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/ 12 March 2004

African Union condemns Madrid blasts

The African Union on Friday condemned the deadly Madrid train bombings that left 198 people dead, and called for an intensified global fight against terrorism. ”I condemn the terrorist act that took place in Madrid in which so many innocent people lost their lives and hundreds injured,” said AU Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare.

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/ 12 March 2004

The difficult birth of AngloGold Ashanti

Ghana’s Parliament last month ratified a merger between South African mining giant, AngloGold, and Ghanian enterprise Ashanti Goldfields, to create the world’s largest gold mining business. However, instead of jubilation, the event was marked by a veiled boycott by Ghana’s biggest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress.

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/ 12 March 2004

SA still draws in the crowds

South Africa is still outperforming other tourism markets in the world, despite the effects of a strong rand and the shortage of in-bound flights to Cape Town. So said South African Tourism at a media briefing in Johannesburg this week. Moeketsi Mosola, South African Tourism’s chief operating officer, said on Thursday that South Africa is still a leader in the field of global tourism.

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/ 12 March 2004

Who will take the Northern Cape?

As one of South Africa’s remotest, largest, but least populated provinces, the Northern Cape could so easily have descended into chaos. In the 1994 elections the African National Congress had not secured the majority needed to govern the province, and the National Party was threatening to take over. The political future of the province was on a knife-edge.

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/ 12 March 2004

Picking a premier

Ask any senior African National Congress official who is going to be in the next Cabinet or who will lead the provinces, and they will tell you: ”Chief, the president is unpredictable.” Unofficially, there are murmurs that Mbeki is keeping his options open for as long as possible, to see if he can use the premier posts to solve some sticky political problems in the ANC.

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/ 12 March 2004

Education dept ‘must explain’

Two vital education sectors were inexplicably overlooked in this year’s Budget and the national Department of Education should explain its thinking in these areas, according to an analysis of the education budget released this week by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa).

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/ 12 March 2004

Cosatu clashes with BEE firms

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is on a collision course with empowerment companies, which, it says, do little to advance workers’ interests or real broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE). Two deals announced within the past month in the Western Cape have sparked Cosatu’s ire:

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/ 12 March 2004

Youth league doesn’t churn out elites

For some time now a desperate invective has been directed at the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). Its leadership has been accused of elitism, failure to mobilise the youth and being right wing, among other things. The latest in the comical series is the charge that the league has become a vehicle for churning out elites.

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/ 12 March 2004

The ANC’s election manifesto for dummies

In order to run the African National Congress’s Vision 2004 election manifesto, computer users will first have to install a version of Microsoft’s popular operating programme that has been specially designed for South Africa. The new version is called Shack Windows and is totally compatible with all standard computer systems. Copies may be pirated from the Independent Electoral Commission website.