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/ 11 February 2005
President Robert Mugabe’s government has earmarked 12-billion Zimbabwe dollars to buy food aid for needy Zimbabweans who are going to the polls next month, the state-run daily The Herald said on Friday. About 1,5-million Zimbabweans are in need of food aid ahead of the next main harvest due in April.
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/ 11 February 2005
The Competition Commission recommended conditional approval on Friday of the merger between mining groups Harmony and Gold Fields. Due to the hostile nature of the proposed takeover, the commission found it difficult to assess the effect of a merger on jobs, and therefore attached the retrenchment conditions to its approval.
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/ 11 February 2005
The Pretoria High Court dismissed an appeal on Friday by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and broker Addy Moolman against their fraud convictions. Moolman sought leave to approach the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein to challenge his 58 fraud convictions and four-year prison sentence, and Madikizela-Mandela wanted to appeal her suspended sentence on 43 counts.
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/ 11 February 2005
Peace is possible in Colombia despite its four decades of civil war, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Thursday, pointing to harmony achieved in South Africa after decades of racial strife under apartheid. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate gave the optimistic outlook during a speech at a peace symposium in the south-western city of Cali.
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/ 11 February 2005
Eastern Cape minister of agriculture Max Mamase resigned last Tuesday as a high-level investigation into a dodgy R16-million empowerment deal bankrolled by his department closed in on him. Mamase announced his resignation on the same day that a list of questions about his involvement in two dubious business deals arrived at his office from the joint anti-corruption task team (Jactt).
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/ 11 February 2005
United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have been barred from having sex with locals after reports of sexual abuse of girls as young as 13, the UN announced. ”We cannot tolerate even one instance of a UN peacekeeper victimising the most vulnerable among us,” UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said.
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/ 11 February 2005
The appointment of a top Department of Health official as acting registrar of the Medicines Control Council (MCC) has raised alarm about a potential conflict of interest. Humphrey Zokufa, a chief director whose tasks included the implementation of the new medicine pricing regulations, has been named temporarily to fill the post vacated by Precious Matsoso.
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/ 11 February 2005
There was a carnival atmosphere in the dusty streets of Nieu-Bethesda’s township, Pienaarsig, this week as residents celebrated the removal of the town’s chief administrative officer. The announcement that Leonie Fouché would be transferred to a post in Graaff-Reinet was made by Camdeboo mayor Daantjie Japhta in Piernaarsig’s packed community hall. It
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/ 11 February 2005
Yet another Free State township erupted in protest on Thursday, with residents trying to block the N1 to Bloemfontein to highlight unhappiness with service delivery. Mmamahabane, near Ventersburg, was the second township in two days to be engulfed in unrest in the beleaguered province. The residents demanded that the ANC and the provincial government address their grievances over councillors.
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/ 11 February 2005
The increasingly bitter debate over the presidential succession has taken a new twist, with the African National Congress Youth League suggesting Thabo Mbeki should quit as ANC leader when he leaves the presidency. Youth league president Fikile Mbalula told the M&G any proposal to separate the party presidency from that of the country was divisive and a distortion of ANC history.