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/ 3 September 2004
Rapid growth in expenditure on social grants is squeezing government spending on health, education and other essential services, forcing it to reconsider the way it is financing its major development programmes. Figures released by the National Treasury this week show provincial spending on social grants doubled between 2000/01 and 2003/04. And, government spending on grants is set to grow by another 50%.
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/ 3 September 2004
Outspoken Bulawayo Archbishop Pius Ncube secretly met Prince Charles and briefed him about Zimbabwe’s deepening economic and social crisis at the royal’s London home. Archbishop Ncube, a fierce critic of Mugabe, told Prince Charles that Mugabe was slowly joining the elite squad of tragi-comic African dictators.
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/ 3 September 2004
The doom-mongers may complain that commercial pressures and a growing reluctance to annoy the posh neighbours are stealing the soul of the Notting Hill Carnival. But though the weather was more autumnal than Caribbean, the crowds flocked back to the festival as it celebrated its 40th birthday from August 28 to 29. The event drew a crowd of an estimated one million people.
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/ 3 September 2004
<b>NOT THE MOVIE OF THE WEEK:</b> The poster slogan for <i>King Arthur</i> sells it as "The untold true story that inspired the legend". While there is some intellectual texture and moral fibre, as it were, to the story, much else is botched, writes Shaun de Waal.
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/ 3 September 2004
Madrid, Milan, Valencia, Porto, and Roma: you can’t beat Europe for the big football match atmosphere and one of sport’s greatest occasions. Now that footie season is upon us, <i>Escape</i> scouts the cities that will host the season’s glamour games.
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/ 3 September 2004
Once upon a time there was a wonderful land where the loveliest of rainbows was always in the sky. Even at night this loveliest of rainbows shed its gentle and healing light on the happy people who lived under it. There were two kinds of happy people living in The Land of the Loveliest Rainbow: the Lucky Few and the Unlucky Many. And they couldn’t be more different …
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/ 3 September 2004
Maria Ramos’s plans to revamp the underperforming transport parastatal look certain to run into staunch resistance from the labour movement. Jane Barrett of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, has slammed Transnet’s proposed restructuring as based on flawed premises and lacking full assessment of the social impact. The Transnet CEO’s war with labour has just begun.
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/ 3 September 2004
Record monthly sales in new vehicles, a continued recovery of the manufacturing sector and brisk growth in credit demand indicate that the South African economy is on a roll. Further evidence of manufacturing growth came on Wednesday, when the Investec Purchasing Manufacturing Index (PMI) remained at 59 points, its highest level this year.
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/ 3 September 2004
Three of the five drivers of the African rescue plan, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), had their work cut out this week dealing with conflict and crisis on the continent. President Thabo Mbeki took no fewer than seven of his Cabinet members to Kinshasa for the bi-national commission aimed at beefing up political and economic ties with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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/ 3 September 2004
Professor Bruce of the Philosophy Department at the University of Wallamalloo (Queensland), most famous for his theories on the drinking habits of Aristotle, would have succinctly described conditions in Athens last weekend, as the games came to a close, as: “It’s hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum.”