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/ 11 December 2006
Belinda Moleko muses, calmly determined: “We will change the face of townships. We will. We are more at home with our own.” Moleko’s company, Bella Casa, is the developer of Tembisa’s first cluster-home development. The Willows, a security estate of 25 free-standing homes, priced from R225 000 for 61 square metres, sold out within three weeks of its launch.
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/ 11 December 2006
As 2006 comes to a close, concerns over Kenya’s track record in tackling corruption are deepening in the East African nation. Authorities have consistently said they are committed to the fight against graft, but civil society organisations argue that various developments indicate a lack of political will to root out corruption.
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/ 11 December 2006
Of all the indignities female flesh is heir to, not being able to wee while standing is one of the few we can’t blame on men. Unless God really is a man — in which case, we can! Some women, it is true, can perform this useful feat. But few of us can afford to sacrifice all the shoes that would need replacing before we developed the right muscles.
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/ 11 December 2006
A shift of vocabulary can be the harbinger of a new understanding. The notable increase in recent weeks in the use of the term “civil war” to describe what is happening in Iraq — which has included powerful statements from Kofi Annan and King Abdullah of Jordan — may prove significant.
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/ 11 December 2006
The latest figures from the annual Finscope survey by FinMark Trust show a positive picture for banking in South Africa. The number of people banked has increased from 46,6% last year to 51%, with the biggest increase among the lower-income earners. According to the survey, 800 000 people have entered the financial services arena and Mzansi (the low-income, low-cost bank account) has been hailed as a success.
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/ 11 December 2006
Space agency Nasa recently unveiled plans to build a permanent base on the moon within 20 years that will allow humans to live there. The base will be used as a launching site for missions to Mars, as well as for analysis of the Earth from space. ”We’re going for a base on the moon,” said Scott Horowitz, Nasa associate administrator for exploration.
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/ 11 December 2006
I have a good dose of melanin, making me one of the darker people prowling the streets of Johannesburg. I was born and brought up in Kenya. I carry a Kenyan passport and have official recognition as a Kenyan citizen. I can vote, run for political office and join the Kenyan army — if I want to. I love ugali, the Kenyan, harder version of pap.
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/ 11 December 2006
There are rumours that treasury boss Dr Herbert Murerwa and central bank chief Dr Gideon Gono are at one each other’s throats. They reportedly regularly have SMS wars, with a defiant Gono reminding his boss that they are ”working for the same government, and that he [Murerwa] should be patriotic and listen to him,” treasury insiders say.
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/ 11 December 2006
In a slick, glass television studio in an office block on the southern outskirts of Paris, a new front in the war on ”Anglo-Saxon” cultural imperialism opened up recently. President Jacques Chirac’s decade-old dream of a ”CNN Ã la Francaise” to rival BBC World and United States 24-hour news channels is finally to launch after years of wrangling and in-fighting, promising a revolution in world news.
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/ 11 December 2006
Fiji’s balmy South Pacific vistas stand in sharp contrast to its occasionally nasty politics, so the coup in Suva is a familiar reversion to type. Like the three previous military takeovers since independence, this one — happily bloodless — is rooted in old tensions between the country’s majority Melanesian community and the economically dominant Indians who make up 44% of the island’s population.