African press review 30 April 2013

In the African press: the Botswanan President's brush with a cheetah; a luxury car maker looks to expand in South Africa; and a Kenyan government minister's family asks a foreign expert to investigate the senator's sudden death.

In Botswana, the official press is silent on the events which lead to President Ian Khama needing stitches to a facial wound following a recent close encounter with a cheetah.

According to our coleagues at the BBC, the animal was being fed in its enclosure at an army barracks late last week when it jumped up and scratched President Khama, who was standing nearby.

A government spokesman said it was "a freak accident, but not an attack".

But the privately-owned Gaborone-based Monitor gives the story pride of place under the headline "Khama's brush with death".

There we learn that the president is lucky to be alive after he was saved from the jaws of a wild animal he personally tamed at a Botswana Defence Force enclosure.

The Monitor includes bruises and a bandaged arm in the list of presidential injuries, before adding, with not a hint of irony, that Kharma's nickname is "Tshetlha," which roughly translates as "he who is at ease with lions".

The business pages of South African financial paper BusinessDay carry news that German luxury car maker Mercedes-Benz is considering a dramatic expansion of its manufacturing operation in South Africa, but the country’s fractious labour dynamics have the potential to scupper the investment.

Mercedes-Benz is considering expanding the product line-up at its East London plant to include an entirely new model, the GLK. This sports utility model is popular in Europe but is unavailable in right-hand-drive at the moment. Right-hand GLKs would be the heart of the new project.

This would require the building of a new body shop, and the employment and high-level training of hundreds of new staff.

However, a Mercedes official said the parent company was carefully watching the labour situation, and that the imminent round of negotiations with the National Union of Metalworkers was very important with regard to a decision on GLK production in South Africa.

The metalworkers union recently announced they would enter into negotiations with the Automotive Manufacturers Employers Association next month with a demand for a 20% across-the-board wage hike.

In a separate story in BusinessDay, Vic van Vuuren, the International Labour Organisation’s director in South Africa, warns that forcing employers into steep and unaffordable wage settlements will curb the growth of companies and could also lead to job losses.

Workers are under pressure from rising costs, especially for electricity and transport, which in turn means putting pressure on employers to grant higher wage settlements.

The Reserve Bank has warned about the negative implications of steep wage settlements for inflation.

South African inflation is currently running just short of 6%, the upper limit of the Reserve Bank’s inflation target range.

Yesterday, you may remember, we announced the sudden death of former Kenyan government minister, Senator Mutula Kilonzo.

The main story in this morning's Nairobi-based Standard says the family of the deceased senator has invited a foreign expert to come and take part in the postmortem examination of Mutula’s remains. To allow for the foreign pathologist to take part in the exercise, the family asked that the autopsy, supposed to take place yesterday, be postponed to today.

Sources within Mutula’s circle also revealed that the family of the late Justice and Education minister was discussing the possibility of flying in foreign investigators to help unravel the circumstances of his death.

Sources close to Mutula’s family told The Standard that the senator had expressed fears for his life on several recent occasions.