Under the Choice of Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1996, abortions are legal up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

In pregnancies as a result of rape, incest or in cases of financial hardship, abortions are legal up to 20 weeks.

Kgaladi Mphahlele, who is the manager of Doctors Without Borders' Choice of Termination of Pregnancy, says finding a doctor willing to refer a woman for an abortion is not the only problem.

It is also is hard to find clinics willing to perform abortions.

Mphahlele says access to abortion clinics is necessary to prevent women from seeking unsafe abortion methods.

A report issued last year found that of the 8000 medical clinics in South Africa, about 7 percent performed abortions.

Judiac Ranape, a nurse who trains doctors on abortions, says conscientious objection is a problem.

"You'll find an operations manager who says, ‘We won't perform it [an abortion] because it's against my religious beliefs'," she says.

She wants restrictions on conscientious objection.

Despite Ranape's views, surveys show the general population is strongly opposed to abortion.

The South African Social Attitudes Survey, conducted 2003-2006, found that 9 of out 10 adults believed abortion to be wrong in times of financial dilemma.

Three-quarters said abortion was still immoral if the child was to be born with a disability.

Church leaders have asked for alternatives to be developed for women facing difficult pregnancies with alternatives to abortion.

Cape Town's Catholic Mater Homes do just this.

The pro-life group provides shelter for women during a crisis pregnancy.

"When we talk about the nameless, faceless and voiceless victims of abortion, we have to include the mothers, who so often find themselves in helpless circumstances, with little other alternative but to make the difficult choice to end the life of their unborn child," their website says.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic News Agency

Patrice Motsepe gave an inspiring speech about the role the church plays in sculpting young minds before day his foundation made the donation. Read more

The Supreme Court of Appeals has overturned a 2015 ruling that allowed Robin Stransham-Ford to "die with dignity" by way of euthanasia.

The 2015 rule was granted by the South African High Court.

Stransham-Ford died a few hours before the High Court ruling was delivered.

The Supreme Court of Appeals took the view that the High Court decision ceased to exist once the applicant died before the order could be granted," a spokesperson said.

The Appeals Court also noted the high court made their ruling on Stransham-Ford on an "incorrect and restricted factual basis,".

They said there was "no full and proper examination of the present state of our law in this difficult area."

The Justice Alliance of South Africa (JASA) is pleased with the Appeals' Court's ruling as Parliament will have to decide the issue.

JASA is a "friend of the court" in this case.

"The Supreme Court of Appeal recognised that this issue of the right to choose ones moment of dying is a moral issue," JASA CEO John Smyth said.

"It's very rare that the courts talk about moral issues. In this case the Judge Malcolm Wallis said very clearly that the court was dealing with issues engaging profound moral questions which are beyond the remit of judges to determine.

"So I think for that reason it is a landmark judgment.

"The court is saying it's not for the court to make decisions about moral issues it must go to Parliament."

Views are mixed about the new ruling.

Some euthanasia advocates say assisted suicide is a "human rights" issue.

Others feel differently.

"In as much as it's not good to see a loved one suffering, I feel it's very wrong to take somebody's life," one says.

Source

• CNA
• SABC
• Mail & Guardian
• Image: Law Live

Father Graham Pugin had his hands up when he was shot at close range with rubber bullets.

Though there has not been an official report on his condition, a video shows Fr. Pugin, his mouth bloodied and dripping on his alb, walking with other students to receive care.

Pugin was a facilitator, along with other clergy and former student leaders, in working towards an agreement among students, management, and other stakeholders at South Africa's University of Witwatersrand.

The students have been protesting for four weeks about next year's proposed eight percent tuition fee increase. They are demanding free education.

They say the rate hikes are discriminatory against black students.

Black families' average income is much less than white families'.

Student protests have included disrupting classes, throwing stones and bottles at police and security guards and setting a bus on fire.

A South African bishops' conference statement extended their "sincere sympathy and prayers for a speedy recovery" for Pugin who was "offering refuge to frightened students."

They added that while they support the students' right to demand a good and affordable education, they do not condone the violence and looting associated with the protests.

The bishops said the best course forward is for students and educators to continue with the academic year while working out a compromise for the future.

"... The Government [must] ensure that this academic year is completed in peace ... A compromise must be considered as the huge financial demands of university free education cannot be found instantaneously."

Source

• Ignatian Solidarity Network
• Image: eNCA

He was proclaimed blessed in an apostolic letter read on behalf of Pope Francis by Italian Cardinal Angelo Amato during a Mass in South Africa's northern Limpopo province on Sunday.

The ceremony in Tshitanini village was attended by some 30,000 people.

Blessed Daswa was beaten to death 25 years ago by fellow villagers after he refused to join in witchcraft-related activities ordered by local elders as a response to damaging storms.

A convert to Catholicism, he reportedly refused to pay a sorcerer who promised to end the storms.

After being stoned by his assailants, Blessed Daswa ran to a hut before being found by the mob and beaten to death with a stick.

His murderers then poured boiling water in his ears and nostrils - all of which happened on February 2, 1990, the day the apartheid regime announced it would release Nelson Mandela.

"While his executioners were killing him, Benedict was on his knees praying. He prayed until the last minute of his life," said Fr Andre Bohas, one of the initiators of the beatification process.

He "is a model for all the people in Africa".

Blessed Daswa's eight children - including one born a few months after his death - sat in the front at the ceremony, alongside their 91-year-old grandmother Ipa.

"Proud is an understatement to describe what I feel," said Mutshiro Michael, 33, one of Daswa's sons, adding he had forgiven his father's murderers.

Virtually unknown when he died, Blessed Daswa's fame grew throughout South Africa's Catholic community, with villagers starting to commemorate the anniversary of his death.

His feast day will be celebrated on February 1.

Around eight per cent of South Africa's population is Catholic.

During his Sunday Angelus address in Rome, Pope Francis paid tribute to Blessed Daswa.

"In his life he always showed great consistency, courageously defending Christian views and rejecting worldly and pagan customs," Pope Francis said.

Sources

• AFP
• Vatican Radio
• Reuters
• Image: La Voz Catholica

An editorial in South Africa's Catholic weekly, the Southern Cross, states the SABC has reneged on a 2010 promise to broadcast the Pope's Christmas Mass live every year.

This can be seen as a contravention of the SABC's religious broadcasting policy, which is to ensure a fair and equitable representation of the nation's religious communities.

People who own a television set have to pay a license fee to fund the SABC, so it has an obligation to serve its communities, the editorial continued.

"To tolerate the SABC's disrespectful treatment is to accept the creeping marginalisation of the Catholic Church in South Africa's public life."

"South Africa's faithful should not accept it quietly", whatever the reason behind the papal Mass decision, the editorial argued.

"Catholics must in large numbers register their protest with the SABC, in letters and on social media."

The editorial hinted that the Church hierarchy in South Africa should lead a campaign against the SABC decision.

Continue reading

This extraordinary man, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1962, who served 27 years in jail for his beliefs, walked free, without bitterness, to lead the rebuilding of South Africa as a multi-ethnic nation founded on human rights and the rule of law.

The cause for which Nelson Mandela fought throughout his life was based on the hopes and dreams of South Africans who were excluded from full rights of citizenship and repressed by the evil force of apartheid.

The freedom movement built a mass base not only at home, but also through global solidarity networks around the world.

Those networks extended to New Zealand.

South Africa was far away, and was probably best known to New Zealanders for the strength of its rugby teams.

Many New Zealanders loved the game, too. When the rugby ties with South Africa became the focus for New Zealand's anti-apartheid movement, many were reluctant to acknowledge that accepting engagement with racially segregated teams amounted to condoning the regime that mandated them. Continue reading.

Helen Clark is the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and is the United Nations Development Programme Administrator.

Source: The Listener

Image: Mandela in 1994 looks through the bars of the Robben Island cell he was held in for 18 years Jurgen Schadeberg/Getty Images

For several years, even as your health faltered irreparably and rumours of your increasing fragility could no longer be denied, the world refused to release its hold.

We said prayers, sent love and held vigils until we had brought our Madiba — a man who had lived longer than most — back to life. Such was our belief in the immortality of our hero that we were incapable of relinquishing you.

But now, despite our efforts, you are gone.

I said my own private goodbye almost two years ago, when I visited Robben Island on a trip back to my homeland. As the ferry skated across Table Bay, a cold wind blew in through one of its hatches.

A young man made everyone laugh when he said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we will vote to have this door open or closed. This is a free and fair election — you will only be allowed to vote once!'

I had left the country a decade earlier, and was touched by the benign, self-deprecating tone so many black South Africans now adopted when referencing the past. The country's social undertone had transformed so radically I felt I could pluck a chunk of it from the atmosphere and take it home with me. Continue reading.

Catherine Marshall grew up in South Africa under apartheid. She is a journalist and travel writer.

Source: Eureka Street

Image: Stephen Davies

Thirty-four people died and 78 were injured when police opened fire on striking miners gathered on a rocky outcrop at the mine, 60 miles northwest of Johannesburg.

Continue reading

Lapsley was active in support of the liberation struggle in South Africa and was critically injured in an assassination attempt by parcel bomb in Zimbabwe in 1990. He lost both hands and an eye.

Since then he has dedicated himself to the reconciliation process and heads a trauma healing centre in Cape Town.

Two exhibitions of photos by Auckland photographer John Miller - entitled "Redeeming the Past - my Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer" - will also show as part of the conference,

One, a tribute to the many New Zealanders who stood up for the struggles of the South African people, will depict two decades of activism in 100 black and white images. The other will focus on the 1981 Springbok Tour and show as a continuous loop of 300 colour slides.

The exhibitions, created by Wellington digital printer Out of the Box, have been supported by MFAT and the New Zealand Rugby Union.

The conference, "When Hope and History Rhyme" is part of an international series of events to mark the centenary of the African National Congress.

Local contributors to the conference include Peter Harris, Pat Hohepa, Ripeka Evans, Mike Law, Margaret Hayward, Russell Marshall, Ted Thomas, Geoff Chapple, Rosslyn Noonan and Jock Phillips. New Zealand sportspeople who made a stand on the issue will also speak - All Blacks Bob Burgess and Graham Mourie, and athlete Anne Hare.

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• Scoop
• Image: Italian Politics with Walston
  

The campaign originally aired on Tuesday but was gone by Wednesday after successful protests from Catholics and Muslims who labelled the ad 'offensive'.

The cartoon ad picks up on the familiar Gospel story of Jesus walking on the water, and implies that Jesus is able to walk on water, not because it was a miracle, but because he drank Red Bull, which gave him 'wiiings'.

The ad also introduced a tone of blasphemy, using the word 'jesus', other than as a proper noun.

In response, South Africa's bishops acknowledged Red Bull's history of clever ads, but Cardinal Wilfred Napier said that with this ad, "Red Bull South Africa have overstepped a mark".

"In a multi-faith country like South Africa, where over 70 percent of people profess to be people of faith, the use of faith-based symbols in a satirical, if tongue-in-cheek manner, is guaranteed to cause a reaction," he said.

Stopping short of calling for a full commercial boycott, the cardinal however recommended that Catholics send a message to Red Bull and give the drink up for Lent.

"In this way, Red Bull SA will understand that the idea that there is 'no such thing as bad publicity' is dangerous territory when it comes to mocking religious symbols," said Napier.

South Africa's Muslim Judicial Council also warned of the consequences of extreme consumerism against any faith and said insult and satire of Jesus "targeted the very foundation of Islamic theology", reports the Lake Wylie Pilot.

Pulling the ad, Red Bull said in a statement it was never their intention to hurt anyone's feelings.

Sources

• Lake Wylie Pilot
• Times Live
• Image: Red Bull

The man would be the first saint to be recognised from South Africa, the weekly asserted.

Benedict Daswa, a businessman and devout Roman Catholic from rural Limpopo, was murdered in February 1990, aged 46, after rejecting claims of the existence of witchcraft in his village, Mbahe, near Thoyohandou.

The angelic beings are seen tumbling to Earth because they are attracted to a man wearing Axe deodorant.

"A viewer who complained to the ASA about the advert said the suggestion that angels — God's messengers — would literally fall for a man wearing this deodorant was incompatible with his belief as a Christian," reported the Times of South Africa daily newspaper.

"The advert for Axe deodorant depicts winged, attractive women crashing to earth in what appears to be an Italian town, and then being drawn towards and sniffing a young man who has used the deodorant. The text at the end of the ad reads: 'Even angels will fall,'" reported the Times.

"As such, the problem is not so much that angels are used in the commercial, but rather that the angels are seen to forfeit, or perhaps forego their heavenly status for mortal desires," ruled the ASA. "This is something that would likely offend Christians in the same manner as it offended the complainant."

Sources

• Times of South Africa
• Image: Beliefnet News

"It's difficult to gauge what, if any, impact public opposition to the Springbok tour in New Zealand had in the eventual unravelling of apartheid in South Africa. What is less uncertain though, is the role the tour played in our own progression as a nation," he says.

Read Michael Cummings' Editorial in the Manawatu Standard

Image: You Tube

Michael Cummings is the editor of the Manawatu Standard

A statement issued Thursday after the bishops visited Swaziland said the king should lift a state of emergency that has been in place for nearly four decades, reinstate "the full range of human rights" and open talks on democratization.

The bishops said Swazis are deprived of rights of expression, assembly and association.

"This makes Swaziland a police state in which political parties remain banned," the bishops said. "Swaziland is a country in turmoil; a country tearing itself apart from the inside by the actions of an uncaring head of state and a regime that is getting more brutal by the day."

While Swaziland's constitution "supposedly guarantees the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," it simply enshrines the king's 1973 decree, in which the king suspended the constitution.

The powers enshrined in that decree "need to be curtailed since their abuse by those in authority is the primary cause of the current crisis, in which dissenting views meet with brutality of the highest order," the bishops said.

"Human rights activists have their homes arbitrarily raided" and "are arrested, detained and beaten up by security forces, presumably under orders of the king, who is the commander-in-chief," they said.

Swaziland's prime minister has said his country will resist outside pressure.

Swaziland's King Mswati III lives lavishly in a country of 1 million beset by high levels of poverty, unemployment and AIDS. Mswati is accused of repressing human rights and harassing and jailing pro-democracy activists.

Besides the government crackdown, reformists have had to contend with reverence for the monarchy among many Swazis.

Source

• Associated Press
• Catholic News Service
• Image: IBN Live