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/ 3 August 2007

‘I’ll break your legs’

”He looked at the picture on the wall and asked if I knew the artist, Joe Maseko. I said I didn’t. He then said he had broken Joe’s legs once and he was here to do the same to me.” SABC company secretary Ramani Naidoo levels this accusation against the corporation’s legal head, Mafika Sihlali, in a letter annexed to the SABC’s internal audit report.

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/ 3 August 2007

Whistle-blowers use anti-graft hotline

More public servants are blowing the whistle on corruption and unethical behaviour, but government departments are sluggish in joining the fight. This is the thrust of a trend analysis report compiled by the Public Service Commission (PSC) that compares the responses by public servants between 2004/05 and 2005/06.

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/ 3 August 2007

SACP sticks to its guns over Hani inquest

Clive Derby-Lewis has denied having any information pointing to a “wider conspiracy” to assassinate South African Communist Party former general secretary Chris Hani in 1993. Instead, he says, it is the ANC, the SACP and George Bizos who have suppressed information about Hani’s safety on the day of his murder.

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/ 3 August 2007

Zambia forges ahead with circumcision plans

There is standing room only in Room 3 of the urology clinic at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital. About 30 young men and a handful of mothers with male children listen attentively as Sitali Mulope, clinical officer, briefs them on the benefits of surgically removing the foreskin of the penis.

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/ 3 August 2007

Little has been achieved since Burundian ceasefire

The implementation of the ceasefire agreement between the Burundian government and the rebel Palipehutu-FNL (FNL) reached an impasse last week after the FNL went underground, complaining of biased mediation and failed promises. The FNL said that a lack of progress with the Joint Verification Monitoring Mechanism (JVMM), set up under the ceasefire agreement signed last year, led it to abandon the process.

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/ 3 August 2007

Now it’s the tata tattoo

Do you ever regret getting that tattoo? People often do — and then discover that removing it is a long, slow, often expensive and sometimes painful process, the results of which are by no means guaranteed. But thanks to Professor Edith Mathiowitz of Brown University in the United States, you might never need to again.

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/ 2 August 2007

Dozens killed in DRC train crash

A train crash in a remote location in central Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) killed at least 68 people, the United Nations peacekeeping force said on Thursday. ”There are 68 dead and 128 severely wounded,” UN mission spokesperson Kemal Saiki said. The accident took place late on Wednesday near Benaleka.