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/ 16 January 2004
South Africa will have to import up to two million tonnes of maize this year to feed its population, largely as a result of drought, said Bully Botma, chairperson of Grain South Africa. South Africans consume five million tonnes of maize a year. Last year the country produced a surplus of 2,2-million tonnes of the grain.
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/ 16 January 2004
Every time I visit England I’m delighted at how much further English popular taste has degraded. It’s most encouraging to see the “dumbing down” of England is keeping to schedule, that the pandering to what the producers and proprietors no doubt believe is the generalised bog-level intelligence of their viewers, listeners and readers is kept on target.
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/ 16 January 2004
A lengthy disarmament programme has wrapped up in Sierra Leone, with organisers giving themselves a pat on the back. ”I think that the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of ex-combatants have been a success,” said Francis Kaikai, executive secretary of the programme.
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/ 16 January 2004
This year is shaping up as the year of prison reform in Swaziland, and Aids is the catalyst. ”It would be wrong to suggest that prisons are inhumane in Swaziland, but there is much room for improvement to make them safe from HIV infection, inmate abuse and other ills that are more or less endemic to African prisons,” said an officer with the Correctional Services.
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/ 16 January 2004
As scabby-kneed kids, Calisto Tanzi and Fausto Tonna sat on the same schoolroom bench in the small town of Collecchio, outside Parma. Decades later they were running a booming dairy firm, first dominating the Italian market and eventually building the company into a multinational dairy business, Parmalat.
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/ 16 January 2004
My point of reference on South Africa’s transformation is the Freedom Charter. I am, of course, aware that as an embodiment of the social, political and philosophical aspirations of South Africa, the Freedom Charter’s entrenchment will be as daunting a task as the defeat of apartheid.
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/ 16 January 2004
The misfiring West Indians, rattling through South Africa with alternating bangs and splutters, beg the question over what constitutes genuine recovery in cricket. At what point do struggling teams stop chasing their tails and set a course in the right direction? And what ingredients need to be present for that to happen?
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/ 16 January 2004
Mbeki did not want his first state visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to look like a victory lap for what is arguably his government’s greatest foreign mediation success. Neither did he want it to be frittered away with the customary pomp and ceremony of these events. He went mob-handed to Kinshasa this week, taking no fewer than seven Cabinet colleagues.
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/ 16 January 2004
World champions Australia found record-shattering form to once again outclass a struggling Zimbabwe and record their third straight win in the tri-nation international one-day cricket series at Bellerive Oval in Hobart on Friday.
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/ 16 January 2004
Michelle Wie was neither in awe, nor out of her depth in the opening round of the Sony Open on Thursday. The 14-year-old golf prodigy looked as though she belonged with the big boys of golf as she totaled three birdies and five bogeys for a two-over-par 72 in perfect conditions at Waialae Country Club.