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/ 11 September 2007

The spook and the spin doctor

I meet the spook at coffee shops on the post-industrial fringes of town, past the tile warehouse, table at the back. The spin doctor prefers a fashionable bar where art-school luvvies with constructivist haircuts serve espresso kissed with golden foam. We take a high-visibility table and I listen as he tells me the truth with a slant, writes Nic Dawes.

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/ 11 September 2007

Chop-chop gets the axe

For observers of small business development it is desperately predictable. A government agency, corporation, municipality, academic institution or local entrepreneur stands up and declares the end of joblessness in South Africa. The solution is small business development, it says and, specifically, this pilot project — always a pilot — on which it is about to embark.

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/ 11 September 2007

More to men than tits and arse

I wouldn’t blame anyone who accused me of sour grapes if they heard that I am happy I couldn’t go on the Axe jet, despite accepting the invitation. But, think what you will, the Axe jet’s so-called fantasy is an affront to reasonable men. In its unapologetic objectification of women’s bodies, the maker of Axe says men are so easy to please, writes Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.

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/ 11 September 2007

Spirit of Che rises again

When the haggard and broken figure was laid out on the slab and displayed to the world it was not just Che Guevara who had died. The dream of socialist revolution in South America was over. His image and name would continue to inspire millions but on the continent he wanted to transform he was a political failure, a defeated guerrilla on the wrong side of history.

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/ 11 September 2007

Mr Fossil

Jeroen van der Veer (60), the head of Shell, earned £2,9million last year, the average for FTSE-100 firms and almost a quarter of what was paid to his former business rival, Lord Browne at BP. The relatively modest salary suits the slightly downbeat Dutchman, who is a mile away in style from the garrulous and glitzy Browne.

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/ 11 September 2007

Act now, eat later

A new report on South Africa’s energy future warns that if the nation does not rethink its development strategy it could herald ruin for local farmers and the poor. It calls for a long, hard look at the accelerated and shared growth initiative for South Africa. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas’s South African chapter released its report on the country’s energy future last month.

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/ 11 September 2007

No fertile land means no food

Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned recently. To keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10 000 years combined, the experts said.