High swells have continued to frustrate efforts to pump oil from the grounded Jolly Rubino and could delay the process right up to the weekend, salvors Smit Marine reported. The Rubino is grounded near the sensitive St Lucia wetland area.

The South African government on
Thursday denied media reports that the Burundi cease-fire
negotiations underway in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, have collapsed.

The Ba Gashai tribe, part of the bigger Ba-Phalaborwa people, may keep a valuable private game reserve across seven adjoining farms near Phalaborwa in the Limpopo Province, awarded to them as part of government's land restitution programme, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled on Wednesday.

Four months after the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria granted millions of dollars to the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, there is still uncertainty over how the government intends to use the money.

Insufficient information supplied by applicants has led the National Lotteries Board and the Distribution Agency for Arts, Culture and National Heritage to reject a number of applications submitted during the current funding round.

The Director of the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) responds to criticism from the National Lotteries Board on the report "Smoke and Mirrors", commissioned by the Non Profit Partnership and researched by the CCS.

The National Lotteries Distribution Trust Fund is distributing only three cents for every rand that South Africans spend on the Lotto, reports the Sunday Times. It is alleged that the National Lotteries Distribution Fund is also a billion rand behind in payment to charities.

The new South Africa is in the grip of unanticipated social changes. Rainbow Vice depicts the fast growing drug culture, tightly linked to the world of commercial sex and in conflict with a profoundly Christian population. Punchy in style and based on several hundred interviews, the author shows how multifarious the drug scene is.

There has been a growing corpus of literature tracking the ANC’s adoption of neo-liberal economic policies. However very little has been written on the reaction of communities who face the consequences of this rightward shift that manifests in evictions, electricity and water cut-offs effected at gunpoint under the guise of cost-recovery. Across South Africa community movements have arisen to confront these attacks on the poor. This article focuses on one such movement in Cape Town, the Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign (MPAEC) with particular emphasis on the militant forms of direct action undertaken in defense of “rights” to water, electricity and shelter and the response of the post-apartheid state to these struggles.

Women from an impoverished community in Zululand are being inundated with orders from overseas countries for their fashionable hats and accessories made from discarded plastic shopping bags.

The Cabinet's April 17 statement on HIV/Aids policy -- widely hailed as a crucial change of heart -- is looking increasingly threadbare. Was it, as some maintain, merely a tactical manoeuvre to deflect international condemnation in advance of the G8 meeting in Canada due to consider the New Partnership for Africa's Development?

Despite the numerous HIV/AIDS deaths and severe levels of illness, very few Southern Africans place the pandemic high on the agenda for government intervention. Job creation, crime, security and economic matters supersede the dire consequences of a largely “invisible killer.” Idasa’s Afro-Barometer project recently under-took public opinion surveys in the region.

Sparks are set to fly between the African National Congress (ANC) government and its tripartite alliance partner the Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu), if the trade union's planned anti-privatisation strike goes ahead on October 1 and 2.

The town treasurer of Maquassi Hills has been fired for referring to the local mayor as a "kaffir burgemeester", municipality manager Ross Motsemme said last Friday.

AIDS activist group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), is squaring up for another challenge to drug companies, this time around high prices being charged for life prolonging anti-retroviral medication. Activists will be joined by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the Chemical and Energy Paper, Print, Wood and Allied Workers Union (CEPPAWU), People living with HIV/AIDS and a group of doctors and nurses who work at the coal face of the epidemic.
Related Link: http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.jsp?a=59&o=9320

A discussion list arising from the journal of the same name. The list is for anyone "interested in developing critical insights on class composition, struggles and resistance in South Africa in the broader context of globalized capitalism.". "...it is by no means confined to experts on South Africa; it rather aims to locate the contents of 'Debate' in the broader worldwide confrontation against neo-liberalism." To subscribe send an email to [email protected]
Leave the Subject line blank. In the Message area put:
subscribe debate [your EMail address]

On 19 September 2002, Sina Sebetha, an Edenvale traffic officer in Gauteng province, threatened "Sunday Times" journalist Sabelo Ndlangisa. She told the journalist she would make him "vanish if he did not leave her alone."

The reality is that children's lives are under threat in prison. The worst cases appear to be those of, what the correctional services department defines as, children awaiting trial. At the end of July this year there were 1803 sentenced prisoners under the age of 18 in custody, with another 2157 who were still awaiting trial.

Mmino is a funding programme aimed at supporting the development of music in South Africa. Funding is available for Music and Education Projects.

Minister of Social Development, Zola Skweyiya and the executive mayor of Thswane, have launched a centre for abused children in Pretoria. Gauteng MEC for Social Welfare Services, Angie Matshego also attended the event.