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/ 27 December 2007

May the force be with us

Cape Town. Christmas 1977. I was 13 years old. That seems like a very long time ago now, in a galaxy far, far away. We were living in a period of civil war. Rebel armies, gathered in hidden bases, were plotting strikes against the evil apartheid empire. Security police storm troopers hunted down rebels and imprisoned or killed them, writes Jann Turner.

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/ 27 December 2007

Zim glad to see end of ‘year of queues’

After a year which saw the official inflation rate surge to 8 000%, shelves run dry and opposition leaders beaten up, few people in Zimbabwe can wait to see the back of 2007. While President Robert Mugabe hopes to secure a seventh term of office in elections next year, he is unlikely to trade heavily on his government’s recent economic performance.

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/ 27 December 2007

SA crumble against Windies attack

Fast bowlers Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor struck hard at the South African top order as the tourists took control on the second day of the first Test at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth on Thursday. South Africa crashed to 122-5 at close of play in reply to a West Indian total of 408 in which Shivnarine Chanderpaul made a patient century.

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/ 27 December 2007

Benazir Bhutto killed in suicide attack

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Thursday as she left an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi, putting January 8 polls in doubt and sparking anger in her native Sindh province. State media and her party confirmed Bhutto’s death from a gun and bomb attack. ”She has been martyred,” said party official Rehman Malik.

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/ 27 December 2007

Kenya presidential cliffhanger sparks voter enthusiasm

Queues several kilometres long snaked around Africa’s largest slum on Thursday as Kenyans across the country and the class divide turned out en masse to vote in a close presidential election. In all of the East African nation’s previous polls, there was either only one candidate to vote for or only one with a realistic chance of winning.

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/ 27 December 2007

Pakistan’s Bhutto slain by suicide attacker

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, slain in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi on December 27, knew very well the risks she ran when she decided to wage a public campaign for the restoration of democracy. Hours after she returned home in October after eight years of self-imposed exile, a suicide bomber killed nearly 150 people in an attack targeting her motorcade.

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/ 27 December 2007

HNP leader Willie Marais dies

Leader and co-founder of the right-wing Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) Willie Marais has died of a heart attack at the age of 79, the party said on Thursday. Party chief secretary Louis van der Schyff said Marais was on holiday at Klein Brakrivier when he had a heart attack and died in hospital at Mossel Bay on Wednesday.