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/ 9 February 2005

When the cops become criminals

When 14-year-old Joyce Gwabasa went to the police station near her home on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, to report a street fight, she had no idea that the two officers whom she trusted to deal with the crime would attempt to rape her. KwaZulu-Natal’s safety and security minister has admitted that nine police stations in the Durban area have "bad, bad police officers working there".

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/ 9 February 2005

Continental mush, from Cape to Cairo

I saw a particular skirt at Woolworths when I moved to Pretoria in 2001. Late last year I saw it advertised as the latest fashion in Lusaka. My Zambian friends often gripe about near-expiration film dumped on them by South African retailers. Among the other expired products that South Africa proudly dumps beyond its borders are its older white executives, past their shelf life owing to black empowerment at home.

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/ 9 February 2005

‘I’m available – swallow me’

When Marilyn Monroe lay dying in Hollywood, I doubt she guessed her poisonous legacy. Kennedy’s “lollipop” could act; they just wanted the glistening pout. The planet may have changed since 1962 but Tinsel Town hasn’t. The proof will be staring out of magazine racks from Friday when the March “Hollywood” edition of Vanity Fair – the glossy with a frontal lobe – will be ready for its close-up.

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/ 9 February 2005

Suicide bomber kills 21 in Iraq

A suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives detonated himself outside an Iraqi army recruitment centre in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 21 people. It was the latest in a string of recent attacks on an Iraqi national guard base at Muthana airfield in western Baghdad.

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/ 8 February 2005

DA mission ‘will not go as as far as Zim airport’

A Democratic Alliance fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe will not ”go as far as the airport”, African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) president Fikile Mbalula told students at the University of the Witwatersrand on Tuesday. For its own part, the ANCYL opposes a change of government in Zimbabwe, as it is not a ”regime”, said Mbalula.

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/ 8 February 2005

‘Cresta slasher’ strikes again

The 35-year-old woman who slit the throat of a pensioner at the Cresta shopping centre in Johannesburg has attacked a fellow patient at the Sterkfontein mental hospital. Kanellie Hazikonstandinou was committed to the hospital after a court found that she was not fit to stand trial for the murder of 81-year-old Maureen Naughtin.