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/ 14 October 2005

Suffering the wrath of gods

”Disasters are always most poignant, most chilling, when you know the terrain and the people. So I had stood on the sea wall in Galle, watching kids fly kites, a few months before the tsunami engulfed the south of Sri Lanka. So I remember sitting in a waterfront square in New Orleans early — too early,” writes Peter Preston.

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/ 14 October 2005

Pakistan will never forget

The scale of the disaster has traumatised the entire country — or perhaps not quite. Here in Lahore, a group of people collecting funds for earthquake relief were apprehended and charged. They were amassing money for themselves. Even in the midst of devastation, life goes on.

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/ 14 October 2005

Praat kak

Lemmer learned this week that some of Dorsbult’s less transformed senior citizens have been taking great solace in the online writing of Fikile Beebopaloola, the President and literary über-kahuna of the African National Congress Youth League. It’s rare, one told Oom Krisjan, to come across real paranoia in an dominant political party: ah, she sighed, just like the good old 1980s.

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/ 13 October 2005

Khampepe: ‘Leadership must walk the same walk’

Police have not echoed the willingness shown by the Scorpions to work together and create mechanisms to do so, it emerged on the final day of public hearings at the Khampepe Commission in Pretoria. ”We believe no number of committees can solve the problems until the institutional and constitutional problems have been solved,” said advocate Philip Jacobs for the South African Police Service.