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/ 24 May 2002

Tell me how to live ‘normally’

A year ago I was raped. With a gun pointed to my head, I gave up my independence to a stranger because I was afraid. It seemed a better choice to give him his few minutes of pleasure and walk away with my life. Like Magardie, I didn’t think rape was the worst thing that could happen to anyone.

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/ 23 May 2002

Man of the movement

Walter Sisulu can still bring the party together. If South Africa is in danger of having the ANC as its ruling party for the next 100 years, it is in no small part due to that movement’s uncanny ability to manipulate events — sometimes entirely by accident.

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/ 23 May 2002

Bad law, bad blood

The "processing" of the Immigration Bill has been an unmitigated disaster, both for Parliament and for efforts to redress SA’s crippling skilled labour shortage. Eight years of policy-making has culminated in a frenzy of law-making with almost daily changes of a fundamental kind.

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/ 23 May 2002

Cronyism at its most obscene

If you ever felt a flare of optimism about the political and moral flavour of the Mbeki presidency, now is the time to quench it. There is no longer much doubt about what is happening to South Africa under Thabo Mbeki. Hope is being supplanted by depression.

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/ 23 May 2002

Taking the Bill by the horns

The new immigration policy is an important case study for our country. For the second time in a row I was greeted at immigration at Cape Town International not just with a smile, this time from a man, but with an identically cheery greeting: "Welcome home, sir."