As South Africa commemorates Women’s Month, it is important to look at one of the most dangerous – and seldom discussed – issues affecting women in the country today, says this article from Gender Links. 'In South Africa, drug and alcohol abuse should be an issue of national concern. Yet, while production, sale and use of a number of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and crystal meth is illegal in South Africa, it has done little to curb the use of drugs, which remains very high.'

'The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) welcomes the decision made by the Competition Tribunal on 19 August 2011, to allow the ACB to intervene in the merger proceedings involving multinational seed giant, Pioneer Hi Bred’s bid to take over South Africa’s largest seed company, Panaar. The ACB, represented by Legal Aid South Africa, and advocates Stephen Budlender and Isabel Goodman, has consistently sought to lead evidence and present argument on public interest grounds that militate against authorisation of the merger.'

Stiff competition in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to Africa has compelled SA to prioritise 'economic diplomacy' among a range of foreign policy measures designed to drive economic growth. This comes as SA is losing its prime position as the preferred gateway from which to do business on the continent. A draft foreign policy white paper released last week also proposes the setting up of a development agency targeting other African countries, saying the 'success of economic diplomacy will determine the extent to which SA can achieve its domestic priorities'. Regional integration, reform of the international trading system, and negotiating preferential access for African goods on international markets form the core of SA’s economic diplomacy.

The Hawks confirmed that they were investigating African National Congress Youth League president Julius Malema for fraud and corruption, eNews reported on Saturday. 'From the information that we have, we have enough to tell us that we need to do a full investigation...there's a lot that tells us that we have reason to worry,' Hawks spokesperson McIntosh Polela said. ENews also reported that the South African Revenue Service (Sars) initiated its own investigation into Malema's financial affairs and alleged failure to pay tax.

South Africa’s progressive constitution and laws extend the same protections to unaccompanied minors (the term given to children who cross border without parents or adult care-givers) as to local children, but in practice they face immense bureaucratic hurdles and are often left to fend for themselves. Although no figures are available, Mmone Moletsale of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that based on reports from their partners, South Africa was receiving an increasing number of such children, but still lacked an efficient system for dealing with them.

Ronald Wesso reports on the Food Sovereignty Campaign in South Africa, which is taking steps towards agrarian reform and food sovereignty through land occupations.

Water affairs officials are unable to tell MPs whether the health of South Africa's rivers is improving or worsening, but a rash of red spots across maps they presented suggested the latter. Briefing members of Parliament's water and environmental affairs portfolio committee, the department's acting chief director for water resources information management, Moloko Matlala, listed the main problems affecting the quality of the country's river water. These included fecal pollution, eutrophication (the inflow of nitrates and phosphates), high salinity, high toxicity (from, among other sources, agricultural pesticides) and acid mine drainage.

While countries are rolling out new tests that will enable them to diagnose more patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), a worldwide shortage of the drugs to treat these patients is likely, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns. DR-TB can occur when TB patients do not complete their initial course of TB treatment. The only way to test for DR-TB is through cultures or via molecular testing – neither of which has been widely available in many high incident countries - until the advent of the GeneXpert, a two-hour molecular TB test released in 2010.

This Unicef paper reports on a study to provide insights into the magnitude of the shocks associated with the crisis in macroeconomic terms in South Africa, the country’s capacity to withstand or cushion these shocks, and the extent of fragility in terms of poverty levels and child well-being.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has called for a 'wealth tax' to be imposed on all white South Africans. The former archbishop of Cape Town and former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) also called on members of President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet to sell their 'expensive cars', 'to show you care' about the poor in South Africa. Tutu said apartheid had left South Africans riddled with 'self-hate', and it was directly to blame for the country’s vicious crime rate and road carnage.

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema’s fate, and that of his executive, rests with the ANC’s top six officials, who will decide whether to accept the league’s apology and retraction of what the mother body regards as a politically embarrassing call for regime change in Botswana. ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said officials would continue discussing the matter and there was no deadline to finalise these talks. He had earlier said the ANC would first have to weigh up whether the apology undid the damage to the ANC and the country. The youth league’s apology on Saturday came nearly two weeks after it vowed to stand by its intention to mobilise opposition to Sir Ian Khama’s government, which it described as a 'puppet regime'.

At least 145,000 South African municipal workers will walk off the job on Monday in a strike aimed at shutting down services including rubbish collection, in the latest dispute to disrupt Africa's biggest economy. 'Our demand of an 18% increase across the board, or R2 000, whichever is greater, is very necessary to meet the economic hardships that municipal workers suffer,' the South African Municipal Workers' Union said in its strike pamphlet.

The National Archives and Records Service were ill-equipped to deal with the deluge of declassified information likely to ensue once the Protection of Information Bill becomes law, the Nelson Mandela Foundation warned. With over-classification believed to have been the norm since the Minimum Information Security Standards became policy in 1996, MPs have been grappling with the question of what to do with secret files from the recent past, as well as those from the apartheid era.

'Johannesburg’s international airport was put on red alert after its National Key Point status was activated this morning due to the expected arrival of a delegation from Israel. Plans of the delegation’s local host, the South African Union of Jewish Students, to welcome their Israeli 'Hasbara' delegation were thwarted, with the Israeli delegation arriving at OR Tambo International Airport amidst much controversy.'

Cabinet has noted the national position for the negotiations on climate change under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), spokesperson Jimmy Manyi said. Previously, South Africa said it would commit to lowering greenhouse-gas emission by 34 per cent below business as usual trajectories by 2020, and by 42 per cent by 2025, on condition of financial and technological assistance from developed nations. The Africa Group Negotiators (AGN) - a negotiating bloc under the UNFCCC - has started developing the ‘African Climate Platform for Durban’, which would articulate the African position at COP 17.

A new white paper on international relations reaffirms that SA’s foreign policy should be based on human rights and development in Africa but also warns that SA’s regional leadership position could soon be challenged. In the past SA has been criticised for having lost its focus on human rights, particularly when it supported positions that failed to take strong action on the crisis in Zimbabwe. A decision to deny a visitor’s visa to the Dalai Lama for fear of alienating China was also strongly criticised.

South Africa now has a website offering where broadband customers can enter their phone numbers and find the cheapest broadband offering in their area.

Reuters reports that South Africa's proposed National Health Insurance programme, aimed at giving greater access to healthcare for the country's poor, will require 125 billion rand in 2012 and 214 billion rand by 2020, according to a government source. The NHI, currently being discussed by the government and other parties in South Africa's healthcare system, will require 255 billion rand by 2025, the source said citing the document.

About 80 demonstrators wearing gas masks and lab coats to emulate scientists from oil company Shell have protested in Cape Town against hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for shale gas in the Karoo. Shell SA is punting shale gas as an affordable alternative to coal, nuclear and renewable energy industries, and wants to explore 90,000km² of the Karoo. The march was initiated by photographer Kian Erikson in partnership with the Climate Justice Campaign and Earthlife Africa CT.

There is no bi-lateral agreement between South Africa and Zimbabwe to prevent refugees from the famine-wracked Horn of Africa entering South Africa, said state officials last week. The statements from the South African department of Home Affairs and the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs this week are in direct contrast to statements appearing on the South African Home Affairs website, and Zimbabwean news reports on Zimbabwe’s decision to bar entry to Somali and Ethiopian refugees.