Thursday November 24, 2011

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Jessica Hannah

Making headlines:

President Jacob Zuma said yesterday that South Africa cannot afford to increase its spending on social grants indefinitely because this is not sustainable.
More than 15-million of an estimated 50-million people in Africa's biggest economy receive some kind of state welfare. With an unemployment rate of 25% of the labour force, millions of South Africans still live in poverty even 17 years after the end of white minority rule and look to government to improve their plight.

Egyptian riot police fired barrages of tear gas at protesters demanding Egypt's army relinquish power in a sixth night of violence which has led the interior minister, to propose postponing elections due on November 28. Scores of young men, coughing and gasping for air stumbled into dark side streets off Cairo's Tahrir Square to escape the acrid smoke during the to-and-fro battle with police. But, undeterred, tens of thousands still thronged the square peacefully late into the night on Wednesday to protest the deaths of more than 30 people in the violence and reject the army's offer of a referendum on its rule.

The conduct of ANC MPs Ben Turok and Gloria Borman in not voting for the Protection of State Information Bill in Parliament "smacks of ill-discipline", the party said. It was reported that Turok, one of the ANC's leading free-thinkers and a veteran who played a big part in the writing of the 1955 Freedom Charter, slipped out of the National Assembly as voting time approached. ANC spokesperson Keith Khoza said, "this fell outside the normal conduct of a senior ANC member.” Borman was the sole ANC MP who abstained from voting for the bill.

Also making headlines:

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh looks set to be re-elected in polls today which West African regional bloc Ecowas has said may not be free and fair.

The AU’s special envoy for Somalia urged countries waging war on al Shabaab to keep an open door to negotiations with militants who are willing to lay down their weapons.

And, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe said that South Africa's economic exposure to countries at the epicentre of the European market turmoil is reasonably low

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.