African press review 14 June 2013

We focus on South Africa where news of Nelson Mandela’s improving health is making headlines in most of the rainbow nation’s papers.

Mail and Guardian reports that cabinet issued a statement after its regular fortnightly meeting on Thursday, reassuring the nation that Madiba was responding well to treatment and receiving the best medical care.

M and G says that the main opposition Democratic Alliance welcomed the good news from the cabinet about Mandela’s health and expressed the wish that Tata continues to gain strength and thanked his medical team for all they have done.

South Africa’s Islamic party, Al Jama-Ah, called on Muslims to continue making dua (supplication or invocation) for Mandela's good health, according to the Johannesburg newspaper. It reports that in Cape Town the Muslim Judicial Council led a vigil for Mandela at the Owal mosque Thursday, while the city’s Anglican Archbishop, Thabo Makgoba, published an open letter asked everyone to pray for Mandela.

As the 94-year-old spent his sixth day in hospital, his name has become a subject of  political discord between the ruling ANC and the opposition Democratic Alliance, according to Business Day.

The paper points to a warning by President Jacob Zuma urging the DA to keep their hands off Madiba and not create “their own superficial image” of the former president. Zuma’s remarks in parliament were in apparent criticism of the party’s publicity campaign, which has included the distribution of a pamphlet showing Nelson Mandela embracing the late activist Helen Suzman.  

Cape Times unveils a grand plan for a Nelson Mandela statue being finalised by the eastern city’s council. The paper reports that the Cape Town authorities are looking to erect the Madiba monument on the Grand Parade in front of the City Hall where he delivered his first public speech after being released from prison. The city is to appoint a heritage expert to look at locations and designs for the statue, according to Cape Times.

The Sowetan published a heart-warming account of Mandela’s life told by an old man in the small Transkei village of Qunu, where Madiba spent his boyhood. The paper caught up with his childhood friend Kekena Steve Mangwambi, now aged 93. He told the Sowetan about a visit Mandela paid him shortly after his release from prison and how he took him on a helicopter so that he could experience what it was like to fly.

And the Johannesburg Star reports that a serial rapist has been sentenced to105 years in prison for robbery, assault and rape of 14 women.

There is an equally gruesome story making headlines in Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper - the presentation before a High Court judge on Thursday of a man accused with slaughtering a neighbour and eating his body parts in the former Rift Valley provincial capital of Nakuru.

Two witnesses told the tribunal that they found Samuel Epolis’ remains at Tetu farm in Subukia in June last year after he had gone missing for a day. According to the paper, the pair said they found the suspect with blood-stained clothes sitting by a sufuria pot full of boiled meat, according to the Daily Nation.