In her recent book on the history of Columbia’s death squads, Jasmin Hristov has argued that neoliberalism needs the squads, and the resulting inequality would have been impossible to maintain without them. Hristov notes that death squad violence 'is purposefully directed towards sectors of society that stand in the way of the ruling class’s efforts to maintain economic dominance and acquire more resources to make even more profit. The upper classes so fear political organising among the poor, who could mount a formidable opposition to the status quo if allowed to organise unrestrained by state repression.' In the wake of political assassinations in South African provinces, Jane Duncan, the Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society at Rhodes University, looks at how serious the problem is.

US$5,000 has been awarded from the Take Back the Tech! Fund to four outstanding South African Women’s organisations that are set to make an impact on the high levels of violence against women in the country. The four different projects will work with young black women in townships, black lesbians, rural para-legals and survivors of violence to increase awareness, reporting of incidents, and help survivors of violence on their healing journey.

There are many myths around the abuse of social grants. In his article 'Social grants: Going beyond basic needs' David Neves from the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies shows how social grants not only provide a safety net, but also act as a spring board for all sorts of other unseen opportunities, including small-scale entrepeneurship. Grants are often invested in the future, in ways that meet the needs and constraints of the poor - often either in building or upgrading housing or in their children and grandchildren's education and nutrition.

KwaZulu-Natal Province remains the epicentre of South Africa’s HIV epidemic but new research reveals that nearly a third of hospitals surveyed had not started a single HIV-positive infant on antiretroviral treatment in several years. The research, presented at this week’s Orphaned and Vulnerable Children (OVC) in Africa Conference in Johannesburg, was conducted by the University of the Witwatersrand’s Maternal, Adolescent and Child Health (MatCH) Unit, with the government.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) urged newly appointed Cabinet ministers on Monday to bring down 'unacceptable' levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality. 'We urge the new team to remain fully united so that we can move forward together to deliver on our promises and bring down the unacceptable levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality,' a Cosatu statement said.

'Water management in South Africa is in serious crisis. Consumers were recently told to wash their fruit and vegetables as they could be infected by disease causing E. coli microbes because the crops were irrigated with water contaminated by sewage,' writes Glenn Ashton on the website of the South African Civil Society Information Service. 'Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is killing not just crocodiles but entire riverine eco-systems. Our dams, rivers and streams are becoming ever more stressed due to the low flows of water that remain in them because of illegal over-abstraction for irrigation and contamination by poorly maintained sewage works.'

The South African Sugarcane Research Institute (SASRI) has applied to the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries for permission to conduct field trials for four varieties of GM sugarcane. Having viewed SASRI's applications in terms of the Public Access to Information Act (PAIA), the African Centre for Biodiversity issued a statement saying: 'It is our opinion that the information provided is so inadequate that it is virtually impossible to conduct any meaningful independent assessment of the applications. Further, throughout the application runs the assumption that the genetically modified lines under discussion are 'equivalent' to their conventional counterparts. This is a view not supported by the published literature.' Read the rest of the statement through the weblink provided.

A coalition of civil society groups marched to South Africa's Parliament on 27 October to protest against the draft version of a new Protection of Information Bill. 'This bill is a betrayal of all the democratic principles we fought for,' anti-apartheid stalwart Kader Asmal told the crowd. South Africa's parliament is presently considering legislation to replace secrecy laws drawn up during the apartheid era.

The proposed seminar will focus on:

- Indo-South African Political Relations: Historical Goodwill and Current Issues
- Indo-South African Economic Relations: Challenges of South-South Co-operation
- Indo-South African Strategic Relations: Strategic Partnership and Competing Interests
- Indo-South African Diaspora Relations: 150 Years of Indian Migration to South Africa

A four-week service delivery protest in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, has spread to Philippi, with hundreds of residents barricading busy roads with burning tyres over the weekend. The protest was set to continue last night, according to Eric Notana, chairperson of the Philippi People's Forum.

The Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), just announced by the South African government, can be praised for being a hard win in a context that offers few building blocks to make bolder decisions, writes researcher and policy analyst Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen on the South African Civil Society Information Service website. 'However, time is not on the side of the poor and more broadly, the country. A conscious attempt to finalise economic policy that has the best prospect to break unemployment is needed, and such policy should be integrated within government’s policy and budget by the next MTBPS in 2011.'

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/502/68169_sa_strike_tmb.jpgThe social weight of organised, mobilised workers is beginning to consolidate in South Africa. The September public sector strike was a shining example, writes Trevor Ngwane.

Gus Pickard, a rural development consultant operating in the Western Cape, has a strange problem, writes Karin Kleinbooi on the blog Another Countryside. He has been contacted by a farming family living on land near Elim: they desperately need help because they may lose their land - to the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform. 'The family has been farming on the land for many years. Despite setbacks they have survived; but they have also accumulated significant debt — not enough to render them insolvent, but enough to put them under pressure. Seeking a way out of their conundrum, they applied for land reform funds. Their application was successful — but nothing happened, until after a long silence, the Department contacted them and told that instead of getting money, the Department would buy the farm back from them for the amount of money needed to settle the debt. '

Research on HIV/AIDS is on the rise in South Africa, a country with the largest number of HIV infections in the world, while Western research efforts have levelled out, a study has found. Only around two per cent of all research articles produced by the United States, the biggest producer of HIV/AIDS studies, are about HIV/AIDS, according to the study in Scientometrics. By contrast, 5.5 per cent of South Africa's research effort goes towards HIV/AIDS - mainly clinical medicine and social studies.

Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) heavyweight Zwelinzima Vavi has denied suggestions that a civil society conference under way in Boksburg was testing waters for a new political party. 'Let us right from onset state that we are not an anti-ANC and anti-government coalition,' the Cosatu general secretary told delegates on Wednesday. 'We are not here to begin a process to form any political party, nor to advance the interest of any individual.'

South Africa is set to unveil plans this week for a huge solar power plant that it claims would be the largest in the world. UK newspaper The Guardian reported on Monday that the project is expected to cost up to US$28.5 billion.

Efforts by the political left to shape the debate on a new growth path were dealt a heavy blow when cabinet’s big guns stopped far short this week of backing radical interventions in the economy. Just more than a month after Cosatu called for radical interventions – including having 'ownership' over the
balance sheets of the central bank by a new state bank, tightened exchange controls and redistribution of income in key employment sectors – the government has turned a deaf ear.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has written to Cape Town Opera to ask them to postpone their planned trip to Israel. Tutu says: 'Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong for Cape Town Opera to perform in Israel.'

In making his second submission to a parliamentary committee on the Protection of Information Bill, Minister of State Security Siyabonga Cwele defended the proposed legislation as being in line with the South African Constitution, International Human Right’s Charters and Conventions and international best practice. Regrettably Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) remains unconvinced.

The first book by academic and journalist Azad Essa has been called controversial, brash and insightful, attracting much interest and favourable reviews. 'I have no doubt that this will be the first book of many. I am honoured to be associated with it,’ says Ferial Haffajee, City Press editor-in-chief.