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Highlights in this article are my own.

The ANC has come out in defence of its controversial youth league leader Julius Malema, saying there was a campaign by the media to belittle him.

Malema, probably best known for his infamous “kill for Zuma” statements, was misunderstood by the media, the ANC national working committee (NWC) said after its weekly meeting.

“The NWC discussed what appears to be a sustained campaign in the media to belittle Julius Malema, and to position him and the youth league as being at odds with the policies of the ANC,” the NWC said.

“The media has a tendency to cover comments made by Malema in a selective and often inaccurate manner, ignoring the consistent policy pronouncements of the ANC Youth League.”

ANC insiders have described Malema as a “liability, who is failing to address the needs and aspirations of the working young professionals in this country”.

An ANC insider said Malema’s rhetoric could be appealing to the unemployed youth but he was failing to capture the imagination of “young professionals, who are now willing to come out and engage in politics as shown by the high turnout during the recent voter registration”.

Malema’s trail of controversial public outbursts started last year when he said the youth league would kill for ANC leader Jacob Zuma. Since then – apparently after ANC leaders rebuked him in private – he has replaced the word “kill” with “eliminate” in similar statements.

Zuma recently told the SABC that he had advised Malema to stop making controversial statements. – Sapa

Sowetan - News

So, ‘the media’ is out to get the ANC. This is not the first time the ANC has made statements like this about the way the media treats certain members, like Malema and JZ.

How convenient it must be to blame the incompetence of these members of the perception the media creates, rather than take responsibility for the sheer stupidity of these people.

I would be very surprised if, after everything that JZ, Malema and others have said in the past couple of months, the ANC still wins the election by a large margin. In fact, I would be very surprised if they win at all – but we have learnt some valuable lessons from Zimbabwe, and I do not expect JZ to simply let go of the seat he has claimed for himself.

That said, should the ANC win the next election, I will be packing my bags very quickly, because I refuse to live in a country that has him as leader. I believe Botswana is always looking for some skilled workers, and Namibia is also looking promising *grin*

I have high-lighted a couple of sentences that particularly worry me.

ANC: Cut Motlanthe coverage
16/11/2008 00:07  - (SA)  

Makhudu Sefara

Johannesburg - The ANC has allegedly ordered the SABC to reduce its coverage of President Kgalema Motlanthe and to stop projecting him as being so presidential, to the disadvantage of the party's president, Jacob Zuma.

In a startling move that points to deep-seated divisions in the camp, the ANC has allegedly asked the country's biggest media organisation not to project Motlanthe as being more of a statesman than Zuma.

Two news executives and a few reporters told City Press that the ruling party was concerned about increasing calls for Motlanthe to be allowed to continue as the country's president, even after the elections next year.

"We were asked in October to reduce our coverage of Motlanthe and focus on putting out a better image of Zuma. We have tried to resist this, but there is only so much we can do," said one SABC source.

ANC getting raw deal

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe emphatically denied this on Saturday, saying the ANC was not in a position to tell the SABC which leaders to cover, because the party was getting a raw deal from the public broadcaster anyway.

"They do not cover us objectively, so we don't have the luxury of saying 'increase this or reduce that'," said Mantashe, adding that the ANC did not see any contest between Motlanthe and Zuma.

Motlanthe has courted controversy for a while, contradicting several ANC leaders - including national treasurer Mathews Phosa and South African Communist Party boss Blade Nzimande - publicly in what some say is an attempt to project himself as the sole voice of reason in a camp of hotheads.

Motlanthe has previously said that some attacks on the Constitutional Court from within the party were "out of ignorance".

The ANC Youth League said he was acting like a "paragon of correctness". The league also warned him not to act as if Zuma was no longer there.

Mantashe said the ANC had only asked the SABC to be objective.

"All these issues you are raising are being raised everywhere, but not in the ANC. We do not think Motlanthe is over-covered.

"He is squeezed in like all of us," said Mantashe.

Zuma cautioned over Motlanthe

Analyst Professor Sue Booysen of Wits University said she was "not surprised at all" about the alleged intra-Zuma camp battles.

Booysen said she knew that when the ANC decided who should replace former president Thabo Mbeki, those closest to Zuma had cautioned against Motlanthe, saying he was too good and too strong a candidate and could be difficult to dislodge from office.

They preferred former National Assembly speaker and current Deputy President Baleka Mbete because she was thought to be "weak" and easy to remove.

Booysen said the Zuma/Motlanthe face-off made sense because it was becoming increasingly clear that for the ANC to disarm the Congress of the People (Cope) it needed someone who was the embodiment of the values Cope espoused.

"There can be no doubt that Motlanthe would do much better than Zuma. He stood up to the Youth League, he spoke in defence of the judiciary.

"He is good," she said.

Zuma 'represented postively'

City Press asked the head of the Media Monitoring Project, William Bird, to analyse SABC TV's English news bulletins from last Saturday to Thursday to evaluate how Zuma and Motlanthe were featured.

In that period Bird found that Zuma could be "seen and heard speaking" for 239 seconds as opposed to Motlanthe's 61 seconds.

Bird said Motlanthe was featured only in items the SABC could not afford to ignore, such as the SADC summit that he hosted in Sandton, and other continental and global issues.

Zuma, on the other hand, was "represented positively" on the campaign trail.

Where he talked about the new party, Zuma came across as being "too defensive", talking about pursuing snakes, said Bird.

But overall, "Zuma is mostly shown speaking positively on a variety of issues, except where there is Julius Malema, because almost everything Malema says is negative.

"But Zuma gets a lot of chance to speak while Motlanthe speaks only briefly," Bird said.

SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said that he "spoke to all the people who matter" and could not find anyone who knew of an ANC instruction to cover Motlanthe less.

An SABC source said the request to cover the head of state less came before Mbeki was "recalled".

Zuma portrayed as a pop star

"I think they thought we were committed to covering Mbeki as a person and were being factional.

"The latest request came in October, at a meeting on the fourth floor of the TV centre.

"The concern is that we project Motlanthe in a statesman-like manner and Zuma (who likes to sing and dance) as a pop star.

"They say where he is seen with Malema, the young man must be edited out - but Malema sits really very close to Zuma," he said.

On Saturday Kganyago said the SABC would defend its journalists against political attacks.

Bheki Khumalo, an SABC board member responsible for news, last week said the board was aware that the SABC news team had come under severe pressure from various political organisations, some of which were being abusive to individual producers.

This, he said, was expected to escalate with the elections approaching.

- City Press

ANC: Cut Motlanthe coverage: South Africa: Politics: News24

Sounds like the ANC has bigger problems than it is willing to admit. And I have to say, i can quite see them ‘asking’ broadcasters to do this and that – because, amazingly, they are behaving much like their predecessors during the dark 80s. And this is how it started in Zim too. Control of the media.

Who controls the media controls the world, right? Or at least for voters, yes. And if you, as a broken political party, can convince your voters that everything’s all right and you are the good guy by using the media, you are sure to win the election. Because TV/newspapers never lie, right?

One just has to worry about Herr Zuma’s motivations for wanting to be president. Surely, the primary focus of the president should be what is good for the country and not for self. And, were I in Zuma’s shoes, and have come up against someone who is, indeed, better for the country and its people, I would step down. But then, this is Herr Zuma, who has done everything, everything, he possibly could to clean up his path to the presidential chair. I wonder what he will do, should there be a revolution that decides Motlanthe should rule rather than him.

I will vote for the party that restores freedom to the press as well as the people of this beautiful country, who believes in the true equality of all, and puts the safety of our children and elderly first, above parties and name changes.

As teensy nanotech devices get even tinier, the question of how to supply them with power becomes more pressing. Zhong Lin Wang, a nano-engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, is committed to finding the answer. As he described in a January Scientific American article, these devices (measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter) could rely on nanoscale power plants, which would harvest waste energy from the ambient atmosphere or even from the human body. Now Wang's team has a new addition to the nanogenerator family: zinc oxide wires that produce an alternating current when stretched and released like a rubber band. (Wang is pictured holding a large-scale prototype at the left.)
The new approach, described today in Nature Nanotechnology, has several advantages over earlier techniques, Wang says. For one, it avoids the mechanical scrubbing action that characterized some earlier generators, which means it's less likely to wear down. And the simplicity of the concept lends itself better to mass production. The entire device is covered by a flexible polymer, Wang adds, so it can be embedded in soft materials such as clothing or even muscles, meaning that getting your blood moving by going for a brisk walk or hitting the gym might one day get some electrons moving as well.
Credit: Gary Meek/Georgia Tech

Nanogenerators: Be your own power plant: Scientific American Blog

Ankara - The mayor of the south-eastern Turkish town of Batman on Wednesday said he would take the makers of the worldwide string of hit Batman films to court, claiming that makers of the films had used the town's name without permission, the Dogan news agency reported.

"There is only one Batman in this world," said Batman mayor Huseyin Kalkan. "Without telling us, the US makers of the films have taken the name of our region."

Huseyin said that if necessary he will go to the United States to file a court case. - Sapa-dpa

*snortle*