Human Rights Watch Africa Division seeks a South Africa Director to coordinate its efforts from its office in Johannesburg, South Africa, contribute to the organisation’s human rights policy and advocacy work, and serve as the organisation’s principal spokesperson in South Africa. Please apply immediately.

The African Sociological Association announces its 1st Congress which is scheduled to hold in Grahamstown-iRhini, South Africa, from 15-18 July 2007. The African Sociological Association was formally constituted in December 2000 on the back of the 10th General Assembly of CODESRIA, in Kampala, Uganda.

In February, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) issued its fourth assessment report on the state of emissions and climate change. According to the world’s leading scientists, there is a 90% likelihood that the global warming we are experiencing is linked to human-induced causes. In essence, it stems from burning fossil fuels. South African industry must become much more serious about its emissions, writes Karen Alsfine for Business Day.

South Africa has designed a package to lure 35,000 foreign skilled professionals in the coming year to fill the vacuum of skill labour in the country. South African Home Affairs Minister, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, has disclosed that there are 34,825 quota work permits available in 53 occupations where career professionals are needed.

Following the successful run of its first ever gender and media literacy course that took place in June-August 2006, Gender Links will be conducting another Media Literacy Training Course from 3 May - 2 August 2007. The course material has been developed by Gender Links (GL), a Southern African NGO that specialises in gender, governance and communication. The tool kit being used draws from research and training material developed over a number of years on gender and the Southern African media.

While South Africa is planning on increasing bio-fuels production some experts warn the move may hurt subsistence farmers and cause more hunger in impoverished areas of the country. Proponents in the United States and Brazil say bio-fuels such as maize-based ethanol is a clean energy alternative that comes from resources that are renewable.

While South Africa's "homelands" -- areas formerly set aside for blacks -- have been relegated to the dustbin of history for more than a decade, their legacy lives on in the form of land degradation, and even desertification in northern and eastern parts of the country.

When you seek to find a gliche in the system
When you feel al l the time that there’s something missing
When you turn around and the doors closed
and your belligerence shows
cause the politicians wearing emporer’s clothes

I’ve got news for you, you’re here too.

When we do the ‘they’
When we call it black or white or grey
When the headlines scream another dead child,
another oil slick,
another hard crime somebody else is doing the time
When you say your life depends on the other man’s outcome
oh there’s so much degradation
the government’s put us in this situation
It’s a black dream you scheme

I’ve got news for you, you’re here too.

When your sister’s raped and your brother’s drugged and the
streets aren’t clean and you look at it all and say, “We’re all headed for a hard fall.”
When you speak of lies
but don’t speak you truth
when can’t make it to the top
and it’s always somebody else’s fault that the ball’s dropped.

I’ve got news for you, you’re here too.

When your agitation is all you can spare
and your rhetoric’s got you all in a rage
when you can’t hold yourself when you fall
and you lay down love and pick up arms
and the silence cries
but your lips – still – don’t – move –
yet in your own living room you’re a prophet of doom

I’ve got news for you, you’re here too.

We tick the minutes spill the seconds
tick the minutes spill the seconds
talk judgement, economics and acid rain.

We tick the minutes spill the seconds
tick the minutes spill the seconds
talk memory, talk more pain.

We tick the minutes spill the seconds
talk of God
talk more, talk more
talk
more
we’re keeping score
and love a waiting at the door

When you move to Australia cause the countries a failure
when mending the situation calls for a band aid solution to put us in line with our constitution
when you can’t understand how ten years of democracy didn’t make it all fit
when you feel the urge to shout “Get over it!”
as if something outside yourself requires the shift
remember people we’re all in the same damn lift!
“Going up orrrrrr down!”

we tick the minutes spill the seconds
tick the minutes spill the seconds
time is a wasting while we’re cutting and pasting
and life is elsewhere
here or there?
outside’s a good place to count the cost
when you’re running that race from the inside
It’s better than dealing with the feeling of being lost,
displaced in your space…

I’ve got news for you
It doesn’t take an apocalypse to mend a century
It doesn’t take blame to alleviate pain
A simple step to the mirror is all it’ll take
A reflection on the reflection is the only thing that can free the present
from hate

Soooo put on your parachute, or strap on a seatbelt
the ride’s scary or sacred
could be heaven’s door or hell’s gate
all depends on your internal state
but unless you’re late, deceased or carried off in a crate
don’t berate the psychosis and add to the neurosis
simply take a look in the mirror at your own thriller
dispense with the polyfiller

I’ve got news for you
you’re here too.

Khadija-Tracey Heeger

"Women in South African History by Nomboniso Gasa (Ed) published by HSRC Press, 2007.

Women in South African History traces the lives of South African women from the pre-colonial, pre-union period (mid 18th century) through to the post-apartheid beginnings and present day South Africa. It is written in four thematic parts: Women in the pre-colonial and pre-union periods; Women in early to mid-twentieth century South Africa; War: armed and mass struggle as gendered experiences; The 1990s and beyond: new identities, new victories, new struggles.

The book is a radical departure from the traditional history texts in that it uses a feminist analysis rather than the “more acceptable gender analysis” in it’s approach by examining “the ways in which gender intersects with race, culture, class and other forms of identity and location in South African history“. By including the present as part of history the book shows how the past and present are inextricably linked and thus better examines women’s experiences over the past 300 years. The experiences of women’s struggle and their continuing hazardous journeys towards liberation are expressed through the dual metaphors of “they move boulders” - challenges; and “they cross rivers” - dangers.

Women in South African History goes far beyond the many well known events and periods by feminizing those events and periods where women’s participation has never been acknowledged. In the chapter “Like three tongues in one mouth”: Tracing the elusive lives of slave women in (slavocratic) South Africa, Pumla Dineo Gqola, brings to life the slave women brought to South Africa from South East Asia, East Africa and Southern Africa. Despite the scarcity of historical and biographical narratives, Pumla is still able to document the lives of some slave women and more importantly the ways in which they resisted and revolted against their enslavement and their central role “to the historical constitution of Afrikaner society“. Other examples are women’s mass protests against carrying of passes in Bloemfontein and Potchefstroom in 1913; women’s involvement in the trade union movement during the 1930s; the participation of women in the ANC underground and military wing in the 1950s; township uprisings in the Eastern Cape in the 1970s and 1980s; naked women protests against lack of housing in Soweto in 1990; migrant women in Johannesburg and women learning to live with HIV/AIDS in present day South Africa.

The book concludes with a powerful essay by Yvette Abrahams in which she chronicles her experience of researching and writing on Sarah Bartman. Or rather searching for the REAL Sarah Bartman not the racialised sexualised object constructed by white male fantasies …

“a living specimen of barbaric savage races” one who according to Lindfors [Courting the Hottentot Venus] was willing to collaborate in her own degradation in order to earn more money… she allowed herself to be exhibited indecently to the European public, and she persisted in this tawdy occupation for more than five years….. She may have been the victim of the cruelist kind of predatory ruthlessness, but her collusion in her own victimisation was unmistakeable…."

he concludes

"To put it plainly, she may have engaged in prostitution as well as exhibitionism. Her degradation may have been complete.."

Abrahams tears these racist, sexist texts to pieces written not in the 1800s but in the 1980s. Men such as Lindfors were able to pass these lies off as academic text by so called intellectuals. Abrahams leads us through to the convincing conclusion that Sarah Bartman was a slave - a Khoekhoe slave woman. She does this by connecting her own personal herstory to that of the Khoekhoe. Born in the pre-colonial period of the 1780s, she must have had a Khoekhoe name and the only way she could have lost that name at that time was through slavery. Also the only way for her to move from her home in the Western Cape to England was as a slave. Sarah Bartman lied (that she willingly exhibited herself) because she was a slave and knew very well that her words would not be believed over that of a white man and the consequences of her telling the truth would have been too horrible to contemplate such as life imprisonment and even more degradation and abuse.

Abrahams again makes the absolute convincing statement without any hesitation or qualification that the “abuse and degradation” of Sarah Bartman was rape. Rape not only of Sarah but of the whole Khoekhoe nation. The white male racist, sexist texts she quotes in her essay are a form of “surrogate violence” against African women, Black women, Khoekhoe women and Sarah Bartman.

“Was it not rape of a symbolic sort to parade the degradation ad humiliation of auntie Sarah before me? Was it not a sexually violent act which expressed male power and my vulnerability to pain? Has not each male author I have brought before you been unable to resist the temptation of demonstrating their psychosexual power and auntie Sarah’s inability to resist?"

"In the place of false witness it is time to speak the truth. I name the posthumous abuse and degradation of auntie Sarah’s body, rape. The rape of her body is a rape of my mind."

As Abrahams writes, Sarah Bartman whose real name, real self was stolen like that of millions of other slaves and their descendants, is dead and therefore can no longer feel the pain. But she (Abrahams) feels it - I feel it and Black women throughout the world feel it. Every racist, sexist, misogynist text by whiteness against Black women is felt by me, by all of us. The symbolism of this sexual violence is explained by a more “refined and broader” definition of rape.

"…the element of sexual abuse are the violation of a person’s integrity by force and/or threat of physical violence, dishonouring the ethic of mutuality and care in relationships of domination, and an infraction of one’s psycho-spiritual-sexual integrity. Sexual abuse is sacrilege of God’s spirit in each of us [Eugene, TM “If you get there before I do: A womanist ethical response to sexual violence and abuse. In J Grant (ed) Perspectives on womanist theology”

In reviewing South African Women in History, I chose to focus on Yvette Abrahams essay because the story of Sarah Bartman speaks to the book as a whole and speaks to me personally. It is both the beginning - pre-colonial and the present, continued racism but always resistance. Sarah Bartman’s agency was expressed in her act of survival against all odds. For me Sarah Bartman, Khoekhoe woman represents the loss that came with slavery and colonialism as well as the struggle for liberation and emancipation.

Women in South African History is a “transdisciplinary” interrogation of events and periods in the history of South Africa from a feminist perspective. The narratives bring to life the daughters of Africa in their quest for emancipation, sometimes at great cost to themselves and their families, particularly their children. But always there is an unflinching determination - choices are laid bare and the choice is still emancipation.

President Thabo Mbeki formally launched the Nepad e-Schools Demo Project in South Africa on Tuesday 17 April, with the opening of a computer lab and audio-visual centre at Maripe Secondary School, in Mpumalanga. Maripe is one of six schools in South Africa in which computer labs and audio-visual centres will be installed as part of the demo project, which includes 18 African countries.

The Schools Development Unit (SDU), an established professional outreach unit of the School of Education involved in developing levels of excellence in teaching and learning in schools, seeks a Director for appointment to a permanent position. The Unit has a number of current projects that will take the SDU into a new era of development. eadline for applications is 30 April 2007.

Later this year, women in Southern Africa expect a leap forward when it comes to gender equality as Heads of State are discussing more binding commitments to raise women's share of decision-making positions to 50 percent. South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki is putting heavy pressure on his colleagues, who also can point to considerable gains.

Lack of archived material on lesbians in South Africa has prompted photographers Jean Brundrit and Zanele Muholi to conduct a workshop entitled "Making Herstory". The project trains participants to acquire basic photography skills that will enable them to document their past, present and future.

The case against 14 gay men arrested last year and charged with public indecency at Camp David Bar in Pretoria, South Africa, has been thrown out of court. The charge of operating a brothel laid against the owner of the club was also dropped because of lack of evidence.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/broadcasts/systemcele.jpgSystem Cele from shack dweller association Abahlali in Durban speaks to Pambazuka News about the struggle for rights to land and housing in new South Africa. Five members of her group are now on hunger strike after being arrested in what Abahlali sees as a politically motivated murder charge. In this interview System speaks about why the community is struggling to stay in their area, and the obstacles they face in daily life and political organising. For more on shack dwellers issues and updates on the hunger strike see the .

Johannesburg's inner city regeneration programme has led to the eviction of more than 100 refugees and asylum seekers. Some fear a flurry of evictions in coming months could see 70,000 people, including refugees and asylum seekers, expelled from 235 buildings.

The media literacy course is part of GMDC activities that seek to promote dialogue and debate around gender and media.

Length of poetry contributions: Poems to fit a full page of the Agenda Journal. Deadline: 28 June 2007. All submissions must be emailed to [email][email protected] For more information contact [email][email protected]

A biography about South African legislator Patricia De Lille invaded the right to privacy of three women whose names and HIV-positive status were disclosed in it, South Africa's Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday. According to a report in the Independent Online, the three women were each awarded R35 000 in damages, from Patricia de Lille, author Charlene Smith and publishers New Africa Books.

Food parcels are finally being offered to HIV positive mothers in KwaZulu-Natal who want to exclusively breastfeed their babies as part of a new government policy. In the past, positive mothers were advised to either exclusively formula feed or, in cases where there was no supply of clean water, to exclusively breastfeed to protect their babies from getting HIV.