The UNISA Institute for Social and Health Sciences (ISHS) takes great pleasure in inviting you to participate in a workshop entitled Preventing Violence against Woman and Children: A Data to Action Workshop to be held from the 27th to the 29th June 2006. Violence against women and children infringes on the human rights of these vulnerable groups and is therefore a real threat to the development and sustainability of a human rights culture that guarantees safety in South Africa.

Cash benefits for children are reducing the impact of poverty on school enrolment in South Africa. In KwaZulu-Natal, child support grants are helping children, particularly from the poorest families, to be educated. Families receiving such grants are more likely to send their children to school at earlier ages than other equally poor households.

Coalition For Peace in Africa (COPA), an organization specializing in capacity building of practitioners in conflict transformation and peace building will from 25th September to 27th October 2006 conduct a five week Advanced Training in Conflict Transformation. The training will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa at the Elijah Barayi Memorial Training Institute.

The theme of this event is "Corporate Social Investment (CSI) and the IT Sector - Strategies for Engagement with the NGO Sector". The objective of the event is to create an opportunity for dialogue and interaction between IT companies and NGOs, highlighting different CSI strategies and approaches that are being implemented by IT companies, and how these interventions relate to the needs and expectations of NGOs and the communities they serve.

This is a media training initiative operating inside the youth section of Cape Town's Pollsmoor Prison, South Africa. The project works with 12 incarcerated males from the ages of 16 to 18, who meet weekly to co-produce radio stories about various aspects of prison life. Using radio production and training as both a means of building communication skills and as a forum for group dialogue, the Young in Prison Radio Project aims to provide a space for the young inmates to collectively dialogue about issues that are important to their personal development and rehabilitation, and to share their experiences with the outside world.

Government has identified land reform as central to the alleviation of poverty. The programme, begun with the passing of legislation in 1996, has three main elements: restitution of rights through the land claims process; the redistribution of land via acquisition to develop a black farming middle class; and securing tenure for people living on the land of others. The director of tenure reform at land affairs, Sipho Sibanda, admitted that there was a degree of paralysis in government.

Racism and mental illness have a long, sad history in South Africa, with the effects of Apartheid still painfully apparent. A spotlight was placed upon the issue of racism, at the World Racism Conference held in South Africa last year. Amongst other things highlighted was the issue of racism towards foreigners from neighbouring states. The increase in the flow of illegal immigrants, since the 1994 elections has led to a rapid growth in local xenophobia toward illegal immigrants.

Students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s (UKZN) medical school believe they are racially victimised while staff counter that personality clashes and academic rigour are being misconstrued as racism. Over the past three years escalating racial tension at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine has seen black students alleging racial discrimination by Indian academics in the teaching and assessments of students.

Fraud and corruption in prisons are on the decline, a senior official has said. "Although the road ahead remains arduous and long, I can confidently say we are winning this battle," said acting National Commissioner of Correctional Services Patrick Gillingham. He was speaking at the opening ceremony of the department's ethics management and anti-corruption training programme in Pretoria.

The South African government has spent over US$5.2 billion on housing subsidies since 1994 but is still no closer to overcoming the desperate shortage of adequate homes. Government figures show that the housing backlog has continued to grow, even though 1.8 million subsidised houses have been built since 1994 - in 1996 the deficit stood at two million, compared to the current 2.4 million gap between demand and supply.

"You will be kept informed as often as is necessary." The Orwellian statement borders on satire, but in fact it comes straight out of the archives of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, from the late 1970s or early 1980s. Radio clips like this fill the air as the audience takes its seats for the Johannesburg Market Theatre's current production of Black Dog Inj'emnyama - a play that stems from that anguished period in South Africa's past.

This course is intended for practitioners to learn essential facilitation concepts and skills for working developmentally with groups of people in small group, workshop or training course settings. Practitioners will learn the basics of facilitation and improve the ways they already facilitate.

Each day crowds form outside the refugee reception offices of the Department of Home Affairs, asylum seekers who have often crossed thousands of kilometres only to find that the process to gain recognition as a refugee can take years in South Africa. The government is determined to clear this backlog of asylum applicants – now about 100,000 – over the next year. Success will mean ending both long delays and many of the problems in documentation faced by the growing queue of those awaiting a decision on requests for refugee status.

Language experts are worried about the "genocide" of certain African indigenous languages in South Africa. This follows recent case study findings that some schools are reluctant to include African indigenous languages as part of their curriculum. The Dean of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Professor Renuka Vithal, said the State needed to promote indigenous languages.

If the tearful pleas of the man who pulled the trigger are to be believed, it was no more than a tragic accident. When Marcel Nel, a white South African farmer, shot at a dark shape rustling in the long grass at dusk on his neighbour's plot, he thought that he had at last caught the dog that had been terrorising his animals. In another stark example of the racial tensions that still haunt South Africa, many are convinced that it was a deliberate, racist murder.

President Thabo Mbeki's speech at the ceremony unveiling the emblem for South Africa's 2010 Fifa World Cup, in Berlin on 7 July 2006 spoke of the importance of the tournament to the continent. He said 'the 2010 Soccer World Cup belongs to the many Africans who in many parts of the world engage in a continuous struggle against racism and xenophobia'.

The Scorpions investigative unit has confirmed that it has information linking President Thabo Mbeki to a French defence company implicated in arms-deal corruption, but says it has no evidence of wrongdoing on his part. Mbeki, who was deputy president at the time, allegedly met executives of Thomson-CSF in Paris in 1998. The company, now known as Thales, was bidding for a stake in the multibillion-rand arms deal.

Jacob Zuma's defamation claim against the media has risen to R63-million after a Johannesburg radio station "further insulted" him, the Witness newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The Cape Town Book Fair drew the best from around the world, and showed that South Africa is decidedly on the map as far as being on the cutting edge of cultural and intellectual life is concerned. Being there was to see a new and enlightening phase of our era of liberation. The pariah thing has gone. Smiles and hugs all round.

Hope that post-apartheid economic growth will translate into a better life for the poor is dying in the expanding squatter camps that ring Johannesburg, South Africa's bustling business centre. The poignancy of poverty in South Africa is that often the have-nots are within sight of the haves. In the case of Protea South, the settlement of 3,000 shacks adjoins the leafy suburb of Lenasia, with its large and heavily secured houses, clean streets and modern shopping complex.