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/ 10 October 2005

Out on a limb at Aardklop

For some reason or the other, I found myself down at the Aardklop Festival last weekend. Aardklop is a celebration of serious Afrikanerness that takes over the centre of the seemingly enlightened city of Potchefstroom at this time each year. Why the festival is there, and what aard it is busy klopping, is anyone’s guess.

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/ 10 October 2005

Fat cats take the cream

Fat-cat salaries are crowding out socio-economic delivery in many of South Africa’s municipalities, official figures show. The salaries of municipal councillors and officials outstrip spending on services by nearly R10 -billion — 10% of the total municipal budget. The figures must be seen against the backdrop of the municipal protests that have exploded across South Africa in the past six months.

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/ 10 October 2005

Health officials say Congo fever contained

Health officials are monitoring 151 people for symptoms of the deadly Congo fever virus, which claimed the life of an unnamed farm labourer at Groote Schuur hospital on Monday. Confident the disease will not spread, officials on Monday discharged seven people, including the dead man’s wife and son, from the Riversdale hospital.

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/ 10 October 2005

Scorpions: Should they stay or go?

Contrasting arguments on the future of the Scorpions were submitted by a police union and the Democratic Alliance at the Khampepe commission in Pretoria on Monday. The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union told the commission: ”The need for the Scorpions no longer exists.”

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/ 10 October 2005

Cosatu protesters converge in Pretoria

Workers marching for an end to unemployment and job losses warned the ruling African National Congress on Monday to ignore them at its peril. ”We cannot simply be election fodder,” Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) president Willie Madisha told protesters who converged at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

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/ 10 October 2005

Harare squatters win court reprieve

A court in Zimbabwe on Monday provisionally barred the eviction of about 400 squatters from a suburb in the capital, Harare, a human rights lawyer said. Zvikomborero Chadambuka, of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, said the High Court in Harare ordered that his clients should not be evicted from Mbare suburb.