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/ 4 September 2006
The government has moved to limit the fallout from a warning by Kwazulu-Natal Judge Chris Nicholson that a ”grave constitutional crisis” could occur if it defied court orders. ”Government wishes to reassure all South Africans in general, and the judiciary in particular, that court judgements are binding on the state and that all state institutions will abide by court decisions.
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/ 1 September 2006
What started weeks ago with Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) activists occupying the Human Rights Commission offices in Cape Town may end with the pressure group taking President Thabo Mbeki to court in an attempt to get Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang fired. The lobby group says there are several legal avenues that could be explored if the president were to be brought before the court.
The government’s foot-dragging response to a Durban High Court order to provide anti-retroviral treatment to HIV-positive prisoners continued this week when it ignored a deadline to give the High Court proof of its treatment plan for inmates at Durban’s Westville Prison.
Photographer and activist Omar Badsha’s new exhibition features the ordinary people who have changed the course of history over the past 30 years.
One of the few schools for black artists during apartheid, the Rorke’s Drift Art and Craft Centre is reinventing itself two years after its reopening, writes Niren Tolsi.
Niren Tolsi speaks to veteran writers about life in Durban in the Fifties — the subject of a new exhibition featuring photos from Drum magazine.
Rule one when going to a planned UFO sighting: don’t be too hopeful of being whisked away by giant, gently glowing, triple-breasted or amply hung aliens. Rule two: carry a handy tab of some hallucinogenic substance, in case of disappointment.
Violet Mthembu, who cares for three people every day, says that many of the sick and aged she looks after are either physically or economically incapable of collecting water from one of the stand pipes dotting the township — the only place where residents can access running water. "Some people have [prepaid] cards, but for others it’s too expensive, so we use our own cards," she says.
The Foreman Road informal settlement nestles in a ravine leading down to the Palmiet River on the edge of the middle-class suburb of Clare Estate in Durban. From the top of the settlement the view across the river is of a swathe of trees and bushes, yet that is where the idyll ends.
Treatment of HIV/Aids, including the provision of anti-retroviral drugs, will now be available to inmates of Durban’s Westville Prison after a Durban High Court ruling by Judge Thumba Pillay. Fifteen HIV-positive prisoners had taken the prison and the departments of health and correctional services to court to force them to fulfil their constitutional and legal obligation to provide treatment.