South Africa's national blood service is to meet to discuss whether to stop treating blood donated by black people as high risk. The health minister has already said this should stop, after it emerged that President Thabo Mbeki's blood was destroyed because he was black. He did not fill in a questionnaire and because he was considered high risk, his blood was burnt.

"HIV is just a virus...If we change our attitudes, HIV will die. It will have no space and capacity to spread," says Musa Njoko, a young South African woman who has been living with the virus for the past decade. Njoko, a singer, has devoted herself to helping people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Along with about 200 other AIDS activists, Njoko attended the launch of the 'Mutapola Campaign' in Pretoria.

The recent aspersions cast on prominent leaders of our movement like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi reveal the inability of our movement to accept criticism and constructively engage with dissenting views, writes Cosatu's Tony Ehrenreich. "In many respects it is enlightening that differences within the tripartite alliance are made public, because it is in this way that the many members of the alliance are able to evaluate for themselves what lies behind the disfunctioning of the alliance."

Should a national athletic team or a rugby team have racial quotas to reflect the nation's racial composition? Political activists in South Africa are launching protests when a sports team becomes "too white", causing the white-dominated opposition to talk about a "race obsession" among certain ruling party members.

The government’s land reform programme requires big spending, close to R2-billion a year. But the total budget for the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs was less than R2-billion this year. A massive R13-billion is needed next year to meet President Thabo Mbeki’s restitution deadline at the end of next year, where land or cash compensation is given to communities dispossessed during the apartheid years.

In 2000 a South African government committee recommended the introduction of a basic income grant (BIG), consisting of a grant of R100 per month for every South African citizen, regardless of age or income level. The idea of basic income emerged as a response to the crisis of welfare states, and yet was relevant to South Africa even though it has never been a welfare state, because the problem of mass structural unemployment it faces has some similarity to the structural problems in Northern welfare states. Extreme poverty and inequality, insufficient administrative capacity, and the existence of a relatively well-developed social assistance system further accelerated demand for the BIG, making South Africa one of the first countries in the world to consider it as a policy alternative This paper produced by the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) attempts to explain the dynamics of the political process that led to the BIG being raised to the level of a 'policy alternative', that is, an option being seriously considered for government action; and explores the eventual consequences of the campaign for a BIG to be introduced.

A New York court has thrown out legal cases against more than 30 companies, accused of having illegally aided the apartheid-era South African Government. The class-action lawsuits targeted firms including computer giant IBM and banking giant Citigroup. According to the plaintiffs, groups and individuals who suffered under apartheid, the companies supplied oil, money and technology to South Africa.

Environmental group Earthlife Africa will go to court on Monday as part of the group's legal battle against power utility Eskom's proposed pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR), with the court case aimed at upholding South Africa's environmental rights, Earthlife said in a statement. The Legal Resources Centre will be representing Earthlife Africa in the case. The authorisation of Eskom's proposed PBMR will come under judicial scrutiny on November 29, 2004 and November 30, 2004 when a full bench of the Cape Town High Court considers whether the authorisation of the plant given on 25 June, 2003 was unlawful.

The MDG Campaign Manager will be responsible for all staff, interns and volunteers who are part of the MDG Department, as well as the management of external consultants and services. The incumbent will be required to operate to tight deadlines using independent judgement within clear parameters and to develop and implement department work plans and objectives.

Reporting directly to the Communications Manager, and working closely with other CIVICUS departments, the Membership Coordinator is responsible for refining and implementing an effective membership strategy and plan aimed at building CIVICUS membership and citizen participation worldwide. This is a one year fixed-term position, with the possibility of extension.

Visit the Women's Net website for a listing of events taking place around the country over the period of the 16 days. The contact details of the institutions hosting the events are included and there are also contact details for you to have your event listed.

Former Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu was a thorn in the flesh of successive apartheid regimes in South Africa until the demise of white rule in 1994. Now, with apartheid gone, Tutu is directing his desire for social justice elsewhere. "We were involved in the struggle (against apartheid) because we believed we would evolve a new kind of society: a caring, a compassionate society. At the moment many, too many, of our people live in gruelling, demeaning and dehumanising poverty. We are sitting on a powder keg," Tutu said this week. More than 40 percent of South Africans, most of them black, live below the poverty line of a dollar a day according to Statistics South Africa, a government agency.

Still catching their breath after the introduction of tough dispensing rules, community pharmacies in small towns have been dealt a further blow as the health department issues thousands of dispensing licences to health practitioners. Taki Kyriacos is packing it in. After 26 years as the only pharmacist in the small Eastern Cape farming community of Stutterheim, Kyriacos says he can no longer make a living. He primarily blames Government moves to hand out dispensing licences to any doctor or health practitioner who applies for one for the situation that now challenges his very existence.

Reporting directly to the Secretary General and providing administrative and office management assistance for the CIVICUS Secretariat, the incumbent will be responsible for organising day-to-day correspondence; serve as liaison to the Board, other CIVICUS staff and the public; ensure continuity and consistency in representations to various audiences by working especially closely with the offices of Programmes, Finance, Communications and others; and assist with the Secretary General’s internal oversight and co-ordination activities.

Hundreds of people from a diversity of backgrounds came together this week to protest the installation of pre-paid water meters in Soweto and other townships. The march was organized by the coalition Organizations Against Prepaid Water that included amongst others the Anti-Privatisation Forum, the Community Independent Development Forum, Independent Baptists, Jubilee, SOPA, PAC, the Coalition Against Water Privatisation and taxi associations. Gathering at Mary Fitzgerald Square, itself an emblem of the Johannesburg Development Agency’s neoliberal city restructuring, the protestors made their way to the Civic Centre to deliver a memorandum to Mayor Amos Masondo. The memorandum listed a host of grievances about pre-paid meters, most importantly the fact that pre-paid meters allow Johannesburg Water (JW), and companies like it, to implement the harshest form of “cost recovery” – automatic self-disconnection.

Businessman Schabir Shaik's payments to Deputy President Jacob Zuma were nothing less than bribery, and he used fabrications in the financial statements of the Nkobi group of companies to hide them, a former Nkobi employee told the Durban High Court this week. Former Nkobi financial manager Celia Bester took the stand, giving the first insider's view of the way the Nkobi group's finances were handled.

Racial segregation and the unfair treatment of black ministers are still causing deep concern in South African churches. This is the main conclusion drawn from research outlined in a booklet, Transcending Racism in Church and Community, that was launched in Johannesburg recently. Bishop Purity Malinga, head of the KwaZulu-Natal and Coastal District of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa said churches should consider providing interaction and racism workshops to address the matter.

New estimates of poverty show that the proportion of people living in poverty in South Africa has not changed significantly between 1996 and 2001. However, those households living in poverty have sunk deeper into poverty and the gap between rich and poor has widened. The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in collaboration with Mr Andrew Whiteford, a South African economist, has generated these estimates.

Labourers from the fertile farms of South Africa's northernmost province regularly bring their grievances to a modest office in Musina's Nancefield township, just south of the Zimbabwe border. John Mashaba and Dorah Ncupe, officials in the Legal Advice Centre, listen to workers' accounts - in the hope of eventually mediating solutions with employers. Most labourers tell of abuse by farm owners - from physical violence to illegal evictions. But behind every laborer's dispute is a single issue: land.

The current face-offs between the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the African National Congress over Zimbabwe and the recent Telkom share deal are symptomatic of unresolved tensions over key policy issues in the tripartite alliance. Although the open war of words is nothing new in their 13-year formal relationship, it comes at a crucial time with the three partners ironically more agreed on economic policy than previously.