The virgin myth theory — the belief that sex with a virgin can cure HIV/Aids — has become the accepted explanation for child sexual abuse in South Africa, despite little hard evidence linking it to rapes.
Residents of Thembelihle squatter camp near Lenasia, south-west of Johannesburg, attacked the Azara Secondary School with rocks and petrol bombs and students had to be evacuated under police guard. Police were called in to stop the disruption and escort the children home.
About 130 people remain trapped in their vehicles in the northern parts of the Eastern Cape by the heavy snowfalls that have blocked roads and cut off several towns in the province.
Drew Forrest: What is the relevance of a communist party in the year 2002, and in what sense are you a communist party?
‘Some call me the devil,” proclaims Ed Fagan delightedly. We are in a Cape Town Waterfront hotel and Fagan, a showman, is enjoying himself as he details the multibillion-dollar class action he has launched against foreign companies accused of propping up apartheid.
Even members of the African National Congress don’t take its Youth League’s pronouncements seriously. ”The rate at which the Youth League calls for boycotts, there is a good chance that their engagement on any issue will not be taken seriously,” said one former member.
Saudi Arabia is to gender what apartheid South Africa was to race. In public life a woman is almost entirely segregated from men: excluded from the workplace, penned in special ”family sections” in restaurants, taught in separate schools and colleges and forbidden to drive.
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Experts say a traditional African herbal medicine, Metrafaids, substantially reduces the viral loads of HIV-positive patients.
Once again South Africa has cause to be embarrassed by its leaders at the 14th International Aids Conference in Barcelona. It is time for Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to resign. She clearly not only does not understand much about HIV/Aids, its treatment, prevention and care, but she has forgotten that government ministers are employed by the people who voted for them.