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/ 9 February 2005
Early Childhood Development (ECD) in South Africa has come a long way since the inception of Ntataise about 25 ago. In 1980, when the organisation started, ECD opportunities and preschools for children in disadvantaged rural areas were virtually non-existent. Jane Evans, director of Ntataise, looks back.
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/ 9 February 2005
HIV/Aids is a serious subject, and is not usually much fun. But this time it was. In this remote spot of southern Côte d’Ivoire, it was as if the circus had come to town. Under the banner of the Aids lexicon project, a team of specialists were here to introduce local language equivalents for words like "Aids" and "contraceptives" to promote a better understanding of the virus among the country’s rural population.
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/ 9 February 2005
Msinga, in KwaZulu-Natal, has been hit hard by HIV/Aids and the number of funerals in the district has risen dramatically in recent years. According to custom, farmers will not work their fields for one week after the death of a man and two days after the death of a woman. As the number of funerals rises each week, farmland lies fallow. Honouring the dead is putting this community’s livelihood at risk.
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/ 9 February 2005
"I’ve been waiting years to say this in a public place — would you mind if I nibbled at Uranus? Or if you’re phobic, maybe I could just eat your Mars? Before you get huffy and indignant, some chocolate-makers decided that what the world needed was a fully edible party pack of all the planets of the solar system, made out of chocolate." This, and more, from Ian Fraser’s goodie bag.
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/ 9 February 2005
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
”If the Transitional Federal Government does not make human rights a base for … its political structures, I do not think the project of reconciliation will succeed,” Ghanim Alnajjar told journalists in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, Monday, after returning from a two-week visit to Somalia.
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/ 9 February 2005
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
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
A director at the Lahmeyer International company, one of the international firms involved in the construction of the giant Lesotho highlands water project, is expected to appear in the Lesotho High Court soon on charges of corruption and bribery, according to court papers.
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/ 9 February 2005
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.