Tumi Makgetla
Guest Author
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/ 11 May 2007

Stand-off in Hamas saga thaws out

The row over Intelligence Minister Ronnis Kasrils’s invitation to Ismail Haniyeh to visit South Africa now seems to revolve around which hat the Hamas leader should wear. Kasrils’s spokesperson, Lorna Daniels, insisted that the minister had expressed the desire to see Haniyeh, who is also the Palestinian Prime Minister, visit South Africa as part of a Palestinian unity government delegation.

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/ 11 May 2007

Hip-hop and happenin’

Forget hip-hop music’s old association with expensive dental accessories, dropping it like it’s hot, sipping on gin and juice or Courvoisier or delivering devastatingly eloquent disses. The “Battle of the Giants” dance competition at Sun City last week revealed a whole new side to hip-hop, replete with sequins, lavender hoodies and krumping primary schoolers.

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/ 4 May 2007

Milking the consumer

If the consumer pays between R5 and R6 for a litre of milk in the shops, how much should the farmer get? The milk industry is currently under investigation by the competition authorities, who are focusing on the price build-up between farmer and consumer. In particular, they are paying close attention to a set of apparently cosy interventions that the large milk processors are able to make in the market.

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/ 26 April 2007

Nigeria poll fiasco’s SA link

As the massive irregularities in the Nigerian presidential poll come into focus, it has emerged that South African companies were asked at the eleventh hour to print ballot papers that often did not reach polling stations in time. A local printer says it declined a request four days ahead of the poll to print the bulk of the presidential ballots.

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/ 20 April 2007

Rashid issue comes home to roost

The Department of Home Affairs continues to insist that Pakistani national Khalid Rashid was deported purely on immigration grounds, despite revelations that he has been detained for more than a year by Pakistani intelligence. In the months since his deportation, Rashid’s family has known nothing of his whereabouts, seeing him for the first time a few days ago.

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/ 17 April 2007

Vehicle tracking devices

Vehicle tracking companies have recovered tens of thousands of vehicles since they started up just more than a decade ago. But not only do these companies find stolen cars, their staff also apprehend and arrest criminal suspects, locate chop shops and help the police break up syndicates.

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/ 4 April 2007

Security authority swoops on car guards

Nine Zimbabwean car guards were sent to South African deportation facility Lindela on Tuesday and another three were arrested in a swoop on an illegal car-guarding business in Johannesburg by the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (Psira). Twenty car-guarding businesses have come under Psira’s scrutiny over the past 40 days.