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In South Africa, this year’s campaign for no violence against women and children coincides with a drop in sexual offences reported from April 2009 to March 2010.

An ombud is a person who investigates complaints and negotiates fair settlements, especially between persons that have been wronged, victimised or injured such as consumers or students and an institution or organisation.

Resolve disputes 

The newly-launched Online Fingerprint Verification System is expected to deal a major blow to acts of fraud and corruption that have cheated banks out of millions of rands, said Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

The system is a joint initiative between the Department of Home Affairs and the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC).

It focuses on 12 priority performance outcomes, which form the basis for performance and delivery agreements between ministers or groups of ministers and the president. They are:

But as the rural development programme’s two-year term comes to an end, one wonders if it has achieved its aim of creating jobs and turning the village into a semi-township. 

Some say Muyexe village is now blooming  with residents having access to services never available to them before. 

Early in 2011, President Jacob Zuma launched the Masibambisane Rural Development Initiative at his hometown of Inkandla, KwaZulu-Natal.

The programme was also implemented at nearby eShowe in the Umlalazi Municipality to create job opportunities for poor and vulnerable communities in rural areas.

Many of the young children and the elderly in their community sometimes went days on end without a decent meal, but thanks to a group of women who decided to reach out to their community, they can now always count on having a meal every day. 

In its first year, 357 195 learners were enrolled, with 613 643 in 2009 and a further 610 000 in 2010. In 2011, 658 000 learners have enrolled and South Africa is therefore well on its way to achieving its goal. 

These learners are not matriculants or college graduates;  they are adults aged between 18 and 80, some of them blind, deaf or physically disabled, who completed Kha Ri Gude literacy and numeracy courses in 2010. 

They are part of a group of more than two million adults who had just stepped over the illiteracy threshold as they received their ABET level 1 (Grade 3 certificates) with pride and gratitude.