Three more former ministers have followed Barbara Hogan in resigning as MPs after being axed from the executive two weeks ago in the biggest cabinet reshuffle since 1994. The Sunday Independent has confirmed that former minister of Sports Makhenkesi Stofile, former Public Works minister Geoff Doidge and former Water and Environmental Affairs minister Buyelwa Sonjica this week tendered their resignations to National Assembly Speaker Max Sisulu.

The ruling ANC will appoint two independent researchers to investigate the nationalisation of mines, its secretary general said on Monday. 'The NEC (national executive committee) has resolved to appoint two senior researchers and a project manager to investigate successful models that could be considered on the role of the state in mining,' Gwede Mantashe told reporters in Johannesburg.

South Africans are fearful that Johannesburg may soon be at the mercy of acid water, with whisperings of the CBD crumbling as basements flood and buildings corrode. The government is said to be too slow, gutless and corrupt to enforce necessary action, the mining companies too heartless and unwilling to pay, the community and environmental activists too alarmist and the solutions too expensive or ineffective. South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper is featuring a series on acid mine drainage, or AMD, in South Africa, with each week focusing on a different area.

Gender-based violence is a persistent human rights violation in South Africa, especially seeing girls and women of all ages continually enduring incidents of rape and assault. Official estimates that have been criticised as being overly conservative, put the number of women raped in South Africa at 27,750 a year, or three an hour. Last week, an 8th grade girl was allegedly gang raped by three schoolboys on the high school’s premises. The incident was allegedly filmed by students using mobile phones. Media Monitoring Africa says that numerous aspects of how this story has been reported have given cause for concern.

After successfully protesting the Protection of Information Bill (the secrecy Bill) the Right2Know Campaign has emerged as a vibrant campaign with significant influence in the public discourse. This rapid growth has raised a number of questions and the R2K Working Groups have called for a National Dialogue amongst campaign supporters to deliberate on matters of the Campaign's scope, strategy, and structure.

Google has launched Google Voice Search in South Africa to enable internet users to use their natural voice to speak into their cell phones for Google searches. Google senior staff engineer Johan Schalkwyk has said 'you speak into your phone and it sends your voice over the network where it's analyzed and you get your search results.'

Project Literacy, the largest provider of adult basic education and training (ABET) in South Africa, has been forced to shut down its provincial offices and retrench more than half its staff after the government withdrew a major contract. Project Literacy chief executive, Andrew Miller, points out that the former director-general of the Department of Higher Education and Training, Mary Metcalfe, had awarded the contract, on behalf of the National Skills Fund (NSF), in September but that it had been withdrawn three weeks later.

'An elected government that does not accept that people have a right to form new parties and to contest its hold on power may be a "democratically elected" government, but it is not a democratic government. In a democracy, everyone has the right to form parties and to contest for state power at the polls and any limitation on that right is a limitation on democracy,' writes Richard Pithouse about ANC comments criticising a recent civil society conference convened by COSATU and the Treatment Action Campaign.

The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation has released a major study on violence in South African society, recommending that government define its response to violence more clearly. The report notes that whilst it is clear that dealing with the problem of illegal firearms is a central pillar of government’s efforts to address crime, the argument for a focus on armed violence goes beyond this. 'This is partly through the fact that it motivates that knife violence also become a focus of attention, but also because it challenges government to reconceptualise its approach to how it defines violent crime priorities,' says the report.

The United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries will carry out an official visit to South Africa from 10 to 19 November 2010 to examine the regulatory and oversight system in place to monitor the activities of private military and security companies. The UN expert body will hold discussions with government authorities, parliamentarians, civil society organizations, representatives of the diplomatic community, as well as representatives of the private military and security industry based in South Africa. In these discussions, the Working Group will focus, among other things, on the content and possible impact of the relevant legislation adopted in 2006.

South African politicians and businessmen who pocketed R1-billion from the arms deal are set to be named in a new investigation by Britain's auditing watchdog. The Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board (AADB) is to investigate KPMG, which advised BAE Systems on offshore companies that were used to pay 'commissions' to influence the awarding of lucrative contracts in South Africa's R47.4-billion defence procurement package.

The government's contentious draft Protection of Information Bill will threaten whistleblowers trying to root out corruption, says Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi. 'Cosatu is committed to free expression... I believe that the Protection of Information Bill as currently drafted clearly breaches these laws,' he told a gathering hosted by The Daily Maverick in Sandton, Johannesburg.

Fears that antiretroviral therapy might lead healthier-feeling HIV-positive people to have more sex and potentially infect others may be unfounded, according to a new South African study, which recorded patients having significantly less sex as well as safer sex after starting treatment. The study followed 2,332 HIV-positive patients enrolled in care who eventually started treatment at a large urban clinic in Soweto, Johannesburg's largest township, and a rural clinic in Mpumalanga province between 2003 and 2009.

South Africa is set to create a US-style development aid agency as it seeks to play a more prominent role as a major donor country in Africa, says International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. She made the announcement at a regional heads of mission conference in Nairobi, Kenya during a three-day foreign policy session, Business Day reported on Wednesday.

Children of South Africa (CHOSA) is a small funding NGO that is looking for a full-time Programs Coordinator with progressive politics who speaks fluent isiXhosa. This person should understand grassroots and community-led development as well as be anti-authoritarian in his/her socio-political outlook.

The country's economy is ‘a poverty machine’ perpetuating and deepening inequalities that ‘threaten the basis of social stability and growth’, writes Andries du Toit. But in re-imagining South Africa’s future, we need to focus on 'the quality of social relations' and not just ‘material issues’.

Somalians in Khayelitsha say they are wondering which one of their countrymen in the township will be killed next after Somalian shopkeeper Cyrix Man was shot on Tuesday night. Man, 23, was shot twice in the head outside his shop on Endlovini Street, in Khayelitsha C-Section at about 11pm last Tuesday, and died in hospital at about 3.30am on Wednesday morning. Khayelitsha’s Somalia Retailers Association chairperson Abbi Ahmed said more than 22 Somalian’s had been killed in the past three months.

The Home Affairs office in Cape Town is facing a court interdict for refusing to renew asylum seeker permits and refugee status documents for foreign nationals who originally obtained their documentation in another province. As many of these foreign nationals whose documentation has expired cannot afford to travel back to the province where they originally received documents, they face the possibility of arrest and deportation, or, if they have a job, may lose it.

'The Civil Society Conference held on 27-28 October 2010 will hopefully come to be seen as a historic turning point in South Africa. It may mark the revival of co-ordinated community based activism that aims to achieve social justice and better the lives of the poor in South Africa. It was attended by more than 50 independent organisations that believe in social justice and that fight for it every day. Civil society is therefore taken aback by attacks on the motives of the conference emanating from the ANC’s National Working Committee (NWC) on 1 November 2010. We are surprised by the insinuations that the conference is part of a plot against the ANC. We expect better of the post-Polokwane ANC. This is conduct reminiscent of the paranoia of the Mbeki era. It is a conduct that suggests the ANC, or some of the people who hide under its flag, have something to fear.'

The Lindela Detention Centre in South Africa is a holding facility for the temporary detention of 'illegal foreigners' while they await deportation. This report from The Forced Migration Studies Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand argues that despite the authority's efforts to improve operations at the facility, there continue to be systematic violations of the law at Lindela. The paper uncovers several lapses in correct procedures for detention in the center.