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/ 2 May 2006

Aids teen murdered

Aids activists have threatened mass action and a lawsuit against Kenya’s government for its apparent failure to protect HIV-positive people from violence and intolerance. This follows the brutal murder of Isaiah Gakuyo, a frail 15-year-old boy who had been living with Aids.

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/ 2 May 2006

Lessons from ancient wisdom

This is the season of freedom. On April 27 we South Africans will celebrate Freedom Day. During this same month Jews around the world celebrate Passover — the Festival of Freedom, which marks 3 318 years since their Exodus from Egypt, the greatest liberation in history, when G-d intervened directly in the course of human affairs to free an oppressed and enslaved people.

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/ 2 May 2006

Know you are black, my son: A father’s wish for his child

”When my son was in grade zero, he had a friend called Brendan. Typical of a South African parent born before 1990, I asked Ntsika if Brendan was a lekgoa [white person]. ‘What is a lekgoa?’ he asked. I did not answer, not because I believe children should be seen and not heard, but because I did not know how to respond to the question,” writes the Mail & Guardian‘s Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.

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/ 2 May 2006

Working man’s hero vs pensive scholar

Like a variegated leaf, the old Movement for Democratic Change didn’t respond to sunlight and other atmospheric conditions in a uniform way. There was party president Morgan Tsvangirai, a former trade unionist and the working man’s hero, who wanted to tread the populist route and then there was his secretary general, Welshman Ncube, a professor of family law with a tendency to seek consensus through scholarly persuasion and debate.

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/ 2 May 2006

Eat up or pay up

It is a guilt trip inflicted on most children who leave sprouts or cabbage on their plates. ”Eat up,” their mothers chide. ”Think of those starving children in Africa who don’t have such luxuries.” A few grimacing mouthfuls later, the plate is empty. Adults will be reminded of their youth when they step into a Nigerian restaurant in east London.

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/ 2 May 2006

‘You can be in prison without being a prisoner’

”Over the past 34 years, I have been arrested 126 times while carrying out my profession as a journalist. Physical and mental torture, death threats, the ransacking of my newsroom and so forth have often been my daily lot in a situation where repression and corruption, even within the press, have become the norm,” writes Cameroonian journalist Pius Njawe.

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/ 2 May 2006

Malaria fund misgivings

The World Bank, a leader in the global effort to control malaria, has been accused of deception and medical malpractice by a group of public health doctors for failing to carry out its funding promises and wrongly claiming its programmes have been successful in cutting the death toll from the disease.

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/ 2 May 2006

Nepal: No rah-rah revolution

Something refreshingly old-fashioned has taken place in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal: a genuine revolution. From April 6 (until Monday, when King Gyanendra finally gave in to the people’s demands), Nepal was paralysed by a general strike called by the political parties and backed by Maoist guerrillas.