’s April decision to offer free anti-retroviral drugs to survivors of sexual assault, the programme is being undermined by time lags and survivor’s failure to complete the course of drugs. The programme is being rolled out in Gauteng, the Western Cape, KwaZulu Natal and the Free State, but the AIDS Law Project’s Liesl Gerntholtz says the drugs are not readily available in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and the Northern Cape.

Nearly half of all public officials surveyed in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa thought it was "not wrong" or "wrong but understandable" to accept 'gifts of appreciation' from citizens in return for performing services which are part of their jobs. This is according to a report released last week by the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM).

A fund has been established for the defense of John Pape, who was arrested earlier this month in Cape Town, South Africa, after being on the run since the 1970s for his involvement in the activities of an American liberation movement.

Eastern Cape Premier Makhenkesi Stofile has apparently been instructed by President Thabo Mbeki to fire three MECs -- Education MEC Stone Sizani, Roads and Public Works MEC Phumulo Masualle and Social Development MEC Ncumisa Kondlo. The province is awash with rumours as to why Mbeki had demanded the action, with one suggestion being that they are part of a "leftist" clique and that their removal is part of a purge.

The government is sitting on close to R1-billion of Reconstruction and Development Programme funds it has received from foreign donors. A damning Auditor-General's report to Parliament on the RDP Fund shows that on March 31 this year, R997-million was unspent or unallocated.

Grass Incorporated Manufacturing Artists (Gima) employees collect lengths of rope and cart them back to a factory and shop at Casterbridge Farm, an upmarket shopping and dining centre in White River. Gima creates employment for about 500 grass collectors and pays them for the rope they produce. The company employs another 60 people at the factory, where the rope is made into mats, blinds and furniture. These products are sold to 27 shops around Africa and to passing tourists. The Department for International Development gave funding to start the project.

The Democratic Alliance has recently 'unveiled' a campaign around the Basic Income Grant, which it intends to be part of its election platform. But the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) says the DA is only making a big song and dance in an attempt to create the impression that it really cares about the poor.

South African police investigating an alleged plot by white extremists to topple the government have found a cache of 26 bombs.

Pietermaritzburg-based award-winning environmental activist Bobby Peek on Monday joined forces with American activists to take on the Royal Dutch Shell petroleum company. "Shell's oil refinery in South Africa is an apartheid relic that is presently crumbling. The plant has had more than 17 major incidents since January 2001, impacting directly on the people in South Durban and they have a right to call for government to shut it down," said Peek.

There is widespread belief in South Africa that the number of non-citizens has escalated dramatically since 1990. Is it true that the country is drowning in a 'flood' of aliens? What is likely to best serve its needs in terms of immigration policy?

Changes in ownership within South African media has placed many challenges on up-coming broadcasting companies and authorities.

Fiery anti-war activists under the banner of the Anti-War Protest trudged from the Israel Trade Mission to the American Embassy in Johannesburg last week. “People united shall not be defeated”, “no war against Iraq”, "Freedom for Palestine” and “phansi with US terrorism”, were some of the slogans uttered by the marchers.

Southern right whales are making a comeback, giving ecologists a rare piece of good marine news as fish stocks shrink and oil spills foul fragile coasts. South African scientists said Tuesday that an annual count had revealed the biggest number yet in the survey's 32-year history of the gentle leviathans, which can grow to 56 feet and weigh 70 tons.

South Africa said Thursday it did not deliberately withhold information about elephant poaching at one of its national parks from a U.N. organization deciding whether to allow sales of ivory stockpiles. On Tuesday, the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) voted to allow South Africa, Botswana and Namibia to stage one-time sales of ivory from their stockpiles in 2004 provided it did not lead to a surge in poaching by criminals hoping to launder fresh tusks among the legitimate sales.

Members of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance recently held a protest outside the Sapref plant in South Durban, South Africa and demanded to know why Shell MD, Richard Parkes had allegedly lied about a recent incident at the plant.

The leader and last remaining member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) - a group that committed politically motivated crimes in the United States in the 1970s - was arrested in Cape Town last Friday. James Kilgore, 55, who had been using the name Charles Pape, had been on the run from the FBI for the past 26 years. An article on the South African Independent Media Centre web site notes that Pape is the third international leftist arrested in South Africa over the past three months and threatened with deportation. "This is clearly part of a campaign by the ANC-IFP-NNP centre-right government to demonise internationals working alongside the emergent social movements and by doing so to demoralise the movements," the article said.

The people of the West Rand town of Carletonville now have the opportunity to learn valuable IT skills thanks to the establishment of a Communal Information Technology Centre (CITC). The CITC concept, the result of a government-private sector partnership, is aimed at providing skills development and income-generating opportunities for the unemployed.

A non-governmental organisation has filed a lawsuit against 21 multinational corporations and leading international banks for helping prop up the apartheid state. The Khulumani Support Group (Khulumani) filed the suit in its name as well as that of 85 of its 33000 members, in the New York Eastern District Court on Monday. This posting from Africa Action contains a press release from the Apartheid Debt & Reparations Campaign, a statement from the law firm of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, a list of the companies that are the defendants, and a profile of the Khulumani Support Group. It also contains excerpts from the stories of individual plaintiffs who are parties to the case.