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/ 24 September 2004

Left vs ultra-left

Despite the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) reaching breaking-point last week over leadership squabbles, the election results released on Thursday reflected resounding confidence in the union’s current leaders. The union’s Secretary General Slumko Nondwangu and president Mtutuzeli Tom were re-elected for the next four years. The new treasurer is Philemon Shiburi.

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/ 24 September 2004

Policing with the people

The murder rate in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township has dropped by almost a third in the past year — well above the 22,5% decline for the Western Cape and the 9,9% reduction nationally. The sprawling poverty-stricken apartheid township recorded 574 murders in the 2002/03 financial year, — about a sixth of all murders in the whole Western Cape. But today, it’s no longer is the country’s murder capital.

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/ 24 September 2004

Mbeki’s pleas fall on deaf ears

President Thabo Mbeki has spent a long week in New York swimming against the tide. It may be difficult to get the United Nations General Assembly to focus on practicalities at the best of times, but the president’s call for a ”new definition” of security premised on expanded prosperity and democracy, struggled for media and diplomatic oxygen on a day dominated by a succession of appalling reports from Iraq.

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/ 24 September 2004

Zimbabwe tourism figures plummet

The number of foreign tourists visiting Zimbabwe dropped by 36% in the first half of this year compared to the same time in 2003, the country’s tourism promotion body said on Thursday. The figures by the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) said the number of visitors dropped from 1,3-million in the first six months of last year to 827 245 this year.

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/ 24 September 2004

Art teacher and former pupil plan to tie the knot

An art teacher who was jailed for having sex with a 13-year-old pupil and bore his child has said that she and the now 21-year-old plan to marry, according to news reports late on Thursday. Mary Kay LeTourneau, who was 34 when she began a relationship with then-sixth grader Vili Fualaau in 1996, has reunited with him since her release from prison earlier this year.

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/ 24 September 2004

Zim slips in FDI rankings

The Zimbabwean economy has been ranked 138th out of 140 countries, with an inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Potential Index of 0,064 for the period 2000-2002, the World Investment Report 2004 has revealed. The country compares in the FDI Peformance Index to countries such as Bangladesh and Haiti.