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/ 20 February 2008
Solar-powered billboards in Jo’burg and Cape Town have brought heat and electricity to two townships and helped to shine the spotlight on some of the issues facing the communities in which they are located. A year after it was constructed the first solar-powered billboard in South Africa has brought a primary school in Alexandra, Johannesburg, out of obscurity and into the global limelight.
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/ 20 February 2008
Hazardous chemicals are detrimental to the environment. In China last week sulphuric acid leaked into the water supply from a chemical factory, poisoning at least 26 villagers, illustrating just how dangerous chemicals can be. China has a bad track record. It has some of the most chemically polluted cities in the world, following decades of massive industrial and economic growth.
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/ 11 February 2008
Sarah Jessica Parker nailed the point with a stiletto: good shoes are better than a bad love affair and great shoes can outlast love itself. But while many women fantasise about owning a trophy set of sparkly Jimmy Choos, the reality for most South Africans, particularly children, is that a plain pair of shoes remains a luxury.
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/ 11 February 2008
Simba Makoni chose a five-star hotel to announce his candidacy for Zimbabwe’s presidency recently, but he will have to get down in the trenches if he is to pose a serious threat to President Robert Mugabe. His announcement whipped up a great deal of enthusiasm among a Zimbabwean electorate demoralised by the opposition’s failure at the weekend to agree on a united front against Mugabe.
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/ 8 February 2008
Sharon Sabbagh was elected by the Democratic Alliance to Johannesburg’s Ward 87 in 2006. Ward 87 spans some of the city’s most affluent old suburbs, including The Parks, Westcliff and Forest Town, and their grittier little sister, Melville, where we are meeting. The folk who live here are a tough crowd to please, yet in two years Sabbagh has achieved what some residents call miracles.
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/ 28 January 2008
It’s super sexy, green and to be made in South Africa. A press release jointly issued by Italy’s Velozzi, a sports car manufacturer, and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) of South Africa announced a partnership two weeks ago to develop a range of sleek new plug-in hybrid sports cars.
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/ 28 January 2008
The Southern African region is at risk of not meeting the millennium development goal on poverty eradication, as power outages become a daily occurrence. Countries including Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa experience regular electricity cuts, leading to outages at clinics and schools — key public facilities essential to meeting the goals.
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/ 25 January 2008
She looks down while washing dishes in a bucket as we enter the house where she lives with 56 people scattered around the house and on the property. “Please sit down. Sorry, the couch is a bit wet,” she says. It is striking how dignified she looks while sitting up straight in a pink dress with her hands folded on her lap.
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/ 11 January 2008
Scores of Kenyans living in South Africa handed a petition to the Kenyan High Commission in Pretoria this week demanding that President Mwai Kibaki stand down. <i>M&G</i> reporters Warren Foster, Nosimilo Ndlovu, Zodidi Mhlana and Surika van Schalkwyk spoke to some of the petitioners to get views.
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/ 23 December 2007
Thabile* was 15 when she was forced to marry a man in his thirties in the Mgudlulweni village near Mount Frere in the Eastern Cape. Her parents agreed to "give" their daughter to him. She did not know about the marriage or consent to it. On her way to school one day, four men abducted her. "I was walking to school and they grabbed me. They took me to a man I did not know to be my husband," Thabile says.