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/ 10 September 2004
Di-di-di-di dah-dah, di-di-di-di daaaah. Di-di-di-di dah dah, di-di-di-di daaaah! It’s the most recognised TV theme song, and now it’ll get stuck in your head all over again. The 70s cop show Hawaii Five-O is to be turned into a movie. Named thus because Hawaii is the 50th American state, the series featured breathtaking scenery matched with sharp dialogue, and was one of the most popular TV shows of all time.
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/ 10 September 2004
About 690 000 civil servants are expected to strike out of a total of 852 937 unionised members. As preparations for protest get underway, there is already a mood of triumph. But the question is whether trade union leaders have the grit to sustain this mass action for more than a day. The <i>M&G</i> speaks to the ordinary man on the street.
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/ 10 September 2004
The document on his desk, <i>Why Revolutionaries Need Marxism: Philosophy and Class Struggle</i>, provides a dog-eared hint of the past week’s mood. The general secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers Union, Thulas Nxesi, is one of nine trade union leaders who have been commanding their headquarters, in inner-city Johannesburg, on a 24-hour basis since their announcement on Monday that up to 690 000 civil servants will hit the streets next Thursday.
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/ 10 September 2004
Former Harare Mayor, Elias Mudzuri, has said residents of the Zimbabwean capital and satellite towns are consuming water contaminated with raw sewage and that water supplies could run dry next month due to fighting over the past year between government and the Movement for Democratic Change.
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/ 10 September 2004
The national government on Thursday ordered an urgent independent forensic investigation into 14 contentious deals in Mpumalanga that have cost the taxpayer R72,1-million. Chief land claims commissioner Tozi Gwanya has instructed senior independent property valuer Derick Griffiths to verify whether sales prices for the 14 vegetable and dairy farms in Mpumalanga’s Badplaas valley were inflated or otherwise manipulated by land speculators and government officials.
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/ 10 September 2004
The United States secretary of state, Colin Powell, dramatically increased pressure on the Sudanese government on Thursday by declaring the killings and destruction in its Darfur region to be genocide. Powell, directly blaming the Sudanese government, said: ”This was a coordinated effort, not just random violence.”
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/ 10 September 2004
The British mercenary Simon Mann, who faces up to 10 years in jail on Friday for trying to buy arms to overthrow the president of Equatorial Guinea, contributed 000 to the plot, according to a list of alleged financiers believed to be in the hands of the South African police. Ely Calil, the London-based Lebanese oil millionaire who is being sued in London by the Equatorial Guinea regime, is alleged to have raised another 000.
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/ 10 September 2004
On a bright Alamagordo evening almost 60 years ago, a posse of scientists sat in an army hut chewing tobacco and comparing Bunsen-burner scars. The faintly frantic air in the room that night might have been a result of their plan, the next day, to trigger the first nuclear explosion in history. Or it might have been because there was a small possibility that the blast would ignite the planet’s atmosphere.
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/ 10 September 2004
Like many South Africans I was devastated by the news that a baker’s dozen of our most respected senior politicians have been accused of not revealing to Parliament the full details of their accumulated prosperities. ”The MPs who tried to cover their assets”, jibed the front-page headline in this very paper in a patently clear attempt to hide terrible and hurtful slander behind subtle wordplay.
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/ 10 September 2004
Petrochemical giant Sasol unveiled details of long-awaited plans to grow in the Middle East, and possibly China, this week, against the troubled backdrop of a devastating accident and labour dissidence at Secunda. Unveiling Sasol’s results up to June, CEO Peter Cox put a brave face in reaction to the blast that had claimed seven lives by Wednesday and left hundreds injured.