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/ 13 January 2004

Fat cats are rolling in money in Malawi

Corrupt fat cats in Malawi continue to walk around with their heads held high, even though they have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. The consequences of their acts are set to remain a burden on this poor Southern African country of more than 11-million people as it prepares to go to the polls in May.

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/ 13 January 2004

A house of bright colours

"An educationist should never be made a minister of education, just like a military person should not be made minister of defence," Kader Asmal, then water and forestry minister, told the <i>Sunday Times</i> in 1996. "They bring their own activist ideas, but there is more to it than that [activism]."
As the matric furore rages, spotlights focus on the man at the centre, Minister of Education Kader Asmal, reports

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/ 13 January 2004

Should the death penalty be put on death row?

Almost 10 years after the death of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, his father — Pa Beesam Wiwa — remains angry and sad. A tribunal appointed by General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s military ruler at the time, sentenced Saro-Wiwa to death in 1995 after a controversial trial. Pa Wiwa says the execution left him embittered.

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/ 13 January 2004

Brazil’s faltering left-wing dream

Nina Rodrigues has little doubt that President Luiz Inacio ”Lula” da Silva will bring her a better life and that Zero Hunger is just the start. ”He came from the same background and he can understand what people want … He is a fighter and he will bring us all together.” But harsh economic realities have thwarted Da Silva’s radical programme.

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/ 13 January 2004

China’s challenges

The sheer speed and scale of China’s economic expansion are so extraordinary that they have roused fears in certain quarters. For nearly two decades China has recorded an average annual growth of about 10% and 14% growth in merchandise trade, three times that of world trade in the same period.