Anger over the disbanding of the KwaZulu-Natal ANC Youth League executive by the league’s national leaders almost exploded into violence when fuming youth league members from the eThekwini region tried to storm a meeting being addressed by the league’s national executive in Durban. Pandemonium broke out when the angry youths, singing songs in favour of President Jacob Zuma and chanting slogans against youth league president Julius Malema, approached the office where the meeting was held on the 21st floor of the building.

South Africa’s Home Affairs department has notified Zimbabwean authorities that it is resuming the removal of illegal immigrants after lifting a special moratorium which has been in place since May 2009. South Africa had given Zimbabwean immigrants, estimated in the millions, a 31 December 2010 deadline to regularise their stay but just 275,762 submitted work permit applications which were decided by 31 July.

President Jacob Zuma has said he would soon release further details on the arms deal commission of inquiry. Zuma recently announced he would set up a commission of inquiry into South Africa's controversial multi-million rand arms deal.

In order for global climate change policies and efforts to progress, intense local activism and countries most adversely affected by climate change must play a leading role. If they don't, an upcoming meeting of state parties to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) in South Africa will be a conference of 'paralysis' and 'profiteers', says Patrick Bond, climate justice expert and author of the book 'Politics of Climate Justice' coming out in November.

From the 18 - 20 July 2011, the first Southern African Regional Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX) was hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa, by JASS (Just Associates) Southern Africa and Women’s Net. The Feminist Tech Exchange, organised under the Building Women’s Collective Power partnership, brought nine women’s rights activists from Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe together to share and build knowledge and skills on communication and ICTs from a feminist perspective. The exchange was convened as a way to strengthen women’s collective organising power through the use of ICTs.

Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi is set to meet justice ministry officials to rectify what his office terms 'contradictions' in the Sexual Offences Act of 2007 and the Children's Act of 2005. One law makes it legal for children of 12 and older to access contraceptives, and the other criminalises sex for youngsters of that age. Recently, children's rights activists were outraged when it emerged that National Prosecution Authority head Menzi Simelane had used the Act to authorise the prosecution of at least two groups of children between the ages of 12 and 16 for having consensual sex.

Battles between backyarders and informal settlement residents over the allocation of houses at Makhaza’s Ithemba Labantu housing project in Cape Town flared up again last week, resulting in shots fired by a backyarder believed to be defending himself against attackers. According to residents of Khayelitsha K-Section informal settlement, which is in Makhaza and where the 163-unit project is being built, backyarder Thembalani Mpambaniso was attacked by residents of the informal settlement while he was visiting his girlfriend, who lives in the settlement.

South Africa's Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has released a green paper on land reform, but the paper has been described as a 'great disappointment' by Andries Du Toit from the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies. 'After more than two years of vacillation and evasion since President Zuma’s announcement of the need for a new policy framework, the Ministry has produced a document that provides almost no guidance on any of the crucial questions facing land and agrarian reform in South Africa. It fails to offer any serious proposals for public debate on what the alternatives are to scale up land reform. It is bafflingly slight, weighing in at no more than eleven pages. It is in fact surprising that the Ministry is willing to release such an insubstantial and vague document at all.'

Please join Amnesty International and War on Want to hear about the remarkable work of Abahlali baseMjondolo (‘people of the shacks’), a movement campaigning for the rights of many thousands of South Africans living without access to adequate housing and at risk of forced evictions.

The evening includes a a screening of the 20 minute short version of the film, Dear Mandela, the story of the emergence of Abahlali, its courageous response to the numerous challenges it has faced and its campaign against forced evictions, which led to the constitutional court victory in 2009.

VENUE: Human Rights Action Centre, 17 - 25 New Inn Yard, EC2A 3EA
DATE AND TIME: Friday 7 October 2011 at 6:30 p.m.
CONTACT: Caroline Elliot, War on Want
Attn Africa Programme, Amnesty International, amnestyis[at]amnesty.org
PRICE: FREE
BOOKING: book your space

Desmond Tutu has accused the government of dragging its feet over the visa application of the Dalai Lama, who has been invited to attend the former archbishop's 80th birthday party. Tutu invited the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate to give a lecture as part of his 80th birthday celebrations next month but officials have so far failed to react to the visa application. In 2009, Tutu criticised a decision to bar the Dalai Lama from attending a peace conference in Johannesburg, with the government saying that it did not want to jeopardise relations with key trade partner China.

The presidency has dismissed reports of the imminent suspension of police commissioner Bheki Cele. The Sunday Times reported that the president was about to send a final letter of suspension to Cele, seen as a once trusted political ally now fighting for his job, despite success in reducing crime rates. According to the newspaper he would be barred from office while a board of inquiry investigated his role in the police's R1.7 billion lease deals for new headquarters, which the public protector had deemed unlawful.

Mike Cowling finds that the first three pages of South Africa's land reform Green Paper seem to set the tone of what is to follow, by explaining what needs to be done without providing any indication of how this is to be achieved.

Is job creation really the best way to seek wellbeing for all in countries with chronic, high unemployment? No, according to Hein Marais – especially not in a wealthy middle-income country like South Africa, where very high unemployment combines with high poverty rates. A universal income grant, he argues, makes much more sense.

Investments in rural infrastructure, both physical and institutional, were needed to enhance the resilience of agriculture in the face of the uncertainties of climate change, South Africa's Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said at the African Ministerial Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture.

South Africa remains committed to resolving and stamping out the recurring problem of xenophobia in all its forms wherever it manifests itself within the Republic. This was the message from Minister for Public Service and Administration, Mr Richard Baloyi during his opening remarks of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) meeting of select Focal Points with African Peer Review (APR) Panel members.

A document shows that South Africa’s government is far behind land reform efforts, a setback that could prove explosive in a country with staggering inequality almost a generation after white rule ended.

In four days, MPs could pass an outrageous secrecy bill that undermines the constitution and South Africa's democracy - helping the government keep wrongdoing from the people and enabling cover-ups of corruption and human rights abuses. But there are four people that could make or break this bill: the Chief Whips.

The Afri-Tech Johannesburg summit is bound to unravel new areas of research and collaboration – with unlimited possibilities of enriching human lives in Africa and around the globe. The framework of this conference is intended to create cross-functional solutions in the areas of health care, education, banking & finance, networking solutions, digital marketing and science & technology.

Subscribe to Highway Africa’s Email Alerts or RSS feed for regular updates. Sustainable development in the face of climate change is the theme of the 15th annual Highway Africa conference currently underway in South Africa.

The 'Journalist Declaration on the Protection of State Information Bill' is an urgent petition that is calling upon all community, public, commercial and trade journalists to speak up against the Secrecy Bill and other proposed legislation. Organisers plan to release the list of endorsements before the National Assembly votes for or against the Secrecy Bill on Tuesday, 20 September 2011.