Thousands of unemployed South African youths and an embattled social services sector will benefit from a bilateral cooperation agreement signed between the department of social development and the government of Cuba. Under the agreement just more than 9 000 auxiliary social workers will be trained in the next year in a move to provide relief to overworked social workers.

Controversial businessperson Charles Modise, being held in prison in Kimberley, said this week that he was arrested as part of a larger political conspiracy to discredit besieged Cosatu president Willie Madisha. He said in a fax from prison this week that he was arrested with the help of the head of the detectives in Gauteng, commissioner Norman Taioe.

An oppressive pall hangs over the Motala Heights informal settlement in Pinetown near Durban. It comes not from the dump site nearby the wood-and-iron houses nor from sewage, but rather from the clampdown on basic civil liberties — the freedom of movement and political association.

Staff at Rhodes University are seething over the revelation that former vice-chancellor David Woods, who retired in April last year, received a covert gift of R1,67-million paid from university funds. This gratuity was over and above contractual obligations Rhodes had to Woods, such as cash payouts to him for leave untaken by the time he retired.

A group of Richtersvelders is trying to stop the Land Claims Court from making the land settlement signed on April 22 with Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin an order of the court. The agreement, signed by four members of a 15-member committee with Erwin, was allegedly done in great secrecy.