Word: limpopo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Nine days after she won the women's 800-m world championship as an all but unknown in Berlin, Caster Semenya returned home to the plains of Limpopo, the northernmost province of South Africa, to escape the uproar that had enveloped her since she'd crossed the finish line. Semenya, 18, finds herself as not only one of the world's best athletes but also among its most controversial, under investigation by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) not for cheating or doping but for allegedly not being female. "Coach used to tell me there are many ways...
Actually, Semenya doesn't run like a man. Her time wouldn't even have gotten her into the men's heats in Berlin. But in the flesh - at a homecoming in Polokwane, Limpopo's main city - Semenya's appearance was just as startling as it was on the track. At first, she rode high in an open-topped car, blushing and waving like a prom queen. A few minutes later, it was a burly-looking Semenya who rolled up to a microphone, baseball cap on backward, and thanked the crowd in a cracked baritone. Family and friends admit there...
Speaking from the rural village of Seshego in South Africa's northeastern Limpopo province, Semenya's mother Dorcus told the country's Star newspaper that she felt jealousy had motivated the rumors about her daughter. "If you go [to] my home village and ask any of my neighbors, they would tell you that Mokgadi [Caster] is a girl," she said. "They know because they helped raise...
...original population has left. Some estimates range from 2 million to 4 million; South Africans reckon they host 1 million to 2 million refugees. Shantytowns with names like Little Harare and Zimtown have sprung up outside cities across Africa. The stories their inhabitants tell--of risking crocodiles in the Limpopo River and lions in South Africa's Kruger National Park in their bid to escape--speak of desperation. They also illuminate why any recovery in Zimbabwe will be a long time coming. "It's a brain drain," says Archbishop Pius Ncube, a prominent government critic based in Bulawayo...
South of the muddy-brown Limpopo River that separates the two countries, South African police and immigration officials have contingency plans to handle thousands of refugees if the presidential election results in civil war. Next to AIDS and the crime rate, Zimbabwe is just about the biggest crisis worrying South Africans, some of whom blame the Mugabe government directly for a critical slide in the value of their currency, the rand, and a lack of investor confidence. The local American Chamber of Commerce estimated last year that South Africa had lost $3 billion worth of potential foreign investment because...