Wednesday, March 23, 2011.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Dimakatso Motau.

Making headlines:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said Western powers pounding Libya's defences will wind up in the dustbin of history, as his troops held back rebel advances despite four nights of attacks from the air.

While Western air power has grounded Gaddafi's planes and pushed back his troops and armour from the brink of rebel stronghold Benghazi, disorganised and poorly equipped insurgents have failed to capitalise on the ground and remain pinned down.

The rebels have been unable to dislodge Gaddafi's forces from the key junction of Ajdabiyah in the east, while government tanks dominate the last big rebel hold-out of Misrata. Analysts say there is big risk of stalemate on the ground.

Meanwhile, the Libyan government denies its army is conducting any offensive operations and says troops are only fighting to defend themselves when they come under attack, but rebels and residents say Gaddafi's tanks have kept up their shelling of Misrata in the west, killing 40 people on Monday alone, and also attacked the small town of Zintan on the border with Tunisia.

The UN peacekeeping mission to Ivory Coast said Laurent Gbagbo's forces were readying an attack helicopter and multiple rocket launchers on Tuesday and condemned the growing use of heavy weapons against civilians.

Its statement came as Gbagbo's rival Alassane Ouattara scolded the mission for not doing enough to protect civilians, saying Gbagbo's security forces had killed more than 800 people since a contested November election in the world's top cocoa grower.

The power struggle between the two has degenerated into armed conflict, with gun battles and heavy weapons fire in the main city Abidjan and the west, across a north-south ceasefire line in place since the end of the last civil war in 2003.

The UN mission said Gbagbo's men were repairing an MI-24 attack helicopter and readying BM21 multiple rocket launchers.

The number of people employed in South Africa’s formal sector rose for the second consecutive quarter in the three months to December, with the economy adding 101 000 jobs in the fourth quarter.

The Quarterly Employment Statistics report, published by Statistics South Africa on Tuesday, showed formal non-agriculture employment rose by 1,2% to 8,256-million in the December quarter, compared with the 8,155-million people employed at the end of the September quarter.

The positive traction over the past two quarters followed 18 months of employment numbers dropping, with almost one-million lost jobs during the economic crisis of 2008/9.

Also making headlines:

Somalia's prime minister pledged to crush a four-year Islamist insurgency within three months.

Nigeria's foreign minister has accused the international community of double standards by imposing a no-fly zone to protect civilians in Libya while doing little to end abuses in crisis-torn Ivory Coast.

And, The no-fly zone over Libya could end up costing the Western coalition more than $1-billion if the operation drags on more than a couple of months.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.