South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said she would not refuse a nomination to head the ruling African National Congress, which is due to choose a new leader next month. The ANC's dominance of South African politics means whoever wins is almost certain to become the next president in 2009.

South Africa's agriculture and land affairs minister, Lulu Xingwana on Thursday fired five of the embattled Land Bank's senior board members. The five including board chairperson Lungile Mazwai, and Directors Litha Nyhonyha, Charles Davies, Raisibe Morathi and Moira Tlhagale were fired amid claims that they mismanaged over R1 billion of bank fund.

South Africa's Human Rights Commission (HRC) is to launch an investigation into the death of a Zimbabwean refugee who died outside the home affairs offices on Friday, reportedly of starvation. Fellow refugees said the man, Adonis Musati, had spent the past two months sleeping on the pavement outside the department's Foreshore office in the hope of obtaining asylum documents.

For several years Port Elizabeth hosted hundreds of refugees without apparent difficulty; refugees largely went about their business, creating self-sustaining employment and living productive lives. They seemed to have integrated well, without the support that the UN refugee agency and its partners have provided to refugees in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town.

While the South African open source software (OSS) market is still in its development stage, the recent decision by the South African Government to adopt a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) policy is a significant boost for the industry. A new analysis from Frost & Sullivan South African Open Source Software Market, finds that both the public and private sectors will benefit from the expansion of OSS, as the cost reductions realised will not only encourage the start up of new businesses, but will also allow the government to channel resources to much needed areas such as healthcare and education.

The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) is concerned about the reasons given by the United States (US) Department of State to University of Johannesburg Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor Adam Habib, for his being denied entry into the US. Habib is a political scientist and prominent political commentator. The reasons were sent to him by the US Consulate General in Johannesburg on October 26, 2007, following an application from Habib for a waiver of his ineligibility to enter the US.

Margaret Legum, best known for her call to sanction apartheid South Africa, died in Cape Town at the age of 74 on November 1. She died of complications arising from a cancer-related operation. She leaves behind two sisters, three daughters, five granddaughters and one grandson. She was widowed in 2003.Legum, who studied economics at Rhodes University and Cambridge, was a major advocate of social justice in South Africa. She lectured and worked as a journalist, often writing for the Mail & Guardian while residing in Kalk Bay in Cape Town.

Thousands of the poorest residents in Cape Town, South Africa, are facing eviction from an informal settlement to make way for a government housing project. About 20,000 residents of the Joe Slovo informal settlement near Langa, a township about 15km from Cape Town along the N2, the main access road to and from the airport, are opposing their forced removal to Delft, about 20km northeast of the city, because they say it would reduce their standard of living further and make it difficult and more expensive to travel to the city for work.

The South African government has revealed that less than 5 percent of white-owned commercial agricultural land has been redistributed since the demise of apartheid in 1994, making the target of having 30 percent redistributed by 2014 seem almost unachievable.

Without new interventions, cases of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) in rural South Africa will increase dramatically over the next five years, according to a study. The research was published last week (27 October) in The Lancet. The study, which modelled the effect of various infection control measures on the spread of XDR-TB in the rural community of Tugela Ferry in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, suggests that infection rates will increase from 194 cases in 2007 to an estimated average of 234 cases a year by 2012.

The Association for Women's Rights in Development is an international membership organisation that works to strengthen the voice, impact and influence of women's rights advocates, organizations and movements internationally to effectively advance the rights of women. From November 14-17, 2008, up to 1,500 women's rights leaders and activists from around the world will converge on Cape Town, South Africa at the 11th AWID International Forum to discuss the power of movements.

Three weeks ago, 35-year-old Waldo Bester was found stabbed to death in Vredenburg, north of Cape Town. Although details of this gay man’s attack are unclear at present, the fact remains that he was murdered brutally in what is believed to be hate crime according to Cape Town’s Triangle Project – which is long standing gay organisation in the Western Cape Province.

South Africa is in danger of losing the battle against HIV/Aids, the United Nations children's agency has warned. Unicef's South Africa representative, Macharia Kamau, said infection and death rates were outpacing treatment.

The home affairs department's refugee offices in Cape Town was a "chaotic" place where refugees were treated like animals, a parliamentary committee said. The MPs, on an unannounced visit to the refugee offices on the Foreshore, found that officials illegally detained refugees.

Reggae musician Lucky Dube was shot dead in a hijacking on Thursday in Rosettenville, Johannesburg police said. Captain Cheryl Engelbrecht said the incident took place at about 8.20pm when Dube (43) was driving a blue Volkswagen Polo in the Johannesburg suburb. She said Dube was dropping off his son in the area when he was attacked. "His son was already out of the car. When he saw what was happening, he ran to ask for help."

The FOSS Awards were inspired by a love and appreciation of Free Software., and a desire to share this with more people. Ian Gilfillan, who conceptualised the idea, writes: “As a student, I only learned proprietary software. It was only much later in my own explorations that I began to explore the world of FOSS. The openness, spirit of sharing and willingness to assist were an inspiration, and allowed me to learn much more, and to create for myself, than would otherwise have been possible.

City councils had a moral duty to spend money rolling out broadband networks to cover all their citizens, in the same way that they had a duty to provide water, sewerage and electricity, speakers at a technology conference have said. The right to broadband Internet access and affordable phone calls was just as great as the right to other municipal services. Any government that did not fulfill that need was doing its citizens disservice, speakers said.

ARC International and the Coalition for African Lesbians (CAL) is excited to announce an international conference entitled "International Dialogue on Gender, Sexuality, and HIV/AIDS: Strengthening Human Rights Responses in Africa and around the globe ." Deadline is 24th October 2007

"In this fascinating history of the Guardian, South Africa's famous anti-apartheid newspaper, James Zug tells the story of a political publication that not only reported events but also helped to shape them. Between 1937 and 1963, the Guardian was the sole voice of dissent in the South African media, and Zug shows us how it played an essential role in the struggle to end apartheid."

A United States appellate court on Friday allowed claims brought by victims of apartheid against dozens of major companies to go forward, saying a lower court erred in ruling it did not have jurisdiction over the matter. The corporations named in the suits include oil companies such as BP and Exxon Mobil, banks such as Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and UBS, as well as other multinationals such as IBM, General Motors and Ford.