One can find the required access point but you cannot connect.

If you have a personal access point then simple reboot allows connection.

Unfortunately when you have several access points of the same name then you can never connect.

Oddly this means that we cannot establish connection to even unencrypted access points 

I have marked this as major because we do have workaround using wicd which is not even in our repository and so we have take tarball, extract and then install (easy)

http://wicd.sourceforge.net

This is a problem which is well known for some years we found the following:-

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-networking-3/ubuntu-driver-for-smcwusb-n2-wifi-adapter-not-working-alternatives-821284/

So while there is workaround which enables us to use Mageia this is not enough because people will be installing Mageia and finding problem at such fundamental level will simply abort and install another distro, for my part I installed Debian 7 instead.

I have already reported the problem in bug 10727 and was very disappointed that nobody can acknowledge or provide solution.
this time I will not be closing the bug until such time as solution, not workaround, is provided.

Reference bug 10727

Also 7626 9261 5015 10032 5250 and many more.