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/ 24 February 2006

Power play over power cuts

Power cuts have become a factor in Cape Town’s municipal poll, with the Democratic Alliance climbing in on a succession of blackouts this week. ”I have never seen such outrage. Now whites are going to vote,” said a senior Western Cape DA member, who admitted the levels of enthusiasm fell short of the intensity of the December 2000 poll that clinched the city for the DA.

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/ 24 February 2006

Opposition cries foul as Uganda’s polls close

Uganda’s opposition complained of intimidation and interference by the army in their strongholds on Thursday, as voters took part in the country’s first multiparty elections for 25 years. The security forces turned out in large numbers near polling stations, with police expressing concern that there might be an attempt to disrupt the vote.

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/ 24 February 2006

Sectarian violence explodes in Iraq

Iraqi authorities struggled to contain a convulsion of sectarian violence on Thursday in which more than 150 people died in massacres, armed clashes, suicide bombs and reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. Sunni religious authorities said 128 Sunni mosques had been attacked and three clerics killed.

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/ 24 February 2006

Blogger bares Rumsfeld’s post-9/11 orders

Hours after a commercial plane struck the Pentagon on September 11 2001 the United States Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was issuing rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, according to notes taken by one of them. ”Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly,” the notes say.

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/ 24 February 2006

Mince quietly and carry a big schtick

Has Mark Boucher unwittingly unleashed a tidal wave of vaudeville on an unsuspecting Australian cricket team? This was the question on every drama queen’s glossed and outlined lips this week after the Frodo Baggins of South African cricket was quoted in an international magazine urging local fans to give the tourists hell at every opportunity.

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/ 24 February 2006

The ANC monolith starts to crack

<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/262374/vote-box_blue.gif" align=left>The African National Congress is fighting its toughest election yet. The ruling party’s monolithic hold on power is showing distinct cracks, as strongholds have splintered from Khutsong in Gauteng, where residents have staged running battles with authorities, to Khayelitsha in the Western Cape, where a feisty group of independents has challenged for power and Matatiele in KwaZulu-Natal where the former ANC mayor has formed a breakaway party.

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/ 24 February 2006

Bob’s lift doesn’t reach the top floor

It is official — Zanu-PF’s financial crisis does not go right to the top. The party has not held its weekly politburo meeting since the beginning of the year because it cannot afford to fix the lift in its 14-storey Harare headquarters. The party is battling to raise what sounds like the huge sum of Z$160-million (R6 154) needed for spares and maintenance.

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/ 24 February 2006

Awuleth’ ilaptop yam …

What is the meaning of the upheavals in Khutsong, the mining township west of Johannesburg that has forced itself from obscurity into the headlines? In this ruling party stronghold, residents burnt homes of election candidates of the African National Congress. They almost ran ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota out of town last week and plan to boycott next Wednesday’s election.