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/ 24 February 2006
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 (R6Â 154) needed for spares and maintenance.
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/ 24 February 2006
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.
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/ 24 February 2006
For a campaign whose tagline is "talk about it", retracting the billboard was a bitter pill to swallow. It wasn’t so much about loss of face as trying to reconcile the public response with the concerns expressed by organisations within the sector. Last weekend in the town of Paul Roux in the eastern Free State, 1Â 000 parents and children met in response to loveLife’s call to face HIV.
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/ 24 February 2006
Anglo American, the mining empire built by the Oppenheimers on the goldfields of the Free State and Witwatersrand, is saying goodbye to gold. It announced recently that it would sell down its interest in AngloGold Ashanti, though it still intended to retain a significant shareholding in the medium term.
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/ 24 February 2006
Recently, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, warned that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) risked falling into obscurity unless it was given a radical shake-up to provide greater focus, independence and legitimacy. King called on the IMF’s shareholders to take on the responsibility of bringing the global monetary and financial watchdog up to date.
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/ 24 February 2006
There is a disturbing sameness about the way South Africa’s two most vexatious neighbours negotiate their way up the proverbial creek with nary a sign of a paddle.
Swaziland’s King Mswati III appears to be emulating President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. In the finest Austin Powers tradition, the mini-me king is attempting a Murambatsvina-style slum clearance of his own.
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/ 24 February 2006
Two years after being spirited out of his troubled Caribbean home, Jean-Bertrand Aristide maintains that his love affair with the Haitian people is as hot as ever. The former priest, who has been sheltering in South Africa since May 2004, announced this week that he’s going home.
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/ 23 February 2006
When a primary-school teacher in the troubled Khutsong township asked her grade-one students what the word ”demarcation” means, one pupil answered: ”They want to move us somewhere poor.” The children think it’s ”just a game” to provoke the police by throwing stones and burning tyres in the streets, says the teacher.
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/ 23 February 2006
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The Democratic Alliance will ”turn on the lights” and pressurise Eskom and the government to get their act together regarding the current spate of electricity outages, party leader Tony Leon promised on Thursday. He said in this election the old slogan ”Power to the people” has taken on new meaning.