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Barbara Ludman (re)learns how to live in the moment at South Africa's home of "ubuntu Buddhism", and one of the most beautiful spots on the planet: the laid back, but not disengaged, Buddhist Retreat Centre near the town of Ixopo in KwaZulu-Natal.

Entrepreneurs Sara Blakely and Richard Branson are backing South Africa's Women on the Move programme, which empowers young women to take control of their lives and help build responses to HIV/Aids and poverty in their communities.

Alexandra township in Johannesburg has been under threat of demolition many times in its 100-year-old history - particularly in the height of the apartheid period, when other "black spots" in the middle of white suburbs met their deaths beneath state bulldozers. Of these, Alex alone survived. Thanks to a friendship.

President Thabo Mbeki has officially opened a high-tech, state-of-the-art maritime academy in Simon's Town outside Cape Town, saying the facility will turn out maritime officers on a par with the best in the world.