There is no lock on the door, no phalanx of guards, no visible impediment to the drugs leaving the glass chamber that the laboratory technicians call a ”stability room”. The pills come in little white boxes with labels such as lamivudine, zidovudine and efavirenz, technical names disguising the fact that these tablets are the stuff of life.
The woman sipping tea in a sunlit garden deep in Afrikaner country does and does not resemble the Zola Budd Britain remembers. The hair is rather longer, the legs tanned and muscular for so small a frame, the feet bare, the face of a pixie, with lines around the eyes indicating this is no longer a teenager.
South Africa’s self-styled mother of the nation, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, was plunged into a fresh legal battle today, as her trial for fraud and theft resumed following months of delays.
Pro-government forces have slaughtered hundreds of civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo in one of the worst massacres since a peace deal was signed, rebels claimed yesterday.
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/ 20 January 2003
By dawn, the convoy is ploughing through the bush, rolling east into a rising sun with 58 tonnes of emergency food for a settlement camp cut off without aid deep in Angola’s famine territory.
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/ 14 January 2003
The landlocked African kingdom of Swaziland is believed to have the world’s highest rate of HIV, with almost four out of 10 adults infected with the virus which causes Aids. Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini said the official rate of infection had risen to 38,6% from 34,2% in January 2002.
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/ 11 January 2003
The trucks rolled into Chilonga with men, equipment and a sense of occasion: the government was bringing water to the people. It had been quite a wait, decades or centuries, depending on whether you counted from pre-colonial times, but at least the job was to be done properly.
The governments of Liberia and Burkina Faso helped an al-Qaeda plot to funnel diamonds and weapons through West Africa before and after the September 11 attacks, it was reported this week. An investigation has uncovered an elaborate web of bribery and clandestine deals.
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/ 13 December 2002
Washington opened its diplomatic offensive last week, when President George W Bush had talks at the White House with Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Kenya’s President Daniel arap Moi.
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/ 4 November 2002
Zambia set a controversial precedent for developing countries this week by confirming that it would not accept genetically modified relief food despite the threat of famine. The government said concerns about its effect on health and the environment made the food too risky.