It is with disgust and incredulity that I read daily about the heinous crime of “corrective rape” that is still taking place on the streets of South Africa, especially in the “African Townships” (basically poorer suburbs inhabited by Africans, such as Soweto, Gugulethu, Langa, Kayalitsha etc.) Corrective rape is “the rape of a lesbian by a man either to punish her or cure and correct her sexual orientation”.

Despite South Africa having a very liberal constitution, which forbids discrimination against LGBTs ( Lesbians, gays, Bisexuals and Transgendered persons), lesbian women are constantly being targeted in hate crimes, where the aim is for lesbian women, especially “butch” women to be beaten up and raped (often gang-raped) to “teach them what they are and what a woman should be like”,  sometimes by their own male friends. Read More…

Posted under Gender equality

The ongoing debate as to whether the sex trade in South Africa should be decriminalised or legalised has gained momentum as the 2010 Soccer World Cup approaches. In this article we take a look at various reasons why this should happen, and ask for your feedback.

The decriminalisation of sex work is recommended in South Africa’s HIV and AIDS and STI National Strategic Plan (2007-2011), and supported by both South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) and the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), but the process of changing the law remains under the South African Law Reform Commission, which began reviewing the Sexual Offences Act seven years ago. An initial bill for parliamentary debate is not expected to be ready until March 2010, and any changes in legislation would not be passed before 2011. In the meantime, advocates of decriminalisation have called for a moratorium on arrests of sex workers during the World Cup. Read More…

Posted under HIV / AIDS

While World AIDS Day is graciously honored by millions around the world on December 1 of every year, the unfortunate truth is that not a single day can fully give justice to the reality that more than 33 million people around the world live with HIV every single day of their lives. Even more difficult to demonstrate in a single day is the significant burden HIV/AIDS holds over Africa and Asia, where crowded populations and abject poverty are far larger problems than in Europe or North America.

Although the rates of HIV are dropping and the measures to prevent further spread are finding results, it is highly likely that the toll taken by the HIV/AIDS pandemic on the children of South Africa will be severe. It is estimated that deaths attributed to HIV/AIDS will leave one in three of the country’s children orphaned by 2015. This staggering figure is only one reason why World AIDS Day is not over; but for only one reason, it foreshadows extremely serious social, economic, and humanitarian problems. This is a concern that requires action on all planes from high levels of government to the most basic levels of community and neighborly care. Read More…

Posted under HIV / AIDS

Today is World Aids Day. It is being recognized around the world. Google and Twitter have changed their homepages to a red background.

Aids Epidemic Update reports that the total number of world-wide infections has been declining by 17% over the last 8 years. Still 33,4 million people are infected with HIV – that’s more than ever before. The victims live longer

due to improved therapies that weren’t available in the early stages of the epidemic. Treating these patients requires a lot of resources. Therefore every prevention of an infection is saving us a big amount of money.

Just imagine if some of this money not spent on treatments would flow into increased prevention efforts?

Based on an estimate 2.7 million people were infected with HIV last year. 2.3 out of these 2.7 million infections are estimated to have happened in the Sub-Sahara region. The second region of new infections is South East Asia with 310,000 new infections. Europe (40,000) and USA (52,000) have much lower numbers. Read More…

Posted under HIV / AIDS

It’s far more important than you may think, and teams spend a lot of time trying to think through exactly how their jersey should appear, what colors, designs, logos, and even what fabrics to use: modern sportswear have quite a few different fabric options, a lot more than cotton or polyester.

That’s why it’s pretty cool to see the new Bafana Bafana jersey for the 2010 FIFA World Cup:

The jersey is yellow with green trim, as you can see, and includes 11 threads to symbolize diversity in unity (there are 11 national languages in South Africa too, by no coincidence). The South African flag appears on the front and there are modern interpretations of traditional South African art on the collar.

There are two versions of the Bafana Bafana jersey, known as “Formotion” and “Techfit skin-tight”, both including climacool technology which helps control sweating and keep the player cool.

Want a replica to wear so you can start feeling that Bafana Bafana magic?  Adidas (the jersey sponsor) says that an official replica is already on sale throughout South Africa and it’s retailing for R599 ($80.22), while a T-Shirt that’s quite similar in appearance is R345 ($46.20).

Posted under 2010 World Cup

News sources are reporting that a 50-person delegation from FIFA toured the various facilities under construction in South Africa late last month and found everything going very well and all major venue construction projects on schedule to be done by the end of 2009.

That’s five stadiums: Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium (Port Elizabeth), Moses Mabhida Stadium (Durban), Mbombela Stadium (Nelspruit), Peter Mokaba Stadium (Polokwane), and Soccer City Stadium (Johannesburg).

In addition, the FIFA team inspected team hotels and training sites and, as Ron DelMont, head of FIFA’s South Africa Office, said: “overall, we are very impressed with the achievements made. In addition to the stadiums coming together, we were equally pleased that the teams of the organizing committee, host cities and FIFA are working on a common vision.”

Wondering if the tour was just about buildings, gates and seats?  The team included experts on broadcasting, media operations, logistics, safety, security, medical and hospitality.

All we can say is Go, South Africa, Go!

Posted under 2010 World Cup

The countdown for the World Cup has long begun and many South Africans are looking forward to the day finally arriving. The recent Confederations Cup was a taste of the 2010 World Cup and things to come.

The media hype has increased over the last couple of months and all programmes and stations continue announcing how many days are left until the World Cup. Different television, radio and newspapers compete for coverage of the World Cup to gain a larger audience.

Ordinary South Africans are also looking forward to the World Cup but for many reasons such as the enjoyment and the fact that the world’s eyes will be upon us, as well as for monetary benefits.

I love soccer and I am very happy that South Africa was chosen to host the 2010 World Cup. It is great that South Africa is getting international exposure that has not been given yet. During apartheid sanctions were placed on South Africa including the sporting sections, so having the World Cup in South Africa shows how far South Africa has come and that we are moving forward. Read More…

Posted under 2010 World Cup

I’ll be the first to admit that if you haven’t seen one before a “tag cloud” can be a bit confusing, but the concept is actually pretty cool: statistically analyze all the words in a book, on a Web site, or similar, then pick the dozen most common important words (e.g., skip “the” and “and”) and display them, with the words that appear more frequently larger than those that are more uncommon.  You’ve probably seen them as you’ve surfed the Web, perhaps without really thinking about how quickly and efficiently they can convey a lot of information about that given site.

When we wanted to come up with a way to convey our set of values with both the South Africa Project and Ubuntu Now, a tag cloud seemed a natural, and they’ve come out really well. Here’s the one for the South Africa Project:

South Africa Project Tag Cloud

Immediately and without any complications it shows that while we’re still engaged and interested in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, rape prevention is a much more core goal of our project, and that empowerment and gender equality are critical parts of what we are trying to accomplish.  Nice, isn’t it?

What’s better is that we’ve made it easy for you to support our project by buying some gear with this tag cloud featured by going to our South Africa Project Store. Just click and check it out, I know you’ll like it.

And our overarching organization, Ubuntu Now?  We created a different tag cloud for that:

Ubuntu Now Tag Cloud

Since we’re big fans of this one too, which offers up the values that helped guide the creation of Ubuntu Now and South Africa Project, we’ve also made these available with its own online store: Ubuntu Now Online Store.

I invite you to browse both stores and I’ll remind you that it’s one of the easiest ways to help us raise money to support these worthy goals for South Africa and our troubled world.

Posted under 2010 World Cup, Gender equality

A recent study on rape by the South Africa Medical Research Council came as a strong reminder on the severity of the rape situation in South Africa.

According to the study 1 in 4 men have already forced a women to have sex with him. Rape is generally accepted in wide parts of the society.

The police statistics show 86 women and 64 minor girls being raped each day.

30% of adolescents stated that their first sexual encounter was based on rape.

The reported number of rapes per year is 55,000. The University of South Africa estimates that the real number is around 1 million. If this number is correct one woman in South Africa is forced to have sex every 30 seconds. Read More…

Posted under Gender equality

If you’ve watched the terrific Confederations Cup — and especially its thrilling USA:Brazil ending! — then you can’t have helped hearing the South African fans making noise with their traditional instruments of football mayhem, the vuvuzela.

They look like this:

The Vuvuzela is a noise maker found at South African soccer matches

A half-dozen fans having one of these, or even a lot of fans who blow on them to celebrate a goal or terrific defensively play is one thing, but as those of us that watched the FIFA Confederations Cup learned, the practice in South Africa seems to be to keep a continuous drone of vuvuzela going throughout the match.

And we’re not talking about twenty or thirty people in the stadium, we’re talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of locals keeping a deafening racket during the entire match.

Players have complained, coaches have complained, broadcast personnel have complained, but FIFA, so far, has said that it would allow vuvuzela’s in the World Cup 2010 stadiums and would allow South Africans to use them to mark their enjoyment and appreciation of the game.

I wish they wouldn’t. I found the constant clamor to be most distracting and annoying, and it even got in the way of being able to hear the crowd reaction to terrific plays or bad calls by referees both.

Maybe it’s time for the South African fans to learn some chants?

Posted under 2010 World Cup