The African National Congress, South African Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) could be in trouble for displaying racist placards at the court appearance of four men accused of feeding a former employee, Nelson Shisane, to lions. Outside the Phalaborwa magistrate's court in Limpopo province, they displayed printed posters proclaiming "Enough is enough - Kill the farmer, kill the boer"; "Tired with boers"; "Fed up with killer-boers"; and "Castrate boers". The South African Human Rights Commission last year declared the liberation slogan "Kill the boer, kill the farmer" to be hate speech.

About 300 youth delegates are converging in Benoni, far east of Johannesburg, for the Second National Conference on Youth Development at Local Government Level. Youth development workers, municipal youth managers and leaders of the broader youth sector are attending the three-day conference. The conference is part of the bilateral relationship between South Africa and Flanders and is hosted by the National Youth Commission (NYC) and the South African Youth Council (SAYC).

Thousands of preschool children across the Peninsula are set to go hungry - because their creches have been deemed sub-standard, and from the end of March food subsidies will be stopped. "It's a nightmare. We have about 40 little ones who get breakfast and lunch here every day, and that's the only food they get," said an outraged Christo van Rooyen who manages the finances of Jack and Jill creche in Ocean View. They were presented with a list of essential repairs by the department of social services to secure their food grant, but the criteria have proved impossible to fulfil.

A new book criticising government land reform threatens to strain relations between the government, farmers and agricultural unions, the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs said last Thursday. "In fact if this book gets out into the general populace I can see racial outbreaks developing between blacks and whites," said chief land claims commissioner Tozi Gwanya. At the launch of the book, The Great South African Land Scandal, in Pretoria last Thursday, publisher Philip du Toit said he hoped it would "inform the broader public about the slow cancer infecting commercial agriculture in South Africa". The book claims that recent amendments to the 1994 Restitution of Land Rights Act paved the way for the land affairs minister to "expropriate land at will".

The e-Government Gateway portal will be made available through the existing government web site (www.gov.za), building on the familiarity that South Africans already have with government information.

The proposed Certificate of Need (CoN) for doctors, which they claim intrudes on their right to freedom of movement, will remain. This was the word from Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang when she briefed the media on Monday as part of the government's social development and health cluster. "The government will move on the CoN framework to achieve our goals in terms of the constitution," the minister said. "The CoN will remain. It is intended to transform the healthcare sector in South Africa."

The announcement, Monday, that South Africa will go to the polls on April 14 for its third democratic election has opened the way for political parties to start campaigning in earnest. But, analysts are already predicting that the ruling African National Congress will be returned to power with a sweeping majority. "Voter support for the African National Congress (ANC) is stable, as evidenced in the 1994 and 1999 general elections, as well as from recent opinion polls,” said Tom Lodge, a political science lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

In an astonishing about-turn, embattled Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has denied outright she gave any commitment to the start of a national anti-retroviral roll-out. The shock announcement is sure to send Aids activists, the health profession and those affected by the virus into a tailspin. The minister and Nono Simelela, head of the government's HIV and Aids programme, laid out the planned roll-out in substantial detail last November. But now she says it will start when "everything is ready".

In the first case heard since the Equality Court was set up last year, the owners of the club Sliver in Green Point acknowledged that racial discrimination lay behind the assault on a coloured man and his white partner after being refused entry to the gay club. After being refused an apology from the club or a change in its policy, the couple, from Bantry Bay, approached the South African Human Rights Commission last month and a complaint, one of the first, was lodged with the Equality Court.

An inquiry into racism in South African rugby will be set up by the end of February, sports minister Ngconde Balfour said. Late last year the South African Rugby Football Union (SARFU) cancelled a commission that was to have begun an inquiry into alleged racism in Springbok rugby. This was after reports that a white player had refused to share a room with a mixed race team-mate. Balfour said SARFU had asked the sports ministry to conduct the inquiry into the sport nationally.

The Municipal Services Project (MSP) is looking for an experienced Project Coordinator to manage research and administrative activities in the project. This is a two-year contract position from March 2004 to March 2006 with the possibility of a one-year extension. The Coordinator will be based in Cape Town at the International Labour Research and Information Group Trust (ILRIG) offices, affiliated with the University of Cape Town.

Ten years after apartheid ended, racism still overshadows South Africa, but glimmers of a more equal "rainbow nation" are breaking through. "We need to recognise the profound impact that racism has had on our society, materially, spiritually, psychologically or morally," President Thabo Mbeki said recently. "We need to recognise that many South Africans are still hurt and still feel the pain and the consequences."

South African President Thabo Mbeki's attitude towards HIV and Aids is once again under scrutiny. He claims: "I don't know anyone who has died of Aids." So why does it continue to dominate the problems facing the South African people? People don't actually die of Aids. What kills them tends to be the so-called "opportunist" diseases that thrive because of the damage that the Aids virus, HIV, causes to the body's defence system; infections like TB, pneumonia, and even influenza. So President Mbeki's statement that he does not know anyone who has died of Aids is technically correct. But it is a bit disingenuous, and Aids campaigners say such remarks are profoundly unhelpful.

Game parks often have an aura of elitism. Those who frequent them generally need money to buy the equipment that allows the wilderness to be enjoyed in comfort - and a stable job so that they can take the time off to do so. This is particularly true of St Lucia in South Africa, long a playground for those with four-wheel-drive vehicles, fishing boats and diving gear. But ever since the area was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999 - and 260,000 hectares of forest, military land and scattered game farms joined to create the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park - playtime in the area has been severely curtailed.

ActionAid International is relocating its headquarters from London to South Africa. Brendan Gormley, Chief Executive of the Disasters Emergency Committee "believes the ActionAid International model is the future" as the organisation strives to transform itself into an organisation made up of equal partners from the developed and developing world.Senior staff members will relocate to Pretoria whilst the fundraising staff, long-term aid and disaster relief programmes will be administered from the UK.

After six years of growing Genetically Modified (GM) crops for animal and human consumption in South Africa without proper public knowledge and consent, the Department of Health (DOH) recently published its belated labelling regulations for GM foodstuffs. "These regulations do not require that GM foodstuff be labelled and effectively defeat the very purpose for labelling of any sort, namely to give the consumer the right to choose. They are totally unacceptable in that they don't require mandatory labelling of any of the major GM crops currently grown in South Africa. The Department of Health has cunningly provided industry with a way out of mandatory labelling by invoking the discredited and scientifically flawed concept of 'substantial equivalence'," said Andrew Taynton of the Safe Food Coalition.

The Natal Witness reports that South Africa is set to receive an initial US$40mn grant from the United States to fight the spread of HIV/Aids in 2004. The US Embassy in Pretoria will be responsible for the administration of the funds and has already identified worthy projects in consultation with NPOs and government.According to the US ambassador to South Africa, Cameron Hume, the grant allocated to South Africa is not enough to combat the Aids scourge but is a step in the right direction.

The UK-based Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) - a long-standing donor to South African development projects - initiated a consultative review of its South African grantmaking programme in 2002. The review has now been concluded and the Trust has announced some important changes.From 2004, the JRCT only considers applications for projects in KwaZulu-Natal, and primarily in the rural areas of the province.

President Thabo Mbeki wrapped up a tour of the opposition stronghold of KwaZulu-Natal on Saturday by warning that any violence around South Africa's coming elections would be stamped out. Fighting between activists from Mbeki's African National Congress (ANC) and the province's dominant Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) killed 20,000 people in the 1980s, and after a decade of relative calm, tensions have risen since election campaigning began this month.

The Human Rights Commission had recommended that Parliament consider amending the Promotion of Access to Information Act to make dispute resolution in terms of the act accessible and affordable, commissioner Leon Wessels has said. He said at an international conference that the amendment should also allow the commission to take actions to court and mediate where necessary, giving it the same powers it has in terms of the Promotion of Equality and the Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act.