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/ 22 December 2003
President Lansana Conte of Guinea was on course to extend his 20-year rule over the impoverished west African country after elections on Sunday, despite failing health and opposition complaints of ballot-rigging. The chainsmoking Conte (69) was too ill to campaign much but aides denied that he was dying.
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/ 21 December 2003
Rian Malan’s crime is not just saying the unsayable, but saying it so well. He has picked the one cause which unites almost everyone, from George Bush to Bono, and declared it a con. Africa, says Malan, is not dying of Aids at all. The apocalypse you hear about, the tide of death leaving a continent of pensioners and orphans, is not happening.
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/ 21 December 2003
When Essie Mae Washington Williams, a 78-year-old mixed-race woman, walked out in front of the television cameras last week, she gave public voice to a secret she had hidden all her life. ‘My father’s name is James Strom Thurmond,’ she said into a microphone that amplified the emotions wobbling in her voice.
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/ 21 December 2003
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday promised to create a ”broad alliance” with other pro-democracy organisations that he said next year would force President Robert Mugabe’s government to negotiate a settlement to the country’s crisis.
Zim state media spews ‘hate speech’
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/ 21 December 2003
Libya provided detailed intelligence on hundreds of al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists as part of a deal to end its isolation as a pariah nation, The Observer can reveal.
Blair hails Libya deal on arms
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/ 21 December 2003
The team had been working hard. In a secret base in the centre of Baghdad 16 computer and intelligence experts attached to a dedicated American military intelligence unit had been spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for six months building one of the most sophisticated computer models ever used in a manhunt.
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/ 21 December 2003
South Africa’s inflation rate hit a 44-year low in November with consumers paying less than one US cent more than last year on an average basket of goods and services. Statistics South Africa said annual growth in consumer price inflation slowed to 0,4% in November from 1,5% in October this year.
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/ 21 December 2003
"Clara Bowden was beautiful in all senses except maybe, by virtue of being black, the classical." — Zadie Smith, <i>White Teeth</i>. A quick glance through our mainstream South African media — an extension of that age-old medium — will reveal the glowing icon of black (South) African beauty, and Lux "Face of Africa" Khanyi Dhlomo.
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/ 21 December 2003
"During the first 10 years of democracy in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance (DA) made two quantum leaps forward." Head of the DA Tony Leon talks about the role the African National Congress’s strongest opposition will play in the next decade.