Ex-deputy president Jacob Zuma sang and danced with supporters on Saturday, November 12 after hearing that his corruption trial would start in the high court on July 31 next year. Zuma was cheered by the large crowd outside the magistrate's court as he sang the struggle song Mshini. According to people in the crowd, the song means "bring my machine" but implies "bring my machinegun". Speaking in Zulu, Zuma explained the judicial process to the crowd and asked for them to be disciplined and not repeat any incidents such as the one at his previous court hearing when people burnt T-shirts showing the face of President Thabo Mbeki. Earlier a court official formally served Zuma with an indictment outlining the two corruption charges against him.

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. Working under the supervision of the Southern Africa Project Director, you will assist the team in overall office management and provide research assistance contributing to reports on security, political, governance, human rights and social issues related to the Southern Africa and Horn of Africa regions. The position will be based in our centrally located office in Pretoria.

The Electoral Institute of South Africa has a position open. Responsibilities include providing overall support to the Local Government Programme Officer, assisting in the development and implementation of all local government Projects, arranging and facilitating workshops, assisting in the conceptualisation of project proposal, researching and analysing relevant policies and legislation, general administration and the preparation
of reports.

Seventy-eight healthy South Africans are to test a new candidate HIV vaccine over the next 18 months, reports the Mail and Guardian. The International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and a United States company need to determine if the medication is safe and effective. Called "tgAAC09", the preventive HIV vaccine candidate is based on HIV subtype C, the subtype of the virus most prevalent in Southern and East Africa. "The trial should take about 18 months to complete and will enrol 78 volunteers in total -- men and women -- who are in good health. TgAAC09 is designed to elicit two different types of immune responses, an antibody response and a cell-mediated response. The vaccine consists of an artificially made copy of the HI virus and cannot cause HIV infection or Aids," the IAVI said on Monday, November 14.

"The Barclays Miles Ahead neo-colonial safari through Africa will be celebrating its triumph on Thursday (10th of Nov.) at the Convention Centre in Cape Town (6pm at the CTICC). Barclays executives have been travelling through East Africa in white 4x4s on a publicity tour designed to detract from the Bank's deep involvement in Apartheid, financing the Arms Deal, and other such acts of corporate robbery. This is a shady parody of the Cape to Cairo imperial designs of Cecil John Rhodes, and Jubilee South Africa and allies will be at the Convention Centre to give the Bank the welcome it deserves."

Prosecutors in South Africa have charged two subsidiaries of the French arms company Thales with corruption. The charges, denied by the firms, were included in the indictment against the former deputy president, Jacob Zuma, due to go on trial next year. Mr Zuma has been formally indicted for corruption in connection with a multi-billion dollar arms deal.

The Treatment Action Campaign this week released a statement and fact sheet in which it explains why it holds Matthias Rath responsible for several deaths of HIV infected individuals. Dr Matthias Rath’s “pseudo-science” is causing confusion and costing many lives and is flourishing because it is perceived to be endorsed by the health minister and the president, according to the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). Analysing the recent deaths of five people who were taking the Rath vitamins, the TAC said for three of these patients Rath was at a minimum responsible for contributing to their deaths.

Climate change in South Africa could force a safety review of the country's dams and reservoirs, Parliament's water affairs and forestry portfolio committee has been told. "In South Africa, because of our variable climate, we have to build our dams bigger, generally, than elsewhere, because we have really big droughts and really big floods," University of KwaZulu-Natal professor of hydrology Roland Schulze told MPs.

What are the difficulties of designing a literacy project based on the way learners use literacy in everyday life? Evidence from a recent literacy project in South Africa and from the National Literacy Programme in Namibia demonstrates that difficulties are likely to arise from differences between learners' everyday uses of literacy and their understanding of what it can offer them.

SANGONeT would like to appoint a Manager for its ICT services and advocacy activities. This position is a challenging opportunity for someone passionate about the potential role and contribution of ICTs in support of the Southern African development process, with a keen interest in advocacy, policy and related application issues shaping the role of ICTs in the region.

The purpose of this guide from the South African Institute for Distance Education (SAIDE) is to give principals and senior school management information on using and managing ICT resources so that they can provide leadership in their schools. The guide also considers some implications of the use of the computer and related resources for teaching and learning. The authors hope that it will also be a valuable resource for other senior members of the school staff, and for School Governing Bodies.

Dissatisfied with the quality of current South African search engines, Alistair Carruthers has built Jonga which he hopes will become the first stop for South African Web searches when it launches later this month, Tectonic News reports. "Jonga is the result of over two years of development in my spare time as a pet project. It has evolved into something that was never intended to be a commercial or revenue generating venture, but purely an exercise to see whether or not I could create a search engine that would become the first place Internet users would go if they wanted to search for anything South African and also be able to compete with other existing commercial search engine-related sites," says Carruthers.

"On at least two recent occasions President Thabo Mbeki is reported to have questioned whether NGOs in South Africa are being manipulated by foreign donors and the extent to which civil society in South Africa is independent. As a network of NGOs committed to democracy and free speech we feel compelled to respond to the President’s attack on the credentials of NGOs. The President’s statements over the past week were made in the context of the upcoming African Union peer review of South Africa and civil society’s push for greater representation on the panel that will review the state of governance in the country. The views expressed by Mbeki reiterate government’s ambivalent line on NGOs, particularly on matters related to contested development strategy and NGOs’ oversight role."

On October 26, South African Civil Society Organisations held a caucus to support their government’s position on trade and to make their policy demands. At a meeting that included the South African GCAP arm, SANGOCO, church organizations, and labour movements, and well-known GCAP personalities Chien Yen and Hellen Wangusa, the CSOs stated their demands on Agriculture, Non Agricultural Market Access (NAMA), Services, and Development. They demanded that their government must ensure that development policy drives trade policy and not vice versa.

The HIV/AIDS programme initiated by Medicins sans Frontieres in Lusikisiki is well on its way to reaching everyone in the sub-district that needs treatment. Lusikisiki, a tiny town in the Eastern Cape, has just celebrated enrolling over 1100 AIDS patients on antiretroviral treatment thus becoming the biggest rural treatment programme in the country. “The majority of people in South Africa can’t spell Lusikisiki. They just know that it is in the bhundu. If we can achieve this here, the whole country can achieve even more. Let us be a light for others by saving our own lives,” Dr TC Thomas, superintendent of the local St Elizabeth Hospital, told the 2000-strong crowd gathered in the town on Friday (28 October).

Agenda is a feminist media project based in Durban that is committed to giving women a forum, a voice and skills to articulate their needs and interests towards transforming unequal gender relations. In order to meet our vision, we offer an annual internship programme with the aim of contributing towards a pool of gender-sensitive and gender-aware writers, who will practice the skills acquired at Agenda in the mainstream media and other environments.

South African opposition leader Tony Leon has called for an inquiry into allegations made in the UN report on the Iraq oil-for-food programme. The report suggests that four South African companies may have been among 2,200 firms worldwide that paid money to Saddam Hussein's government. At least two of the companies are linked to the governing ANC party.

The Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT) is pleased to announce the launch of a new Internet portal for and about the NGO sector in South Africa. This portal is primed to become the gateway to the South African NGO sector, boasting the most comprehensive, validated and easily searchable NGO directory in the country, containing information about more than 2 500 organisations. This directory is augmented by wide ranging and diverse information for and about the NGO sector, including general news, press releases, campaigns, vacancies, event calendars, case studies, toolkits and research reports.

The African National Congress needs to find a "far more dignified" way of dealing with the succession issue, business magnate and former party heavyweight Tokyo Sexwale said October 23. "What we are seeing with the [Jacob] Zuma/Thabo Mbeki debacle is less than dignified," he told an Institute for Justice and Reconciliation symposium in Cape Town. "I think we can do better. Beware also the law of unintended consequences. Things may just snap." He said he thinks the ANC needs to give better guidance to the nation about its transition and succession policies.

Exposing learners to a wide range of prospective careers in science at primary school level could help increase interest in science studies while empowering the youth to help the country deal with modern technological developments. This was a shared sentiment of delegates attending the Youth into Science Strategy (YSS) National Consultative Conference which ended in South Africa on 27 October. The conference was attended by representatives from sectors such as science councils and centres, government departments, non-governmental organisations and institutions of higher learning, among others. They spent two days exploring ways to rekindle young people's interest in the fields of maths and science.