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Posted on Jul 10, 2006, 9 a.m.
By Bill Freeman
An elderly South African woman has reportedly laid claim to be the world's oldest person -- 132 years -- and an organisation representing the old is adamant the accomplishment be officially recognised. Moloko Temo of Bochum in the country's northern Limpopo province was reportedly born on July 4, 1874 according to a government identity document issued to her in 1988, the Afrikaans-language Beeld daily said.
An elderly South African woman has reportedly laid claim to be the world's oldest person -- 132 years -- and an organisation representing the old is adamant the accomplishment be officially recognised.
Moloko Temo of Bochum in the country's northern Limpopo province was reportedly born on July 4, 1874 according to a government identity document issued to her in 1988, the Afrikaans-language Beeld daily said.
Temo has eight children, 29 grandchildren, 59 great-grandchildren, and five great-great-grandchildren.
She has been blind for the last 54 years and is presently wheelchair-bound, though reportedly "healthy in every other way."
Temo lives with her daughter, Evelen Temo, 78, who was apparently born when her mother was 54-years-old.
Now, the province's Elderly People's Forum is moving to have the claim officially recognised by Guiness World Records, but so far their effort has gone unanswered.
"I have sent several letters to their head office in London, but they ignored me. I don't know what else to do to bring Temo's remarkable age to their attention," said chairman Tom Boya of attempts dating back to 2004.
Boya told the paper Temo ascribed her high age to "playing a lot of sport, especially hockey," when she was younger.
According to the Guinness World Records' website, the world's longest-living man was Shigechiyo Izumi of Japan, who died at age 120 in 1986.
Maria Esther de Capovilla from Ecuador is currently recognised as the oldest woman still alive.
She is 116-years-old and was born in 1889.
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