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/ 9 January 2004

Shades of pale

History is nothing if not ironic, all notions of it repeating itself as farce after initial tragedy aside. A brilliant Afrikaner dissident journalist under apartheid (harassed, intimidated and on a number of hit lists), Max du Preez found himself "too hot" to handle – and "too white" – under the new dispensation, writes Anthony Egan.

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/ 9 January 2004

Focus on aviation safety in Africa

African airlines have set an ambitious target of reducing the number of accidents by 50% by the year 2010. Since this goal was set at the Association of African Airlines general assembly in Tripoli on December 10 last year — two planes have come down — in Benin and Egypt with a cost of 261 lives.

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/ 9 January 2004

President Bob’s secret Christmas cards

Sometimes even journalists get lucky. Last week I was stranded for four frustrating hours in Geneva airport, waiting for a connecting flight that somehow had vanished off the computers. Near the check-out counters, I was approached by a grimy tout who snuck up close and leered at me. ”Want to buy some feelthy Christmas cards?” he wheedled.

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/ 9 January 2004

No cause for celebration right now

The celebration of South Africa’s 10-year-old democracy will not resonate in soccer the way things are now. The under-23 squad are on tenterhooks as to whether they’ll be off to Athens later this year, but the biggest blow must be Shakes’s seven-day suspension on the even of the Nations Cup.

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/ 9 January 2004

Dakar dispatches

January 5. Somewhere in southern Mauritania. Michelle, mon petit baguette, I write this by the guttering light of a burning Mitsubishi. The driver will soon be extinguished and so I must be brief. The weeping has become incessant. At first it was just the Italian bikers, sobbing into their malfunctioning carburettors …

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/ 9 January 2004

ANC launches manifesto in IFP country

The African National Congress is launching its 2004 election campaign on January 10 and 11 in Durban. "The ANC hopes to convince the voters of KwaZulu-Natal that a clear ANC majority in the province is critical for faster progress towards the elimination of poverty," the <i>ANC Today</i> newsletter said on Friday.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=29452">ANC manifesto TV coverage ‘unfair'</a>