African press review 10 May 2012

Algerians find their election complicated but not that interesting. Kenyans worry that there may be violence when they  go to the polls. Malema is out but does Maleamaism live on? What should SA do with its rand?  A Nigerian NGO is up in arms over stiking doctors being sacked. But Goodluck Jonathan is not going to fire any ministers.

The headline in The Tribune in Algeria reads "The longest day", a reference to the administrative complexity of today's parliamentary elections. There are 24,916 candidates, among them 7,700 women, representing 44 political parties and independents, 48,763 polling stations and 21 million registered voters.

For The Tribune the real danger is lack of voter interest. The last parliamentary elections, in 2007, saw only 35 per cent of those registered actually bothering to cast a vote, a situation which undermined the perceived legitimacy of the parliament elected then.

In Kenya The Daily Nation reports that the national intelligence service agency has warned the government of the possibility of violence as the country heads towards elections.

According to Prime Minister Raila Odinga, the National Security and Intelligence Service has informed the government that there are strong indicators of violence due to an increase in tribal politics which is fuelling ethnic hostilities.

The intelligence services say that the increasing trend of political parties to seek support from specific ethnic groups is fuelling hostilities between tribal groups.

A similar warning in 2007 was ignored by the state, leading to the post-election violence triggered by a dispute over the result of the presidential ballot.

The next elections in Kenya are officially due to take place in March 2013.

On the editorial pages of South Africa's BusinessDay, veteran journalist and political analyst, Allister Sparks, says he hopes no one believes that Julius Malema’s expulsion from the African National Congress means that the phenomenon of Malemaism is over and done with.

Whether Malema can make a political comeback is not the question, says Sparks. His concern is not so much about the young man himself as the social circumstances that enabled Malema to shoot so spectacularly across South Africa's political galaxy.

Sparks goes on to ask: "What is it about this fledgling of seemingly modest intelligence, with no consistent or coherent ideology of any sort, that enabled him to whip up masses of young black South Africans, and even a few elders, to the point where he was able to alarm, even intimidate, the leadership of the mighty ANC, the party of liberation that defeated apartheid, the party of the iconic Nelson Mandela?"

Sparks says there is a huge amount of frustration in South African society and a sense of anger, too, at the unfulfilled promises of the transition, at the injustice of gross inequality and the feeling, especially among the young, that they are simply not participating in the promised land.

Malema has been clever enough to harness the dangerous energy generated by that frustration. It is Malemaism rather than Malema himself that poses a threat to the future, Sparks argues. With or without him, the conditions he was able to exploit remain and anyone else can ignite them.

President Jacob Zuma has done nothing, according to Allister Sparks' analysis, to rectify the chronic neglect of infrastructure development, energy and transport capacity and, above all, boosting the quality of education and skills development.

He has neither the vision nor the political will to do anything beyond trying to secure his own permanent immunity from prosecution.

That is the true cause of the phenomenon Sparks calls Malemaism and it will continue to endanger South Africa's future until some new leader has the courage to tackle it head-on.

BusinessDay's main story reports that commodity prices continued their slide yesterday, dragging down South African stocks and the value of the rand with them as investor concerns mounted over an untidy end to Europe’s debt crisis.

The rand weakened by more than two per cent against the dollar on Wednesday with a US dollar costing more than eight rand for the first time since the start of the year.

Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University professor who won the 2001 Nobel Prize for economics, says South Africa should work towards a weaker currency to aid attempts at reducing unemployment.

Other analysts say a weaker rand would provide a temporary boost to output and employment, but would result in higher inflation.

According to the Lagos-based daily newspaper Punch,  an NGO called the Society for the Rule of Law in Nigeria, has described the sacking of 788 striking doctors by state governor, Babatunde Fashola as "wicked, inhuman and tyrannical".

The doctors were sacked on Monday, for failing to show up for work as part of an on-going dispute over pay scales.

The Society for the Rule of Law in Nigeria explained that it was alarmed by the sackings, saying the last time such action was witnessed in Nigeria was during military rule.

And Punch also says that, contrary to media reports, President Goodluck Jonathan is not planning to replace any of his ministers for the moment.

The president said on Wednesday that he had implicit confidence in the abilities of the current members of the Federal Executive Council to deliver and to assist him in achieving his administration’s transformation agenda.

Jonathan is currently in Ethiopia for the 22nd World Economic Forum on Africa.