January 21, 2013.
From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Motshabi Hoaeane.
Making headlines:

French troops make advances in Mali as Islamist rebels melt away.

Prime Minister Ali Zeidan says Libya won’t be the base for attacking its neighbours.

And, Zimbabwe civil society groups condemn the crackdown on President Robert Mugabe critics.

 

French troops advanced cautiously toward northern Mali on Sunday amid fears of ambush by al Qaeda-linked fighters. Meanwhile, its French fighter jets pounded the Islamists' strongholds in the desert near Timbuktu.

Residents of the town Diabaly, some 350 km from the capital Bamako, said Islamists had fled into the bush after French airstrikes.

France has deployed 2 000 ground troops and its war planes have pounded rebel columns and bases for the past 10 days. This effort has turned back an Islamist advance towards the riverside capital that Paris said would have toppled Mali's government.

France now aims, with international support, to dislodge the Islamists from Mali's vast desert north, before they use it to launch attacks on the West.

 

Libya’s Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said that Libyan authorities wouldn’t allow the country to be used as a launch pad for attacks that threatened the security of its neighbours.

In the chaos following Muammar Gaddafi's decline in 2011, Libya's vast desert south has become a smuggling route for weapons, which have reached al Qaeda militants deeper in the Sahara.

The Algeria crisis marks a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

Plagued by violence, drugs, weapons trafficking and an influx of illegal immigrants, Libya's new rulers last month announced they would temporarily close its borders with Algeria, Niger, Chad and Sudan to clamp down on lawlessness in its vast desert south.

 

Zimbabwean rights groups have condemned what they called an escalating campaign against critics of veteran President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party ahead of elections expected this year.

A group of 58 civic organisations, including church and legal groups, said there was a "well-calculated and intensified" assault on human rights activists, journalists and artists through slander, intimidation, raids, arrests, prosecutions and persecution.

United Nations human rights spokesperson Rupert Colville said the UN condemned what it described as a crackdown against civil society groups. He said the organisation also condemned recent attacks against human rights defenders in Zimbabwe, including arbitrary arrests, intimidation and harassment.

The civil society groups said that the primary goal of launching this onslaught was to criminalise the work of civil society, discredit it and showcase civil society as unpatriotic and devoid of national interest.

 

Also making headlines:

 

A veteran jihadist fighter claims responsibility for the bloody Algerian siege in support of al Qaeda.

Fitch Ratings says Amplats’ restructing plans highlight South Africa’s labour challenges

And, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga denies any Limpopo textbook saga accountability.

 

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.