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/ 11 July 2007

Teachers flee Zim

Zimbabwean teachers are leaving home in droves. Low salaries and poor working conditions have made life unbearable for them. It is estimated that since last year almost every school in the country has lost at least three to four teachers.

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/ 11 July 2007

Africa as hell

Globalisation is reducing diversity to a minimum of conservative, standardised products: homogenised, predigested, regurgitated, slickly packaged goods for universal, easy, unthinking consumption. That’s happening all over the world. But closer to home, and to our hearts, is the problem that there is less space for African filmmakers to be seen or heard.

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/ 11 July 2007

Creating a factory of content

A few years ago if you had seen Leon Schuster’s Mr Bones you would have watched one of the highest grossing and, dare it be said, best films South Africa had to offer. Thankfully the same can’t be said of our industry’s current output with the advent of films such as Bunny Chow and Tsotsi.

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/ 10 July 2007

Mother arrested for drowning baby

Forensic experts exhumed a baby on Tuesday who was drowned and buried in a yard — allegedly by her mother — last year, Pretoria police said. ”I can confirm that forensic experts found the remains of the child in the yard,” Inspector Paul Ramaloko said. He said the child was buried in July last year just after being born.

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/ 10 July 2007

Al-Qaeda threatens more attacks in UK

Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, on Tuesday threatened more attacks on Britain two weeks after failed bombings in London and Glasgow. ”I say to [former British prime minister Tony] Blair’s successor that the policy of your predecessor drew catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said in a tape posted on a website.

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/ 10 July 2007

Lesotho charges five with treason for attacks

Lesotho on Tuesday charged five men, including three members of the African mountain kingdom’s defence force, with treason in connection with recent attacks on leading politicians. They were arrested by soldiers in the city last weekend, weeks after houses belonging to three government ministers and the leader of the main opposition party were shot at.