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/ 21 December 2005

Matric exams valid and credible, says Umalusi

This year’s matric exams were valid and credible, education quality assurance body Umalusi said on Wednesday in Pretoria. It found that the country’s matric, adult education and vocational examinations were conducted in line with policy and the results were valid, reliable, fair and credible, said Umalusi chairperson John Pampallis.

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/ 20 December 2005

Cold Christmas Day forecast for coast

Rain and a drop in temperature to below 20 degrees Celsius are predicted for the entire coast from Plettenberg Bay to Durban on Christmas Day, according to the South African Weather Bureau. Mpumalanga and Limpopo will be hit by the colder, wetter weather late on Sunday, but Cape Town should experience fine Christmas weather.

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/ 20 December 2005

Buthelezi: Fallout? What fallout?

Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi has dismissed as false a news report that he had fallen out with party secretary general Musa Zondi. The report, in a KwaZulu-Natal newspaper, also said Buthelezi suspended Zondi at the weekend. ”Both claims are false,” Buthelezi said in a statement on Tuesday.

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/ 18 December 2005

SA schoolboy one short of a tonne

Dean Elgar of Free State was unfortunate to just miss a well-deserved century by one run when he scored 99 against Border at Fort Hare University, Alice, on Saturday on the second day of the Coca-Cola Khaya Majola Cricket Week. Elgar made his runs off 154 balls with eight fours and Free State totalled 192-6 in their 50 overs.

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/ 14 December 2005

Cross-border Bill gets final green light

The National Council of Provinces gave the final green light to controversial legislation doing away with cross-boundary municipalities on Wednesday. The changes have sparked vehement protests, particularly in Khutsong — a part of Merafong municipality — where residents have been staging violent protests.

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/ 13 December 2005

Cross-border Bill gets the nod

The National Assembly on Tuesday approved legislation giving effect to the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment that abolishes cross-boundary municipalities. This affects 17 municipalities, including the contentious ones of Merafong (Gauteng to North West) and Matatiele (KwaZulu-Natal to Eastern Cape).

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/ 13 December 2005

Virginity testing may soon be banned custom

South Africa is set to ban the age-old Zulu custom of virginity testing on young girls, even though traditionalists have vowed to disregard the new measure. The tradition, which involves the inspection of girls’ genitalia, has drawn an outcry from human rights advocates who say it is an invasion of privacy and degrading towards women.

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/ 13 December 2005

Khutsong: ‘Wheels in motion’ ahead of decision

Parliament will have an attentive audience on Wednesday when residents of Merafong municipality gather to hear the result of their demand to remain part of Gauteng province. On Monday, a protest march ended in the handing over of a memorandum calling for the proposal that Merafong be incorporated into North West to be withdrawn.

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/ 12 December 2005

Govt denies fuel shortages

As motorists struggled to find petrol on Monday, the government denied any fuel shortages inland. The situation inland constituted ”an inconvenience rather than a crisis”, and motorists should not wait for their tanks to empty before filling up, Minerals and Energy Minister Lindiwe Hendricks told reporters in Pretoria.

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/ 10 December 2005

Cape fires: Arson suspect arrested

A suspected arsonist was arrested on Friday afternoon not far from the blaze that had been raging across the Oudekraal area on the Cape Peninsula since early on Friday morning, Working on Fire spokesperson Val Charlton said. She said a member of the public spotted the man trying to start a bush fire.

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/ 28 November 2005

Technocratic toffee

”I am tiring of technocratic talk. Joel Netshitenzhe’s most recent statement, that the government would not change its mind on the provinces it has assigned to cross-border municipalities because to give in to peoples’s demands would be a ‘perverse incentive’, is really so much hogwash,” writes Rapule Tabane.

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/ 28 November 2005

The trouble with JZ

According to the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Jacob Zuma (JZ) is subject to a political agenda that seeks to marginalise left and working-class forces to promote the interests of a small elite capitalist faction within the African National Congress.

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/ 26 November 2005

‘It’s my secret, I can’t tell anyone’

In South Africa’s picturesque but Aids-ravaged Zulu heartland, the pandemic is rarely discussed and victims suffer in silence due to a mixture of ignorance, denial and fear. Nokuthula (54), who has been living with the disease for several years, says: ”If I tell the other people, they will be frightened and they will think I am going to die.”

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/ 25 November 2005

SA’s first speech and drama professor dies

”If you love life, then it’s the field for you. It will lead you, as it led me, because I love people, and I care about the quality of what they do,” said Elizabeth Sneddon, South Africa’s first speech and drama professor, who died on Thursday at the age of 98. Sneddon, who never married, died at her home in Durban, a local radio station reported.

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/ 25 November 2005

June 16 – June 23 2006

Kirby’s colonial project Robert Kirby writes that Shakespeare’s plays and poetry ”stand on their own, immune from any historical context” (June 9). Really? How was he able to achieve this feat? Surely any writing is influenced by, and rooted in, contemporary public discourse and the prevailing mores of its time. It stands to reason that […]

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/ 25 November 2005

October 13 to October 19 2006

Lob from cuckoo land And now we have a lob from the far right of fundamentalist cuckoo land — Philip Cole (Letters, October 6) telling us that if Fred marries Steve today then tomorrow Fred may marry Molly the Cow. And God knows if this sort of thing carries on, we could have Fred marrying […]

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/ 25 November 2005

January 12 to 18 2007

It’s the economy, stupid Editor Ferial Haffajee makes some bold statements and assertions in her article ”Meaning of the Selebi saga” (December 21). She should have been more cautious and thoughtful; I found her arguments loosely constructed. High-personality crimes usually give rise to such outcries. While the government believes one murder is a murder too […]

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/ 25 November 2005

December 02 – December 08

The Wail fills the passion gap Goodness gracious me! All these years I thought Steven Fried-person wrote the horse-racing column! Thank you, Madame Editor, for the honorary mention in your ”A 21st century M&G” piece celebrating/commemorating/salivating on 20 years of the newspaper. My Saturday afternoon slumber was pleasantly interrupted by an old friend, Aso Balan […]