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/ 8 February 2007

Mbeki’s legacy under threat

A year after the launch of Asgisa, the government’s blueprint to achieve 6% growth by 2014, the panel of international economists commissioned by the national treasury to advise on the initiative has warned that it could fail if “serious macro inconsistencies” in the plan are not addressed.

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/ 7 February 2007

Agent fined R20 000 over Travelgate

One of the travel agents involved in the multimillion-rand parliamentary travel-voucher scam was given a suspended sentence and fined R20 000 by the Cape High Court on Wednesday, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported. Nazli Lackay pleaded guilty to defrauding Parliament of close to R3-million.

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/ 7 February 2007

UN: Meningitis kills 76 in Sudan

A meningitis epidemic has killed 76 people in eight Sudanese states since the end of 2006, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Meningitis is an often fatal airborne infection transmitted through sneezing and coughing that infects the brain and spinal cord. Its symptoms include fever, rashes and vomiting.

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/ 7 February 2007

Metrobus denies reports of racist bus driver

Metrobus denies that eight high school children were kicked off a bus in Johannesburg by a racist driver, the company’s managing director said on Wednesday. According to a newspaper report, school children, aged between 14 and 17, said a black bus driver swore at them and kicked them off the bus because they were white.

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/ 7 February 2007

Farmer unions, minister meet

Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana met commercial farmers’ unions on Wednesday afternoon on a stand-off over remarks she made late last year. The meeting got under way at 3.30pm in Pretoria and was expected to continue until late afternoon, AgriSA said.

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/ 7 February 2007

Final arguments in Sivhidzo bail application

The young widow of City Press editor Mathatha Tsedu’s murdered son will know on Monday if she will be released on bail. On Wednesday, the Krugersdorp Regional Court heard final arguments in her bail application. Mulalo Sivhidzo and five men were in the dock following the murder of her husband, Avhatakali Netshisaulu, on December 7 last year.

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/ 7 February 2007

EU earmarks R9bn in development funding for SA

The European Union has earmarked R9-billion in development funding for South Africa over the next seven years, EU ambassador to South Africa Lodewijk Briët announced on Wednesday. ”We want to work with South Africa to enhance its democratic roots … and to help South Africa and Southern Africa, and all of sub-Saharan Africa, to move ahead,” he said at a briefing in Cape Town.

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/ 7 February 2007

Alleged coup plotters plead not guilty

The eight men charged with contravening the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act by planning a coup in Equatorial Guinea pleaded not guilty in the Pretoria Regional Court on Wednesday. The eight accused are part of a group of 61 who returned to South Africa in 2005 after spending more than a year in a Zimbabwean prison.

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/ 7 February 2007

De la Rey? What about Zuma’s umshini?

Bok van Blerk’s song De la Rey is not nearly as ”potentially subversive as former deputy president Jacob Zuma’s song Umshini Wami, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Wednesday. The DA was reacting to a warning from the Department of Arts and Culture that De la Rey was in danger of being ”hijacked” by right wingers.