Motlatsi Lebea

Dumisani Ndlovu wakes at 4am to start his 15-hour day, seven days a week. Each morning the 45-year-old taxi driver, a father of four, climbs into his minibus with one mission in mind — to reach his target. If he doesn’t complete enough trips and earn enough money for the taxi owner, his wages are docked.

"The polarisation we see within the international community … replicates the polarisation within the country itself … the lack of consensus on the Zimbabwean question has been a major stumbling block." — Zimbabwe political analyst Eldred Masunugure, in the <i>Financial Gazette</i>. Compare this report with others from Zimbawe’s media.

She may be all grown up, but Carol Smith still has a passion for dolls. But not just any dolls. The ones she’s hooked on are called Persona Dolls, designed to look like girls and boys of different creeds and backgrounds, which are used by educators to help them tackle stereotypes and prejudices with their young learners.

One woman facing abuse and rape is one too many. Using this benchmark, the road ahead of us is long and it will take many years to eradicate the scourge. But as the 2004 Sixteen Days of Activism, devoted to ending gender violence, begins, we choose to highlight the ‘sheroes’ who have used the political space of the past 10 years to begin to make inroads into the crippling rates of rape and abuse that still bedevil South African men and women.

Unemployment, poor water supplies and sanitation, lack of access to information, high incidence of HIV/Aids, poor infrastructure and inadequate education and training are some of the problems that rural communities are facing in Kwazulu-Natal. Many of these problems are linked, so tackling them requires an integrated approach. And the University of Zululand is doing just that.

In a bid to avoid the crackdown on freedom of speech in their country, Zimbabwean journalists, lawyers and human rights activists have come up with an innovative plan to use the internet to get daily news to Zimbabweans. They have created <i>Zimonline</i> — a website registered in South Africa and thus beyond the clutches of the Zimbabwean government and its restrictive media laws.