African press review 7 November 2013

Reports of attempts to bribe witnesses at the International Criminal Court, corruption in Nigeria and tension reported in the Rustenberg platinum belt of South Africa after the murder of another NUM shop steward - all in today's papers ..

In Kenya, the Standard daily newspaper reports that International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has audio recordings of what she alleges is evidence that individuals who claimed to be acting on behalf of President Uhuru Kenyatta attempted to bribe prosecution witnesses.

Kenyatta faces trial at the ICC for his alleged role in the Kenyan post-election violence in 2008.

Bensouda claims efforts to locate the witnesses and persuade them to withdraw their evidence began days after the prosecution disclosed their identities to the defence in August, last year.

In Uganda, the Daily Monitor says that United Nations security forces earlier this week opened fire on residents of the Sudanese border region of Abyei, after they turned rowdy and attacked a visiting African Union delegation.

The Ngok Dinka community are angry about the AU’s failure to recognise a referendum organised by local leaders two weeks ago. The result of that referendum indicated that 99.9 per cent of the Dinka people voted to join South Sudan. A majority of the other ethnic group in the area, the Missyria, want to be governed from Khartoum.

Eyewitnesses said the chaos started on Tuesday afternoon when the African Union team arrived. The crowd shouted at the delegates, asking them to recognise the results or leave the area. The AU officials were evacuated to Kadugli, the capital of neighbouring South Kordofan state.

According to the Punch newspaper, published in Lagos, former president Muhammadu Buhari says that the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government has institutionalised corruption in Nigeria.

Buhari said that nothing had improved under PDP rule, and it was neccessary for all stakeholders to unite in the fight against corruption, lack of infrastructure and other developmental challenges facing the country.

The Punch also reports that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and local and international traders have been accused of conniving in shady oil deals.

The Swiss-based non-governmental advocacy group, Berne Declaration accused the petrol corporation of robbing the country of several billions of dollars in connivance with major oil trading companies based in Geneva.

Specifically, the report indicts Vitol and Trafigura, two major oil traders in Switzerland, and seven Nigerian oil importers of creating offshore subsidiaries to defraud the country of over five billion euros in subsidy payments between 2009 and 2011.

The report, according to Punch, describes the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation as the most opaque national oil company on the planet. The corporation has not published detailed financial reports since 2005.

South African financial paper BusinessDay reports that tensions soared on the Rustenberg platinum belt on Wednesday following the murder of another senior National Union of Mineworkers shop steward. The incident underlines the fragility of labour peace in an industry facing the threat of a strike, which could halt 70 per cent of global platinum production.

The death on Wednesday of Percy Letanang, a former NUM shop steward at Lonmin’s Eastern Platinum mine in Marikana, brought the death toll of union members to four in the past three months.

Simultaneous strike action by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union looms at the world’s three largest producers, Impala Platinum, Anglo American Platinum and Lonmin, as analysts warn that producers have little room for manoeuvre.

The threathened strikes are in support of demands for a double-digit wage increase.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Unionis expected to make a decision about embarking on a strike in the gold sector tomorrow.

In a separate story, the same paper reports that the business confidence index compiled by the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry fell by 0.3 index points in October to 91.1. This is only the second time in the past six months that the index has been above 91.

The report expresses concern over continuing labour disputes and disruptions of business, and the risks these pose to the country’s sovereign ratings.