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/ 30 January 2004
The Athens 2004 Olympic torch relay brings for the first time the Olympic flame to the streets of Cape Town in June this year. Beginning in early June, the Olympic flame will embark on a 21st-century-style tour that circles the earth. More than 3Â 600 torch bearers will play a part in carrying the flame.
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/ 29 January 2004
South Africa’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Alec Erwin, has been tipped by an influential American journal as the favourite candidate for the director general’s post at the World Trade Organisation, which becomes vacant in September 2005. Erwin’s ministry has poured cold water on the speculation.
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/ 29 January 2004
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has moved to swiftly condemn the actions of what it said were opposition Inkatha Freedom Party supporters who tried to block South African President Thabo Mbeki’s entrance to an imbizo event in the troubled Tugela Ferry in KwaZulu-Natal earlier on Thursday.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=30353">IFP, ANC to discuss tension</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=30339">IFP supporters block Mbeki</a>
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/ 28 January 2004
Western Cape education authorities were hard at work on Wednesday trying to avert an impending education crisis in the province. Meanwhile, pupils, parents and organisations marched in various areas to highlight their unhappiness with the status quo.
Cape parents protest
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/ 28 January 2004
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Valli Moosa says he is ”absolutely embarrassed” about a leopard that had to be put down after being injured in a trap on his family’s farm in the Western Cape. According to reports, the leopard was caught in a gin trap set by workers on Monday.
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/ 28 January 2004
Inkatha Freedom Party leader and Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi has played down a meeting held with the ruling African National Congress this week, describing it as having "no bearing" on the coming elections.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=30281">ANC, IFP meet, details kept secret</a>
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/ 28 January 2004
South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance is "fuelling the fires of racism using the fig leaf of a strong opposition", the New National Party argued on Wednesday. In a raging set of pre-election volleys — the NNP and the DA have been at each other’s throats all week
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/ 28 January 2004
One of South Africa’s largest medical aid administrators, Medscheme, has welcomed proposals for restructuring the public service’s medical-aid schemes. A proposed new public-service medical-aid scheme would bring a welcome one million new medical-aid patients into the industry.
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/ 28 January 2004
Disgruntled parents and their children gathered in front of the Western Cape provincial legislature on Wednesday to express their dissatisfaction with provincial education minister Andre Gaum and his ”disregard for pupils on the Cape Flats”. Allegedly no classes have taken place this year at Norwood Central Primary School in Elsies River.
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/ 27 January 2004
The Aids Law Project has slammed suggestions that the transmission of HIV/Aids be made a crime, saying that such a move would create the dangerous impression that carriers of the virus are alone responsible for ensuring safe sex. ”It is very unrealistic to believe that a draconian law such as this will get people to test [for Aids],” it said.
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/ 27 January 2004
The first public verbal battles in South Africa’s election campaign between the traditional parties of the white minority have focused not on domestic economic policies or development issues — but on the perennial problem of neighbouring Zimbabwe.
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/ 27 January 2004
Confusion surrounds high-level talks between the Inkatha Freedom Party and an African National Congress team headed by Jacob Zuma reportedly scheduled for Tuesday. ANC national spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said the talks were on, but his IFP counterpart Musa Zondi said he had no knowledge of them.
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/ 27 January 2004
South Africa’s Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson has pleaded for an end to all ”comment and speculation” on Judge Siraj Desai. In a statement issued on Tuesday, he also said the question whether Desai should sit as a judge before the rape case against him was finalised was not at issue.
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/ 27 January 2004
The official opposition Democratic Alliance has reacted to what it has called newspaper speculation about the selection of candidates for the upcoming parliamentary and provincial legislature elections. The candidate list was meant to be kept under wraps until changes were made by party leader Tony Leon.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=30185">Top DA brass low on Gauteng list</a>
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/ 27 January 2004
The Democratic Alliance has submitted parliamentary questions to the government in a bid to establish whether South Africa has supplied riot control equipment to the Haitian government. This followed reports that truncheons with the words ‘Made in South Africa’ written on them are being used to control anti-government protesters in Haiti.
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/ 26 January 2004
The provisional Gauteng province list for South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance has placed front-benchers in the National Assembly, including shadow finance minister Raenette Taljaard, too low to be re-elected. DA leader Tony Leon is at the top of the list, with Gauteng leader Ian Davidson at number two.
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/ 26 January 2004
Millions of South Africans stand to gain from proposals aimed at extending the benefits of medical aid schemes, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Monday. ”What we seek to do is ensure that there is equity and fairness in the health care system in South Africa,” Tshabalala-Msimang said.
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/ 26 January 2004
Judge Siraj Desai thanked his supporters on his arrival at Cape Town International Airport on Sunday following allegations of raping a South African woman in India. He thanked everybody, including his lawyer, for the support they had given him, saying his wife had been ”a pillar of strength”.
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/ 23 January 2004
The affair involving allegations that National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid spy should teach South Africa an important lesson, says President Thabo Mbeki in his weekly letter to the nation. He argues that forgiveness — and the end to labelling — is required.
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/ 23 January 2004
The labour union that has been trying to ”blockade” Cape Town International airport on Friday accused the police of causing traffic jams there. ”The police have started pulling out cars of all our comrades with aims to issue them with tickets,” said a South African Transport and Allied Workers Union spokesperson.
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/ 23 January 2004
Opposition parties should refrain from trying to score cheap political points, the Office of the Presidency said on Friday. Spokesperson Bheki Khumalo denied that President Thabo Mbeki’s upcoming trip to KwaZulu-Natal is part of the African National Congress’s election campaign.
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/ 23 January 2004
In addition to the actions the South African wine industry has taken in the past to curb alcohol abuse, a combined effort by the industry and others is needed to rid the country of the ”tot” system, where farm workers receive part of their wages in the form of liquor, according to the CEO of the South African Wine and Brandy Company.
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/ 23 January 2004
Healthcare-related shares on the JSE Securities Exchange South Africa have come under selling pressure in the past week, sparked by investor fears that company profits and margins will be harmed by draft regulations from the government that would see the listed manufacturer’s selling price of all medicines cut by 50%.
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/ 23 January 2004
Speaking at a banquet in honour of visiting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, South African President Thabo Mbeki has toasted the role played by Germans in the building of the South African economy and the continuing role they are playing on the continent of Africa.
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/ 22 January 2004
Evita Bezuidenhout handed out koeksisters and campaign donations to political parties on Thursday at a ”fun raiser” to encourage South Africans to register to vote. ”If you want this to become a dictatorship, don’t do anything this weekend,” said Bezuidenhout.
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/ 22 January 2004
The Inkatha Freedom Party on Thursday asked whether South African Broadcasting Corporation spokesperson Paul Setsetse had received intensive training from Zimbabwe’s Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo. The SABC refused, on Wednesday, to meet with the Democratic Alliance about its election coverage policy.
SABC gives DA cold shoulder
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/ 22 January 2004
The Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa on Wednesday delivered a 16-page judgement to bring down the curtain on a war of words between two national media personalities, precipitated by the Darrel Bristow-Bovey plagiarism claims.
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/ 20 January 2004
The legitimacy of previous polls in South Africa’s democratic process has been placed in the spotlight by Inkatha Freedom Party leader and Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who has spoken of boxes of IFP votes being ”emptied all over the valleys and forests of [KwaZulu-Natal]” during the 1994 elections.
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/ 20 January 2004
The Foundation for Human Rights said on Monday it would take steps to ensure that Judge Siraj Desai and his alleged rape victim would be provided with the appropriate support. The foundation’s board of trustees said that, at the same time, it would allow the law to take its course.
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/ 20 January 2004
The Inkatha Freedom Party and the United Democratic Movement on Tuesday slammed the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s dismissal of a complaint against the SABC, which drew the ire of opposition parties after it screened the launch of the African National Congress’s election manifesto.
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/ 19 January 2004
The Foundation for Human Rights said on Monday it will take steps to ensure that Judge Siraj Desai and his alleged rape victim will receive the appropriate support. The foundation partly funded a South African delegation to the World Social Forum in India, where it is alleged Desai raped a North West woman, also a delegation member.