Monday March 26, 2012

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Brad Dubbelman

Making headlines:

South Africa's ANC youth league rebel Julius Malema upped the stakes in his political wrangling with the ruling party yesterday, saying he would challenge in court its decision to expel him. The ANC expelled Malema from the party in February for violating party rules, causing rifts in the group and bringing the movement into disrepute. "I said I would not go to court, but now I have decided to do so," Malema told thousands of supporters at a rally in his home province of Limpopo, according to the South African Press Association.

Senegal's long-serving leader Abdoulaye Wade admitted defeat in the presidential election, congratulating his rival Macky Sall, a move seen as bolstering the West African State's democratic credentials in a region fraught with political chaos. Thousands of residents of the capital Dakar poured onto the streets overnight, honking car horns, beating drums and singing in celebration after State television reported that Wade had telephoned Sall to concede the country's most contentious election in recent history. "It is the whole country that has just won," Amadou Sall, a spokesperson for Wade, said. "This is a big moment for democracy and President Abdoulaye Wade has respected the voice of the people."

Emerging economies must be given a fair shot at leading the institutions at the heart of global finance or they will end up going their own way, a challenger for the top job at the World Bank said. "The balance of power in the world has shifted and emerging market countries are contributing more and more to global growth – more than 50% – and they need to be given a voice in running things," Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said. "If you don't, they will lose interest.” Okonjo-Iweala was nominated on Friday by African power houses Nigeria, South Africa and Angola to lead the poverty-fighting institution when its current president Robert Zoellick steps down in June.

Also making headlines:

Tunisians are likely to vote for their first full post-revolutionary Parliament in just under a year's time, a government official said.

And, a candidate backed by President Goodluck Jonathan won a vote to head Nigeria's ruling party after the other candidates withdrew, strengthening Jonathan's chances of re-election should he decide to run in 2015.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.