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/ 25 October 2004
Affordable banking in the form of the Mzansi national account — an initiative by the country’s major banks to reach the country’s estimated 13-million unbanked — became a reality on Monday. The account will be offered by South Africa’s so-called "big four" banks — Absa, Nedbank, First National Bank and Standard Bank.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=124310">Mzansi account is ‘a real victory'</a>
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/ 25 October 2004
Monday’s launch of the national Mzansi bank account is the culmination of interaction between civil society, the public sector and banks to deliver a workable banking solution to millions of previously unbanked South Africans. Blade Nzimande, chairperson of the Financial Sector Campaign Coalition, called the launch ‘a real victory’.
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/ 25 October 2004
Carmaker Porsche would like to get its employees to work longer hours for no additional pay, a German newspaper reported on Sunday. The company wants to do away with a five minute per hour break, which company officials say adds up to 18 work days a year, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily reported.
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/ 25 October 2004
Four men who escaped from the Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital in Krugersdorp on Saturday are still on the run, West Rand police said on Monday. Two men, Adrian Cloete (21) and Louis Visagie (24), were re-arrested in the veld near Ventersdorp on Saturday afternoon.
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/ 25 October 2004
It was an historic and sensitive trip, planned with precision — and in secret — at a time of high tension in the Cold War. But British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s visit to west Berlin in October 1982, during which she made a stand against communism in front of the Berlin wall, was a security fiasco from start to finish.
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/ 25 October 2004
India has the Nehru jacket and South Africa has Nelson Mandela’s flowery Madiba shirt, but in Kenya, an attempt to throw off the colonial shackles of the Western business suit is proving less successful. A government-sponsored competition to create a national dress has resulted in a design that looks unmistakably African, but has so far failed to win over the public.
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/ 25 October 2004
Faced with mounting civic pressure to relieve the burden of school fees, government moved last week to increase both access to schools and redress of gross apartheid racial inequalities in education provision. But the leading trade union in the sector — the South African Democratic Teachers Union — said the proposals needed to go much deeper to make a significant impact.
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/ 25 October 2004
You have to be careful of cool. It’s trickier than it looks. Ask people for cool companies, and they rattle off companies with cool ads. But there must be more to it than ads. I don’t want to call a company ”cool” on the strength of its lipstick; I want to know it has heart. Does it do decent by staff and clients, or is it stuck in ancient 20th century gladiator mode? Ease, attitude and tone is what South Africa’s low-fare airline sells.
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/ 25 October 2004
Family members, friends and members of the African National Congress will plan the funeral of controversial KwaZulu-Natal MEC Dumisane Makhaye who died on Sunday. Makhaye died of lung cancer in the Parklands hospital in Durban. IFP MP Vedlaphi Ndlovu said he would remember Makhaye as a ”political animal” who loved his party and didn’t care about other parties.
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/ 25 October 2004
Thousands of people were facing a second night in emergency shelters or out in the open on Sunday after the deadliest earthquake to strike Japan in nine years left at least 21 people dead and more than 1 800 injured. A series of earthquakes measuring up to 6,8 on the Richter scale caused widespread damage on Saturday evening in Niigata prefecture.