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/ 20 October 2003

Call to step up electricity reforms

South Africa has less than five years to increase its capacity for electricity generation, Xolani Mkhwanazi, National Electricity Regulator (NER) CEO, warned last week. Mkhwanazi’s comments coincided with the release of the NER’s annual report. His call for greater urgency was echoed by a range of industry players.

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/ 20 October 2003

Scrum down over rights

The international media rarely descend on Australia — the last occasion was the 2000 Sydney Olympics — and for some Aboriginal Australians the Rugby World Cup has presented a rare opportunity to highlight the shabby state of indigenous affairs in many parts of the sport-mad nation.

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/ 20 October 2003

Skweyiya urges Bills not be displaced

Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya has appealed to the Speaker of the National Assembly to ensure that the South African Social Security Agency Bill and the Social Assistance Bill not be displaced from the programme of Parliament this year. The two Bills were to have been debated on October 21.

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/ 20 October 2003

You do not want to be branded a propagandist in these parts, son.

There’s an obvious danger in undertaking an in-depth cover piece on the chief of government’s communications apparatus. When one is reporting for an audience of media professionals, a significant percentage of whom are editors and journalists trained in the watchdog paradigm, one runs the unsettling risk of being written off as a lapdog of the leadership, a pawn for politicos, a flunky of the ruling faction.

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/ 20 October 2003

Exxon moves to polish its image

ExxonMobil has been holding a series of secret meetings with environmental and human rights groups worldwide in an effort to change its hard-nosed public image.
The moves have been seized on by the Stop Esso campaign as a sign that its boycott activities aimed at changing the company’s anti-Kyoto treaty views are working.