Social media has gone mainstream in South Africa, with both individuals and businesses embracing the available platforms and the average age of users steadily increasing as more people become connected and networks mature. These and other findings were released in a study by Fuseware and World Wide Worx, titled South African Social Media Landscape 2011. Homegrown messaging application MXit and Facebook are the most popular choices of individual internet activity, while Twitter has seen the most growth in the past year.

After sitting in Cape Town at the weekend, where it heard evidence from a range of witnesses, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine declared that Israel was guilty of practising apartheid and called for it to be isolated. The tribunal called on world governments to institute sanctions against it and break off diplomatic ties.

Many refugee Somali parents are not sending their children to South Africa's public schools because they are intimidated by the official processes required to get their children into school and because of the discrimination foreign pupils frequently experienced there. Abdulkadir Khaleif, a representative of the Somali Association of South Africa in the Western Cape, told the Mail & Guardian that the documents schools required before admitting Somali children had often 'been lost because of the war' back home. He was one of about 80 participants at a two-day workshop in Cape Town held by the University of Johannesburg's Centre for Education Rights and Transformation.

Environmental activists on Monday began a protest at the site in Mpumalanga where the Kusile coal-fired power station is being constructed. Greenpeace spokesperson Fiona Musana said the protest started in the early hours of the morning with activists locking the gates of the construction site. Six activists unfurled a giant banner declaring 'Kusile: climate killer' from the top of a crane, then climbed pillars at the site, and planned to spend the night on the pillars, she said.

Activists are calling on South Africa to take the lead in moves for a 'Robin Hood' tax for health. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) have pointed out that as the only African country in the G20, South Africa had a role to play in ensuring that a portion of the FTT went to health and not bailing out banks. The FTT is not another tax on working people, but on financial institutions only – it could cover any financial transaction between banks or be more specific and cover currency exchanges between banks.

'We don’t want South Africa to be the death of Kyoto Protocol,' Minister of Environment, Edwina Molewa said recently, referring to the outcomes aspired to by the incoming South African COP17 Presidency from 28 November to 9 December 2011. But what are the real chances of life for the Kyoto and what are the stakes if we lose it? The best bet, Molewa concedes is to take key elements of the Protocol and build it into a single new agreement, with a comprehensive united approach. The key issue will be whether the positive or flawed elements of Kyoto will be retained.

The Engen refinery in Durban was given 15 days recently to produce a report on a fire that took place at the refinery, come up with a plan to replace old machinery and also a plan to stop future fires, or face criminal charges. But South Durban Community and Environmental Alliance co-ordinator Desmond D’Sa
said it was 'a complete charade' ahead of the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17), to be hosted by Durban. 'People have had respiratory problems and contracted many other diseases, such as asthma and different cancers, because of the high levels of pollution,' he said.

Access to information from any local government should not require appeals to the Mayor and/or the courts, write Zackie Achmat and Fritz Jooste in this article about the difficulties of the Social Justice Coalition in accessing City of Cape Town service agreements with companies responsible for municipal waste disposal in impoverished townships. 'Local government secrecy is unlawful because it is dangerous to democracy; it can allow influence peddling by the wealthy and connected, and often harms the health and wellbeing of working-class and poor communities.'

This PressTV video is a news feature on the Russell Tribunal on Palestine that took place recently in Cape Town. It features interviews with Desmond Tutu and Cynthia McKinney. The tribunal is an international people's forum created by a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East and is a public awareness campaign.

Prominent Gaza human rights lawyer Raji Sourani has called South African judge Richard Goldstone a liar, following recent comments he made in the New York Times regarding apartheid in Israel. Speaking at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event, the founder of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza lashed out at Goldstone for saying apartheid did not exist in Israel. Last month, Goldstone criticised the Russell Tribunal in an opinion piece in the New York Times, entitled 'Israel and the apartheid slander'. He wrote that there was no apartheid in Israel, and called the suggestion a 'particularly pernicious and enduring canard'.

Date: Saturday 5 November 2011
Venue: Café Ganesh, Observatory (corner Trill Road & Lower Main Road). Cape Town, South Africa.
Time: From 10am to 6pm
Free entry

Remember, remember, the fifth of November, as this is the date when South Africa will play host to its first ever Anarchist Book Fair, taking place in Observatory, Cape Town, at Café Ganesh (corner Trill Road and Lower Main Road).

Comrades, armchair anarchists, committed revolutionaries and book lovers are invited to come and learn about this exciting philosophy and its proud history of resistance. You can swing by any time between 10am and 6pm to check out a wide range of radical literature, music, movies, talks and more.

There will be over 12 stalls and collectives taking part including –The Missing Shelf, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front, CrimethInc South Africa, Intsangu Clothes, Amandla! Magazine, Soundz of the South, Feminist Alternatives and Botsotso. The Sympony Way Pavement Dwellers will also be there showcasing their extraordinary book "No Land! No House! No Vote!"

The World Bank has approved $250 million in funding for South African power utility Eskom to develop a wind and solar plant as part of a push to boost sources of clean energy. The World Bank said the funding through its Clean Technology Fund will finance a 100-megawatt solar power plant in Upington in the Northern Cape province and a 100-megawatt wind power project at Sere, north of Cape Town. 'The loan will help Eskom to implement two of the largest renewable energy projects ever attempted on the African continent,' the bank said in a statement.

This paper from the Governance and Aids Programme at Idasa examines the role that local government might play in promoting food security for people living with HIV in a democratic governance context. It examines local government's role in food security through interviews with local councillors in the Tshwane area.

A public call for proposals is underway to encourage individuals and organisations to apply for grants that provide innovative and critical analysis of South Africa’s foreign policy behaviour and impact. OSF-SA wishes to award grants to suitably qualified organisations and individuals that undertake empirically focused research projects on South Africa’s global role as it relates to the following issues:
- Deliberating South Africa’s 2nd year on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
- Understanding South Africa’s Role in Development Cooperation and the Implementation of
the Development Partnership Agency
- South Africa’s identity in IBSA and BRICS
- Comparing South Africa’s corporate footprint in Africa with BRIC partners:
Complementarities and Competition
- South Africa’s Foreign Policy after 2014: Continuity and/or Change?

Numsa on Sunday cautioned against 'factional defences' by some leaders within the ANC-led tripartite alliance, at the expense of the poor. In a statement issued after its two-day national executive committee, Numsa said it was concerned with the reaction of working class formations - South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) - in relation to the ANC Youth League's economic freedom march held this week. Earlier this week, SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande urged members of the ANC Youth League not to participate 'any march that will not make a difference' in their lives.

This publication is the result of a collective process of reflection on the meaning and implications of
community protests for local governance by the Good Governance Learning Network (GGLN). The contributions 'seek to critically enhance government and civil society’s understanding of the importance of recognising community voice and dissatisfaction as a legitimate alternative to pre-defined and state-sanctioned modalities of public participation. The underlying concern is with the technicist, procedural and instrumentalist approach that has (by and large) come to underpin public participation in South Africa. The plea, therefore, is for more dynamic, more meaningful and more varied modes of participation to be nurtured.'

On 19 October, Chimurenga - a pan African literary & political magazine - released 'The Chronic', a once-off edition of an imaginary newspaper for the week of 18-24 May 2008, a time when xenophobic violence tore through South Africa. According to Chimurenga founding editor Ntone Edjabe, the newspaper issue seeks to 'travel back in time to stage an intervention in the past so as to reimagine the present'.

Political parties have welcomed President Jacob Zuma’s decision to axe Cabinet members Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde and Sicelo Shiceka. Zuma announced in Pretoria that Mahlangu-Nkabinde would be replaced as public works minister, and Shiceka as traditional affairs and co-operative governance minister. Zuma's government had been beset by controversy for several months. Public Protector Thuli Madonsela had urged Zuma to take strong action against those involved in leases for police office space, as well as Shiceka for his abuse of public money.

The Democratic Left Front (DLF) has called for the immediate release of Simphiwe Zwane, the Operation Khanyisa Movement (OKM) councillor in the Johannesburg City Council. On Friday 21 October 2011 Zwane was arrested at her home in Thembelihle – the shack settlement in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, where there have been sustained community protests for services, housing and unemployment. She is being held at the Lenasia Police Station cells. 'Zwane’s arrest confirms that the repressive organs of the state are directed at people and workers engaged in protest action.'

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies (IFRC) is calling for Southern African Development Community (SADC) governments to put in place policies that recognise the rights of migrants and to join forces with regional humanitarian organisations to eliminate problems faced by migrants in the region. IFRC Southern Africa representative Ken Odur said migrant 'needs' must be addressed irrespective of their legal status in a host country. IFRC and its member National Red Cross Societies in the Southern Africa region have launched a long-term and intra-region initiative that seeks to address migration-related humanitarian challenges while promoting respect for diversity and social inclusion in Southern Africa.