African press review 12 November 2016

Kenyan press warns of looming genocide in South Sudan. What lies ahead for Africa during Donald Trump's administration? Social media goes viral on false Donald Trump allegations. And tackling the scourge of domestic violence in Africa... could it be that men are on the receiving side of the unsavoury phenomenon?

We start with a grim alert issued by Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper that more than 10 per cent of the South Sudan's 11.3 million people have fled the country as “there is a strong risk of violence escalating along ethnic lines."

The paper attributed the quote to the UN's Special Advisor on Preventing Genocide, Adama Dieng who concluded a five-day trip to the war-ravaged country on Friday.

According to the Daily Nation, about 40 per cent of South Sudan's remaining inhabitants are facing famine, citing the UN's food agencies as the source of the disturbing news.

The publication also warns that the humanitarian disaster is being compounded by a simultaneous outbreak of five life-threatening diseases -- malaria, measles, cholera, guinea worm and kala azar (a parasitic killer) all spreading amidst a breakdown in sanitation and health care resulting from the three-year-long civil war.

 
Mail and Guardian revisits the shocking election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States. According to the newspaper, while he will struggle to get the list of terrible things he wants done, anything good that has to do with the African continent will be way down the list.

Mail and Guardian also claims that academics, analysts, commentators, strategists forecasters scrambling to come to terms with the looming Trump presidency have all predicted that Trump rule will be apocalyptically bad for Africa.

His isolationist economics, it argues, will disrupt the tenuous flow of trade that provides much needed foreign currency for struggling African countries.

Nigeria’s Vanguard opens the debate about domestic violence. It is the first argument in the two part series and it defends the notion that men are increasingly on the receiving end of the unsavory phenomenon that has eaten deep into many homes across Africa.

One man says he witnessed a neighbour who almost killed his wife after a fight over a TV remote control. As the factory worker reports the wife infuriated that her husband had zapped the TV to his favourite channel at the climax of her favourite program rushed into the kitchen to get a pestle which she used to break the TV set and glasses in the living room.

Vanguard also spoke to another man who claims that some women emasculate their husbands and make them feel bad, especially those that earn more than their partner, forcing the men to take out their frustrations by proving their manhood.

Yet another recalled to the paper how his wife almost ended their marriage after he got home late. According to the source, after a heated verbal war, she rushed to the bedroom, brought out his clothes, their wedding pictures and other personal effects and set them on fire. The man says he simply just collected his remaining stuff and left for seven months.

According to publication, the truth is that men are going through a lot but nobody will know because they are used to drowning their marital issues in the bottle. Vanguard promises to give the woman’s perspective of the over-flogged crisis next week.

The Donald and African Trumperies

Kenya's Standard Digital undertook an inventory of false quotes attributed to US President elect Donald Trump which have gone viral on social media in Africa.

They range from claims that he once branded Kenyans as "conmen who dope and cheat on their way to the top". According to the newspaper, the quote was attributed to Trump at the time he was still promoting a false narrative that US President Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan, was not born in the United States.

The publication says allegations attributed to Trump that 'Africans are lazy fools only good at eating, lovemaking and thuggery' were discovered to be circulated by a fake news website.

Standard quotes the online magazine Slate, as claiming that some of the allegations such as the threat to lock up Presidents Robert Mugabe and Yuweri Museveni were put in Trump's mouth by people who criticise African politicians.

According to the newspaper now that “The Donald” is set to be the next US president, there are likely to be lots more of these false "Trumpisms".