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/ 17 December 2004
The Department of Social Development launched a major anti-corruption campaign recently, asking for public support in its fight against fraud, but a large proportion of the fraud is committed by civil servants. The corruption takes many forms, including syndicates operated by corrupt government officials, doctors, lawyers and priests. We investigate how government officials collude with members of the public to defraud the state of millions of rands.
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/ 17 December 2004
The 16 days of activism against gender violence are behind us. And now we ask for another day to draw attention to violence against sex workers. December 17 is the second International Day of No Violence Against Sex Workers. Violence of sex workers is an international trend, but we do not need to look beyond our borders to find justification for the need to address violence perpetrated against sex workers.
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/ 17 December 2004
South Africa is in the grip of the worst drought in recent history, with the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry declaring that the lack of rain and falling dam levels are more acute now than they were during the droughts of 10 and 20 years ago. Recent downpours in parts of Gauteng, the Free State and North West have not had much impact.
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/ 17 December 2004
The Brazilian government is on a collision course with three multinational drug companies. It has threatened to declare HIV/Aids a national health emergency, enabling it to manufacture patent drugs. Brazilian Health Minister Humberto Costa told journalists last week the government would break patent laws if negotiations with Rocha, Merck and Abbott failed to reduce the prices of Aids drugs used in a treatment cocktail.
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/ 17 December 2004
Norman Reynolds recently argued in the <i>M&G</i> that alternative, community-based currencies keep wealth in communities ("Ora points the way"). But there is a better example of a localised economy — Cape Town’s Talent Exchange. Operating for almost two years, the exchange is essentially a bartering system. But people do not exchange goods directly. Instead, they trade in an invented currency called "Talents".
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/ 17 December 2004
Only six weeks after President George W Bush’svictory, the vibrations continue euphoric. Depressed Democrats wonder if they could ever win again. Pundits ponder theses about eternal Republican hegemony. Talk is of more Bush power, more neo-conservative solutions, more variations on a narrow agenda. But is that quite what unfolding events tell us? Or will the administration be filled with mere mediocrities?
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/ 17 December 2004
If you’re reading this late on a Friday afternoon — 5.30pm, say — then about 180 000 South African male prisoners have already been locked in their cells for the night. And after lock-up is when it happens: the sexual violence that characterises the incarcerations of many. Yet confusing interpretations of inter-male sex in South African prisons expose our inability to understand these activities.
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/ 17 December 2004
Sometimes two seemingly unrelated pieces of upcoming news reveal themselves to be part of one and the same iceberg. The film Kinsey, based on the life of the notorious sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, will open in South Africa early next year. This month saw a fast-track review by the Food and Drugs Administration of a testosterone patch that aims to improve the sex lives of menopausal women. The iceberg? The science of sex — or rather, the lack of science of sex.
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/ 17 December 2004
There are fears that the Great Lakes region could again descend into war. Rwandan President Paul Kagame has insisted that he will enter the Democratic Republic of Congo and attack Hutu fighters based there if Kinshasa and the United Nations fail to disarm the rebels. But whether rebels or refugees, many Rwandan Hutus are too afraid to return home.
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/ 17 December 2004
”Two weeks ago, my sister was raped coming home from school. How is my sister supposed to look at me and my brothers and not think of this man? How is she going to trust another man? At the tender age of 14, what picture will she have of men in general?” A policeman and and a brother tells of his anguish at gender violence.