Marianne Merten
Guest Author
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/ 25 March 2003

Winnie skirts public censure

Eleventh-hour legal steps by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela have staved off a planned public reprimand in the National Assembly for her failure to disclose regular, substantial donations in the Members’ Register of Interests. This follows Madikizela-Mandela’s appeal against last year’s guilty verdict by Parliament’s ethics committee.

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/ 18 March 2003

Western Cape fairest to the fairer sex

Gender inequalities are substantially less in the Western Cape than elsewhere in the country, the province’s budget revealed. The budget stated that there are no significant differences between woman-headed households and others, and the unemployment rate of women is no higher than that for men.

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/ 16 March 2003

Starving in Ceres

Parliament heard in the second week of March that 70% of people living in Ceres, one of South Africa’s agricultural powerhouses, experience hunger. A survey of 540 households in the poor communities of Ceres showed that hunger increased in winter months when jobs outside the peak seasonal harvest times became scarce.

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/ 11 March 2003

Plan to curb MPs’ wanderlust

Parliament plans to introduce an international travel policy to curb unwarranted excursions by MPs suffering from wanderlust. The parliamentary authorities became aware of the problem when an overlap emerged in this year’s overseas travel plans by various committees