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/ 20 February 2008
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s national budget charts a pragmatic course that offers hope for better times ahead, the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry said on Wednesday. The budget has a definite business-friendly undertone, Citadel chief investment officer Jan van Niekerk said.
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/ 20 February 2008
A Pietermaritzburg gangster was given two life sentences in the town’s magistrate’s court on Wednesday for taking part in a R20 000 armed robbery in which two men were shot and killed. The men — vintner De Wet Joubert (64) and gang member Sandile Jili — were shot in a busy Pietermaritzburg shopping mall in April 2004.
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/ 20 February 2008
Crime-hit hospitals in Gauteng should have security as soon as March, provincial health minister Brian Hlongwa announced on Wednesday during a Gauteng legislature social-cluster briefing outlining priorities in the coming year. Hlongwa also said Gautengers could have their medical histories recorded on smart cards soon.
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/ 20 February 2008
The Sol Plaatje municipality has urged Kimberley motorists to avoid the road running next to one of its biggest tourism attractions, the Big Hole, for fears of a cave-in. The tourist attraction was dug by thousands of diamond prospectors by hand, starting in 1871 and ending in 1914.
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/ 20 February 2008
Zimbabwe’s annual inflation vaulted to 100Â 580,2% in January to set a new world record, but it is still unlikely to cause sleepless nights to President Robert Mugabe’s government facing elections in about five weeks’ time. The jump in inflation is alarming even in the context of Zimbabwe’s extraordinarily collapsing economy.
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/ 20 February 2008
As a rookie reporter in the Seventies, I snapped some shots of pollution billowing out of the Modderfontein dynamite factory. A security guard gave me a blast and whipped me off to HQ where my film was confiscated. Invited soon after to a ”watch your step, son” lunch, AECI management told me: ”We’ve developed your pictures — they weren’t very good anyway.”
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/ 20 February 2008
Charges were withdrawn against 43 University of Johannesburg students who appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday for public violence during protests last year. The students were arrested following protests against an increase in tuition fees.
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/ 20 February 2008
The Soccer City Stadium is 50% complete and will be finished in May next year, five months ahead of the Fifa deadline, Gauteng Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation minister Barbara Creecy said on Wednesday. An independent state of readiness audit had shown that the province was ”firmly on track” to meet its commitments for the 2010 Fifa World Cup.
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/ 20 February 2008
Keeping prices down had to remain the key objective of monetary policy, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said in his budget speech on Wednesday. ”A policy stance that accommodates higher inflation cannot be consistent with a government that is intent on reducing poverty,” he said.
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/ 20 February 2008
Springbok rugby captain John Smit will remain at the helm of the side until the end of the year, coach Peter de Villiers announced on Wednesday, as political mudslinging continued with the Freedom Front Plus condemning the reaction of African National Congress MPs to former Springbok captains calling for an end to political interference in the sport.