South Africa

DURBAN - Politicians, celebrities and former President Nelson Mandela's grandson, Inkosi Mandla Mandela, were among those who descended on President Jacob Zuma's home in Nkandla to see the President tie the knot with his third wife. Zuma married Thobeka Madiba outside his homestead in a colourful traditional wedding, which attracted scores of guests and media. Guests were treated to Zulu and Xhosa traditional dance, and dancing by the President and his new wife. Zuma sat among his relatives, Inkosi Bhekumuzi and KwaZulu-Natal Premier Zweli Mkhize during the wedding. Security was tight and journalists were barred from getting close to the President's home. However, they were later allowed to attend the ceremony, which has, however, attracted criticism, specifically from the leader of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP), Rev Theunis Botha, who describes Zuma's traditional wedding as a "giant step back into the dark ages." Zuma's wedding "to a woman he is reported to have already fathered three children with, and the alarming return to ancestral worship is a giant step back into the dark ages," says the CDP leader. It is the same ancestral traditions that have plagued [Africa] in the past and that have kept Africa in superstition and poverty, and not colonialism, as some people believe, he claims. "Political parties speaking out against ancestral traditions, when the churches are silent, are exposing themselves to undue criticism of being antiblack or racist," adds Botha.

PRETORIA - Being infected with HIV/Aids will no longer be an "ineligibility" when foreign citizens apply for visas to travel to the US, the US embassy in South Africa says. Foreign citizens will also no longer be required to take an HIV test during medical examinations for visa purposes and HIV-positive applicants will no longer require waiver processing by the
US department of homeland security, a statement from the embassy reads. "Though the US has been a leader worldwide when it comes to ending the stigma of HIV/Aids, we've been one of only 12 countries who, by their policies, still enable the myth that HIV/Aids is a threat," US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says. "The ability to travel freely and have access to affordable healthcare should be available to everyone. This change has been a long time coming, and I am pleased that it is happening now." The change took effect on January 4, following a US ruling in November removing HIV/Aids infection from the definition of communicable diseases of public health significance.

Africa & the world

KHARTOUM - The opposition Popular Congress Party (PCP) has nominated a southern Sudanese as its Presidential candidate for the first multiparty elections in 24 years in April, a move it says will promote national unity. "The candidate is Abdullah Deng Nhial from the south," the party's top defence and security official, Mohamed al-Amin Khalifa, says. "He is a relative of (late Vice-President) John Garang." Garang was the charismatic leader of the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which fought a civil war lasting more than two decades with the north, ending in 2005. His peace deal with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's National Congress Party provided for north and south to share wealth and power, for national democratic elections in April 2010 and a southern referendum on independence in 2011. "This nomination can be a symbol of unity for Sudan because we are not separatists at all, and there is no racial discrimination within our party as within Islam itself," Khalifa adds. Nhial is a Muslim and deputy head of the PCP. The PCP leader, Islamist Hassan al-Turabi, will not stand for President.

WASHINGTON - Air travellers from Nigeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and nine other countries will face full-body patdowns before boarding airliners under new security screening procedures targeting foreign passengers announced by the US. The procedures follow the botched Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound US airliner blamed on a Nigerian man whom US officials believe was trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen.