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The election in KwaZulu-Natal was a neck-and-neck race between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress on Thursday. The counting of the votes has been slow in the province due to rigorous auditing of the electronic capturing of votes.
Special Report: Elections 2004
The Independent Democrats, contesting its first election on Wednesday, surpassed the long-established New National Party in early poll counts on Thursday morning. By mid-morning, the ID had garnered 123 292 votes or 2,24% of the votes counted, putting them in fourth place. The NNP was in fifth place with 121 928 votes, or 2,21%.
Trapped beneath a 20-ton truck, two motorists spent their last moments alive watching emergency personnel frantically trying to rescue them in Pretoria on Tuesday. The runaway truck’s brakes failed, its unlicensed driver said, and it careered through seven sets of traffic lights, smashing five vehicles in its path.
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The rest of Africa can learn much from South Africa’s election process, the visiting Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum said on Thursday. ”We have observed nine elections throughout the SADC since 1999 and realised how much other countries can learn from South Africa,” said the mission leader.
Special Report: Elections 2004
Corpses littered the streets of the Iraqi town of Fallujah on Thursday as United States marines met ferocious resistance in the Sunni Muslim bastion. Meanwhile, Polish and Bulgarian forces were attacked in Karbala and cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s headquarters were destroyed in Sadr City.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, sought by United States forces, said on Tuesday he left the fortress-like mosque where he has been holed up for days, surrounded by armed supporters. Also, Basra was under Iraqi police control on Tuesday after US-led forces and al-Sadr supporters struck a deal to avoid further deadly clashes.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=33724">On the brink of anarchy</a>
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged on Friday that pre-war information he gave the United Nations on Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons laboratories to justify the US-led war on Iraq was not ”solid”. The administration of US President George Bush has also been accused of blocking the commission of enquiry into the September 11 attacks.
Mail & Guardian Online readers who believe that entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth will soon be travelling to Mars on a Nasa space mission have a long wait ahead of them. The M&G Online received several e-mails about this April Fool’s Day joke on Thursday. Most other publications also made use of the opportunity to fool their readers.
Read our April Fool’s Day story
The first medicine-dispensing licences, allowing health-care practitioners to provide medicine to clients, were handed out by the Health Ministry in Pretoria on Tuesday. This follows a law promulgated last year to prevent doctors from dispensing medicine without the licences.
Condolences on the death of Transport Minister Dullah Omar — who died in a Cape Town hospital in the early hours of Saturday morning — poured in from well wishers. Omar will be given an official funeral with ”all the honours due to a serving member of cabinet” government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe said.
Omar: A biography
Omar wanted ‘simple burial’