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/ 21 April 2005

Tourist deaths in KwaZulu-Natal an accident

Eight British tourists who died in a crash after a mentally ill man ran out in front of their minibus in a South African national park were killed accidentally, an inquest has found. The hearing in Britain was told that ”Pelepele” Miyawho had spent December 31 2003 playing ”chicken” with cars in the Royal Natal national park.

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/ 21 April 2005

Alleged kingpin in Guinea coup plot feared killed

Fears were growing on Wednesday night about the fate of the man at the centre of last year’s murky coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, after reports that he had been assasinated. Investigators are looking for Severo Moto, the exiled opposition leader whom the British mercenary Simon Mann and his friend Mark Thatcher last year allegedly planned to make president of the oil-rich West African country.

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/ 21 April 2005

Better results are costing the learners

Faced with mounting pressure and financial incentives to improve matric results, government high schools with a history of a high failure rate are resorting to controversial measures to improve their averages. One tactic such schools are using is so-called ‘gate-keeping” in Grade 11. Learners who performed poorly in Grade 11 are not promoted to Grade […]

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/ 21 April 2005

Queen of the classroom

In the dust bowl of rural Nongoma, deep in the heart of Zululand, the Grade 5s and 6s at Kamsweli Primary School have an unusual dignitary as their teacher: the youngest of the five wives of Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini Ka Bhekuzulu. An educator since 1997, Queen Nompumelelo (28) describes some of the more […]

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/ 21 April 2005

Listening to the world of the deaf

Growing up in Durban, she started her schooling like most other children until she started to lose her hearing at age seven. She struggled for a while because she wasn’t sure what was happening to her – and nor was her family. ‘My grandmother thought I was a stubborn girl because I wouldn’t respond when […]

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/ 21 April 2005

Primary schoolchildren bust for drugs

The boys, aged between nine and 13, were allegedly also selling drugs at the school. They handed over 56 mandrax tablets they’d hidden in the school toilets to police, later leading them to two dealers at a nearby train station. Although the school’s principal refused to speak to the media about the matter, he confirmed […]

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/ 21 April 2005

Union withstands division

Re-elected president, Willie Madisha, told the 1 050 delegates representing Sadtu’s 515 branches across 51 regions nationwide, that the congress had taken place while the country’s labour movement was ‘under attack from sinister anti-working class forces and smear campaigns by faceless people through the media”. Thulas Nxesi, who retained his position as Sadtu’s general secretary, […]

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/ 21 April 2005

Approach to mergers ‘flawed’

In its final submission to Minister of Education Kader Asmal, the Univen council has described the proposed merger with the two institutions as ‘flawed” and ‘defective”. It says the proposals, if implemented, would be disastrous for Limpopo province in that they do not take regional equity into account. The Univen council is chaired by Barney […]