Dancing the toyi-toyi, stomping their feet and singing protest songs, more than 100 residents of the informal Joe Slovo settlement in Cape Town and their supporters rallied outside of South Africa’s Constitutional Court last month in support of the community’s right to adequate housing. Nearly all had traveled 28 hours by train to attend the hearing concerning the future of their community.

It's been three months since I sent out an email appealing for your help as the xenophobic crisis hit Khayelitsha. Your response was overwhelmingly rapid and generous, and has enabled us help the people who ended up living at the Desmond Tutu hall. (By now, most have re-integrated into the community, and about 30 of the original Desmond Tutu hall dwellers are now in the nearby Solomon Mahlangu hall).

The Socialist Student Movement (SSM) is making a call to action for free education against the background of a year of protests at institutions of higher learning, culminating at the closure and beginning of the academic year. Financial exclusions, triggered by exorbitant annual fee increments, academic exclusions, shortages of accommodation, of resources necessary for learning and teaching and of qualified educators have pushed students into battles where they have been faced with brutal state repression, with shootings at for example Wits and the University of Johannesburg.

Today (8th September) we are launching an important report on shack fires. We asked for this report to be written and we worked closely with the writer at all stages. We are releasing the report today so that it can be widely discussed in the lead up to the City Wide Shack Fire Summit called by the movement for Monday 22 September 2008. We will launch the isiZulu version of the report soon. We call on all organisations that are concerned with justice and that want a city in which everyone is safe to read and discuss the report.

In 1968 the BBC's Africa Editor Martin Plaut was one of 600 students at the University of Cape Town protesting because black lecturer Archie Mafeje had been denied a teaching post there. Returning to Cape Town 40 years later for a reunion of campus rebels, he discovered the real reason for the university's stance.

Nigeria and South Africa are the main emitters of greenhouse gases in Africa, accounting for almost 90% of the emissions in the continent, environmental experts have said. "Nigeria produces almost 45% of the greenhouse gas emissions in Africa from its gas flaring by oil firms in the Niger Delta while South Africa produces as much from industrial pollution," said Stefan Cramer.

It was bad enough for web publishing when the challenge was to persuade marketers to move money from 'old fashioned' magazines and radio to the 'new and trendy' Internet. Now there's something newer and trendier! The success of MXit has been phenomenal. The instant messaging service available via cellphones has more than three million subscribers in South Africa.

South Africa is one of only seven countries in the world that grants refugee status on the basis of sexual orientation. But people seeking that relief are battling as much as other refugees in the country. In Uganda, homosexual acts are punishable with life imprisonment; in Mozambique with three years’ imprisonment, and with seven years in Botswana.

In South Africa non-nationals, refugees, asylum seekers, and other immigrants are often excluded from the services, welfare, and dignity they are guaranteed by South African law and constitutional commitments. Issued annually in commemoration of World Refugee Day (20 June), this report represents research by members of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), a national network of service providers and research bodies in South Africa.

South Africans who believe in a conspiracy theory that HIV was introduced by white people as a way of controlling the black population are significantly less likely to have had an HIV test, according to a study published in the September 1st edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. For the South African government to restore the public’s faith in their response to HIV, they need to “present a consistent and strong prevention platform about the importance of testing”, argue the investigators.

Pick up the promotional brochure of any government, NGO or corporate social investment programme and you will read that poor women are an important beneficiary group – if not the most important target of social relief and investment programmes. Many millions of Rand are raised and spent in the name of alleviating the plight of poor black women, particularly those living in rural South Africa.

The May 2008 attacks and the responses they have triggered from both Government and South African civil society could well transform the migration debate much more profoundly than first meets the eye, writes Aurelia Wa Kabwe Segatti.

Following the election of the African National Congress to government in South Africa in 1994, there was great hope and expectation that finally the inequalities that had existed for so long along racial lines would be redressed and black people would see marked improvements in their standard of living and better access to public services such as housing, water and electricity.

The Advanced Conflict Transformation (ACT) is a four week course that is organized by COPA. This course offers diverse aspects of conflict transformation and peace building. It is aimed at participants working in related fields on the African continent. Although reference is made to the impact of international political and economic events & trends on the continent, emphasis is placed on culturally sensitive and sustainable responses to regional and community conflicts in Africa.

The Open Society Institute’s (OSI) Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AfriMAP) seeks to appoint an Advocacy and Communications Officer, who will be based at the offices of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Closing Date for applications is 12th September 2008

Shelters for the victims of a spate of xenophobic violence will have to stay open until the Constitutional Court hears a matter relating to their closure on Monday. Constitutional Court judges were locked in deliberations on the matter for most of Friday, before issuing a direction at 3.30pm.

Assumptions of relating sexual abuse of same sex to homosexuality abound lately in South Africa where the public could not draw the difference. This comes in the wake of Tiny Virginia Makopo’s case of 29 July – recently postponed to Sebokeng Magistrates Court for October hearing this year – where the former dormitory matron at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy pleaded not guilty on fourteen charges including assault, indecent assault, crimen injuria and indecent acts against young girls whom she had to fend for at the academy.

The health department has withdrawn two widely-dispensed tuberculosis (TB) drug combination batches after preliminary investigations revealed the drugs became unstable under long-term storage, ultimately placing patients at risk of not receiving their optimal dosage.

The United Nations refugee agency is assisting foreigners – mostly Zimbabweans – forced to flee their homes in South Africa by xenophobic violence, as the deadline looms for tomorrow’s closure by the Gauteng provincial government of all six temporary shelters, housing 6,000 people. Gloria, a Zimbabwean asylum-seeker who spoke on the condition that her real name not be used, has made her home for the past two months in a Johannesburg facility that will be shut down tomorrow.

Legislation is being formulated that will allow for the prosecution of all forms of human trafficking."The draft Bill (the Trafficking in Persons Bill) allows for all forms of human trafficking to be prosecuted including labour exploitation and not only sexual exploitation," said South Africa National Prosecuting Authority's (NPA's) Sexual Offences and Community Affairs (SOCA) Unit, National Co-ordinator, Malebo Kotu-Rammopo.