About 1.3 million South African public sector workers have penned down August 10 to stage a nationwide strike. The government raised its pay offer to civil servants on Thursday to try to avert the strike, but it was quickly rejected by the unions. "More than 1.3 million public servants will on Tuesday take part in marches and demonstrations right through the country leading to a total shutdown of the public service," the largest umbrella labour group, COSATU, said in a statement.

South Africa has recalled its ambassador to Rwanda following a diplomatic row over the shooting of an exiled Rwandan general in Johannesburg. Gen Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, a critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, was shot and wounded in June. South Africa said it had not broken diplomatic ties and no connection was being made between the ambassador's withdrawal and the shooting.

As we commemorate South Africa National Women's Day, Gender Links spoke to ordinary women about the challenges they face every day. In an accompanying story, Doreen Gaura writes that the link between many women's organisations and the realities of women's every day lived experience has become tenous. She spoke to women from informal settlements about the issues that matter to them. This photo essay documents their conversation.

We are now in August, that special month set aside to celebrate the achievements of women in South Africa. But I'm not so sure we should be pouring champagne just yet. It is also during this month that we commemorate the day on which 20,000 women marched on the Pretoria Union Buildings 54 years ago to protest the extension of passes restricting freedom of movement during the apartheid government.

We are organisations that campaign for social justice. The success of our work is dependent on respect for the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. The right to free expression and freedom of the press and other media are essential components of democracy. That is why they are contained in the Bill of Rights. They are one of the essential means by which all people in South Africa, especially the vulnerable, exploited and poor, can hold government and the powerful private business sector to account.

Unlike schools and offices in South Africa, the criminal gangs along the border between the World Cup hosts and Zimbabwe did not take a break because of a sports tournament. As thousands of foreign fans flocked to the football stadiums and hundreds of journalists arrived to cover the first African World Cup, along the border another influx of foreigners received a different sort of welcome. They were not met with bright green and yellow flags and vuvuzelas, instead, these foreigners faced armed attacks and a pattern of sexual violence employed systematically to traumatise already vulnerable people.

Following the incredible feeling of African unity experienced during the World Cup, most of us were alarmed by rumours of the targeting of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers in some pockets of our communities post the final. It stood in stark contrast to the Pan-African spirit we demonstrated when we collectively switched our loyalty to Ghana after Bafana-Bafana was eliminated from the tournament.

Now two years in the making, the South African state's War on Poverty (WoP) is ‘one of the most clandestine operations in South African history’, writes Patrick Bond.

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Broadband for All aims to provide broadband connectivity to South Africa’s under-served areas through a community-centric model rather than a telco-driven model. The model leverages wireless-mesh technologies to link priority government sites and high bandwidth users such as schools, municipalities and government offices, who in turn provide a link to smaller customers such as businesses, NGOs and individuals.

Various Civil Society Organisations have called on the South African government to withdraw a homophobic statement made by SA representative at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva 16 June 2010 ,calling it “insensitive” to the persecution of Lesbian Gays, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) people and contrary to South Africa’s constitution which is opposes discrimination.

South Africa’s campaign to test 15 million people for HIV in one year risks being implemented in a way that undermines people’s human rights, the activist Mark Heywood told the Eighteenth International AIDS Conference in Vienna last Thursday. Incidents of coercive testing have been recorded but the lack of effective monitoring procedures means that it’s impossible to know whether those incidents are widespread or not.

South Africa cannot afford pay demands from thousands of public service workers and hopes a deal can be reached next week before a strike widens to nearly a million workers, a minister said on Friday. Thousands of workers from the Public Servants Association union walked off the job on Thursday, causing little impact so far to Africa's biggest economy. But that could change if the country's biggest labour group makes good on its threat to join the strike next week, which could cripple commerce.

Four white South Africans have been fined $2,700 (£1,700) each for making a video humiliating five black university workers and posting it online. The former students at the University of Free State pleaded guilty to crimen injuria.

Slightly built Nokwanda, 12, buried her head in her hands every time someone asked her a question. Her participation in a recent UNICEF-supported photography workshop here looked like it would be limited. Yet when asked to pick a favourite photograph, Nokwanda was transformed. She knew immediately which to choose, pointing to a photo of police officers at the Lyndhurst Primary School, which she attends.

Women’s Day is a day when we commemorate a day on which 56 000 ordinary South African women set out on an extraordinary mission. They rose up and challenged the then Apartheid government on the issue of pass laws. Yes, their collective story was heard but what about the stories of those ordinary South African women who were willing to sacrifice their own freedom for the freedom of our country. As part of our Women’s day celebrations, the Southern African Media and Gender Institute intends to publish a newsletter entitled ‘Celebrating Herstory.”

In just ten years the HIV/Aids infection rate in South Africa has jumped from one per cent of the population to one-third. Seventy per cent of HIV patients are also infected with tuberculosis, which is now the biggest cause of natural death in the country. But doctors say better treatment and education could wipe out the completely curable infection altogether. Al Jazeera's Rosie Garthwaite reports from Khayelitsha township.

KwaZulu-Natal is committed to a massive male circumcision drive using all available medical methods including the controversial Tara Klamp, according to Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo. Circumcised men are up to 60 percent less likely to get HIV than uncircumcised men, according to studies.

In one of the biggest advances in HIV prevention in decades, a vaginal gel containing an antiretroviral drug has been proven to protect almost four out of 10 women from HIV. A study of almost 900 HIV negative women from KwaZulu-Natal found that there was a 39% lower HIV incidence rate in the group that used the gel containing tenofovir. This ARV-containing gel (known as a microbicide) could save over 800,000 lives and prevent 1.3 million new HIV infections over the next two decades in South Africa alone, according to statistician Brian Williams.

Global funding for AIDS efforts fell flat during last year’s economic meltdown, ending a six-year streak of annual donation increases, according to new analysis released this week. Overall, financial support for international HIV/AIDS assistance fell more than 1 percent to R64,2 billion (US $7.6 billion) in 2009, from R65 billion (US$7.7 billion) the previous year, according to a report from Kaiser Family Foundation and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. The report measured donations from the Group of Eight most industrialized nations, European Commission and other donor governments to low- and moderate-income countries, and noted difficulties interpreting real value as reporting cycles and currency fluctuated.