Monday, April 20, 2009
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Amy Witherden.
Making headlines:
The coming election will be a defining moment, said African National Congress president Jacob Zuma at the party's final rally in Johannesburg on Sunday.
Zuma assured the thousands of ANC supporters packed into two stadiums, that the party has no plans to change the country's Constitution. He said that the ruling party had used its Parliamentary majority responsibly in the past, and has no intention of using its electoral mandate to change the Constitution.
The Presidential front runner made a plea for unity among South Africans and promised that the party would work towards reducing the impact of the global financial crisis on the country and its people.

In international news, Australia and the Netherlands have joined a growing Western boycott of a United Nations conference on racism, over fears that it will be used as a platform for unfair criticism of Israel.
The US announced on Saturday that it would stay away, citing "objectionable" language in a text prepared for the Geneva summit. Canada and Israel have said that they will sit out the meeting, which the UN organised to help heal the wounds of its last major race summit in 2001. The US and Israel walked out of that meeting, held in South Africa, after Arab States sought to define Zionism as racist.
Although the negotiated text omits any reference to Israel and the Middle East, it "reaffirms" a declaration adopted at the 2001 Durban meeting that singled out the Jewish State.
The absence of Western powers in Geneva is a blow to the UN and could undermine future diplomatic efforts to tackle sensitive questions of race, ethnicity and religion. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, warns that these issues could explode into violence if ignored.

In South African election news, while the ruling African National Congress faces no danger of losing its heartland - the Eastern Cape - in the coming elections, it is, for the first time, facing a wave of new competition from disgruntled supporters looking for solutions to old problems.
On the final weekend of election campaigning, both the Congress of the People and the Democratic Alliance held rallies in ANC strongholds in the province.
Professor Kofi Etsiah, a political science professor at the University of Fort Hare, says that "people are starting to move from the past". Previously, South Africans associated the ANC with their freedom, but now people are questioning more and more whether they are any better off. The more distant the past becomes, the less people will identify with it.
Etsiah believes that opposition parties have no choice but to come together in the future.

Also making headlines:
Opposition parties attack the ANC in the final rallies before Wednesday's election.
In a rare show of unity, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, celebrated the country's independence from Britain together.
And, the ANC receives a boost with the presence of former President Nelson Mandela at its final election rally.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.