Exotic tree plantations have earned the name 'green death' from eco-activists, who point out that they displace native species, very few of which can live in plantations. Plantations in the eastern parts of South Africa are particularly notorious for consuming grassland, now considered our most threatened biome.

This Conference will focus on the relevance and application to data collection, policy development and practice of researchers and practitioners in the field of reducing and preventing firearm related death and injury.

Science, human rights and good governance can make the world a better place, begins the introductory article of the latest Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) newsletter. "This is why we must protect all these things. If they are undermined, our country's development will falter. Ordinary citizens must make sure that government respects science and our rights and that it ensures that scientific and technological advances benefit all. Science must be held to account for its inadequacies. But we must not allow our own government to misuse legitimate questions about science to refuse us our rights." Click on the link to read the newsletter.

The Public Health Association of Southern Africa (PHASA) is pleased to announce its Third Public Health Conference to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 15 th - 17th May 2006. The conference will be co-hosted by PHASA, the Gauteng Department of Health, the University of the Witwatersrand School of Public Health, the International Epidemiological Association and the Health Systems Trust.

Last week, the South African defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota took final delivery of the SAS Amatola, a R1,5-billion, 36 000 ton, 121 metre long warship complete with biological and chemical defense mechanisms, automated damage control and armour protection. The state-of-the-art Amatola is the first of four corvettes to be fully completed and is currently docked at the military harbour in the picturesque naval town of Simon’s Town near Cape Town.

The mountain peaks above Simon’s Town provide the best view of the four warships moored in the harbour below and while this may seem like an odd place to begin a discussion about South Africa’s March 1 local government elections, the ships speak to a number of issues that are relevant to the vote for 9 000 councilors in 284 South African city, town and district councils.

Amidst much criticism that the money could have been better spent on services delivery, the purchase of the corvettes formed part of a multi-billion rand arms deal which also included a shopping list of 30 helicopters, 24 Hawk fighter trainers and 28 Gripen light fighter aircraft. It was with the corvettes that the controversy over the arms deal started, with contractor Richard Young alleging a conflict of interest involving the government's former acquisitions chief, "Chippy" Shaik. Schabir Shaik, brother of “Chippy”, was a shareholder in the Thomson Group and African Defence Systems, which were awarded the contract to provide combat technology for the four corvettes. Schabir Shaik was found guilty in 2005 on two charges of corruption and one of fraud, and sentenced to an effective 15 years' imprisonment. His appeal will be heard later this year. But it was Judge Hilary Squire’s assertion in that case that Shaik had enjoyed a “generally corrupt” relationship with former deputy president Jacob Zuma that rocked politics in South Africa to its foundations.

As a result of the outcome of the Shaik trial, Zuma was fired by president Thabo Mbeki and now faces court later in the year on corruption charges. The charges have been characterized by Zuma’s camp as an attempt to eliminate him from the race for the presidency in 2009 elections. Zuma also faces a March trial in connection with the alleged rape of a 31-year old Aids activist. The events have pitted factions in support of Zuma against those of Mbeki and further strained the relationship between the ANC and its alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP).

So when you’re looking down on the four corvettes in Simon’s Town harbour its impossible to divorce them from South Africa’s wider political reality. There’s no doubt that the arms deal has been part of a defining period that will resonate far into the future. For this reason, local government elections, taking place in an atmosphere of heightened national political tension, seem far more significant this time around than when they were last held in 2000.

Simon’s Town and the resident corvettes are linked to the rest of South Africa in other ways. The town forms part of a string of coastal villages along the False Bay coast that since 2000 have seen a doubling and in some cases even a trebling of property prices. The coastal enclaves that hug the mountains have become the home of a mix of foreign property owners, old and new money, all attracted by the beauty of the False Bay coast and the massive returns offered by a lucrative property portfolio.

Yet alongside this boom are communities that the wealth windfall has bypassed completely. Just over the hill from Simon’s Town harbour is the shack settlement of Red Hill, where high unemployment rates, poor housing and lack of services are common problems. A few valleys and mountains from Red Hill is Ocean View, where the apartheid government dumped the original inhabitants of places like Simon’s Town under its forced removals policy and where unemployment, gangsterism and drugs are rife. And a few kilometers from Ocean View is Masiphumelele, where unemployment and lack of housing are common problems.

These communities, segregated by high walls, electric fences and an enormous privatized security industry from properties literally next door to them that sell for millions of rands, mirror the broader South African picture that shows a widening gap between rich and poor, a gap already large as a result of apartheid but compounded by market friendly economic policies which have favoured those who are able to access resources.

It’s in communities like Ocean View and Masiphumelele where a new flank has opened up in the South African political story. In May last year, Ocean View erupted in protest over housing shortages and poor services. Protests in Masiphumelele over education led to clashes with the police. These small, localized protests have sprung up in towns across South Africa, peaking across the country in a 2005 “winter of discontent” and simmering ever since. Although the causes of these protests have been diverse and sometimes rooted in local politics, a common characteristic has been that they have all included an element of protest against a lack of government delivery in the area of housing, electricity, water or sanitation.

As the local government elections near, the media has sometimes used these protests as evidence that the ANC is going to be punished at the polls through low voter turn out, even if victory is assured (Only 48% turned out in 2000). This may still turn out to be the case in some areas, but there are also indications that the equation might not be so simple. A recent ACNielsen survey, for example, shows that support for the ANC does not dissipate in correlation with support of protests. Factors such as loyalty to the ANC exists together with support of protest.

This suggests that the protests could oddly assist the ANC, something a recent Markinor poll published by the Sunday Times newspaper pointed out. Protests had raised awareness in some municipalities and would increase voter turn out. In this sense the protests could assist the ANC not only by getting voters to the polls, but by pressurizing councilors to get on with the job of delivering services. This line of argument, however, only holds for so long as the ANC can maintain some kind of control over the protests. Arguably, events of the last week, where Lekota, a senior ANC figure and defence minister, was chased out of the town of Khutsong and prevented from addressing a rally, is not an example that the ANC leadership in Pretoria would want to encourage.

But what these community actions have done is to raise the profile of issues of delivery at the local government level, even though the voices of those protesting seem to have been sidelined from the mainstream political debate, characterized by reports which show the protestors as violent even when the police fired on them first, or by a lack of voices articulating the concerns of communities beyond the initial sound bites in media coverage of protest action.

Why has there been an apparent short out at local government level? The reasons advanced are many. Massive apartheid era backlogs at local government level meant that the process of service delivery started out on the back foot. The ANC top guard, typified by President Thabo Mbeki’s remote style of leadership and centralization of power, has detached itself from the hurly burly of service delivery. Bruising battles within the ANC for control of the organisation have detracted attention from grassroots delivery. Local councilors, faced with massive backlogs and little capacity, have simply buckled under the pressure. Widespread corruption based on power and patronage has permeated the local government level. The Growth Economic and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy, the unilaterally adopted market-focused growth path adopted by the ANC in 1996, limited the amount of money that could be invested in social development projects, boosting the rich to be even richer, but leaving the poor behind.

Which ever or all of those reasons you choose it’s clear that the ANC has an ever-increasing workload if it is to meet its service delivery commitments. As long as this situation is allowed to continue, the pressure from below is likely to increase rather than decrease, no matter what the result of voting next week.

* Patrick Burnett is online news editor, Pambazuka News

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The Department of Agriculture is failing to adequately implement the existing flawed regulatory system for genetically modified (GM) crops in South Africa. This emerged from Biowatch South Africa’s recent examination of a sample of GM permits and permit applications. The sample (of 134 permits and 108 permit applications and review documents) is part of a larger batch to which the Department of Agriculture has given Biowatch South Africa access. This follows the Pretoria High Court’s order in February 2005 that Biowatch South Africa be granted access to information about how decisions are made in the granting of GM crop permits.

The South African authorities have seized a luxury house belonging to a former Nigerian state governor accused of corruption in his own country. Officials confiscated the property - said to be worth more than $1.7m - on the waterfront in Cape Town. Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was impeached and removed from his post in the Nigerian oil-producing state of Bayelsa in the Niger Delta last year.

The successful candidate will oversee projects in South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho and will work to advance economic progress, promote community development and help to eradicate disease, famine and conflict.

South Africa faces key challenges in meeting international standards of justice as well as those laid out in its own constitution, according to a new report. The report, launched today (February 17) by the Open Society Foundation-South Africa and AfriMAP, a project initiated by the Open Society network of foundations in Africa, provides a comprehensive audit of justice sector performance in post-apartheid South Africa. It also calls on the government to take steps to ensure that South Africa's justice system operates fairly and transparently and follows the rule of law.

In the late 1990s - still the early days of South Africa's democracy - Joseph Makhadi couldn't afford to continue his studies at a local technical college. He dropped out and lived, unemployed, in a humble dwelling along with 10 members of his extended family. But in 2002, Makhadi and his family were among 700 households given title to a vast piece of rolling bush in South Africa's Limpopo Province, a result of the government's ambitious land reform programme. Now, the 29-year-old manages the poultry farm owned and operated by the beneficiaries, known locally as the Manavhela community. This week, Makhadi toured the buildings that hold some 6,000 chickens and marvelled at how his future had opened up.

As gays and lesbians become more visible in South African townships, they are increasingly becoming targets of homophobia, according to rights activists. The organisations were reacting to reports at the weekend of the murder of a young lesbian in a township in Cape Town. "I have recorded 50 rape cases, dating back 10 years, involving black lesbians in townships," said Zanele Muholi, a community relations officer with the NGO, Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW). Muholi, a lesbian, who was also abused growing up in a township, co-founded FEW in 2002, to provide a support network for black gay women.

The South African government has postponed a controversial proposal to resume culling elephants from Kruger National Park where overcrowding is causing problems, a leading conservation scientist said. The proposal last year from the national parks authority to end a 10-year ban had outraged many conservationists who said it was unnecessary. "They listened to our arguments and have agreed to postpone the cull, but we don't know for how long," said Rudi van Aarde. "We want at least three years for more research." Van Aarde, on a brief lecture tour of Britain, is professor of conservation ecology at the University of Pretoria and a member of a panel of scientists set up to advise the government on the proposed cull.

This paper argues that when fatherhood is privileged as a central aspect of masculinity everybody benefits. It discusses new emerging concepts of masculinity which have developed in response to the critique of hegemonic models, and which emphasise tolerance, domestic responsibility and sensitivity. This "new man" model of masculinity has led to a growing acceptance of the importance of families for men, and of men for families. Fathers who are positively engaged in the lives of their children are less likely to be depressed, to commit suicide, or to beat their wives. They are more likely to be involved in community work, to be supportive of their partners, and to be involved in school activities.

In accordance with one of the aims of UPEACE to develop and increase capacity in the teaching of conflict and peace studies in Africa, we would like to invite your university/department/centre to nominate one or two staff members to participate in a short course on Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution. The course is due to be held in Pretoria from 3 to 7 April 2006 and will be presented by the Africa Programme of the United Nations-affiliated University for Peace. Only proposals submitted by people who have been nominated by their institutions or organizations will be considered.

The Durban High Court on Wednesday ordered the Scorpions to return certain documents seized from former deputy president Jacob Zuma and his lawyer, South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) radio news reported. The documents were seized during raids on Zuma's homes in Johannesburg and his KwaZulu-Natal homestead, and the Durban office of his lawyer, Michael Hulley, in August 2005. They relate to the investigation into Zuma's "generally corrupt" relationship with Durban businessman Schabir Shaik.

The Director General of the World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy, came to Wits University at the invitation of the South African Institute for International Affairs. He was greeted by protestors inside the venue who were forcibly removed to join the picket of the event outside. The protestors continued to dog Lamy at his next engagement at the Nedlac chamber in Rosebank.

"People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) is disappointed but not surprised by today’s (February 14) postponement of the rape trial involving former deputy president Jacob Zuma. Applying for recusals of judges and postponements are common delay tactics employed by defence teams during rape trials. POWA is cognisant of the fact that the State did not oppose the application for a postponement and hopes that this postponement serves the interests of the state’s case. From POWA’s experience in dealing with other rape cases, we know that delays to the court process often have a negative impact on survivors’ emotional well-being. Some survivors will interpret the postponements and delays as a sign of the criminal justice system favouring the accused."

* Related Link:
South Africa: Zuma rape case in High Court
http://www.agenda.org.za/index.php?option=com _content&task=view&id=1123&Itemid=147

Two weeks ago at the Joe Slovo informal settlement, bulldozers came in and destroyed the house of an outspoken member of the community. He had invited a journalist to the settlement to talk about corruption in the housing allocation process at Joe Slovo, accusing the local community leader of giving preferential treatment to family members, and of excluding Xhosa residents from new housing.

Pan African Health is the premier African healthcare congress - incorporating a conference, exhibition, and the 1st Healthcare Award for Excellence and Innovation sponsored by Absa. The theme of Pan African Health (PAH) 2006, which takes place from 29 – 31 August 2006 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa is accessing and managing funding for healthcare initiatives in Africa. PAH 2006 will see the Africa’s leading healthcare players and role players converge on the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, to stay abreast of developments in the healthcare and healthcare funding arenas, to share information and experiences, to reinforce existing relationships and to seek out and form new relationships. Contact Jenny Wong for further information on: Tel: + 27 11 465 8871; email: [email protected] or visit www.panafricanhealth.com

In a move to address the critical shortage of nurses, several nursing colleges will be re-opened, Health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has announced. She said that her department had been contemplating the move, but that they had waited for the go-ahead from President Thabo Mbeki in his state of the nation address. “We have got to train as many nurses as possible. Even if we train too many and some leave,” said Tshabalala-Msimang at a media briefing in parliament.