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Keywords: Johannesburg

  • AUSTRALIA

    Hope for haemorrhaging Zimbabwe

    • Chris Chatteris
    • 31 July 2012
    3 Comments

    For the international community, including Australia, it is devilishly difficult to find the most helpful stance to take with the present regime in Zimbabwe. It is naive, however, to simply assume that things will come right once Mugabe has died. The fact is that things could get worse once he is off the scene.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rise of the urban refugee

    • David Holdcroft
    • 10 February 2012
    2 Comments

    In the last ten years the world of the refugee has rapidly shifted. The refugee camp is now the exception rather than the rule: 58 per cent of all refugees reside in urban areas, mostly in the rapidly growing slums of the cities in the global south.

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  • RELIGION

    Making friends not foes of rights and religion

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 September 2011
    5 Comments

    The Church of the 21st century should be the exemplar of due process, natural justice and transparency. While there can be little useful critique of the final decision of Pope Benedict to force the early retirement of Bishop Bill Morris, there is plenty of scope to review the processes leading up to it.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A child's Christmas in South Africa

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 22 December 2010
    1 Comment

    It started with a trip to Bethlehem, and has come to this: gift-laden, work-weary travellers clogging flight paths and highways like swirling snowflakes. But I stay home, draw my memories around me, and embark on a beautiful journey into the past.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Vigilance needed as South Africa welcomes Zimbabweans

    • David Holdcroft
    • 22 December 2010
    2 Comments

    There is growing awareness that the leniency shown to people fleeing Zimbabwe in recent years has put pressure on the South African community at the same time as letting Mugabe's government 'off the hook'. It seems that political imperatives may have replaced humanitarian motives.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    South Africa shows compassion to Zimbabwean refugees

    • David Holdcroft
    • 05 November 2010
    9 Comments

    Zimbabweans have been coming to South Africa for reasons such as political violence, displacement due to land reform, and the collapse of the economy. After initially turning them back at the border, South Africa moved towards a pragmatic 'special dispensation' that was more compassionate, even if the future of the country's refugee rules now remains uncertain.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Empathy for the buried as Chilean miners emerge

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 13 October 2010
    3 Comments

    Raw earth passed by, centimetres from my eyes. Light seeped away, and all that was left was the sound of my breathing. Then a beam of light from a miner's hat reached towards me. A voice greeted me and a hand helped me to climb out. I did an interview, there in the dark, with the faceless person before me.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Jews fenced in by Aussie intolerance

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 02 August 2010
    27 Comments

    Given that eruvs are inconspicuous, and religious freedom in Australia is a fait accompli, there can be only one explanation for the prevailing sentiment, and that is a subtle prejudice which represents the great big elephant in the room for anyone living on Sydney's North Shore.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Refugees and other aliens

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 18 August 2009
    5 Comments

    One night 11 years ago I joined members of a local police commando to report on a mission to intercept Mozambique refugees travelling into South Africa. It is easier to 'tolerate the intolerance' in under-resourced, refugee-deluged South Africa than in Australia.

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  • RELIGION

    Neither Scott nor Amrozi deserves death

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 October 2008
    31 Comments

    We should feel deep regret when the bullets pierce the hearts of the Bali Bombers. Neither just nor useful, the death penalty is immoral. Prime Minister Rudd is well positioned to contribute to its abolition.

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  • RELIGION

    Killing people for killing people

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 October 2008
    9 Comments

    'For me, talk of the death penalty evoked the young, frightened faces of Scott and Emmanuel, as well as the laughing, haughty faces of Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra.' Full text from Frank Brennan's session on 'Killing People for Killing People', Ubud Writers Festival, 17 October 2008.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A planet of slums

    • Gary Pearce
    • 10 July 2006

    Mike Davis' new book belongs to a long tradition of studies of the urban poor – among them, Friedrich Engels’s examination of Victorian Manchester in The Condition of the Working Class in England. Davis updates this genre for a period of globalisation.

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