Nelson Mandela delivered his first speech there after leaving prison. The square has also been the scene of anti-apartheid protests and military parades. This coming week (beginning September 30), however, Cape Town's Grand Parade will be a venue for something entirely different: street soccer matches played during the 2006 Homeless World Cup (HWC).

People's Health Movement, South Africa, invites you to participate in a global campaign for the right to health. The organizations involved in various stages of drafting and reviewing it to date included SAMWU, NEHAWU, the Domestic Workers' Union, the Media Training Centre, the SA Council of Churches, Treatment Action Campaign, the Black Sash, the Children’s Resource Centre and the People's Health Movement [SA].

Race remains our national obsession — even when we talk of it in code. And so issues which clearly reflect our racial divides are more likely to be seen by all of us, and to command our attention: witness last week’s dispute about company employment equity reports.

A leading AIDS activist caused a stir by demanding the South African health minister's removal in the presence of the deputy president at a conference on Tuesday. Our government has failed us. We must speak the truth. We are willing to work with you [the government] anytime; you have ignored our letters; you have not spoken to us, but we are ready to talk," Zackie Achmat, leader of the AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) told Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at a conference of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) outside Johannesburg.

Patents and copyright laws are major stumbling blocks to breaking the market dominance of expensive, proprietary software, Meraka Institute's Bob Joliffe told Highway Africa delegates in Grahamstown. Jolliffe, who was presenting a paper at the Highway Africa conference, said countries like South Africa have developed a lot of software in different areas using open source, but have been prevented from making further improvements because of copyright laws.

Conservative MPs are on a collision course with a Constitutional Court ruling granting same-sex unions the same rights as traditional marriages. This time they are up in arms over a homosexual couple being able to adopt a “girl child”. For the second time in as many weeks MPs have objected to the Civil Union Bill, which has now been officially introduced to Parliament.

The Cape Town Anti-War Coalition firstly calls on the SA Department of Trade and Industry to explain why its website says it is supplying helicopter and aeroplane parts to Israel, while Cabinet ministers keep claiming that there is no weapons trade with Israel.

Dear Madam, Open Letter to the Minister of Justice on xenophobic attacks against Somali and other Refugees Dear Minister, We are making this an open letter not to insult your powerful and respectable office; we are making it an open letter because we know that the content of this letter will benefit many Africans that come across it.

The second Gender and Media summit closed in Johannesburg Friday (September 9) with a call for greater media diversity in all areas - ownership, content and audiences. Held under the theme "Media Diversity: Good for Democracy, good for business" the summit highlighted a number of ways in which the media is failing in one of its core functions - giving voice to the voiceless.

Government is to donate R3 million to a mathematics institute aimed at recruiting African students for training in research and teaching careers.The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is to be funded to the tune of R3 million in the current year by the Department of Education, Minister Naledi Pandor announced in Muizenberg, Wednesday (September 14).

DAWN will hold its third feminist advocacy training programme, the DAWN Training Institute (DTI) in November 2007. It will be a three-week intensive training programme. The date and venue will be announced later. The training programmes are designed for young feminist activists from the South who are engaged in, or have strong interest in, global advocacy work for social and gender justice.

The South African NGO sector is gathering momentum to petition the South African government to adopt free and open source software. The petition, to be sent to Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, the minister of public service and administration, calls on government to reduce the country's dependence on software imports.

The South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef) is planning public protests to stop the controversial Film and Publications Amendment Bill from going ahead. "It's the bill that should be banned, not the media," said Sanef chairperson Ferial Haffajee in a statement released after the organisation met in Grahamstown.

The extremely virulent form of tuberculosis that killed 52 out of 53 people at a hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, is just the "tip of the iceberg" in southern Africa, scientists have warned. What makes this strain of TB so lethal is that unlike normal TB, XDR TB can infect even the healthiest of people. But healthy people are more likely to be able to fight off the disease, while those who have compromised immune systems, will die within a month.

Highway Africa is an annual ICT conference hosted by Rhodes University which is situated in Grahamstown, South Africa. Each year, more than 500 delegates from across the globe attend the conference to discuss issues relating to Internet governance, ICT policy and media for democracy.

Thirty poets from thirteen countries will descend on Johannesburg and Durban for a groundbreaking experience of words and rhythms at the 10th Poetry Africa international poetry festival in early October.The festival showcases a diversity of poetic styles that bring together the traditional and the cutting edge.

7th September 2006 -- 2:30pm Sexual Offences Bill altered just days before finalisation Yesterday, the Justice Portfolio Committee added a new provision to the Sexual Offences Bill effectively aimed at criminalising the clients of sex workers.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) has condemned bodyguards' destruction of media photographs of President Thabo Mbeki entering a Pretoria Medi-Clinic. This amounted to "gross censorship unacceptable under South Africa's Constitution", Misa-South Africa's chairperson Raymond Louw said.

The political hurricane blasting ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma towards the presidency of the party and the country has dramatically intensified. To the roaring, chanting approval of more than a thousand delegates at the congress of SA's biggest teaching union, Zuma launched a fierce attack on key policies of President Thabo Mbeki, whom he accuses of leading a political conspiracy against him.

Africa’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturer has five times as many South African patients using its anti-retroviral (ARV) products as it had just more than a year ago. Despite the Department of Health only procuring R83-million-worth of ARVs from Aspen in those 16 months, company CEO Stephen Saad says it has seen the number of South African patients using its ARVs grow from 20 000 a year ago to 100 000, a 500% increase.