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/ 29 October 2007
Sport in South Africa is not just about fun and games. It is, to misquote the great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, "more important than that". Those who continue with their misguided view that religion is the opiate of the oppressed will have us believe that sport is to modern societies what religion was before the age of enlightenment.
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/ 29 October 2007
The cellphone industry plans to invest more than $50-billion in sub-Saharan Africa over the next five years to provide more than 90% of the population with coverage, the GSM Association announced on Monday. The investment will be used to extend the reach of GSM mobile networks and to provide a rich suite of mobile multimedia services, including internet access.
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/ 29 October 2007
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=ancconference_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/321750/Icon_ANCconference.gif" align=left border=0></a>The mood ahead of the African National Congress (ANC) national conference in December is similar to that in the winter of 2005 when the ANC membership surprised the leadership and hijacked the policy discussion forum. Now, as then, the leadership appeared incapacitated by internal wrangling.
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/ 29 October 2007
The last flight out taxied from the sparkling new Harare airport, lifted over the city and dipped its wings in farewell. With that, at 9am on Sunday, British Airways (BA) said goodbye to Zimbabwe. Though symbolic, it’s not the first time BA has been forced out of Zimbabwe in the 75 years since the first flying boats opened up the aerial link with Southern Africa.
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/ 29 October 2007
A search has been launched for a two-year-old boy who was kidnapped by his father, Western Cape police said on Sunday. Police spokesperson Malcolm Pojie said the mother, Lea Muller, from Beaufort West was also kidnapped on Friday but managed to escape.
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/ 29 October 2007
A defector who was born and spent 22 years in a North Korean prison camp said on Monday his motive in writing a book is to speak out for the children who grow up behind barbed wire. Shin Dong-Hyuk said that at the age of 14 he was forced to watch the execution of his mother and brother.
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/ 29 October 2007
The world’s largest bank last week announced it would take a 20% stake in Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank, in the biggest foreign direct investment by a Chinese company anywhere in the world. This means South Africa is now the top destination for Chinese foreign investment, ahead of Zambia and the Sudan.
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/ 29 October 2007
Multinational Holcim, based in Switzerland, brought about one of the bigger black economic empowerment (BEE) deals last year by selling its stake in Holcim South Africa down to 8% from 54% for about R7,4-billion. Somehow the factual question of whether BEE had spurred the disinvestment became a political issue.
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/ 29 October 2007
While the government continues to point fingers at the telecoms sector crying foul about excessive pricing, perhaps it needs to hold up the mirror to itself as the single biggest shareholder in the sector. With a 37% shareholding in Telkom, the government is by far the biggest investor in South Africa’s ICT sector.
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/ 29 October 2007
Last week, another armed group in the increasingly volatile eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ignored a government deadline to disarm, increasing to three the number of illegal groups the Congolese army is chasing in that region.
At the same time, a Human Rights Watch report detailed the atrocities that threaten civilians living in this region.