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/ 25 February 2005
In 1911, Gustave Flaubert launched a valiant but vain broadside at the hypocrisy, doublespeak, platitudes and banality of the bourgeois chattering classes. Three years after the publication of <i>A Dictionary of Received Ideas</i>, World War I broke out. In 2005, Tom Eaton presents, in three parts over the next three weeks, a new dictionary of ideas.
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/ 25 February 2005
Schabir Shaik’s defence is hanging by a thread — albeit a substantial thread named Jacob Zuma. As Shaik began testifying in his defence in the fraud and corruption trial in Durban this week, it became increasingly clear that crucial aspects of his evidence rely on Deputy President Jacob Zuma for corroboration.
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/ 25 February 2005
Damaging though it may appear to onlookers, this week’s evidence in the Schabir Shaik trial does not seem to have shaken Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s supporters in the African National Congress-led alliance. Some still insist the trial is a smear campaign to discredit Zuma and thwart his bid for the presidency, while others maintain a wait-and-see attitude.
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/ 25 February 2005
Children’s rights activists have long expressed concern over the extent of child trafficking and exploitation in West Africa. Recent events in Gabon might give them cause for hope, however. For the first time in its history, the country is to try persons accused of these crimes. Eight nationals from Benin and Togo have been indicted for trafficking and exploitation.
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/ 25 February 2005
When Anglo American persuaded South Africa’s government to relax exchange controls and allow the group to shift its corporate domicile to London, a central argument was that London domicile would allow it to raise money more cheaply for investment in this country. Much the same argument was put by BHP Billiton. It has not worked out quite that way.
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/ 25 February 2005
Canadian wildlife officers are tracking smugglers in the macabre slaughter and mutilation of 40 bald eagles, which has shaken aboriginal people on Canada’s west coast. The first dead birds were discovered on February 2 by a woman walking her dog on the reserve of the Burrard Indian band, a forested area across an ocean inlet from Vancouver, in British Columbia.
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/ 25 February 2005
South Africa’s state-owned power company Eskom on Thursday unveiled plans to build the world’s biggest hydro-electricity plant on a stretch of the Congo River, harnessing enough power for the whole continent. The proposed plant at the Inga Rapids, near the river’s mouth in the western Democratic Republic of Congo, would cost -billion and could generate about 40Â 000MW.
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/ 24 February 2005
Bio-warrior Wouter Basson’s tangled web of explanations about almost 100 front companies set up while he was head of Project Coast began to unravel in the Constitutional Court this week. For the first time, details of Basson’s testimony at an October 1997 bail hearing have entered the public domain. They contrast sharply with his evidence in a 30-month trial in the Pretoria High Court.
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/ 24 February 2005
The topic of campaign finance is rarely far from the minds of politicians or pundits in the run-up to elections — and Zimbabwe is no exception to this rule. With the country in the midst of a political and economic crisis, it may even be a hotter topic of discussion here than elsewhere. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in Zimbabwe in six weeks’ time.