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/ 8 September 2007
Two foreign tourists were arrested and later released on warning for taking photographs without approval at the Zulu royal reed dance at kwaNongoma in Northern KwaZulu-Natal, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reports. Organisers said that a man and a woman had failed to obey rules made to protect the participants and retain the dignity of the ceremony.
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/ 8 September 2007
Boland Kavaliers scored a nail biting 24-20 win over the Valke in a hard fought Currie Cup rugby match on Friday afternoon, after trailing 20-19 at halftime. The victory was Boland’s third of the season, while the East Randers are still without a win.
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/ 8 September 2007
The Central African Republic and São Tomé and PrÃncipe have pulled out of the 2010 World Cup, precipitating a change in the first phase of the African qualifiers. Fida said in a statement it had changed the draw for the opening round of African qualifying matches, in which the 10 lowest ranked teams had been paired.
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/ 8 September 2007
Separated conjoined twins Danielle and Danika Lowton remained in a stable condition on Saturday having survived a successful 16-hour operation to separate them. Arwyp Medical Centre Private Hospital spokesperson Henry du Plooy said the twins were being monitored constantly.
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/ 8 September 2007
Anyone with an intimate knowledge of the marauding packs of Western Province and the Sharks will know why groundsman Julian Barnard said on Friday his staff would be working all night in order to get the Newlands Stadium pitch into shape for Bafana Bafana’s African Nations Cup qualifying game against Zambia.
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/ 7 September 2007
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Argentina created one of the biggest shocks in World Cup history by beating host nation France 17-12 at Stade Francais on Friday night. In front of a full house at Saint Denis France froze in the headlights and produced a string of errors suggesting that they will not be the force some had expected in the showpiece event.
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/ 7 September 2007
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The 2007 Rugby World Cup kicked off in France on Friday night, filling the Cup stadium in Paris with colour and movement in a somewhat bizarre ceremony that was shorter and much less grandiose than those of soccer and the Olympics. Thousands of spectators watched as drummers surrounded the field and beat out loud rhythms on big, red oil drums as planes flew past trailing red and blue smoke.
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/ 7 September 2007
Police fired rubber bullets at a group of striking refuse workers who turned violent in Pretoria West on Friday, stoning waste-removal trucks. Captain Lucas Sithole said about 200 workers gathered outside the city’s waste-management offices at 12.30pm.
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/ 7 September 2007
Jealousy may have been at the centre of the murder of two women accused of bewitching a northern KwaZulu-Natal school, a teachers’ union reported on Friday. National Teachers’ Union spokesperson Allen Thompson said investigations by the union had revealed that one of the women burnt to death last Monday had a granddaughter at Manhlenga High School.
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/ 7 September 2007
The South African government’s attitude to global warming was very encouraging, chief scientific adviser to the British government David King said on Friday. The South African-born King, who is in the country for a series of ministerial meetings on a range of issues, also gave the thumbs-up to this country’s planned pebble-bed modular nuclear reactor.
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/ 7 September 2007
German soccer legend Franz Beckenbauer visited the construction site of Cape Town’s 2010 Soccer World Cup stadium on Friday and declared himself ”very, very impressed” with preparations. ”I am very, very impressed with the construction going on in Cape Town and it’s fantastic what the people in South Africa are doing in preparing themselves for the World Cup in 2010,” he said.
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/ 7 September 2007
One of the Cape Town councillors embroiled in the city’s floor-crossing battle said on Friday she did not know what party she belonged to any more. Georgina Sass was one of five Independent Democrats members that the newly formed National People’s Party claimed on Thursday had defected to it.
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/ 7 September 2007
A 10-hour operation to separate conjoined twins Danielle and Danika Lowton is currently under way at the Arwyp Medical Centre Private Hospital in Kempton Park, spokesperson Henry du Plooy confirmed on Friday. Only four operations of this nature, namely the separation of conjoined twins, have ever been carried out in South Africa.
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/ 7 September 2007
Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar has been sent home from the Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa after a bust up with teammate Mohammad Asif. The incident occurred in the nets on Thursday when a heated argument led to the 32-year-old Akhtar striking his fellow fast bowler on the thigh with a bat.
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/ 7 September 2007
South African media company Sabido, the holding company of locally based television station e.tv, has acquired 49% of Gaborone Broadcasting Company (GBC), e.tv said in a statement on Friday. Fifty-one percent of GBC was held by Mike Klinck, a Botswana banker, who acquired the station four years ago.
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/ 7 September 2007
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is looking at the legality of the Tshwane metro council’s reported ban on ”white businesses”, and the matter could even end up in the Constitutional Court, DA leader Helen Zille said on Friday. ”Such a resolution amounts to naked racism and flies in the face of the Constitution,” she said in her weekly online newsletter, SA Today.
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/ 7 September 2007
Most professional football teams are making unemployment insurance fund (UIF) payments but they are still contravening the Act, the Labour Department said on Friday. Department spokesperson Kgomotso Sebetso said 90% of employers were submitting a bulk sum in payments each month but not the breakdown of the players’ details.
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/ 7 September 2007
Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad is not yet pursuing his opinion that the government should pull advertising from the Sunday Times, presidential spokesperson Mukhoni Ratshitanga said on Friday. He said that Pahad was only expressing a personal view and that it was not government policy.
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/ 7 September 2007
The JSE all-share index gave up earlier gains of just over 0,5%, trading at just 0,21% in the black shortly before midday on Friday. "It hasn’t been an exciting day, we are up slightly. We initially saw gold stocks up on the stronger gold price, which supported the rest of the market," said a local trader.
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/ 7 September 2007
South Africa’s net gold and foreign exchange reserves increased slightly to ,449-billion in August, data showed on Friday, as the softer rand currency slowed the pace of reserves build-up. The figure rose from ,965-billion at the end of July.
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/ 7 September 2007
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No issue must be ”taboo” for debate in South Africa if its people want to succeed with reconciliation and nation-building, African National Congress (ANC) deputy president Jacob Zuma said on Thursday. ”Debate in the country must be promoted,” Zuma said in delivering the annual public management commemorative lecture.
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/ 7 September 2007
During the question-and-answer session at the launch of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class in Mpumalanga, a journo asked how he was supposed to fit all the info about the new model into a 750-word story. We all laughed and agreed that that was a challenge: trying to summarise how much the C-Class had changed and what it had to offer.
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/ 6 September 2007
Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi is waiting for more technical information before deciding on action on Khutsong’s sinkholes, his ministry said on Thursday. The minister was waiting for more detailed information on Khutsong, said the minister’s acting spokesperson, Thokozani Mtshali, when asked about the government’s position on the situation.
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/ 6 September 2007
About five million condoms supplied by Zalatex have been collected since a recall and an additional 7,5-million condoms quarantined at the company’s warehouse, the Health Department said on Thursday. This follows charges that Zalatex bribed an official at the South African Bureau of Standards to approve inferior condoms.
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/ 6 September 2007
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Former South African president Nelson Mandela met the Springboks in Paris on Thursday, his office announced. ”Mr Mandela wished the Springboks well after receiving a Springbok jersey from the team,” said Mandela’s spokesperson, Zelda la Grange, in a statement.
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/ 6 September 2007
Mittal Steel South Africa will have to fork out close to R700-million after it was fined on Thursday by the Competition Tribunal for price-fixing. A statement released by the tribunal said that it had fined Mittal R691,8-million and imposed ”behavioural remedies” on the company in terms of the Competition Act.
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/ 6 September 2007
Preparation for the 2010 soccer World Cup in South Africa has entered its ”operational phase”, chief executive officer of the local organising committee Danny Jordaan said on Thursday. ”The 1 000-days countdown signals to us now the beginning of the operational phase”, he told a press conference ahead.
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/ 6 September 2007
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The African National Congress Youth League has vowed to stick by Jacob Zuma as its candidate for president of the country, even if new criminal charges were brought against him. ”He is innocent until proven guilty … until such time we will continue to support the deputy president,” league president Fikile Mbalula said on Thursday.
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/ 6 September 2007
Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Mike Waters has been suspended from Parliament following his outburst in the National Assembly on Wednesday. At the start of proceedings in the House on Thursday afternoon, speaker Baleka Mbete described his conduct of the day before as ”outrageous, disrespectful and grossly disorderly”.
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/ 6 September 2007
Former leader of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Juan Uys has thrown his weight behind the newly created National People’s Party (NPP). He said on Thursday that he had also taken up a post as personal assistant to controversial Cape Town city councillor Badhi Chaaban. He said that the NPP appointed him as its media liaison officer this week.
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/ 6 September 2007
South Africa’s automobile industry was a leader in the government’s radical expansion of the manufacturing sector, President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday in stressing that it be encouraged and supported. It was self-evident that the automobile sector would play a significant role in ensuring the country achieved the higher rates of economic growth it needed.
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/ 6 September 2007
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told Parliament on Thursday that total spending by all three spheres of government in the financial year to March was R5,3-billion rand less than had been appropriated. Much of the underspending was blamed on lack of capacity.