Fifteen years after Nelson Mandela swept to an historic victory to become the first black President of South Africa, today South Africans again head to the polls. As it has for the last fifteen years, once again Nelson Mandela's party, the African National Congress, is expected to win comfortably, and the ANC's Jacob Zuma is expected to become President. But for many, South Africa has not lived up to the dreams of 1994, the year Mandela, one of the great heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle became President and a national unity government was formed. Now, almost 23% of the population is unemployed and the country is plagued with a staggeringly high murder and crime rate. Many blame South Africa's problems on the government and for the first time since 1994, the ANC faces meaningful opposition in this election.

To help paint the scene and provide some background, this morning The Takeaway talks with Andrew Meldrum, Africa Editor of the Global Post in Boston, who spent 27 years in South Africa, and with the BBC’s Africa Editor, Martin Plaut, who’s outside a polling station in a township in Cape Town.

For more on the divided opinion of Jacob Zuma, watch the video below.

"More regulation" is the magic phrase some claim is needed to prevent another economic meltdown. It looks like the credit card industry may be the leading front of that new regulation. Today, lawmakers in the U.S. House are working on a bill that would curb some practices that consumer advocates consider the most egregious, like arbitrarily raising interest rates. On Thursday, President Obama is meeting with the heads of the credit card divisions of 14 major banks, and it's widely thought that the he will express his support for the legislation. Anya Kamenetz, a staff writer at Fast Company magazine and the author of Generation Debt joins The Takeaway with a look at what new regulation we can expect for credit card companies, and what that will mean for borrowers.

Trouble viewing this video? Check out the YouTube version.

Today is Earth Day, and many of us are patting ourselves on the back for going green. But despite your wise decisions to buy CFL lightbulbs, zero VOC paint, and phospate-free soap, it turns out most products that advertise themselves as green are barely scratching the surface. But there's good news! Advances in new sciences like industrial ecology mean we are on our way to a greener future. Here to explain what that all means and what small steps you can really take, The Takeaway talks to Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything.

Databases like Good Guide and Skin Deep can help consumers choose products that are green and healthy.

For more tips on saving the planet, watch the Planeteer Alert below.

What can you buy for a $109 billion? That's the question the U.S. Treasury Department is asking itself as the TARP bank bailout fund has become a shell of its once robust self. The fund started out with $700 billion and managed to buy the solvency of the financial system (and a few AIG bonuses), so what should they do with the remaining money? 58 space shuttles, 500 million iPhones, or 1.7 million Hummers? Obviously The Takeaway has a few ideas.

Dr. Evil had a plan for what to do with $100 billion:

When the Obama administration dropped the use of the phrase "War on Terror" earlier this month, it marked one of its most significant foreign policy shifts, according to writer Reza Aslan. Aslan is the author of a new book called The Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, where he claims the U.S. must win over religious extremists by framing the struggle in earthly, concrete terms.

On Tuesday, President Obama made it clear that he is leaving open the possibility of investigating the members of the Bush administration who authorized the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques against terror suspects. The use of waterboarding, hanging from the ceiling, and other tactics could constitute illegal torture and President Obama suggested creating a commission to investigate these potential abuses. The President's remarks on Tuesday caused both controversy and confusion in light of earlier statements by both Mr. Obama and his staff that suggested he was interested in turning the page on the past abuses and moving forward. To help us understand what Congress is thinking about this issue, The Takeaway talks to the man in charge, New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who is Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

Did you miss the President's remarks to the CIA? Here they are:

A new examination by our partner The New York Times, shows that in 2002 top officials in the Bush administration for the first time signed off on the barbaric interrogation procedures, that in the past it had always condemned. And no one involved in that decision, from the President down through the House and Senate, knew the history behind the methods they had just signed off on. Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal didn't know of the history of these programs.

What was that history? According to several former top officials interviewed by the New York Times, the methods used by the CIA against terror suspects were taken from a military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. The program had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of Communist torture methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans during the Korean War. Obviously not something you want to pick up off the shelf and start using again. Here to present his report is New York Times reporter Scott Shane.

For more, read Scott Shane's and Mark Mazzetti's article, In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use in today's New York Times.

President Obama is signaling a new era of diplomacy with two Latin American nations long considered troublesome for American interests, namely Venezuela and Cuba. President Obama has called for open dialogue with Cuba and has said that "The policy that we've had in place for 50 years hasn't worked the way we want it to. The Cuban people are not free." Then Mr. Obama engaged with Mr. Chavez in a seemingly friendly way, despite criticizing Chavez's policies and anti-U.S. rhetoric. While some critics have accused Mr. Obama of coddling Venezuela, he dismissed such accusations.

But what are the pros and cons of engagement with these two countries, which were the focus of a very different kind of diplomacy under President Bush? To help answer these questions, we turn to former Ambassador Otto Reich, who was the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela for President Reagan and a former senior Special Envoy and diplomat under Reagan and both G.W. and G.H.W. Bush administrations.

As South Africa heads to the polls to elect a new President, we check in with two voters. Athi Singapi is a 24-year-old travel business owner in Port Elizabeth, South Africa who is not a fan of the ruling African National Congress. We also speak with Thanduxolo Bomali, who is a supporter of the ANC.

For more of The Takeaway's coverage of South Africa, click here.

The only Somali pirate that Americans can look to for justice in the hostage taking of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama was walked into a federal court in New York yesterday— with a smile on his face. Many wondered whether his smile was one of pride or simply that of a teenager struggling to grasp the situation he’s gotten himself into. Partially because no one is sure how old the Somali Pirate suspect actually is. While a Magistrate ruled yesterday that the suspect, Abduhl Wali-i-Musi is old enough to be tried in federal court. His age will be just one of many thorny issues among for prosecutors and his defenders to hash out in court. Helping us understand the legal issues in play is Neil Quartaro, a lawyer with the International Litigation group and an adjunct associate professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs where he teaches Maritime Law.

Here is a CBS News report on the pirate's day in court: