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/ 30 December 2007
Eighty people were arrested for drunken driving and other criminal offences at a roadblock in East London, Eastern Cape police said on Sunday. Superintendent Mtati Tana said the arrests were made in a joint operation between police and traffic officers as part of the festive season crackdown on serious crimes and drunken driving.
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/ 28 December 2007
The disappointing South African matric pass rate came as no surprise, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Friday. MP George Boinamo said it was, however, disappointing that the pass rate had deteriorated. ”During the past year our country’s education system, and more importantly, its learners, faced many challenges.”
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/ 28 December 2007
Rescue services are still searching for the Cessna 210 light aircraft that went missing on Wednesday, said South African Search and Rescue Organisation head Charles Norval on Friday. ”We haven’t had success, but are still searching. The rescue team is following all the leads,” Norval said.
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/ 24 December 2007
A national plan is in place to give thousands of matriculants who are not expected to pass this year a second chance, a newspaper reported on Monday. ”Education departments confirmed on Sunday that the plan was being finalised at provincial level,” the report in Beeld said.
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/ 24 December 2007
Santa Claus will have to slide down slippery chimneys on Christmas Day as thunderstorms are expected in most parts of South Africa on Tuesday. Rain and thunderstorms across several parts of the country have been predicted by the South African Weather Service.
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/ 24 December 2007
Campaigners say they are eyeing legal action ”sooner rather than later” to block a bid to change Grahamstown’s name to iRhini. ”All such name changes have to be fully motivated and must reflect the views of the community,” one of the coordinators of the Keep Grahamstown Campaign said in a statement on Monday.
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/ 23 December 2007
Thabile* was 15 when she was forced to marry a man in his thirties in the Mgudlulweni village near Mount Frere in the Eastern Cape. Her parents agreed to "give" their daughter to him. She did not know about the marriage or consent to it. On her way to school one day, four men abducted her. "I was walking to school and they grabbed me. They took me to a man I did not know to be my husband," Thabile says.
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/ 22 December 2007
At least 10 people were killed and more than 20 injured in a collision when a bus ploughed into the trailer of a stationary truck near Estcourt in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands on Saturday morning, paramedics and the provincial road traffic inspectorate said. Of those injured, eight were in a critical condition.
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/ 21 December 2007
The transnational family, nourished by email, chatrooms, long-distance calls and SMSs has increasingly become a feature of migrant communities. In this virtual family the husband might be living and working in South Africa, his wife slaving away as a nurse in England and their children at school in Zimbabwe, their country of origin.
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/ 20 December 2007
South Africa’s second-largest housing market, the Western Cape, continued to have the lowest house price inflation in the country, fresh data showed on Thursday. Price inflation in the province dropped from 12% in July to 11% in August, the Lightstone residential property index showed.
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/ 19 December 2007
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An attempt to get the principle of gender parity elevated to the top structures of the ANC was trounced on Monday night, the Mail & Guardian has learned.
The policy, also known as the 50/50 principle, is a steep change in empowerment in the ANC and requires that every alternative position available for leadership be reserved for a female candidate.
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/ 19 December 2007
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=ancconference_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/327874/livefrompolo.gif" align=left border=0></a>Did the ANC fatten up for the slaughter in Polokwane? An audit of membership statistics suggests the wholesale recruitment of new members to boost the girth of provincial delegations has played — and will play — a role in the outcomes at Limpopo.
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/ 18 December 2007
Eastern Cape authorities were still searching for 29 tuberculosis (TB) patients who escaped from the Jose Pearson Hospital in the Nelson Mandela municipality, after twenty returned on Tuesday. The patients escaped through holes they had cut through the hospital’s perimeter fences.
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/ 18 December 2007
More than 560 people have died on South African roads since the beginning of December, the Department of Transport said on Tuesday. At least 119 people were killed in accidents in Gauteng, 86 in KwaZulu-Natal, 58 in the Western Cape, 70 in the Eastern Cape, 52 in the Free State, 74 in Mpumalanga, 51 in Limpopo and seven in the Northern Cape.
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/ 18 December 2007
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A third day of cool, rainy weather in Polokwane did little to quench the fiery support for the front-runners in the ANC presidential race: Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Voting for the party’s top six officials started later than the scheduled time of 6am on Tuesday morning due to computer-related delays.
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/ 18 December 2007
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=ancconference_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/327874/livefrompolo.gif" align=left border=0></a>Membership of the African National Congress has grown to 620Â 000 members from 416Â 000 members in 2002. A national conference, the most powerful gathering of the party, is a perfect opportunity to assess who makes up the ANC. Who is the typical ANC member and what do they believe in?
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/ 18 December 2007
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Secretary-general of the ANC Kgalema Motlanthe spared no punches when he presented his organisational report to the national conference this week. Mandy Rossouw looks at which provinces came out tops and which need to take a long hard look at themselves.
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/ 18 December 2007
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President Thabo Mbeki’s team fought back after a first day of humiliation at the ANC’s 52nd national conference at Polokwane, holding an unprecedented rally at lunchtime. Jacob Zuma’s people responded with an even bigger rally. The Mbeki rally was part of a package of measures to turn back the voting gains of deputy president Jacob Zuma, who is set to take the top job.
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/ 18 December 2007
The idea of children crossing borders often conjures up images of paedophile rings, clandestine smuggling operations and helpless, vulnerable children, whisked away from their loved ones. Increasingly, however, foreign children living in South Africa are found to have left their homes willingly, in search of a better life here.
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/ 17 December 2007
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Heavy rain on Monday did nothing to dampen the spirits of supporters of the front-runners in the African National Congress leadership race as the second day of the ruling party’s 52nd national conference got under way.
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/ 17 December 2007
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=ancconference_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/327874/livefrompolo.gif" align=left border=0></a>Thousands of delegates to the ANC’s 52nd national conference converged on Polokwane International Airport on Saturday to register in a cavernous hangar for the event. The regiÂstration hangar was a free-for-all for groups supporting either Thabo Mbeki or Jacob Zuma.
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/ 17 December 2007
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On Sunday a picture emerged of strong support for Jacob Zuma, overshowing the rest and spectacularly managing to humiliate national ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota. As strong an indicator as it was, some delegates supporting President Thabo Mbeki insisted that an Mbeki win remained a possibility.
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/ 17 December 2007
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Delegates to the ANC’s national conference in Polokwane were on Sunday concerned about disruptions, but also hopeful that the party will emerge stronger and better. Motsotose Ndyalivani (49), a delegate from the Rogersfontein region of Grahamstown, said the conference was different from the six that he had attended in the past.
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/ 17 December 2007
Uncertainty over the prosecution of police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi was not in anyone’s best interest, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said. The National Prosecuting Authority’s (NPA) spokesperson Tlali Tlali said on Sunday that a decision had been made on whether Selebi ”has a case to answer”.
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/ 17 December 2007
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=ancconference_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/327874/livefrompolo.gif" align=left border=0></a>Sabelo "Shanée" Moroka is a woman trapped in a man’s body, trapped in Polokwane at the African National Congress’s 52nd national conference. She joined the ANC earlier this year because she wants a gold Hummer, to go with her front teeth.
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/ 16 December 2007
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African National Congress (ANC) secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe’s organisational report, delivered on Sunday at the party’s national conference in Polokwane — was the first comprehensive admission from a party leader that the factionalism in the party was a result of a power struggle between two personalities: Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.
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/ 15 December 2007
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An atmosphere of excited anticipation took hold in a hot Polokwane, Limpopo province, on Saturday as thousands of delegates to the African National Congress’s (ANC) 52nd national conference arrived by bus, car and taxi. Buses from all over the country jostled for space with large pedestrian groups of ANC supporters from various provinces.
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/ 15 December 2007
Eastern Cape authorities are searching for TB patients who escaped from the Jose Pearson Hospital in the Nelson Mandela municipality. The Eastern Cape Health department said it was believed that 29 multidrug-resistant and 20 extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis patients cut through three of the hospital’s perimeter fences to make their escape.
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/ 15 December 2007
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Sara Kadi, a volunteer Aids worker who lives in a shack without electricity in an impoverished part of Soweto, wants a better life. That is why she wants Jacob Zuma to win the race for the leadership of the ruling African National Congress and become the next president of South Africa.
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/ 14 December 2007
She had wings, but that was her only claim to angelhood. They peeled out from under her bra straps in juicy flaps of humanity and wobbled ominously as she bellowed her invective into the already hot air. Quite what she said was hopelessly entangled in an accent that reeked of rum and considerable experience of too many bad men.
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/ 13 December 2007
The pompom weed — a plant in the daisy family — is rapidly becoming one of the most serious threats to the conservation of South African grasslands, the Working for Water programme said on Thursday. The weed’s beautiful flowers are leading members of the public to collect and inadvertently spread it to more places.
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/ 12 December 2007
The motorist who was caught doing 257km/h in his silver Audi TT on Sunday night has been named as Ukhozi FM’s DJ Sbu, Talk Radio 702 reported on Wednesday. DJ Sbu, or Sbusiso Leope, appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday. He was released on R1 000 bail, Johannesburg metro police said on Wednesday.