She dodged the threat of legal action by Aids activists, and then had to deal with apparent threats from drug firms to pull out of the country. All in all, it was a torrid week for Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. But last week yet another furore involving multinational pharmaceutical companies erupted.

While anti-gun lobbyists are applauding the South African Police Service (SAPS) for its efforts in recovering lost and stolen guns, it has emerged that the police are incapable of looking after recovered guns in their possession. This is one finding of research conducted by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) on behalf of Gun Free South Africa (GFSA).

The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) has filed its responding affidavit in the legal case that it brought against South Africa’s four major political parties to compel them to disclose their sources of private funding. The affidavits all indicated their refusal to disclose their funders as it would threaten the country’s multiparty democracy.

The Department of Public Works will go ahead with ”fruitless expenditure” on a site worth R10-million, despite not knowing who will use it. Bewildered public works officials, who spoke to the Mail & Guardian on condition of anonymity, said the department’s acquisition of property with no immediate user will be a violation of the Public Finance Management Act.

A decision by some of its member organisations to call for a boycott of the national elections has split the Social Movement Indaba — an umbrella of 11 social movements. Social movements are divided on how best to boycott the elections.

Girl learners as young as 12 are being injected with contraceptives at schools by nurses from the North West department of health — sometimes without their parents’ consent. The Child Care Act states that no medicine may be administered to any child under the age of 14 without a parent’s informed consent.

”Apartheid Israel can be defeated, just as apartheid in South Africa was defeated,” Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former president of the African National Congress Women’s League, said on Thursday. She described the killing of the leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, as a ”cowardly act that took the life of a brave hero”.

Democratic Party veteran Helen Suzman laid into both the Democratic Alliance’s support for the death penalty and Patricia de Lille’s new party, the Independent Democrats, this week. She warned DA faithfuls now attracted to De Lille that the newcomer offered little substance.

An al-Qaeda operative told the Italian police that his unit had been poised to carry out mass murder at the main Milan railway terminus, possibly before the September 11 attacks, the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported on Thursday.