A cargo of potentially dangerous plutonium has been driven away from South African waters after the Greenpeace ship MV Esperanza set sail from Cape Town to track and monitor the shipment.

A top director in the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department has been reinstated to his plum R375 000-a-year job - despite being found guilty in an internal inquiry of mismanaging more than R2.5-million of taxpayers' money.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela last Friday reiterated his belief that all HIV-positive South Africans should have access to antiretroviral drugs through the public health system.

There is tentative evidence that the high-risk sexual behaviour of teenagers, which has been driving SA's high rate of HIV infection, is changing as a result of awareness campaigns, LoveLife CEO David Harrison says.

By Patrick Bond
This book offers a critical reflection on the post-apartheid 'sustainable development' experience. What is of greatest value from South Africa is the warning not to pursue neoliberal, market-oriented strategies--as did Pretoria and most SA municipalities since democracy dawned in 1994. Working with local activists, Bond and his colleagues have researched and campaigned on behalf of social and environmental justice for years: offering alternatives to a minerals smelter in the Nelson Mandela Metropole, opposing Lesotho mega-dams, helping township residents end disconnections of electricity and water, and advocating for free lifeline services.

An all-Africa meeting of civil society groups and non-governmental organisations working in the area of HIV/AIDS care and treatment, will take place from August 22-24 in Cape Town, South Africa. The meeting is jointly organised by Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), Medecins Sans Frontieres/South Africa, Catholic AIDS Action Namibia, Kara Trust Zambia and a host of other organisations.

It is the duty of parents to educate their children about HIV/AIDS and the use of condoms. Boyce Mgcina, a traditional healer from Izifo Zonke Traditional Healers and an HIV/AIDS counselor at Zola Clinic in Soweto, says in most cases fathers become not just heads of the house but also role models to their children - girls and boys irrespective. Mgcina says traditional healers should talk often about HIV/AIDS during imbizos.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) will have to reflect on poverty, inequality, HIV/Aids and trade inequalities -- all of which are central to the achievement of the
millennium's development goals. All of these highlight the importance of the
summit in as much as they threaten to derail it.

Lerato Nkosi, 11, is desperate to go to school. At any opportunity she gets to dodge her mother's protective gaze the lanky girl joins her boisterous peers on their walk to Vulamasango Primary School in KaNyamazane, Mpumalanga. Nkosi is learning disabled and like 82% of mentally or physically disabled children in Mpumalanga is denied an education because of teacher's indifference or lack of facilities at government schools.

'Some call me the devil," says Ed Fagan, delightedly. We are in a smart Cape Town waterfront hotel and Fagan, a consummate showman, is thoroughly enjoying himself as he details the multibillion-dollar class-action lawsuit he has launched against multinational corporations and banks, including Barclays Bank, accused of propping up apartheid. "I'm not the devil - but I can be," he says. "The devil's a guy who does a job and gets a bad rap."

The National Lotteries Board may be taken to court over its dual role as regulator and distributor of funds totaling about R430-million a year, earmarked for non-profit groups.

The biggest attempt to tackle the Earth's worsening environment problems and help the planet's poorest gets underway in less than two weeks, but already the prospect of failure hangs over the Johannesburg summit. Wrangling over textual nuances, squabbling over financial commitments and a doctrinal row between Europe and Washington could hollow out the summit, transforming the second Earth Summit into a ludicrous exercise in hot air.

The National Development Agency has injected more than R48-million into the province's poverty alleviation projects, with more than 18 percent of its current budget allocated to the Eastern Cape. It has also identified poverty-stricken areas, where the agency is speeding up funding.

Afrox is to donate an extra R1 million to 115 child care organisations as part of the group's 75th anniversary. Afrox Community Involvement Process (CIP) co-ordinator Renee Selfe announced at the same time that disadvantaged children in South Africa and especially in the Eastern Cape can look forward to a treat next month.

South African donors have funds, but fund-raisers are struggling to raise money for NGOs facing financial crises. Studies have shown that grant funding has not decreased over recent years, yet NGOs are finding it increasingly difficult to raise money. It appears that donors choose to spend their money in different areas from those in which most NGOs function.

Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya on Monday announced the government had given the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) civil society forum R15,8m.

A one-week course on infectious disease modelling will be held in Pretoria between 2-6 September. Delegates will be introduced to the fundamental concepts, principles and theories that are used to develop models of infectious diseases in human populations, and there will be a specific focus on the application of these methods to the design and evaluation of vaccination programmes.

Opposition parties waded into the government on Tuesday on the controversial R53-billion arms deal, describing the report on the investigation into the deal and the government's role in it as a "disgrace" and a national "shame".

The Eastern Cape provincial government has granted an Australian company a permit to prospect for minerals in a botanical "hotspot" on the Wild Coast, the Eastern Province Herald reports.

In Khayelitsha, South Africa, MSF is running an anti-retroviral therapy (ART) treatment programme where the results have been exceptional. Based on the results from the first six months of treatment to 177 patients in the programme, over 85 percent of the patients have responded with high rates of improvement.