The UN refugee agency is reaching out to some 13,000 Angolans living in South Africa, many of whom are highly educated, to offer help for them to return home, a spokeswoman said Monday. Contrary to other countries in the region where hundreds of thousands of Angolans took refuge during the 27-year civil war, South Africa does not have refugee camps for the Angolans, most of whom live in Cape Town, said Melita Sunjic, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Education Minister Naledi Pandor will this month lead a South African delegation to a Commonwealth meeting in Britain, where a set of protocols to guide the process of recruiting teachers is to be finalised. The meeting would focus on ways of stemming the flow of teachers from poorer to richer nations, said Pandor after her second Council of Education Minister's meeting in Pretoria.

The fight against HIV/Aids in South Africa will receive a major boost when a European Union (EU) body will donate R4,2 bn to the Medical Research Council (MRC), reports the IOL. A spokesperson from the MRC indicated that the funding from the European Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (ECDTP) will be used 'to conduct trials.'

The first Software Freedom Day will be held in South Africa on August 28th. Linux user groups, companies, organisations and individuals from around South Africa will get together to celebrate free and open source software in numerous events to be held throughout the country. The day aims to increase awareness about free software and it is hoped it will become an annual event.

South Africa has about 1.5 million fewer HIV-positive people than UNAIDS reported earlier this month, according to a new report released Wednesday by the country's governmental statistics agency Stats SA, Reuters reports. According to Stats SA's mid-year statistical report, there are about 3.8 million HIV-positive people in South Africa, and approximately 1.5 million people have died from AIDS-related causes.

The health of the nation is characterised by a quadruple burden of disease, with the impact of HIV/AIDS adding to the combination of a high injury burden, conditions related to underdevelopment and chronic diseases. Per capita spending at district level on Primary Health Care (PHC) ranges from R389 in richer districts to R42 in the poorest districts, meaning that many districts are simply not able to afford the PHC package estimated at approximately R220 per capita. Although spending on health in the public sector in 2005/6 is projected to increase by R 8.7 billion in real terms over a decade, much of the funding has been absorbed by HIV/AIDS, medical inflation and relatively higher salaries which has resulted in real expenditure per capita stagnating. These are some of the findings contained in the 9th South African Health Review (SAHR).

The Competition Tribunal is set to reopen an investigation into the pricing practices of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, after announcing that it had agreed to hear the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's (AHF's) complaint against the company over its AIDS drugs prices. Glaxo is the world's largest manufacturer of AIDS drugs, with patents on three of the most widely used antiretroviral medicines

The Lesbian and Gay Equality Project (“the Equality Project”) announced earlier this month that it and eighteen other applicants have filed an application in the Johannesburg High Court challenging the laws that prevent two people of the same sex from entering into a legally recognised marriage. In effect, these laws prohibit lesbian and gay people from exercising the fundamental human right of the freedom to determine a spouse of choice.

Government has unveiled a draft agricultural charter setting out tough empowerment targets including 35% black ownership of agriculture-based companies by 2014. The draft charter also said that 50% of agricultural land, including that held by the state, should be available to black farmers by 2014. The 50% requirement increases government's earlier target of 30% by adding another 20% of prime farmland that must be leased to black people.

South Africa has expanded its experiments with genetically modified potatoes, which will soon be grown in field trials at six secret locations around the country. Anti-GM groups are angry that the field trials are being expanded, as they say the earlier trials were flawed.

An appeal by former African National Congress chief whip, Tony Yengeni, against what he considers to be a 'harsh and severe' four-year jail sentence for fraud was postponed indefinitely on Monday. Yengeni was sentenced in March 2003 after pleading guilty to defrauding parliament by failing to disclose a near 50% discount he received on a luxury 4X4 Mercedes-Benz. He was acquitted of related corruption charges under a plea agreement with the state.

Senior officials from South Africa and Rwanda were due for diplomatic talks in Pretoria this week, centering around co-operation on immigration, refugee and nationality issues. The talks, to be led by South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and her Rwandan counterpart Charles Murigande, are expected to also touch on human trafficking, establishment and the use of movement control systems and management of data.

South Africa's top prosecutor, Bulelani Ngcuka, has asked to resign after his corruption allegations against powerful Deputy President Jacob Zuma sparked a damaging political row within the ruling African National Congress. Ngcuka heads South Africa's Scorpions Unit, which last year investigated Zuma on suspicion of soliciting bribes from a French firm in exchange for contracts in a multi-billion dollar government arms deal. Zuma has denied any wrong-doing and will not be standing trial. In October, Zuma's financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, is to face trial on similar charges.

In the first few months of this year alone more than 1 000 nurses in South Africa have asked that their qualifications be sent abroad because they are considering leaving the country in search of better prospects. According to the SA Nursing Council, from January to May more than 1 000 nurses had asked for a verification of their qualifications to be sent to health agencies abroad.

South Africa will oppose moves by some member countries of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to return to commercial whale hunting, according to Horst Kleinschmidt, deputy director of the Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism. The country will also not support "scientific" whaling, where whales are killed supposedly for scientific research, particularly by Japan.

Scores of residents who were forcibly removed from their land in Pretoria's eastern suburbs and on the West Rand due to the now-repealed Group Areas Act have been compensated by the government. Residents of Eersterus/Riverside, now part of Newlands, and Munsieville and Madubulaville on the West Rand, will share an estimated R36,9-million which has been paid out by the department of land affairs.

Mpumalanga's police commissioner has ordered a top-level investigation into allegations of torture, bribery and corruption within the province's serious and violent crimes unit. The investigation started last week amid allegations of apartheid-era torture methods used by members of the unit against detainees at police cells in Witbank and Middelburg. Police officers are also alleged to be running an extortion racket, arbitrarily detaining people with the intention of extracting ransoms.

The Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT) is pleased to announce that it will be organising its first annual "ICTs and Civil Society" conference that is to take place from 2-4 March 2005 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

CAF Southern Africa will be hosting its first conference on Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) on the 28th September 2004 in in Johannesburg. The event will bring together CCI practitioners and non-profit organisations to discuss how time, skills, knowledge and talent can be best used to build meaningful partnerships.

Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla confirmed this week that the ministerial inquiry into the scandal-plagued liquidations industry would solicit submissions on all problems in the sector. This broadening of the investigation's remit is expected to make it the most exhaustive yet into the alleged rampant corruption in the sector and follows a series of arrests last week.