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/ 18 December 2006
Zimbabwe’s opposition and rights groups vowed on Monday to stage mass street protests against plans by President Robert Mugabe’s supporters to extend the veteran ruler’s term by another two years. The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front has proposed that 82-year-old Mugabe’s term be extended to 2010 by postponing presidential elections.
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/ 18 December 2006
Legendary South African yachtsman ”Biltong” Bertie died at his home in Gordon’s Bay on Monday at the age of 63. Stanley John Reed had been suffering from cancer, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported. Reed was the first South African, and one of only a few yachtsmen in the world, to complete three single-handed circumnavigations of the globe.
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/ 18 December 2006
The glue that has kept South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) together ”is fast becoming unstuck”, says Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi in his online letter on Monday. ”This may not be a bad thing for democracy — or for the ruling-party,” said Buthelezi.
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/ 18 December 2006
Angola, whose once-buoyant agriculture sector was devastated by a 27-year civil war, is looking to revive farming production with a major programme of government spending and private investment. About 200Â 000 jobs should be created, Prime Minister Fernando Dias dos Santos told MPs last week as he unveiled the government’s 2007/08 economic programme.
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/ 18 December 2006
Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota has appointed a committee to probe costly flights by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka and other VIPs, he announced on Monday. The investigation will start in the first week of January and will be headed by former South African National Defence Force member Kgomotso Moroka SC and Reserve Force General Benno Smit, he said.
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/ 18 December 2006
"I’m living a life and a half. I’ve gone through different lives. I’ve been blessed, successful, thank God. I’m very grateful." These were words spoken by the late Taliep Petersen in a 2005 interview with the <i>Cape Argus</i>. But now the South African theatre and music industry will have to adapt to a different life, a life without the profound and historic musician and writer.
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/ 18 December 2006
Botswana’s government said on Monday it will not appeal a High Court ruling that hundreds of Bushmen had been wrongly evicted from ancestral hunting grounds and should be allowed to return. The president’s office said in a statement it will not initiate an appeal in the case that saw Africa’s last hunter-gatherers take on one of the continent’s most admired governments.
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/ 18 December 2006
Ernie Els moved up to fifth from eighth in the world rankings issued on Monday after his three-shot victory in the South African Airways Open on Sunday. Thailand’s Thongchai Jaidee survived a double-bogey finish to win the season-ending Volvo Masters of Asia on Sunday. The win lifts him 28 places to 75th.
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/ 18 December 2006
A state of emergency must be declared over the Aids pandemic sweeping South Africa and the country’s teachers and the defence force mobilised to tackle the problem, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) said on Monday. PAC secretary general Achmad Cassiem said money to fund this could come from cancelling the government’s arms-procurement programme.
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/ 18 December 2006
The Home Affairs Department is considering a forensic audit to find out how many fraudulent identity documents are in circulation, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said on Monday. In a written reply to a question by Sandy Kalyan of the Democratic Alliance in the National Assembly, she said her department will consider such an audit in the 2007/08 financial year.