{pp}South African video sharing website MyVideo.co.za has teamed up with Grocott's Online and Cue – the official National Arts Festival newspaper, now in its 20th year – to launch an online video channel covering the annual arts festival, which kicked off on 28 June 2007 and runs until 7 July.

{pp}South Africa’s hospitality industry is likely to experience much improved service levels once minimum wages become law from 1 July this year. In terms of a new determination under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, businesses associated with the hospitality industry will have to pay employees such as waiters as minimum wage.

{pp}A mystical brotherhood; seeking to be ‘non-contemporary’ and in rejecting all false conventionalism, so searches for a poetic evasion in an almost lost world of unreal and languid beauty. David Krut Projects is bracing for their next exhibition of art and performance by the pre-Crapalite Brotherhood of Robert Whitehead and Johan Engels.

Exhibition opens 23 June - 15 July 2007.

{pp}A brand new 6700sq.m. mall is set to grace the N2 at the gateway to Grabouw in the near future. Marsh Rose Mall – named after a rare fynbos species found only in the Elgin mountains – is being developed by local company Realcor Cape and has just broken ground opposite the Orchard Farmstall, adjacent to the N2 en route to Hermanus and the Southern Cape.

{pp}With the end of apartheid came the beginning of economic redress. Before South Africa’s first democratic elections, inequalities of income and wealth were the worst measured anywhere. Since then, perhaps the greatest struggle has been the attempt to undo the economic vestiges of the system of racial exclusivity. At the heart of this redress is the reduction of poverty and inequality. But just how much has been changed?

{pp}Poverty and Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa (HSRC Press) will be launched at Constitution Hill on Monday, 11 December 2006 at 5:00 for 5:30pm as part of the ongoing public programme Inside Out Series. Alan Hirsch, Chief Director of the Economic Sector within the Presidency, will speak about the volume and the contribution of these authors to the debate on how South Africa is dealing with the challenges of poverty reduction. Members of the public are welcome to attend and can RSVP by calling (011) 381 3100 or e-mailing. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

With the end of apartheid came the beginning of economic redress. Before South Africa’s first democratic elections, inequalities of income and wealth were the worst measured anywhere. Since then, perhaps the greatest struggle has been the attempt to undo the economic vestiges of the system of racial exclusivity. At the heart of this redress is the reduction of poverty and inequality. But just how much has been changed?

{pp}Local jeweller Uwe Koetter, made famous this month by his wedding ring gesture to SA’s first same sex couple, has stepped into the limelight once again with his offer of a jewellery bursary to Cape Technikon.

“Sadly, at this time of year, many students reconsider their options and find that they are unable to afford to continue their courses”, says Johan Louw, chief designer at Uwe Koetter Jewellers.

{pp}“I know the risk a woman takes in the sheer effort of writing, placing herself beyond accepted margins, abandoning the securities of less daunting, much more approved paths.” – Yvonne Vera, Opening Spaces

From the legendary Nongqawuse to the lines of anti-pass protesters marching to Pretoria, from labour activists to township leaders, women have formed an integral part of South African history. Dating back from pre-colonial times, through the apartheid years, and into the democratic present, women have made a notable contribution to the shaping of South Africa. All too often, however, the role of women has been woefully under- or mis-represented. Moreover, women’s participation has often been measured within a specifically patriarchal context.

{pp}Constitution Hill Public Programmes and the HSRC Press are hosting another interactive and thought-provoking debate on whether South African society has learned anything at all from the experiences of women in our distant and more recent past. In the course of this InsideOut debate, we hope to uncover fascinating, controversial and illuminating aspects of South African history.

Contributors to the recently launched Women in South African History: Basus’iimbokodo, Bawel’imilambo / They remove boulders and cross rivers (HSRC Press) will kick off the debate at 3:30pm on Saturday 10 March 2007 at No. 4 Lekgotla Space (next to the Constitutional Court), Constitution Hill, Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

{pp}“They tell us the past is another country. Yet think how the past shapes the lives that come after …The history of our lives is your history, as your lives will be the ground from which your children grow. A history so terrible and so beautiful, so base and so heroic may seem strange and hard to comprehend, but it is irrevocably a part of your life too.” – Communist Party of South Africa activist Hilda Bernstein.

Although an increasing body of historical literature has focused on liberation movements in South Africa the role of women in the country’s political history is less well documented. Representation and Reality: Portraits of Women’s Lives in the Western Cape 1948-1976 (HSRC Press) is an important addition to the growing work on the social and political lives of women during the apartheid era. In the book, author Helen Scanlon analyses how apartheid legislation remade gender relations in the Western Cape in the period just after the National Party came into power and how this in turn affected individual women’s lives.