Tuesday May 17, 2011

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Brad Dubbelman

Making headlines:

Tomorrow’s local government poll in South Africa has seen the most peaceful campaign of all post-apartheid elections and looked set to draw a strong turnout, members of the Election Monitoring Network said.
"Despite a number of serious incidents, by and large this has been the most peaceful elections since the advent of democracy, with the least experience of political intolerance," the Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, told a media briefing. He singled out the killing of protester Andries Tatane in Ficksburg and incidences of violence in KwaZulu-Natal, where firearms were found at Nongoma, but said the overall level of pre-election conflict had declined.

The North Atlantic Treaty Association (Nato) must broaden the range of targets it is bombing in Libya or risk failing to remove Colonel Muammar Gaddafi from power, Britain's most senior military officer was quoted as saying. Nato warplanes, acting under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians, have stopped government troops advancing on rebel strongholds but the collapse of Gaddafi's rule, which many Western governments seek, has not materialised. After a series of air strikes on his Bab al-Aziziyah compound in Tripoli, Gaddafi taunted the Western military alliance, saying in an audio recording aired on Friday that he was in a place where Nato could not reach him.

The words "dubula ibhunu", loosely translated to “shoot the boer”, were declared incitement to murder in a judgment handed down in the High Court in Johannesburg on Monday. In his order, Judge Leon Halgryn said "... the publication and chanting of the words 'dubula ibhunu', prima facie satisfies the crime of incitement to murder". This judgment is separate to the ongoing hate speech case by Afriforum against African National Congress Youth League president Julius Malema after he sang the words several times last year. This case relates to two members of the Society for the Protection of Your Constitution.

Also making headlines:
Government has reiterated Cabinet’s call to all eligible voters to come out in large numbers tomorrow, to exercise their democratic right to elect a government of their choice.
South African power utility Eskom said it has lifted restrictions at its Medupi construction site following protests, but many workers were still away due to election-related leave.
And, fighting in western Côte d’Ivoire between Ivorian troops and militias loyal to former president Laurent Gbagbo is over, but the militiamen killed a total of 220 people as they fled to Liberia, the government said.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today