The South African government's neglect of schools on commercial farms prevents thousands of rural children from receiving an adequate education, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. Farm schools provide the only educational opportunity for farm workers’ children in South Africa. The 59-page report, "Forgotten Schools: Right to Basic Education for Children on Farms in South Africa," found that the government's failure to negotiate contracts with farm owners impedes children’s right to basic education. In the worst cases, farm owners have deliberately obstructed children's access to the schools.

Activists have expressed outrage at South Africa's decision to stop a roll-out of anti-Aids drugs for children. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) accused the authorities of putting people's lives at risk. The health department is advising hospitals not to enrol new children on the programme in case there are not enough drugs for them to continue.

The holiday of an Indian politician and his family has turned into a nightmare, after a South African Airways official allegedly accused them of buying their passports. They claimed the SAA official was racist after she accused them of buying their passports, and refused to listen to the advice of an immigration official at the airport who said the passports were in order. However, SAA's corporate communications manager, Rich Mkhondo, denied the allegations.

The public quarrel between public protector Lawrence Mushwana, National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka and former justice minister Penuell Maduna will test the ability of the African National Congress (ANC) to handle disputes that threaten to split the party, experts say. A war of words broke out between the three men following the release of Mushwana's report last week, which was critical of the way Ngcuka handled the allegations of corruption against Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

Health officials at district level in northwestern South Africa have been put on "red alert" to prevent the spread of polio from neighbouring Botswana, a government spokesperson told IRIN. Southern Africa recorded its first case of polio in more than a decade when the disease was reported in Botswana earlier this year.

The Ceasefire Campaign is seeking a Project and Communications Officer. The ideal candidate should have a tertiary qualification as well as some experience in project management and communication.

The average worker needs to work for 111 years to earn what an executive director receives for one year, according to the latest report from the Labour Research Service, a Cape Town-based think-tank. The average executive director's pay of R2.7 million a year "remains excessive when compared with the average minimum wage of R24 000 a year paid to workers", the report says.

The South African government is failing to disburse grant money from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to organisations combating the disease "on the ground," Global Fund Executive Director Richard Feachem said this week, adding that the fund may withdraw the country's money as a result, Reuters reports. Speaking to the South African media, Feachem said, "It's intolerable that the money gets stuck in Pretoria and if Pretoria can't move it for any reason, we will simply withdraw it and establish direct relationships with the people actually doing the work."

The 70 suspected mercenaries arrested in Zimbabwe on charges of conspiring to topple the president of Equatorial Guinea are taking the South African government to court, a lawyer told IRIN on Wednesday. "We have filed an application at the Pretoria High Court following the failure of the office of the [South African] president [Thabo Mbeki] to respond to our request, sent to him on Monday, to either extradite the men to South Africa or ensure they are not handed over to the authorities in Equatorial Guinea," lawyer Alwyn Griebenow said.

Economic analysts have hailed the launching of the JSE's Socially Responsible Investment Index, saying it will bring about an exciting era of corporate responsibility. The index will rate companies on how their operations will affect the country socio-economically and environmentally. Sean de Cleene, a director of the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship, says the index will demand that companies adopt a more holistic and integrated approach to sustainable development.

Intelligent Management Strategies (IMS) extends an invitation to attend an International Conference on Corporate Citizenship and Social Responsibility to be held at the Inter-Continental Sandton Sun and Towers, Sandton, Johannesburg.

The event is entitled "Transform our Communities."

Topics for discussion include:

- Economic development and upliftment;
- Structuring investment;
- Making Corporate Social Investment (CSI) an invested interest; and
- Legal and empowerment issues around CSI.

The South African Aids Vaccine Initiative (Saavi) has confirmed that Impala Platinum Holdings has committed R2,5mn over five years while Transnet donated R1,5mn towards their HIV/Aids vaccine research, reports the Mail and Guardian. Saavi, indicating that the funds will be used to cover research to develop new test vaccines and run clinical tests, welcomed the funding and encouraged more support and partnerships of this nature.

Naledi Pandor, the education minister, says gender inequality in education should be addressed as a matter of urgency. Pandor was speaking at a gender equity conference in Gordons Bay, near Cape Town. She said there were disparities in the provision of education and the appointment of female managers within the education department in the country.

A year from now, according to Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the minister of health, South Africans should be paying nearly 33 percent less, on average, for generic and brand-name products. But dispensing doctors, whose revenue will drop by an estimated R503-million once the new medicine pricing regulations are in place, are likely to increase their consultation fees to compensate for their losses. Hospitals too, whose biggest cash cows are medicines, could increase theatre costs to reduce their losses.

Hate crimes against lesbians are on the increase, mainly in areas such as Soweto and Alexandra, the chief executive officer of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women has said. Speaking at the ninth international conference of the South African Association of Marital and Family Therapy at the International Convention Centre on Tuesday, Donna Smith said the hate crimes ranged from murder, assault and abduction to rape and other humiliating forms of sexual abuse.

Parliament's mixture of new and long-term MPs were on Friday advised that the tough new anti-corruption bill passed earlier this year applied to them as well - and they could not use their parliamentary privilege to malign anyone outside parliament itself. Anton Meyer, parliament's chief legal adviser, was taking the MPs through the rules and regulations that affect them as office bearers as much as they do ordinary members of the public. The new Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, passed by the previous parliament before the April elections, applied to all South Africans and indicated that government was "very, very serious" about rooting out corruption at all levels of society, Meyer said.

When the African National Congress took power from the white apartheid government in 1994, it placed land reform at the top of its political agenda and launched an ambitious programme of land restitution, redistribution and security of tenure for farm workers. The restitution programme aimed to address wrongs that dated back to the 1913 Land Act, under which whites were allotted 87 percent of South Africa's land - while the majority blacks were crammed into the remaining 13 percent. According to government officials, some three million hectares have been transferred to 700,000 black households and individuals since the advent of democracy in 1994. This includes land transferred through restitution, redistribution and the allocation of state property, says the Department of Land Affairs.

About 77 percent of young South Africans infected with HIV are women and 62 percent of them had believed they had a small or no chance of contracting the virus. The new figure tallies with a growing worldwide trend showing a far higher incidence of HIV infection among women than men. The figures were the highest authoritative results that local researchers have seen.

The Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, is looking for a qualified and motivated person to be its new director. The FMSP is an interdisciplinary research and graduate teaching unit, to be based in the School of Social Sciences, dedicated to exploring and publicising the experiences of people displaced from their homes due to poverty, violence or persecution.

The land-redistribution programme is stagnating, with government managing to transfer only one-tenth of the 30% of land earmarked for emerging black farmers over the past six years. Government's failure to fast- track redistribution is highlighted in recent research reports, suggesting that at the current rate it will take 80 years for Land Affairs and Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza to reach the 30% target. Didiza's department on Friday acknowledged "lack of progress", blaming "bottlenecks in government's bureaucracy, rocketing prices of farmland and budgetary constraints".