Tuesday, April 21, 2009
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Jonathan Faurie.
Making headlines:
The South African Broadcasting Corporation has rejected claims by the Congress of the People that it sabotaged the broadcast of the party's final election rally.
SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said that the news broadcaster rejects insinuations that the alleged blackout of the coverage of the event was influenced by political motives. He explained that there were technical glitches during the coverage, which had affected its coverage of the Democratic Alliance rally as well.
Kganyago said that by law the SABC was required to provide coverage to political parties in proportion to their representation in Parliament. The corporation thus considers it unfortunate that Cope would attack the SABC on its alleged "bias", when the party has received coverage that it was legally not entitled to.

In international news, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted a walkout during his speech to a United Nations racism summit yesterday, when he accused Israel of establishing a "cruel and repressive racist regime" over Palestinians.
The summit had already been badly undermined by a boycott by the US and some of its major allies, over concerns that it would be used as a platform for what US President Barack Obama called "hypocritical and counterproductive" antagonism towards Israel.
Ahmadinejad's speech produced the kind of language that the Western countries and Israel had feared.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who held a meeting with Ahmadinejad earlier on Monday, said that it was "deeply regrettable" that the Iranian leader had ignored his plea to avoid causing upset at the conference. Ban said that he deplored the use of this platform by the Iranian President to accuse, divide and incite.

Back home, Rand Merchant Bank currency strategists say that the current weakness of the rand is not owing to jitters about the upcoming South African elections. RMB believes that the election results will not have much influence on the performance of the currency.
An African National Congress two-thirds majority may worry some speculators, while a fall in the ANC's share from the last election's 69% would encourage some comments on an improvement in multi party democracy.
However, the results will take a few days to be finalised, and will in all likelihood be swamped by the effects from global markets, said RMB. All markets are still trading on one theme: the depth and extent of the global recession.

Also making headlines:
Rwanda rejects a plea for the release of Congo rebel leader Laurent Nkunda.
The South African government confirms that 7 427 South Africans voted in London last week, more than one-half of the amount of expatriates that registered to vote abroad.
The Somalian government says that it could see a 75% decrease in piracy off its coast with the help of donor backing.
And, South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission says that all Gauteng voting stations are ready for Election Day tomorrow.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.