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/ 9 September 2005

‘We can’t be a state mouthpiece’

It has taken about a month for Dali Mpofu, the new South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) chief executive, to figure out how hot his 28th-floor seat is, and stamp his authority on the corporation. The times seem to be, as the Chinese might say, interesting ones at the SABC’s Auckland Park headquarters. Someone’s head seems always to be on a chopping block or already rolling.

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/ 26 July 2005

Man allegedly ‘roasts flesh’ of niece

A suspected cannibal who allegedly murdered his niece and then roasted and ate her right thigh is expected to appear in the Harding Magistrate’s Court in southern KwaZulu-Natal on Tuesday. Police spokesperson Superintendent Zandra Hechter said the man was arrested on Sunday after he allegedly killed his sister’s three-year-old daughter and attempted to kill her other children.

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/ 15 July 2005

Three bits and a piece

I am enraged at the utter crassness, crudity and weapons-grade stupidity of whatever organisation now manufactures and sells the almost immortal game of Scrabble. I went to buy a new Scrabble set the other day. The box was marked Original Scrabble and, like a fool, I took that on trust.

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/ 29 March 2005

Zim torture victims pick up the pieces in SA

At first it appears as though the seriously ill Zimbabwean is speaking about someone else’s ordeal at the hands of the notorious Central Intelligence Organisation. Propped up in a hospital bed in South Africa two weeks after her release from Chikurubi Maximum Prison, it becomes apparent that the woman who wants to be known only as ”Itaai” is expressing her own traumatic experience.

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/ 14 March 2005

The challenge of piecing together a ‘failed state’

This past weekend saw a new military operation underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Reports from the central African country say about 800 United Nations troops have been deployed in the north-eastern Ituri region to disarm local militias held responsible for the death of nine peacekeepers last month. The militias have also attacked local Congolese, prompting 70 000 to flee their homes.

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/ 27 January 2005

The South starts picking up the pieces

In a promising development, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, the rebel movement that took up arms against Khartoum in 1983, appears to be giving priority to education. Schooling for girls will receive particular attention. The emphasis on educating girls reflects a larger strategy within the movement to address cultural factors that undermine the status of women.

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/ 29 October 2004

Former aide guilty of faking Dalí masterpiece

A former British army captain who claims to have worked with Winston Churchill on secret wartime operations has been found guilty of reworking a painting by another former employer, the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. John Peter Moore, a former private secretary to the artist, cut up a stolen 1969 Dalí painting, The Double Image of Gala, and used it to create what he claimed was a new Dalí.

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/ 21 October 2004

Fidel Castro: ‘I remain in one piece’

President Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader for more than 45 years, broke his left knee and his right arm in a fall, and urged the Caribbean country’s population of 11-million to stay calm, a government statement said on Thursday. TV cameras captured the incident on Wednesday when the leader stumbled as he was descending a flight of stairs.