The Freedom of Expression Institute is disturbed at the growing number of violations of the right to protest by local authorities and the police. Mounting evidence suggests that more local governments are abusing their power to authorise or disallow gatherings to stifle dissent against their own performance. If this trend continues, then freedom of expression stands to be eroded at a time when it is needed most, namely in the run up to the local government elections. Given that a number of these violations involve local governments suppressing expressions of discontent around the state of service delivery, the freeness and fairness of local government elections may be adversely affected. This is because views expressed in these protests, that are crucial for communities to evaluate the performance of existing local governments, will be prevented from coming to light.

"The Treatment Action Campaign and the South African Medical Association (SAMA) have filed court papers against the Minister of Health, the Medicines Control Council (MCC), the Western Cape MEC for Health, as well as pharmaceutical proprietor Matthias Rath and several of his employees and associates, including AIDS denialists Anthony Brink, David Rasnick and Sam Mhlongo (Professor of Family Medicine, MEDUNSA). This briefing explains why. In addition to Rath, his employees and associates, we are also suing our government and certain statutory bodies. We do so with great reluctance. But it is our mandate and duty to protect the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS. The Minister and the statutory bodies that she oversees have had ample opportunity to avoid this litigation but have chosen not to."

The Media Monitoring Project (MMP), Save the Children Sweden and SAfm have announced the broadcast of South Africa's first ever 'radio conference' on the media's role in covering child abuse. Hosted by Jeremy Maggs, Media@SAfm presenter, the conference will feature a panel of local and international media and children's rights experts who will contextualise the representation of children and abused children in the media and unpack the South African complaints process. Each conference session will be followed by a roundtable discussion allowing for listener interaction.

The International Crisis Group (Crisis Group) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation, with over 110 staff members on five continents, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. We are currently looking for a highly motivated, independent thinking staff member who will be located in Pretoria, South Africa.

The CSI is an international action-research initiative, which provides civil society stakeholders with a diagnostic tool for assessing the current state of civil society on a country level and creating a basis for dialogue, joint reflection and action. CIVICUS is recruiting a successor to the current CSI Project Manager, to take the lead in the evaluation, redesign and subsequent implementation of the CSI in 2006 and beyond. The position is based at the CIVICUS head office in Johannesburg, South Africa.

South African pulp and paper company Sappi is planning to increase the capacity of its Sappi Saiccor mill by more than 200,000 tons a year. Sappi Saiccor is the largest producer of chemical cellulose (dissolvable pulp) in the world. Its mill at Umkomaas, about 50 kilometres south of Durban Port currently produces about 600,000 tons of chemical cellulose a year. The chemical cellulose is used to produce things like cigarette filters, sweet wrappers, an additive to washing powder that stops dirt
sticking to clothes and the stuff that makes vitamin tablets stick together. Almost all of Saiccor's cellulose is exported.

Jacob Zuma should still become president of the African National Congress, the ANC Youth League said on Monday. This follows statements by the SA Communist Party and the Congress of SA Trade Unions that they had never said they wanted Zuma to be the president of the ANC. Although Zuma would go to trial on corruption charges and was facing an allegation of rape, he should be considered innocent until proven otherwise.

South Africa's powerful labour movement vowed to add its muscle to the fight against Aids on Wednesday, heaping pressure on the government amid an epidemic killing some 900 South Africans each day. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which claims a million members and has organized huge protests in the past, announced it was joining activist group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) to push for a new approach to AIDS in the country worst hit by the worldwide pandemic.

Victoria [not her real name] thought she had the law on her side when she left her abusive partner and successfully applied for a protection order against him. According to provisions set out in South Africa's 1998 Domestic Violence Act and reinforced by recently enacted firearms legislation, the order gave the police powers to confiscate the gun that had repeatedly been used to terrorise her. According to the Medical Research Council (MRC), a woman is shot dead by her current or former partner every six hours, and such cases rose by 78 percent between 1990 and 1999.

Mandisa Majuva writes in an article on the website of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Kwazulu-Natal: "Postcolonial subjectivities are, among other things, concerned with ways to divest white supremacist thinking, ways to subvert and challenge social relations that reinforce white supremacy. In carrying out this project, postcolonial subjectivities interrogate literature – searching and questioning why certain oppressive personalities are being re-inscribed. They interrogate history books – searching and questioning why certain memories are not worth recording. In this globalised world, where there are “global movements”, postcolonial subjectivities investigate social movements – raising questions about who speaks for and write about movements, who informs the politics of social movements."

South Africa’s Aids epidemic, one of the largest in the world, shows no sign of relenting, while infection levels continue to drop in Uganda and now also in parts of Kenya and Zimbabwe, according the UNAIDS Aids Epidemic Update. Released this week, the annual UNAIDS Aids Epidemic Update continues to paint a bleak picture of an epidemic that this year alone claimed three million lives of which 570 000 were children. The total number of people living with HIV worldwide reached its highest level – an estimated 40,3 million people are now living with HIV while close to five million were newly infected with the virus this year.

Last weekend saw a continuation of the land and housing struggle of recent weeks in the Lavender Hill area of Cape Town, reports Indymedia South Africa. "On Saturday 19 November 2005, City Police and Cape Town City Council Law Enforcement arrived to mark shacks in the new settlement in St Montague Village. This settlement - which still lacks a name - is made up of about 500 families who settled on the land since last weekend (11 November 2005). On Friday they - along with many other Hillview and St Montague Village residents - were served with a court order prohibiting them from extending their shacks or putting up any further dwellings."

“Massive" educational deprivation continues to plague sub-Saharan Africa, South African Minister of Education Naledi Pandor said, as reported by the Mail and Guardian. "Despite country reports of progress, it is clear that an extraordinary effort will be required to ensure that all countries are directly assisted to succeed," she told the 15th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Edinburgh, Scotland. In South Africa, as in most of Africa, boys are pressured into dropping out of school to earn money for their families, while pregnancy is the main reason girls leave school.

Will lectures in Afrikaans and English kill off the taal? Yes, reckons a very vocal band of current and former Stellenbosch University students, after the university recently approved the introduction of dual-medium instruction in the final undergraduate year of the arts faculty. For the past two months, a well-oiled media campaign has been raging in the letters and news columns of Die Burger, the largest Afrikaans daily in the country. From this it has been clear that not all Afrikaans speakers are happy that their language has to compete with 10 other official languages instead of being one of only two official languages.

South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party emerged from a crisis meeting of its top executive at the weekend to deny claims of internal divisions in its ranks. The ANC national executive committee (NEC) meeting was called to heal a rift between President Thabo Mbeki and the party's former deputy president, Jacob Zuma, which has degenerated into the worst crisis the ANC has faced since being elected to power in 1994.

After 75 000 translated words and many months of hard work, Translate.org.za is scheduled to release OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 in all 11 official South African languages later this month. Translate.org.za director, Dwayne Bailey, says that 20 people - academics, translators and reviewers - were involved in the translations, most of whom are language practitioners in their respective fields.

Hundreds of schoolgirls from disadvantaged backgrounds in Inanda, Durban, had their chance this week to showcase their strengths and highlight their needs to international visitors during a Girls' Education Movement (Gem) session. It is aimed at highlighting issues affecting girls. And with a recent financial injection of about R4-million from Barclays Bank for the project in this country, it is anticipated that up to 1,5-million children will be helped.

This 66-page report documents how refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa’s largest city often encounter abuse by police and other obstacles throughout the refugee-status determination process. “On paper, South Africa has exemplary laws to protect refugees and asylum seekers,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch. “But in practice, the government is failing to provide protection to these vulnerable individuals.” South Africa hosts approximately 142,000 refugees and asylum seekers. Many of them have fled conflict areas and persecution in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe.