ATLIXCO: Sex sells — at least that is what the ruling party candidate is hoping as she seeks to rescue her fading chances in Mexico’s upcoming presidential election. Sitting well behind the frontrunner, Josefina Vazquez Mota of the National Action
Party (PAN) has appealed to women voters to use their wiles to ensure their husbands vote on July 1.
First she urged them on her Twitter account to withhold ‘cuchi cuchi’, or hanky panky, for a month if the husbands do not vote. Then, challenged by a disgruntled man, she upped the ante on Monday. “Today a man wrote to me and said: Josefina, why the negative? What’s the prize? Why not a month without hanky panky for those who don’t come out to vote, and double rations for those who do?” the conservative, usually serious Vazquez Mota told a rally in the city of Atlixco, in the state of Puebla. “If the woman wants to, that depends on each individual. But the thing here is we all take part (in the vote),” she added.
Support for the conservative PAN has been hurt by a mounting death toll in the government’s war on drug cartels, and a failure to create enough jobs for the growing population. Most polls place Vazquez Mota third in the race, well over 10 points behind frontrunner Enrique Pena
Nieto of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Witchcraft alleged in South Africa labour turf warJOHANNESBURG: South Africa’s top mineworkers union has accused a rival of using witchcraft to boost recruiting, an allegation taken seriously among the rank and file in a country where traditional
spiritual beliefs are widely held.
South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has been locked in a violent battle for membership with the upstart Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) at the world’s largest platinum mine, run by Impala Platinum.
“One of the tools used strongly is ‘muti’,” NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni told journalists, referring to traditional
medicines that can be made from a range of ingredients, including animal or human body parts.
Baleni said NUM’s members believed that AMCU had a very strong ‘sangoma’, or witch doctor. “One of the myths is that if you don’t toe the line, especially if you are a man, if you defy them you might have bedroom problems at home,” he said.
Sangomas are widely respected by South Africans of all walks of life, including business leaders and politicians. NUM has also accused AMCU of using violence to recruit, which it has denied.