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/ 25 February 2005
The tender process for building schools is "a system designed for corruption", senior education officials say. But plans mooted by Minister of Education Naledi Pandor to short-circuit graft and waste by relieving provincial public works departments of responsibility for construction tenders have irritated national Minister of Public Works Stella Sigcau.
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/ 25 February 2005
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/197779/special_rep_icon_template.gif" align=left>"We must all work together to pull the wagon through the drift," Trevor Manuel said in every official language but English on Wednesday. And he is using all the room available in the Constitution to ensure that local and provincial governments get their shoulders to the wheel. His balancing act was eased by a larger-than-expected tax overrun.
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/ 25 February 2005
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/197779/special_rep_icon_template.gif" align=left>Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has allocated the largest tranche of the Budget to the provinces — but National Treasury is to exert a much firmer grip on how provincial and local governments spend their money. A key reform introduced in this year’s budget is a change in the way social grants are funded.
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/ 25 February 2005
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is expected to spend the next six weeks on the campaign trail, mending fences with disgruntled provinces whose popular chairpersons have been suspended for attending the controversial Tsholotsho meeting to drum up support for Emmerson Mnangagwa’s failed bid for the party vice-presidency.
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/ 25 February 2005
The child-support grant was launched in 1998 to assist poor parents and caregivers of children up to the age of seven. To qualify for the grant, rural recipients must earn less than R800 a month and their urban counterparts no more than R1 100. But the social welfare system struggled to get the ball rolling amid accusations of maladministration.
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/ 25 February 2005
Togo’s military-installed president was expected on Friday to announce he is stepping down following fierce regional and international opposition to his rule, a diplomat at the African Union said. Faure Gnassingbe was expected to make the announcement in a speech to the congress of Togo’s ruling party, the diplomat told The Associated Press.
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/ 25 February 2005
As African Catholics prayed for the health of Pope John Paul II on Friday, speculation mounted that the ailing pontiff could soon be succeeded by Africa’s first pope in more than 1 500 years. With church congregations rising across Africa, Asia and Latin America, observers see a global church that is increasingly oriented towards the south.
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/ 25 February 2005
Several United Nations peacekeepers were killed on Friday when unidentified gunmen attacked their patrol in the northeast region of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the UN mission in the country said. A spokesperson for the Monuc mission said details of the attack are still sketchy.
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/ 25 February 2005
Dolly the dolphin has followed Max the gorilla into animal history, after Port Elizabeth’s famous bottlenose died on Thursday, aged 36. The oldest Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphin to be born and bred in captivity died at Port Elizabeth’s Bayworld oceanarium late on Thursday afternoon, Bayworld spokesperson Eluise Matthys said.
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/ 25 February 2005
Ninety youths have been arrested in Giyani and one boy is dead after 39 houses were torched in what appeared to be a witch-hunt, Limpopo police said. ”The 39 houses were burnt to ashes,” said Superintendent Moatshe Ngoepe. ”Those people lost everything — food, blankets, their children’s school uniforms and school books — everything,” he said.