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Activist Sello Mokhalipi of the Treatment Action Campaign, an organization that advocates for people with HIV/AIDS, said that complaints of the condoms and their defects have been reported.

We had people flocking in, coming to report that the condoms had burst while they were having sex, said Mokhalipi.

In the judicial capital province of Free State, health department spokesperson Jabu Mbalula said that his department recalled all 1,350,000 condoms but urged that there was no need for alarm –although he was unable to quote a direct number of used or recovered condoms.

Mr. Mokhalipi also added that some of the users who complained of the defective and reportedly porous condoms were infected with AIDS and concerned that they may have infected their partners.

We want the department to go out and tell people about these faulty condoms, Mokhalipi said. How can they say people should not panic if there are still clearly people out there in possession of these condoms?

In 2007, 20-million defective condoms were recalled by the government, and the following year, 5-million condoms had to be taken off the market due to faulty manufacturing. In 2009, a reported 5.6-million people were living with AIDS and HIV in South Africa, an infection rate that is more than any other country.

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Five years later, Mncube was joyful she stayed. On Saturday, he gazed proudly at his daughter, dressed elegantly in white for the first graduation ceremony at Winfrey’s school. Bongekile Mncube is headed to the University of Johannesburg to study politics and economics, and vows to one day help “build the economy of this country.”

“We are so thankful to Oprah,” said her father, a pastor and small businessmen who never went to high school. “We pray that God helps her to fulfill the vision that she had.”

Elgar’s “Pomp and circumstance” rang out Saturday as the graduates marched in, some unsteady on new high heels. The ceremony saw cheers and tears, including Winfrey’s own.

Winfrey’s school is an attempt to wield philanthropy and celebrity against South Africa’s social and educational crises. High-achieving students from poor families were admitted after a rigorous application process in which Winfrey was deeply involved, and she has visited regularly to counsel her girls. She held a last, late-night “pajama party” with the graduates Friday.

Winfrey told reporters after the ceremony that her girls would continue to be able to rely on her support. A counseling unit had been set up to help the graduates budget time, money and priorities in university.

In a graduation speech, Winfrey praised the teachers, administrators, social workers, psychologists and family members she said had ensured the students succeeded. Winfrey said she has learned it takes a team to support students, especially those who have experienced the poverty and personal trauma that define so many South African lives.

Winfrey said she sees the students as her daughters, and listed the blows they have experienced: “Divorce. Violence. Molestation. The loss of one parent. The loss of another parent. Sorrow. Sadness. Grief.”

The first class to graduate from the school overcame adversity to see 72 of the 75 original members graduate. All 72 are headed to universities in South Africa and the United States. Across South Africa, more than half a million members of the class of 2011 disappeared before the 496,000 remaining took their final exams, and only a quarter of those who graduated did well enough to qualify for university study, according to government figures.

“I’m one proud momma today,” said Winfrey, who wore eye shadow and a flowing gown in green, a school color.

Quoting Maya Angelou, she called the graduates “phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal women.”

Graca Machel, whose husband former South African President Nelson Mandela inspired Winfrey to open the school, called on the graduates to change the world. Mandela has retired from public life and did not attend the ceremony. He attended the opening of the school in 2007.

“You are leaders,” Machel said in her graduation speech. “But be humble. Listen. Learn. Try, and try again.”

Winfrey, among the wealthiest women in the world, spent $40 million to build the school, giving it facilities many South African universities might envy. But she said the school’s success was owed to teachers who came early and stayed late, social workers like one who traveled hundreds of miles (kilometers) to rescue a student who had encountered violence during a visit home, and parents who instilled discipline despite difficult home lives.

Winfrey asked staff and family members to stand for applause during the ceremony.

Winfrey encouraged all South African schools to raise their expectations, saying the experience of her school showed young people would respond by excelling. From the start, Winfrey’s students were told they should set their sights on university.

Despite the money and intentions, the school has had trouble. Soon after opening, a woman working as a dormitory matron was accused of abusing students. She was acquitted in 2010. Winfrey, who has spoken of being abused as a child and called the allegations against the matron crushing, and has said the trial’s outcome was “profoundly” disappointing.

Winfrey settled a defamation lawsuit filed in Philadelphia by the school’s former headmistress, Nomvuyo Mzamane, who claimed Winfrey defamed her in remarks made in the wake of the scandal.

Last year, a baby born to a student at the school was found dead.

Winfrey said Saturday there were times when she was discouraged, but that “I always held the vision that this day was possible.”

Winfrey noted the gradates were born in 1994, the year apartheid ended, “into a nation that said: You are free. You are free to rise. You are free to soar.”

Graduate Bongekile Mncube took Winfrey’s words to heart.

“The world should watch out,” she said. “We’re about to take over.”

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The documentary is a five part series that covers the fight against South African apartheid by the South African people, as well as from people around the world.

The director of the documentary series,” Connie Field said.

“The story is not a history of apartheid, nor a history of the liberation struggle, but a history of what the international community did and what events in South Africa most affected the international world”

The documentary rivals the excellent PBS series on the civil rights movement, “Eyes On The Prize” in its wide range of interviews and news footage. While “Have You Heard” covers many familiar faces against the struggle against racial injustice in South Africa, it also ads many other faces of the soldiers against apartheid.

The hero of of “Have You Heard” is not Nelson Mandela, who is incarcerated for most of the time covered by the series, but Oliver Tambo, who was the head of the ANC while he was in exile. For over 30 years, Tambo was one of the main figures in turning the anti-Apartheid struggle from a South African issue, to a global issue.

In 1976 the murder of South African school children who were protesting being forced to learn the white regime’s language of Afrikans in Soweto and the murder of anti-Apartheid leader, Steve Biko by South African police put the eye of the world of South Africa.

The documentary does a great job showing how all sorts of people from around the world with different backgrounds helped to eventually end apartheid. From religious leaders to world leaders, to workers and students, millions of people joined in to end racial segregation in South Africa.

The worldwide boycotts and protests highlight a global consciousness and worldwide cohesive effort to rally around a cause. The protests ranged from Black congressmen and celebrities such as John Conyers and Stevie Wonder getting arrested protesting the South African embassy, to workers such as Caroline Hunter, a Polaroid employee who organized a protest to get Polaroid to divest from South Africa.

Student activism and protest is also shown in the film series. Students from Cambridge University in England to Columbia University in New York organized mass protests forcing their schools to divest from South Africa.

The American villain of the series is Republican President, Ronald Reagan whose strong opposition to sanctions and pressure on the apartheid regime made him a target of people both in America and abroad who opposed apartheid. The South African government was successful in labeling the anti-Apartheid movement as “communist,” and Reagan’s support of the apartheid regime is an embarrassment to America.

The series gives hope to the world and shows how people from all different racial, social and economic backgrounds can come together for a common cause. With so many negative things going on in the world, hopefully this movie will rally people to join in the continuing fight against worldwide injustice.

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Thousands of young South Africans and their parents began gathering at the University of Johannesburg campus on Monday to seek admission. Space was limited, symptom of a larger crisis in South African education and perhaps contributing to a sense of desperation that led to the stampede. Many would-be applicants had only learned they were eligible for further study after getting results from high school final exams last week.

University of Johannesburg vice chancellor Ihron Rensburg said a mother who had accompanied her son to the campus was killed in the melee, which started about 7:30, a half hour before the gate was scheduled to open. Two others were seriously injured and seven slightly hurt, he said. It was not immediately clear whether the injured were prospective students, parents or both.

Desmond Mlangu, a prospective student, said he witnessed a “traumatizing” scene, with women screaming and people continuing to push. He said those at the back of the crowd did not seem to realize what was happening at the gate.

Tendai Nembidzane, a final-year business student who is head of the university’s student council, said he witnessed the stampede and afterward saw the dead woman’s son crouching near her body. Nembidzane said student council members later took the young man to their campus office to be comforted. Rensburg said the young man and others affected by the stampede would be offered counseling.

Hours later, shoes and other debris were strewn at the site. People remained in line, still seeking to study. Classes begin in February.

Those at the university this week were seeking late admission. Regular admission closed in June. Rensburg said some 11,000 people were expected to use the late window to apply for as few as 800 remaining places at his school. Across South Africa, universities are under strain as prospective students seek a better life as professionals in a nation beset by high unemployment. The government hopes to expand its universities over the next decade.

Rensburg said the crisis was further complicated because many young South Africans who were applying for university places should instead be continuing their studies at vocational colleges and other institutions.

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A dozen African leaders and more former heads of state along with African kings and chieftains attended a midnight ceremony where President Jacob Zuma lit a flame, expected to stay alight the entire year, at the red brick, tin-roofed Wesleyan church where black intellectuals and activists founded the party in 1912.

Absent because of his frailty was Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president who is just six years younger than his movement. The world icon was jailed for 27 years by the racist white government and his organization was formerly declared a terrorist group by the United States.

Joy at the ANC’s leading role in ending white minority rule in 1994 was tinged with sadness over the its failure to bring a better life to most South Africans, and corruption scandals that have embroiled its members in recent years.

“It means a lot to be alive when the ANC is celebrating 100 years of its existence,” Mayor Tulani Sebego of Bergville told Associated Press Television News.

He said the party had gained strength along with challenges, “but it has managed to come through it to today, it is here, 100 years and I want to believe it will reach 200 years.”

The stadium at Bloemfontein, upgraded to a 45,000-seater for the 2010 soccer World Cup, overflowed Sunday with crowds that spilled outside, dancing and singing under a blazing sun.

Dozens of buses lined up to drop off celebrants waiting for an afternoon address by Zuma.

Zuma has said the ANC will rule “until Jesus comes” but the next few years will be critical ones for the party that has won a landslide victory in every election for the last 18 years.

The ANC describes itself as the home of the working class and the poor, but inequality has grown in recent years even as a small black elite around the party has become multimillionaires flaunting lavish lifestyles.

Unemployment hovers around 36 percent and soars to 70 percent among young people. Half the country’s population lives on just 8 percent of the national income, according to the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

A warning sign came from the town of Clarens, where stone-throwing protesters smashed the windows of a bus that was to transport supporters to the centenary celebrations in Bloemfontein, 260 kilometers (160 miles) away.

Protesters, demanding ANC municipal leaders be fired for failing to deliver basic services like tap water, stoned vehicles and blocked the road to Bloemfontein, Talk Radio 702 reported.

Such protests have become daily events across the country, where political liberation has not been matched by economic emancipation as Africa’s largest economy remains in the control of the white minority.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in fighting apartheid and is attending the celebrations, recently called for a tax on all whites who benefited from apartheid.

“Apartheid is not over,” American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said after the church ceremony, “the agricultural apartheid, the manufacturing apartheid, the banking apartheid, the shipping apartheid, the layers beneath the skin color are now the next century’s challenge.”

Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, whose country was bombed by South African warplanes attacking ANC guerrilla training camps during the struggle for liberation, issued a warning at a banquet Saturday night.

“Comrade Zuma, you have more serious problems than any of us. You are faced with the land question. I want to remind the South African youth that two wrongs can never make a right,” he said.

The ANC government has admitted its failure to return white-owned farmland to blacks – a key issue of the liberation struggle. In 1994 it set a goal of redistributing 30 percent of agricultural land to blacks by 2014 – targeting a total of nearly 61 million acres (24.6 million hectares). Instead, it has bought only about 6 million hectares, of which a third has been resold by aspiring black farmers who failed to get enough support.

Ninety percent of farmland here remains in white hands. Hundreds of white farmers have been killed over the years, and they in turn are accused of brutality and killings of black farm laborers.

Whites are not the only ones tied up in land disputes. Mandela’s grandson, Mandla, who attended the celebration, faces allegations of land-grabbing by families in Mvezo, the village where Mandela was born. A court will hear the case later this month. Villagers charge Mandla Mandela, a traditional chief, of illegally expropriating their land and removing grave sites to build a multimillion-dollar hotel and stadium.

Another ANC leader embroiled in controversy, Youth League leader Julius Malema, told a weekend rally around the celebrations that he hopes within 10 years blacks will control the mines and farms and whites will be their domestic workers and farm laborers.

Malema has denied newspaper reports that he called ANC leaders “baboons” in a brazen attack at another weekend rally. Malema reportedly said ANC leaders were living “the high life” while most South Africans struggle to survive on breadcrumbs. Malema himself has been criticized for building a $2 million mansion, with people asking where the money comes from.

As he spoke at the rally, people in the crowd made the football substitution sign – indicating their desire for a change of leadership, the Sunday Tribune reported. Malema used the Youth League’s power to help oust former President Thabo Mbeki, opening the way for Zuma to replace him in 2009, but now wants to see someone else lead the party.

That fight will be fought at the ANC congress in December in Bloemfontein, a city in the heart of the country that also is called Mangaung.

In a sign of possible reconciliation, Mbeki is attending the three-day bash in Bloemfontein, the first major ANC meeting he has been seen at since his fall from grace amid accusations he was high-handed, too cerebral and removed from ordinary South Africans.

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The venerated party once banned for decades under apartheid has won every national election since racist white rule ended in 1994, and President Jacob Zuma vows the party “will rule until Jesus comes.”

Yet as the African National Congress marks its 100th anniversary this weekend with fanfare and dozens of visiting presidents, critics say the ANC has failed to unchain an impoverished majority still shackled by a white-dominated economy.

Unemployment hovers around 36 percent and soars to 70 percent among young people. Half of the country’s population lives on just 8 percent of the national income, according to the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

South African political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi praises the ANC for developmental achievements “unprecedented anywhere in the world” in its 17 years of governing the country.

But he noted that many at the ANC festivities will have their joy marred by “a tinge of disappointment and even sadness” about weaknesses and failures.

The ANC’s reputation is being tarnished by a never-ending deluge of corruption scandals, some involving politicians who sacrificed during the fight against apartheid and now feel entitled to luxury cars and financial payback.

It’s created disillusionment, especially for those who volunteered to serve as freedom fighters at a time when many of the ANC’s leaders were imprisoned for their activism.

Serame Mogale, who was only 14 when he became a guerrilla fighter for the ANC, recalled that the slogan in one Angolan training camp was “the pace of the slowest.”

“We would run six hours nonstop with female comrades in front, from whom the whole company or platoon will take the pace,” he recalls. “But today, the weakest is overtaken and left behind to tire and die.”

Africa’s oldest liberation movement is kicking off the festivities with a golf tournament — an event critics say shows how the grassroots-based movement has morphed into an elitist-run political party.

More than 100,000 people are expected for the ANC centenary festivities, including 46 heads of state and a dozen former presidents, the party says. Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu is coming, though it’s unclear whether Mandela will make an appearance.

The 93-year-old icon’s public appearances have become increasingly rare, though he did attend the closing ceremony of the World Cup in 2010. He also made a surprise appearance at a campaign rally ahead of the 2009 election, when the ANC faced unprecedented competition from a breakaway party.

“I would be nothing without the ANC,” Mandela said at a 2008 party rally marking his 90th birthday.

The political party representing South Africa’s impoverished majority already has drawn criticism for spending 10 million rand (nearly $1.5 million) of public money to buy the church where it all began.

The Wesleyan church is the focus of this weekend’s centenary celebrations in Bloemfontein, a city in the heart of the country. It was here that black activists and intellectuals founded the liberation movement that would help lead the decades-long struggle against racist rule.

Until just 20 years ago, blacks were evicted from their homes and herded into separate suburbs, forced to work under slave-like conditions on mines and farms. Families were separated under legalized race discrimination so that white entrepreneurs could take advantage of poorly paid black laborers.

The best parks, beaches and restaurants were reserved for the white minority, with signs in Afrikaans saying “Nie Blankies” — Whites Only. Some shops would only serve blacks through a hole in the wall.

Black nannies cared for white children and prepared elaborate meals for white families, then went to hovels in the backyards of mansions to feed their own children “ration meat” — bones and fat less nutritious than the meals served to white families’ dogs.

A turning point came in 1960, police turned their guns on about 300 people peacefully protesting “pass laws” restricting them to certain areas and requiring them to leave white areas where they worked by nightfall.

At least 69 people were killed and scores wounded in the Sharpeville massacre. The unprovoked slaughter attracted international condemnation that formed the roots of the global anti-apartheid movement.

The government declared a state of emergency and banned South Africa’s two liberation movements — the Pan Africanist Congress, which had organized the Sharpeville protest, and the ANC.

ANC leaders declared there was no longer any space to organize nonviolent resistance and formed Umkhonto we Sizwe, Zulu for “Spear of the Nation,” an army that would wage a guerrilla war for liberation.

“The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit but we shall fight back by all our means within our power for the liberation of our motherland,” said the guerrilla army manifesto.

After Mandela’s 1990 release from prison, he was elected president of ANC and went on to become South Africa’s first black president after the historic 1994 election.

While the ANC confronted a common enemy in apartheid, it became a catchall for people of many different ideological persuasions. Once the enemy was defeated, it is not surprising that differences have arisen.

“We would like to think it (the ANC) has teething problems, but it’s not really only teething problems,” says Amina Cachalia, a political activist who joined the ANC in the 1940s. “I think suddenly it’s become a different platform for different ideologies and for different people with different agendas, and that’s a pity, a great pity.”

The party also has struggled to find a leader as charismatic as the beloved anti-apartheid icon.

Thabo Mbeki, the president who succeeded Mandela, was unceremoniously booted out of office by an ANC congress that deemed him too cerebral and out of touch with the people.

Today the ANC is led by Zuma, a guerrilla fighter who was imprisoned at Robben Island alongside Mandela but whose polygamous lifestyle and extramarital affairs have scandalized South Africans.

Zuma’s leadership is being challenged by Julius Malema, the very same fiery youth leader credited with ousting Mbeki and helping bring Zuma to power in 2007. Late last year, an ANC disciplinary committee fired Malema and suspended him from the party for five years.

Malema, who is awaiting the result of an appeal and is under police investigation for corruption and tax evasion, has been denied the opportunity to address the centenary celebrants. But he will speak at smaller rallies near Bloemfontein, the party said of the young firebrand who draws support from young adults.

Sifiso Mkwanazi, a 26-year-old self-employed businessman, complains about the government’s lack of investment to create jobs and better education opportunities.

“For the generation of my parents, I think it (the ANC) has done a lot, but with our generation, I don’t think they are contributing as much as they should be,” he says.

Still, he said his vote would go to the ANC unless a viable opposition party devoted to the people’s interest springs up.

Cachalia, who has been a friend of Mandela for 60 years, says she wonders what he would make of the ANC’s evolution.

“I sometimes feel very disillusioned these days, but I suppose we live in hope,” she says.

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“Lesbians and transgender men live in constant fear of harassment as well as physical and sexual violence,” the watchdog group said in a report released Monday.

The report, “We’ll Show You You’re a Woman,” was based on interviews with 121 lesbians, bisexual women and transgender men in the impoverished black townships where the majority of South Africans live.

Their lives contrast with those of urban, wealthy, often white gay South Africans who have turned parts of some cities into liberal havens. Gay pride parades are held annually in Johannesburg and Cape Town, which reaches out to gay tourists from around the world. Next year, an international pageant for gay men will be held in Johannesburg.

Same-sex marriage is legal in South Africa and the country has among the most liberal laws on sexual orientation on the continent. But cultural attitudes don’t always match the constitution approved in 1996 by lawmakers determined to show they were more progressive then their apartheid predecessors.

One woman told Human Rights Watch of a series of rapes by her cousin, her coach and her pastor. Another said a female cousin spiked her drink so that the cousin’s boyfriend could rape her. A third said that after a rape. “I really hated myself.”

Raping a lesbian, HRW researchers found, can make a man a township hero. Attackers boast publicly of their crimes and declare to their victims, “We’ll show you you’re a woman,” the report said. Such attacks are known as “corrective rapes” in South Africa.

Lesbians and others who don’t fit the norm respond by avoiding being alone in public, trying not to attract men’s attention, and hiding their sexual orientation, the report said.

Human Rights Watch called on South Africa’s government to act against the attackers. At a news conference in Johannesburg on Monday, Dipika Nath, the lead researcher on the report, acknowledged that addressing the crimes would have a limited effect.

“What we really need is a sustained, large program” that embraces education in schools and engages with religious leaders, she said.

Corlia Kok, a high-ranking Department of Justice official said South Africans should rally to defend their constitution.

“I have my Bible and I have got the constitution in my handbag,” she said, holding up a pocket-sized copy of national charter to demonstrate the importance she placed on the document. Kok participated in a panel discussion organized for the report by Human Rights Watch on Monday.

Kok chairs a task force formed earlier this year to bring together prosecutors, police and others to address crimes against homosexuals and others who do not fit traditional sexual identities. Kok said the government was taking the problem seriously, but acknowledged her task force does not yet have its own budget and was diverting funds from other government projects and seeking help from foreign donors.

“It can’t be government alone,” she said. “We all need to say that this is a challenge that is facing every one of us.”

Nomboniso Gasa, a South African women’s rights activist, said the constitution was written by leaders who dared “to imagine a different society,” and that South Africa today was in need of such leadership in the face of conservative traditional leaders and fundamentalist Christians.

“We are very far from the society we wanted to build,” said Gasa, who spoke on Monday’s panel. “Our society is trying to sanctify heterosexuality as the only form of sexual being. We are told that to be non-heterosexual is to be non-African.”

Contempt for homosexuals has led to anti-gay legal measures elsewhere in Africa. Last week, Nigeria’s Senate voted in favor of a bill that would criminalize gay marriage, gay advocacy groups and same-sex public displays of affection. Two years ago, Ugandan legislators introduced a bill that would impose the death penalty for some gays and lesbians, though it has yet to become law.

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Winfrey spent $40 million to give her girls a campus with computer and science labs, a library and a wellness center. None paid tuition. The students are high-achievers, often from communities where schools are struggling to overcome the legacy of apartheid.

And as the South African school year nears its end, all 72 members of the school’s first graduating class have been accepted to universities in South Africa or the United States. More than a dozen have received full scholarships.

Winfrey told her students that when you teach a girl, you teach a nation.

“The first class, my class, will prove that,” said Nobiva, 18, who will study visual and performing arts at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Winfrey will be at the school for graduation ceremonies in January, school officials said Wednesday as students gathered to reflect on their experiences over the last five years.

The school has drawn sometimes harsh attention because of the celebrity who founded it, and also because of early problems.

Students have been accused of being spoiled. Allegations that a woman employed to care for the girls in their dormitory had instead abused teens were the subject of headlines around the world. The woman was acquitted last year.

Earlier this year, a newborn born to a student at the school was found dead, again drawing international attention.

“Yes, we’ve had bad coverage,” Nobiva said. “But it has certainly made us stronger.”

Winfrey, who has visited her school often, has instilled a sense of purpose. On Wednesday, Nobiva’s classmates – aspiring doctors, accountants, engineers and lawyers – spoke of their plans to serve their communities.

“You can imagine the impact of girls with that insight going out into the universe,” Nobiva said.

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“F— racism, f— the pigs who killed Andries Tatane, f— the AWB,” Esterhuysen said in the audio. He ended his 41-second rant promoting his blog (markesterhuysen.blogspot.com), Twitter, and Facebook accounts.

Esterhuysen, who described himself as an “Enemy of the state” and “Defender of Anarchy” on Twitter, tweeted Wednesday he would be posting a statement about his outburst soon.

Read more at the New York Daily News.

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The judge ruled that while such anthems had their place during apartheid, they constitute hate speech in a society now struggling to redefine relations between the races.

Monday’s ruling comes four months after hearings in the hate speech trial of Julius Malema that were broadcast live on national television. The court case is separate from Malema’s ongoing African National Congress disciplinary hearings, which also have drawn wide attention in South Africa.

While Monday’s judgment could be seen as a setback for the embattled Malema, the lightning-rod figure might use it to rally support from South Africans who see “Shoot the Boer” as part of the heritage of the anti-apartheid movement. “Boer” means farmer in the language of South Africa’s Dutch descendants known as Afrikaners.

After news of the verdict reached ANC supporters gathered outside the downtown Johannesburg courthouse, crowds began singing the song in defiance of the judge’s ruling. Under the ruling, criminal cases can now be brought against those who sing the song or quote its lyrics.

Malema, who was not in court Monday but testified at length during trial hearings earlier this year, had argued the song was not a literal threat against whites. Malema and the ANC said it was a symbolic call to fight oppression, both under apartheid and 17 years after the end of white rule in a society where the black majority largely remains poor.

Malema, 30, has forced South Africa to confront its racial divide, insisted on trying to set his party’s political and economic agenda, and claimed to represent the country’s restive, poor, black majority. The disciplinary hearings, which could lead to Malema’s suspension or expulsion from the party, focus on accusations he is undermining President Jacob Zuma.

Judge Colin Lamont went further than AfriForum, the white rights group that brought the hate speech suit, had demanded, saying that all South Africans, not only Malema, should refrain from singing “Shoot the Boer.”

AfriForum chief executive Kallie Kriel said at court Monday his group respected the heritage of the anti-apartheid movement, but agreed with Lamont that South Africa now should move on.

“We need to find mutual recognition and respect among communities,” he said, calling the ruling a victory over Malema’s vision of South Africa.

Leslie Mkhabela, Malema’s lawyer, said he was disappointed at the ruling, and did not believe courts were the right forum to debate such social issues.

The judge had made a point similar to Mkhabela’s during the trial, urging the parties to find a mediated settlement. Monday, he said he hoped the attention the trial had drawn, and his decision to allow cameras to broadcast much of it, would help South Africans learn about each other and about histories lived largely in violent isolation from one another.

Lamont spoke for nearly two hours before delivering his ruling, touching on South Africa’s colonial history, the struggle against apartheid and the media attention and public outrage Malema had drawn with his insistence on singing such lyrics as “shoot the boer, they are rapists, robbers.”

Lamont said South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution and the spirit that informed it enjoins all members of society to “embrace all citizens as their brothers” and avoid language designed “to be hurtful, to incite harm and promote hatred.”

“I call myself a first lady because I’m the first black child with this disease … Which other black child do you know with this disease?” she challenged.

Ontlametse is the first black child diagnosed with progeria, a rare and fatal genetic condition that accelerates the aging process, the Progeria Research Foundation said.

Nobody knows how many kids in the world have it. In a two-year campaign to identify them, the Progeria Research Foundation says the number of children diagnosed around the world has soared from 48 to 80 on five continents.

The foundation’s executive director, Audrey Gordon, says only two Africans have been diagnosed and both live in South Africa – Ontlametse and a 5-year-old white girl. That is probably because South Africa, an economic powerhouse, offers some of the best medical care on the continent.

Gordon says there are several black holes on the map in her office studded with colored tacks where they have found children living with progeria. “We know that there are children (with progeria) in Africa, in China and Russia, but we just can’t seem to get to them,” she said in a telephone interview from the foundation’s office in Peabody, Massachusetts.

Ontlametse’s mother, Bellon Phalatse, says her baby was born looking normal but that she realized early on that something was wrong. The baby suffered constant rashes and by the time she was 3 months old Phalatse thought she had a skin disease.

Before Ontlametse celebrated her first birthday “her hair was falling, her nails weren’t normal, the skin problems, we were going up and down to the doctors.”

As the child aged prematurely, her father abandoned the family when Ontlametse was 3 years old.

Despite her frequent illnesses, Ontlametse enrolled in school at 6 and proved a bright pupil. But she was often scorned by classmates, teachers and others who thought she was so small and skinny because she had AIDS. South Africa has the highest number of people living with AIDS of any country but the disease still carries a terrible social stigma.

“It was horrible, I don’t know how to explain” what we went through, Phalatse said.

It was not until two years ago that a doctor friend suggested she have Ontlametse tested for progeria, and brought her a book about the disease.

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Demonstrators burned flags of the ruling African National Congress and ran through the streets of downtown Johannesburg holding up flaming T-shirts bearing the image of President Jacob Zuma.

“Zuma must go!” they chanted.

When the protesters began lobbing stones and bottles, police detonated stun grenades and turned water cannons on the crowd of thousands. Later, they fired rubber bullets to get protesters off the roof of an armored car.

The focus for Tuesday’s demonstration was the start of a disciplinary hearing for Malema and five other youth league officers accused of bringing the ANC into disrepute with their calls for the ouster of the democratic government of neighboring Botswana. They face expulsion or suspension from the party.

Analysts say the hearing is a pretext to confront the growing power of Malema, who has mobilized disillusioned and unemployed youth with demands that the government nationalize the wealthy mining sector and appropriate white-owned farm land for black peasants.

Malema, 30, says that is the only way to address growing inequality and poverty in Africa’s richest nation and better distribute wealth that remains firmly entrenched in the minority white community and among a few thousand blacks who have grown wealthy mainly off government contracts.

Malema indicated Monday that he too believed that was the real issue, telling reporters that “This (disciplinary hearing) does not delay our economic struggle. We see this as a setback for the revolution we are pursuing. We will continue to push for economic freedom in our lifetime.”

On Tuesday, he emerged from the hearing to appeal to thousands of cheering militants for a peaceful protest and to chastise them for burning the party flag and T-shirts. He urged them to respect the ANC and its leaders.

“You are here because you love the ANC. We must exercise restraint,” he said. “We cannot burn ourselves.”

The cheers turned to a roar when Malema insisted that the ANC youth league speaks “for the poorest of the poor” and will pursue a “radical and militant” revolution that also must be peaceful.

The disciplinary hearing that began Tuesday and could last for days is a response to the youth league’s announcement last month that it would send a committee to work with opposition parties in Botswana against democratically elected President Ian Khama. They accused Khama of cooperating with “imperialists” and undermining “the African agenda” in Libya’s revolution.

Malema said the youth league would help bring “regime change” in Botswana.

This embarrassed Zuma and other party officials who have been leading African condemnation of the United States, Britain and France for allegedly abusing a U.N. resolution to effect regime change in Libya.

The support of Malema and his youth league was instrumental in getting Zuma elected party president in December 2007 and unceremoniously ousting former President Thabo Mbeki.

Protesting youth leaguers Tuesday threatened to do the same to Zuma at the 2012 ANC congress.

“In 2012 we are voting Mbalula,” they chanted, referring to former youth league president and current Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula. Whoever wins the party presidency gets to run for president. The ANC remains unchallenged politically in the country.

Party leaders have condemned Malema in the past for his divisive tactics, including the singing of a racist song calling for people to “kill the boer,” or white farmer.

In May, the party disciplinary committee fined Malema and ordered him to apologize for sowing discord in the party and undermining Zuma’s authority.

Critics accuse Malema of being an opportunist. They point to the massive mansion he is building in Johannesburg’s luxury Sandton suburb and allegations of corruption. His supporters say those charges are trumped up.

The police and public prosecutor announced this month that they are undertaking a formal investigation into Malema’s business dealings.

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U.S. investigators say Jesse Osmun confessed that as a Peace Corps volunteer, he for months sexually molested at least five girls at a South African shelter for AIDS orphans and other children. None of the girls were older than 6.

In a Twitter account and blogs, Osmun portrayed himself as a champion of Africa and wrote about working with children. Before coming to South Africa, where he started work at the shelter in March 2010, Osmun volunteered at an orphanage in Kenya, where the director said he did no harm. Osmun also wrote of seeking other international aid work before his arrest last week.

His do-gooder identity may have helped cover a darker side. Then the little girls spoke.

“They were frightened. They were brave to tell. They did something very important,” said Samkele Mhlongo, a Greytown police translator who helped an American investigator interview two of the victims from the Umvoti AIDS Centre where Osmun volunteered.

Mhlongo said the children, shown pictures of Osmun, said they described being instructed by him to perform oral sex, and afterward being given candy and warnings not to tell anyone what had happened. Mhlongo said Osmun showed the children child pornography stored on his computer.

According to an investigator’s affidavit submitted to the Connecticut court that will try Osmun, a teacher saw Osmun follow three girls into a building at Umvoti on May 24. The teacher followed after a few minutes, and saw Osmun with his back to her, one of the girls near him. Osmun appeared startled and zipped up his pants. A girl later told the teacher about being asked to perform oral sex.

Two days later, according to the affidavit, Osmun was confronted by an Umvoti manager. The same day, Osmun informed Peace Corps he wanted to end his service several months short of the usual two years. At this point, no one told Peace Corps of the molestation concerns. Greytown police told The Associated Press they never received a complaint from Umvoti.

The U.S. investigator said Umvoti’s director told her she had confronted Osmun before he went to Peace Corps to ask to cut short his service. She said she had told him she believed he was a child molester and urged him to get help. Osmun told the director he would seek help. The U.S. investigator also said children at the center had come to Umvoti officials with disturbing stories about Osmun months before May. Umvoti officials refused to comment for this article.

Osmun flew out of South Africa June 1, and it was only on June 7 that Umvoti informed Peace Corps of its concerns, U.S. investigators said. Peace Corps immediately sent its own investigator to Greytown, and South African police were informed.

On Aug. 4, U.S. investigators said, they confronted Osmun in Connecticut and obtained his written confession.

Joan van Niekerk of Childline South Africa, which campaigns against child abuse, said that the man the children described to officials fit the profile of a calculating pedophile. Pedophiles seek out places where children are vulnerable, she said, which very much describes developing countries like South Africa, where law enforcement can be weak and awareness of how to protect children low.

Commonly in South Africa, she said, “cases can take years to come to court – during which evidence is lost, contaminated … and the longer the case takes the more likely the acquittal.”

Marita Rademeyer, a South African psychologist who counsels children who have been abused, said South African studies show only one in nine reported cases of child abuse go to court, and when there are convictions, sentences rarely approach the 30 years Osmun faces in the U.S. She said many cases are never reported because victims feel ashamed, or have no one they can trust to tell.

According to South African police, more than 27,000 cases of sexual offenses against children were reported last year, accounting for nearly half of all crimes against children. Experts say the weakness of the South African family – a legacy of apartheid when laws forced adults to seek work far from home – and high rates of crime and violence make children here particularly vulnerable. In addition, South Africa, the country with the most people living with HIV in the world, has millions of AIDS orphans.

Sister Mary Owens, director of the Nyumbani Children’s Home, said Osmun volunteered in 2006 at her Nairobi, Kenya shelter for children orphaned by AIDS and children who are HIV-positive. Owens, informed by the AP of the charges against Osmun, said she had spoken with staff and determined he had not been suspected of similar activities there.

Asked whether U.S. prosecutors were investigating whether Osmun had abused children in Kenya, Laura Sweeney, a U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman familiar with his case, said she could not comment.

Osmun had written on a blog of having worked at the Kenyan orphanage, though he said it was in 2004.

The Peace Corps, a 50-year-old humanitarian agency that gives ordinary Americans opportunities to do international development work, said every applicant undergoes a criminal background check and is “screened for suitability.”

Liz Hughes, director of South African programs for the international aid agency Save the Children, said such screening is only the first step. Organizations helping children must recognize that people who want to hurt children will be drawn to their shelters and schools, and must train staff to recognize danger signals. Children must also feel confident that when they report abuse, they will be taken seriously, Hughes said.

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More than 12 million students sang a special version of “Happy Birthday” before lessons began Monday.

Mandela also received birthday wishes from South African leaders including President Jacob Zuma and from U.S. President Barack Obama. In a statement sent Sunday, Obama called Mandela “a beacon for the global community, and for all who work for democracy, justice and reconciliation.”

Mandela, who has retired from public life, is expected to spend the day with his family in his home village of Qunu, some 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) south of Johannesburg.

In 2009, his birthday was declared as an international day devoted to public service.

People around the world have been asked to mark the occasion by giving 67 minutes of their time to work in their local community — one minute for every year of Mandela’s public service. He became South Africa’s first black president after spending 27 years in prison for his fight against apartheid. He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

Mandela’s public appearances have become increasingly rare, though he did appear at the closing ceremony of the World Cup one year ago.

Earlier this year, he was hospitalized for a few days with an acute respiratory infection. Last month, though, he held a private meeting with Michelle Obama when the first lady traveled to South Africa with her daughters.

His foundation also has recently released “Nelson Mandela By Himself,” a book featuring more than 2,000 Mandela quotations on topics ranging from freedom to forgiveness to HIV/AIDS.

For many South Africans, the elder statesman is also thought of as a beloved family member and referred to by his clan name, Madiba.

Students at the Johannesburg School for the Blind and Partially Sighted sang and danced Monday morning as they wished their “Tata Mandela” a happy birthday.

Most of the students are fire victims from South Africa’s impoverished townships and have received assistance from the Children of Fire charity.

This year, the charity held a mock trial at the school to illustrate Mandela’s role in fostering reconciliation after apartheid’s end. On trial: several children accused of stealing from the kitchen.

Charity founder Bronwen Jones said the lesson is especially valuable for children who have been through adversity. She said one in three of the children were burned intentionally.

“For them to be able to rise from that and forgive the people who hurt them, there’s no better example than Madiba,” she said.

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Instead, Mrs. Obama managed to inspire South Africans, through relating to their story of struggle and the telling of her own.

Rohit Kachroo, from The Grio, highlights the success of the first lady’s trip to South Africa and the impact it made.

An excerpt reads:

A key moment was her meeting with Nelson Mandela on Tuesday. From their short time together, a tender image emerged of him reading to his guest. She seemed attentive. Here was a woman from a powerful country which has a painful racial past, pictured with the father of South African’s racial struggle. It was poignant; the image resonated in both countries.

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A photo provided by the Nelson Mandela Foundation showed the 92-year-old Mandela sitting on a couch next to Mrs. Obama, pen in hand to sign an advance copy of his new book, “Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorized Quotations Book.” Mandela was wearing one of his trademark shirts, richly patterned and buttoned at the neck.

Mrs. Obama, daughters Malia, 12, and Sasha, 10, and her mother, Marian Robinson, were viewing some of Mandela’s personal papers at his foundation when he sent word that he wanted to meet them at his home in a leafy Johannesburg neighborhood. It was the first meeting between America’s first black first lady and the political prisoner who later became his country’s first black president

Mrs. Obama’s entourage spent about 20 minutes with Mandela and his wife, Graca Machel, who is a former first lady of Mozambique.

Mrs. Obama’s niece and nephew, Leslie Robinson, 15, and Avery Robinson, 19, who are traveling with her, were also invited to meet Mandela.

White House officials had no immediate comment on the meeting. No aides, except for photographers for the foundation and the White House, witnessed the meeting.

Mandela, who stepped down in 1999 after serving one term as president, is rarely seen in public anymore. At age 92, he is in fragile health and was briefly hospitalized in January with an acute respiratory infection. But he apparently felt well enough Tuesday to invite the Obama family to visit.

Mrs. Obama is traveling without President Barack Obama, who met Mandela on a previous visit to Africa when he was a U.S. senator. Obama and Mandela have spoken by telephone several times since Obama took office, most recently last June, the White House said. Obama also wrote a foreword for Mandela’s book, “Conversations with Myself.”

Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his role in the movement against apartheid, South Africa’s now-abolished system of racial separation.

Mrs. Obama began a weeklong goodwill visit to South Africa and Botswana on Monday.

Earlier Tuesday, the first lady met with Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma, a wife of South African President Jacob Zuma, who has three of them. She and her family were ending the day with a tour of the Apartheid Museum.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a private partnership with the MAC cosmetics company that will expand medical and emergency support services for rape survivors in South Africa, where over 3 million people live with HIV/AIDS.

Black Voices reports:

Clinton and the cosmetics company pledged the commitment of $2 million to diminish the AIDS epidemic in South Africa over the next two years through the launch of new TCC centers and the extension of operating hours at existing clinics.

The TCC Network was launched by the South African governments with aide from the United States government to bring services, including HIV/AIDS testing, prevention, and treatment programs to women and children who are victims of sexual violence. The MAC Foundation will leverage $18.9 million that the U.S. government has committed to the program already.

The MAC AIDS FUND was founded in 1994 with the goal of supporting people living with HIV and AIDS around the world, and commits 100 percent of the sale price of Viva Glam Lipstick and Lipgloss to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and education.

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The first lady will visit Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa and Gaborone, Botswana, during the June 21-26 trip.

Besides youth leadership, Mrs. Obama will also focus on education, health and wellness.

Officials said the visit will highlight the important stake the U.S. has in the success of Africa’s many nations, as well as the historic ties between Americans and people who live in Africa. President Barack Obama’s late father was Kenyan.

South Africa is a political leader and economic powerhouse in Africa, and an example of a successful democratic transition on the continent. Botswana has held free and fair democratic elections since gaining independence in 1966.

The trip will be the second one in which the first lady travels abroad without the president. She will be accompanied by her daughters, Malia and Sasha, and her mother, Marian Robinson.

Last year, Mrs. Obama visited Haiti after its devastating earthquake, and Mexico.

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JOHANNESBURG — A U.N.-led alliance on Wednesday urged young people to change behaviors that increase their risk of contracting AIDS, and called on their elders to provide leadership, education and support.

Their joint report released Wednesday, “Opportunity in Crisis: Preventing HIV from early adolescence to young adulthood,” says that around the world some 2,500 young people are infected daily with HIV, and that in the year 2009 people between the ages of 15 and 24 accounted for 41 percent of new HIV infections among all those over the age of 15.

The organizations that released the report urge communities, leaders and young people to act to stop sex with multiple partners or with older partners, whose prevalence of HIV is statistically higher.

That behavior, the groups say, is “fueling HIV transmission among young people, particularly young women.”

The alliance includes U.N. agencies for children, AIDS, education, health and women, the International Labor Organization and the World Bank.

“We must protect the second decade of life, so that the journey from childhood to adulthood is not derailed by HIV — a journey that is especially fraught for girls and young women,” U.N. children’s agency director Anthony Lake said in a statement Wednesday.

The report said poverty and unemployment have to be addressed because they can push young people into prostitution. They also cited concerns about discrimination against women, which can keep women from refusing unwanted sex, negotiating safe sex, or objecting to a partner’s infidelity. It also says many teens lack access to basic information about HIV and how to prevent AIDS, and to testing services.

But the groups pointed to strategies that can help, such as a campaign in Tanzania to ridicule the idea of men pursuing younger women.

“Existing prevention strategies have had limited success, so we have to look for creative new approaches to reverse the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” Mahmoud Mohieldin, the World Bank’s managing director, said in a statement. “These must address people’s very basic needs for education, economic security, inclusion, dignity, and human rights. These issues are particularly crucial when we consider the health and well-being of adolescent girls, mothers and children, and socially marginalized groups.”

Working as a photojournalist for daily newspaper The World, Nzima was assigned to cover what he thought would be a peaceful demonstration by black students protesting an order that Afrikaans be an official language taught in non-white schools. An officer ordered the students to disperse and, when they began singing instead, the police began firing on the students.

Nzima witnessed a boy shot and picked up by another youth, who began to run away with the boy in his arms.

The photographer was able to snap six images of the scene before he and another newspaper colleague rushed the injured child to a clinic. There, the young Pieterson was pronounced dead. Hundreds of black students were killed in ensuing incidents across the nation.

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The guest list includes some of the world’s smartest women including the world’s first black female astronaut, the woman who discovered neutron stars, and a former head of the Nobel committee for physics.

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Leading South Africa’s female geniuses will be Rhodes University’s Professor Tebello Nyokong. She said the 200 scientists from 50 countries “could be the most brilliant group of women” the country has seen.

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Joseph Ntshongwana is said to have went on a killing spree after his daughter was raped and infected with HIV; however police say there is no evidence that proves a rape ever occurred. Police arrested Ntshongwana after he was found at his home with an axe and bloodstained clothing.

Khangelani Mdluli, a resident of Lamontville, said he survived an attack: “He stopped the car, jumped out with a plastic bag… I thought it was a gun.” Mr Mdluli said the attacker was shouting: “You think I’m stupid? You infected my daughter with HIV.”
Source

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CAPE TOWN, South Africa — South African officials said Friday that they had euthanized the country’s most famous baboon, known as Fred, who was well-known for raiding cars and frightening tourists along Cape Town’s scenic route.

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Fred was the ringleader of a group of baboons infamous breaking into cars to chow down on sandwiches and snacks. Cape Town’s baboon management group said he was euthanized Friday because he was becoming increasingly aggressive.

The group said Fred attacked and injured three people in 2010.

“The decision to have him euthanized was not taken lightly and not without extensive discussions between all role players involved,” the group said in a statement. “This baboon’s aggression levels had recently escalated to the point where the safety of tourists, motorists and other travellers along the road past Smitswinkel Bay was being threatened.”

In 2009, Fred led a group of 29 baboons in a four-car raid outside Simon’s Town, a small coastal neighbourhood. The baboon chief used his signature tactic of opening unlocked doors and jumping through windows to search for food, while the rest looked for access inside from car roofs and hoods.

There are more than 400 baboons roaming Cape Town’s outskirts, particularly the popular scenic route to the Cape of Good Hope.

Baboons are a protected species under South African legislation but their aggressive pursuits of food have led to conflicts with residents. Cape Town’s baboon management group said that as baboons are exposed to human food, rich in carbohydrates, they are becoming increasingly intent on getting more of it — and increasingly dangerous. People caught feeding baboons are liable for a fine of 1500 rand ($219).

“Unfortunately, this baboon’s demise can be contributed mainly to the continuous misguided efforts by humans to befriend and feed baboons,” the group’s statement said. “Because people want to love, laugh at and be entertained by baboons, they start a cycle of events that can lead to tragedy, as in the case of this baboon.”

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Miami lawyer Ira Kurzban flew to Johannesburg Wednesday to accompany Aristide back to Haiti amid unexplained delays attributed to U.S. opposition.

The star of the “Lethal Weapon” action movies arrived Thursday morning, Kurzban said.

The United States has called for Aristide to put off his departure until Sunday’s disputed presidential run-off in his homeland, saying his return would distract voters.

Aristide, who emerged as a leading voice for Haiti’s poor in a popular revolt that forced an end to the Duvalier family’s 29-year dictatorship, remains Haiti’s most popular politician though he has been in exile seven years.

He has said he will not be involved in politics in Haiti and wants to lead his foundation’s efforts to improve education in the impoverished Caribbean nation devastated by last year’s catastrophic earthquake. Aides say he fears the winner of the presidential elections might reverse the long-awaited decision to allow his return. Both are right-wing candidates long opposed to Aristide.

Glover, who is board chair for the human rights and social advocacy organization TransAfrica Forum, is among several U.S. celebrities who have been pushing for Aristide’s speedy return, including politicians Jesse Jackson, U.S. envoy to Haiti Paul Farmer and entertainer Harry Belafonte.

“I am going to South Africa to show our solidarity with the people of Haiti by standing at the side of the leader they elected twice with overwhelming support,” Glover wrote on the TransAfrica Forum website.

“People of good conscience cannot be idle while a former dictator (Duvalier) is able to return unhindered while a democratic leader who peacefully handed over power to another elected president is restricted from returning to his country by external forces,” Glover said.

Kurzban blamed Aristide’s delayed trip on arranging an aircraft. Air charter companies in South Africa said a private jet would cost more than half a million dollars.

South African officials said they are consulting with “interested parties” on the logistics of moving Aristide, his wife and two daughters.

Glover and nine others recently wrote to South African President Jacob Zuma urging him to “assist the Aristides in making their transition as soon as possible” since “all the last remaining obstacles to the Aristides’ return have been removed.”

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SOUTH AFRICA – Jennifer Hudson prepared for her upcoming role in the movie “Winnie” about South African civil rights leader and wife of former President, Nelson Mandela by sleeping in a South African prison similar to the one where Winnie Mandela spent 500 days.

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Essence reports:

While locked in her cell, Hudson’s camera crew shot scenes of her confinement to depict the 500-plus days Winnie Mandela was imprisoned. By the third day, the actress said her hair was tangled, her eyes had sunken in, and she began hallucinating imaginary conversations with her son.

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The 17-year-old girl, who was a pupil at the school just outside Johannesburg, was taken to the Midvaal Hospital in Meyerton.

Beeld newspaper on Friday reported that the baby’s body was found in a plastic bag filled with bloodied clothes after the girl was taken to hospital.

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The film based on Canadian writer Allan Stratton’s 2004 novel “Chanda’s Secrets,” is set in impoverished, rural South Africa, a world of prejudice and superstition surrounding AIDS. Twelve-year-old Chanda shows maturity and courage beyond her years when the disease strikes her family.

Khomotso Manyaka, 15, who played the lead character, said she hopes young viewers will leave her movie with the message that “they don’t have to keep secrets.”

“HIV is not something that you can hide,” said her co-star, 14-year-old Keaoboka Makanyane. “You have to talk about it so that you can get help.”

Both teens come from the same small town in rural northeastern South Africa and are in their first year as boarders at South Africa’s equivalent of New York’s “Fame” school. They earned full scholarships to the prestigious National School of the Arts in Johannesburg on the strength of their performances in the film.

The two teens, who had never before been out of the country, also have had a chance to see the world since the movie’s release, going to film festivals in Europe and the Middle East.

On Tuesday, they gathered with fellow students to watch an Internet feed of the Academy Award nominations announced from the United States.

The movie’s director, Oliver Schmitz, praised both young, first-time actresses.

“I’m proud to have gotten this far,” Schmitz said in a telephone interview from his base in Germany. “I’m proud of the movie.”

Years of South African government inaction have been reversed recently, but the legacy of official denial and the disease’s continuing fierce stigma have helped leave the country with more people living with HIV than anywhere else in the world.

Some 5.7 million of 50 million people are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, and South Africa has more than 1 million children orphaned by AIDS, many left to take responsibility for younger siblings.

Another South African movie with an AIDS theme, director Darrell James Roodt’s “Yesterday,” was a best foreign film nominee in 2005.

JOHANNESBURG — The South African government has halted the rollout of a controversial male circumcision device, health department spokesman Fidel Hadebe said Wednesday.

Hadebe said more research was needed into the plastic device, known as Tara Klamps, which has been used in the circumcisions of 9,000 South African men since April as part of an initiative to stop the spread of Aids.

Treatment Action Campaign, a Cape Town-based advocacy group for people with HIV, welcomed the government’s decision, calling the device dangerous and painful.

South Africa has more people living with HIV than anywhere else in the world, with 5.7 million of 50 million people infected.

Circumcision, in conjunction with using condoms and remaining faithful to one partner, has been shown to cut the risk of contracting the AIDS virus by as much as 60 percent.

While circumcision reduces the risk of HIV transmission, the devices cause excessive swelling and severe pain, said Lihle Dlamini, the deputy secretary general of Treatment Action Campaign.

The director of KwaZulu-Natal’s male medical circumcision division, however, said they will continue to purchase the circumcision device. In October, the KwaZulu-Natal government bought 22,500 devices, director Sandile Tshabalala said.

He said the clamp “is as good as any other method.”

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Even in this crime-plagued country it stood out as tragic: A honeymooning couple from abroad is carjacked and the wife’s body is found in their abandoned taxi the next morning. But now the taxi driver says the husband hired him to kill her.

By accepting the confession in a plea bargain Tuesday, South African authorities gave credence to the driver’s story, but would not immediately confirm the husband was being sought.

Shrien Dewani, 31, denied involvement in his Swedish wife’s murder through a spokesman Tuesday. He retained the celebrity publicist after his return to Britain and when allegations surfaced about him following 28-year-old Anni Dewani’s death.

“Coming from a taxi driver who admitted to playing a part in murdering his wife, I think it should be treated with the contempt it deserves,” Max Clifford told Sky News. “Let’s see what evidence there is to back up these accusations. They have said he (Shrien Dewani) is not a suspect. That is the only true communications that have come out from the official bodies.”

Clifford said authorities have not contacted his client. The couple had married in India two weeks before arriving in South Africa last month. Photographs from their traditional wedding show them smiling in jewels and richly embroidered robes.

Mthunzi Mhaga, spokesman for South Africa’s national prosecuting office, said Tuesday that a bid to request Shrien Dewani’s extradition is “a matter that is likely to be considered” as part of continuing investigations.

“Based on what happened in court today, obviously the investigations are going to intensify,” Mhaga said.

Anni Dewani’s father, Vinod Hindocha, attended Tuesday’s court hearing. As he left, his eyes wet with tears, he thanked South Africans who investigated the case, and people here and around the world who had offered his family support.

“We are very, very confident about the police investigation,” Hindocha added.

Taxi driver Zola Tongo said he took the couple from the airport to their hotel on Nov. 13 when they arrived in Cape Town following a stay at Kruger, South Africa’s most famous game park. Once the wife was out of earshot, the driver said Shrien Dewani asked if he could find someone to kill her. Tongo said Shrien Dewani offered 15,000 rand each (about $2,100), but paid only 1,000 (about $145).

Once Tongo’s confession was read in court, a translator asked in Xhosa whether he understood. Tongo, who stood with his eyes lowered throughout the hearing in a courtroom packed with South African and foreign reporters, said he did – his only comments in court.

As a result of his plea bargain, Tongo was convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was expected to testify against the other suspects, including two South Africans who were arrested soon after Anni Dewani’s body was discovered.

The women’s league of South Africa’s governing African National Congress party said Tongo’s 18-year sentence was too lenient “and undermines our nation’s commitment to ensure that all those who perpetuate violence against women are removed from our society.”

Tongo’s confession did not touch on a possible motive.

Shrien Dewani had told authorities the couple was returning to their hotel from dinner and had detoured to visit an impoverished township when gunmen forced him and the taxi driver from the vehicle. Neither Shrien Dewani nor the driver were hurt.

Anni Dewani’s body was found in the vehicle the next morning in another township. Among the questions raised about the case was why the attackers did not steal the vehicle.

National police chief Bheki Cele told reporters on Nov. 18 that Anni Dewani had been shot in the back of the neck. He said she had not been sexually assaulted.

The case has drawn wide attention in Britain and in South Africa, where violent crime is high but attacks on foreign tourists are rare. Hundreds of thousands of foreigners were here when South Africa hosted the World Cup, soccer’s premier event, earlier this year and no serious incidents were reported.

“Let us hope that the swift and efficient way in which this case has been dealt with, and the fact that it is now becoming clear that it was planned by a non-South African, will help to restore the country’s reputation to the levels we achieved during and after the World Cup,” the Congress of South African Trade Unions said in a statement Tuesday.

The South African case had echoes of a 2003 Australian death involving an American couple.

Gabe Watson, an accomplished diver from Alabama, was dubbed the “Honeymoon Killer” by the Australian media after his wife drowned during a 2003 scuba diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef. In 2008, Australian authorities found there was sufficient evidence to charge Watson with her death.

Officials argued he killed his wife by turning off her air supply and holding her underwater. Watson acknowledged in his plea in Australia that he committed a negligent act, failing to do enough to save his wife. But Watson denies deliberately trying to kill her.

He served an 18-month sentence in Australia after pleading guilty last year to manslaughter, but now faces murder charges that could carry a much stiffer punishment in the United States.

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This is a great thing coming out of South Africa. They have managed to turn weapons of destruction into tools of healing. The American Foreign Press reports:

South Africa has transformed apartheid-era nuclear weapons into a tool for detecting cancer and heart disease, with a new technology that could ease global worries about nuclear arms trafficking.

After voluntarily dismantling its weapons programme, democratic South Africa used the leftover nuclear fuel to produce medical isotopes used by doctors for imaging technology.

South Africa is one of the world’s top three producers of molybdenum-99, better known as moly, used in 80 percent of the 50 million nuclear medical procedures performed globally each year.

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In a series of sermons delivered at Luhlaza High School in Khayelitsha township, Cape Town, Pastor Xola Skosana declared that Jesus Christ had “put himself in the shoes of people who experience brokenness” and had channeled the suffering of his followers by experiencing their same sickness, pain and marginalization, reports the BBC.

Local’s dismay at the content of the sermons quickly spread to the national arena following the events in Cape Town, forcing Pastor Skosana to explain his approach.

“The best gift we can give to people who are HIV-positive is to help de-stigmatize AIDS and create an environment where they know God is not against them, he’s not ashamed of them,” he said.

But while some groups praise the pastor’s metaphor as a means of reaching out to the infected and enhancing the debate about HIV prevention in South Africa, others are outraged over the connection he has made between Jesus and the precarious situations in which the virus can be contracted.

Fellow religious leaders have noted that the metaphor jeopardizes believers’ understanding of Jesus as supreme and God, ultimately rendering him part of the problem and not the solution.

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South Africa has been at the forefront of international attention in recent months with its audacious discussions and approaches to HIV prevention.

Home to the largest population of people living with the virus, in June this year the country played host to a conference focusing on the link between male circumcision and a significant reduction in the spread of HIV.

REPORT: Events In South Africa Perpetuate Male Circumcision Debate

Representatives from Johns Hopkins University and US government delegates were reported to be in attendance at the event, in which researchers, South African authorities and medical experts expressed the possibility of circumcision being able to reduce the spread of HIV by 60 per cent.

Around the same time in KwaZulu-Natal province, 800 boys and young men had been circumcised by authorized medical teams in that provincial government’s push to circumcise 186,703 boys and young men in 2010/2011.

South Africa as a whole is expected to circumcise 2 million boys in the next 5 years.

You can read more about Pastor Xola Skosana’s sermons on the BBC website.

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Prosecutors had accused Tiny Virginia Makopo of trying to kiss and fondle the girls. She also was accused of assaulting one of the teens as well as a fellow supervisor.

A spokeswoman from South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority said Monday that Makopo has been acquitted of the charges.

The scandal erupted at Winfrey’s $40 million school soon after it opened in 2007 amid great fanfare.

In a statement Monday, Oprah said she is “profoundly disappointed” at the trial outcome. Oprah said she appreciates efforts by the prosecutor and police in seeking justice and treating the girls with utmost care and respect.

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This is not the anti-apartheid icon of “Long Walk to Freedom,” Mandela’s 1995 autobiography. “Conversations with Myself,” which goes on sale Tuesday in 22 countries and 20 languages from Catalan to Turkish, presents a more human Mandela, faults, frailties and all.

“Conversations” was compiled with the 92-year-old former South African president’s blessing by a team of archivists, editors and collaborators who worked from decades of notes, letters, recorded conversations and other material.

In a foreword, U.S. President Barack Obama writes that Mandela, who largely retired from public life in 2004, is inspiring even if he is no saint.

“Underneath the history that has been made, there is a human being who chose hope over fear — progress over the prisons of the past,” Obama wrote. “And I am reminded that even as he has become a legend, to know the man … is to respect him even more.”

“Conversations” is best read as a companion to “Long Walk,” which was in part calculated by Mandela and other members of his African National Congress party to stir support for anti-apartheid activists as they stepped into new roles as leaders trying to heal and develop a divided, impoverished nation.

As he puts it in “Conversations,” an autobiography of “a freedom fighter must inevitably be influenced by the question whether the revelation of certain facts, however true they may be, will help advance the struggle.”

Certainly, the possibility of violence within Mandela’s first marriage, to Evelyn Mase, who died in 2004, had no place in the official autobiography. But it has been raised elsewhere, including in “Young Mandela,” an unauthorized biography by British writer David James Smith that appeared earlier this year.

In “Conversations,” Mandela puts his version on record. In a transcript of a conversation with Ahmed Kathrada, a friend and fellow veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle who was helping him polish “Long Walk,” Mandela denies he once tried to choke his first wife. Instead, he said, she threatened to burn him with a red hot poker.

“So I caught hold of her and twisted her arm, enough for me to take this thing out,” Mandela says.

“The poker away,” Kathrada responds.

Mandela: “That’s all.”

Mandela has said his first wife did not understand or support his political activism. A second marriage, to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, also ended in divorce. His anguish over sacrificing family life to politics is a recurrent theme of “Conversations.”

“I love playing and chatting with children, giving them a bath, feeding and putting them to bed with a little story, and being away from the family has troubled me throughout my political life,” he writes in a passage drawn from an unpublished autobiography he had intended as a sequel to “Long Walk,” but never completed.

Other “Conversations” passages are taken from notes Mandela made in calendars in his careful, upright penmanship. On Dec. 12, 1984, he jotted: “Results: failed all six subjects.” He writes elsewhere of having too little time to study for his advanced law degree, taken by correspondence while he was in prison.

The editors of “Conversations” promise the Mandela behind the public figure. But a tell-all would be hard to imagine from Mandela, who spent years as a secretive underground ANC agent, and knew throughout his 27 years in prison that letters to even his closest confidants were being read and censored by apartheid authorities.

Mandela emerged from prison as the most famous African leader of the 20th century, whose words could have far-reaching impact. giving him more reason to be guarded. But there are fascinating glimpses of the inner man, and flashes of his celebrated humor in “Conversations.”

He describes being taken from prison to a hospital to be treated for tuberculosis, and being presented with a breakfast of bacon and eggs despite being on a cholesterol-free diet. When an official warned him against defying doctor’s orders, he replied: “Today, I am prepared to die; I am going to eat it.”

Sales of the book will benefit the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

The foundation, which houses a Mandela archives and supports development and other projects in his name, switched in recent years from a logo featuring Mandela’s face to one of his hands. That reflected his desire to shift the focus from himself, and his concern his legacy would mean little if South Africans did not take it upon themselves to build their country.

“It is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it,” Mandela said last year, calling on people around the world to celebrate his July 18 birthday by doing good for others.

“Conversations” presents a Mandela more people may feel they can emulate. It ends with a passage from his unpublished autobiography in which he insists he was never a saint — “Even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”

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Obama says the Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been a voice of principle, an unrelenting champion of justice and a dedicated peacemaker.

Tutu played a pivotal role in South Africa’s struggle against apartheid, the now-abolished system of white-minority rule. He also has advocated freedom and justice worldwide, supported gay rights and pushed for treatment programs to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Tutu announced this year that he would retire on his birthday, Oct. 7, to spend more time with his family.

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“Why? Why?” shouted Nokuthula Masango, 25, after the authorities carted away bolts of gaily colored fabric.

She made just $36 a week, $21 less than the minimum wage, but needed the meager pay to help support a large extended family that includes her five unemployed siblings and their children.

Read more at NYTimes

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Gcobani Mndini, a shy, lanky 17-year-old, said he was already a gangster by the time he started ninth grade. His small gang, which called itself the Tomatoes, was robbing people, fighting over girls and getting high on Jack Daniel’s and marijuana.

“I joined the gang because I wanted to belong,” he said.

He has since found that he fits in the last place he might have expected — at a private high school that is reinventing education for teenagers from South Africa’s black townships.

Read more at NYTimes

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A South African girl who survived a criminal attack that shocked the nation was among those killed when a train hit a school van this week, a family spokesman said Friday.

Liesel Augis was only six years old when she was raped, beaten unconscious with a brick and thrown into a fire by a family friend in 2006. She survived and became known as “Little Rock” because of her strength and resilience.

On Wednesday, Liesel’s bus driver went around a closed railroad crossing gate and the van was hit by a train. Nine children died at the scene in Cape Town, and a 10th died Friday. Only the driver and four children survived.

Family spokesman Malvern de Bruyn said that Liesel had a zest for life, and the accident has left a deep scar in the family and the nation.

“We could see she was someone who wanted to defy anything that would cut her life,” de Bruyn said.

Liesel’s 2006 attacker, Abraham James, was sentenced to 28 years in jail without parole.

Her attack was one of many that took place between 2000 and 2006 by several assailants at a stretch of open land in a suburb of Cape Town now known as “Bushes of Devil.”

The family’s plight did not end with her attack. Days after James’ arrest, unknown people tried to set fire to Liesel’s home. De Bruyn said he had to find a refuge for them in the same area.

After the attack Liesel started school at the Good Hope Primary School in Kuilsrivier, a suburb of Cape Town. She had to conceal her name and the incident from her schoolmates, de Bruyn said.

“We could not divulge her real name, only the school principal knew the name,” de Bruyn said. But “the private school opened their arms to our child and gave all the support she needed.”

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Even Liesel would not talk about the incident, and would only refer to herself as “Little Rock,” the name de Bruyn gave her, he said. The pseudonym suppressed her pain and her anger, but allowed her to build friendships without being taunted at school, he said.

De Bruyn derived the name from the 1956 march in which some 20,000 women protested against the introduction of pass books that the apartheid government required them to carry at all times which restricted them to certain areas. The women then chanted, “you struck a rock, you struck a woman.”

“I named her ‘Little Rock’ because she was as tough as a rock like those women who fight against apartheid,” he said.

Liesel’s problems were compounded by a family that was destitute and lived in a shack, he said.

She was only able to go to school after a trust fund called The Little Rock Foundation was started for her and other child victims of rape. Local academics, non-governmental organizations and the community of Greater Blue Downs in western South Africa contributed to the foundation.

The family that had to deal with the attacks, now has to deal with their little girl’s death. Police said they are investigating a case of homicide against the van driver.

Liesel will be buried on Sept. 4 along with nine other victims from Wednesday’s crash.

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Swaziland’s King Mswati has been betrayed by his childhood friend, Justice minister Ndumiso Mamba, who was caught sleeping with one of his young wives, Nothando Dube.

Southern African newspapers and online sources say the minister and queen were arrested last week.

The Independent Online reported that the Swazi minister, the right-hand-man of King Mswati III, resigned after a dissident group said he had an affair with the absolute monarch’s wife.

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Afrik-News said for many months, the queen would dress in an army uniform whenever the king was away and walk straight to the gate, and no one bothered to ask where this “soldier” was going.

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