In South Africa, if you are poor your right to justice through the legal system is often denied. If you don't have money for lawyers its hard to get justice. Therefore, the law is for the rich because they have ample money to buy 'justice'. Landlords who have money can afford to try and evict people continuously by accessing the courts and paying the best lawyers to throw people out of their houses. In South Africa, communities don't have money to continuously go to court to fight for, what should be, their basic rights. In the legal system, you are discriminated against if you are poor.

While shelters are bursting at the seams with children in need of care, bureaucracy, by children’s institutions, is hindering many homosexual parents from giving love to those who need it most. The present economic climate has, according to child adoption agencies, also seen a drop in the number of applicants wanting to adopt, as people are uncertain about the future.

The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign decided at its provincial meeting to take up the case of the deceased one year old, Unabantu Mali, who died on her grandmothers back last week after being turned away from three clinics in Nyanga, Gugulethu and KTC. Unabantu's grandmother walked from Nyanga East to Gugulethu to KTC, barefoot, seeking help for Unabantu and being rejected at each clinic. She had no money to get to Red Cross hospital.

This week a group of South African non-governmental organisations filed papers in the Pretoria High Court to prevent President Kgalema Motlanthe from granting pardons to prisoners serving sentences for apartheid-era political crimes. These individuals were all found guilty and sentenced by a court of law, and did not apply for amnesty before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Now the government wants to give those who thumbed their noses at the TRC, or failed to qualify for amnesty, a second chance in what is presented as an attempt to deal with the TRC's unfinished business.

AIDS activists in South Africa appear to have won the final round of a protracted battle to prevent vitamin salesman Matthias Rath from promoting his unproven remedies to patients living with HIV and AIDS. Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an AIDS lobby group, reported on Monday that Rath had failed to file court papers in time to uphold his appeal against a High Court order issued in June 2008, banning him from publishing further advertisements claiming that VitaCell, his multivitamin product, cured AIDS, or from continuing clinical trials of the product in the treatment of HIV/AIDS.

We, the Delft Symphony Residents received an application of eviction from the City of Cape Town. We must appear in the High Court on the 20th of March of 2009 at 10h00. On the 9th of March of 2009 we went to advocates in town, Cliffe, Dekke, Hofmeyr, Number 11, Buitengracht Street, Cape Town, and to the Cape High Court to hand in our notice of intention to defend.

Telecoms operator Neotel has become the anchor tenant on the Seacom cable, poised to deliver vast quantities of cheaper bandwidth to SA through a deal struck by its parent company, Tata Communications. Tata, which owns 56% of Neotel, has signed up as the undersea cable’s first big customer, and has struck another deal to actually manage the cable, its billing systems and customer relations on behalf of Seacom.

Indian vehicle manufacturer Mahindra and Mahindra has increased its stake in the joint venture with its South African partner to 90 percent from 51 percent, and invested a further 30 million rands ($3 million) in the country’s automotive business. Mahindra South Africa, which launched its new multipurpose vehicle Xylo here last week, also expressed confidence in the South African auto market, though other manufacturers reported record drops in sales in the wake of the global economic downturn.

A repeat of the xenophobic violence that swept through South Africa - killing at least 62 people and displacing 100,000 others - will return if the government continues to ignore its origins, says a report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has resolved to represent the case against John Qwelane in the Equality Court. This is subsequent to Qwelane’s July 2008 column which infuriated many gay rights groups where he expressed his sheer hatred of homosexuals saying, among other things, that they are a degradation of values and traditions.

Gangs of South African men are raping lesbians in the belief it will "cure" the women's sexual orientation, an aid agency said on Friday. NGO ActionAid said in a report titled "Hate Crimes: the rise of corrective rape in South Africa" lesbians were increasingly at risk of rape, particularly in South African townships where homosexuality is largely taboo.

The South African government took over a farm this week for the first time under a controversial new policy of taking back unproductive farms allocated to blacks as part of a land redistribution programme. Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana announced the "use it or lose it" initiative last week for farms which the black beneficiaries have left idle.

One thing that almost everyone across the political spectrum can agree on is that land reform in South Africa is in crisis. The pace of transfer is consistently slower than planned for, and much redistributed land is not being used productively. Government policies favour land redistribution, but land use models are not so clearly defined. In the absence of creative thinking about how land can be used, government has defaulted to a position that commercial agriculture is the only viable use for rural land.

History groans with the suffering caused by authoritarian individuals and regimes that were elected to power. For this reason the only useful measure of the commitment of any political project to democracy is to see how it responds to challenges to its own position and ideas.

The South African Coalition for the International Criminal Court (SACICC) was established in 2000 as a collective of volunteers who came together to promote ratification and implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in South Africa. Since South Africa enacted implementation legislation in 2002, SACICC has remained largely inactive. However, there is a growing need for expansion of ratification and particularly implementation within SADC. SACICC has been re-activated and is looking for a Pro Bono Director to lead the way.

The decolonisation of Africa from the 1950s saw the irruption on the world stage of multiple, new nation-states. Between 1951 (Libyan independence) and 1994 (the end of apartheid in South Africa), 50 states emerged. Most dramatic were the months between January 1960 and November of the same year. In eleven months, 17 new states. By the end of 1962, France's African Empire was in tatters.

Helen Zille and the City of Cape Town need to stop trying to score cheap political/elections propaganda points and be honest with the people of Cape Town (see press statement of City of Cape Town below). The so-called ‘water management devices’ are simply pre-paid meters in drag. Like the pre-paid meters which have been declared unconstitutional and illegal by the Johannesburg High Court, these devices dispense the 6000 ‘free’ litres per month/per household and then automatically cut off.

The Radical Youth Network (RYN), along with the Anti Privatisation Forum (APF) strongly condemns the killing of Teboho “Diventsha” Tsotetsi by members of the Sebokeng Community Policing Forum (CPF). It is not the first time the community of Zone 20 in Sebokeng has experienced attacks from the people they claim to be protecting them. Sebokeng Police station has become a haven for thugs and gangsters!

Comrades, as the Landless People's Movement, we were arrested on Sunday 1st March and put in custody and freed on bail of R500 each. We were eight. Our names are Maureen Mnisi, Maas van Wyk, Ivy Seno, Elsie Mkhuma, Shelia Masenodi, Gasa Radebe, Michael Dlamini and Chester Maluleka. One of us is under age (16 years). The case is remanded to the 25th of March. We appreciate your support, even on the 25th

The Newfields Village community has once again been left in limbo by the Cape Town community housing company (CTCHC) which has stopped repairs to the defective Hanover Park houses, claiming it has no more money. We are baffled by this because even though the city sold off its shares in CTCHC last year, it is still a public entity now owned by the National Housing Finance Corporation which falls under department of housing.