African press review 15 November 2017

What's really happening in Zimbabwe? Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye is back in jail. Tanzania is to sell off more than 10,000 cattle belonging to Ugandan and Rwandan herders. Six of every 10 children in South Africa live below the poverty line. And cash handouts are not helping them.

BusinessDay is worried about what's going on in Zimbabwe.

This story is changing as we speak and the newspapers are struggling, like the rest of us, to keep up with events.

The South African daily reports that four tanks were seen heading towards Harare yesterday, after the head of the armed forces said he was prepared to “step in” to end a purge of supporters of the vice-president, sacked last week.

President Robert Mugabe, the only leader Zimbabwe has known in 37 years of independence, was chairing a weekly cabinet meeting in the capital as the vehicles headed for the compound of his presidential guard, about 20 kilometres outside Harare.

BusinessDay says the city appeared calm. There were no troops on the streets and business continued normally.

In an unprecedented step, armed forces chief Constantino Chiwenga openly threatened to intervene in politics on Monday, a week after Mugabe fired vice-president Emerson Mnangagwa, long seen as 93-year-old Mugabe’s likely successor.

Mnangagwa, a veteran of Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation wars, was popular with the military, who view his removal as part of a purge of independence-era figures to pave the way for Mugabe to hand power to his wife Grace.

Grace Mugabe has developed a strong following in the powerful youth wing of the ruling party, Zanu-PF.

Neither the president nor his wife responded immediately to the general’s remarks, but the head of Zanu-PF’s youth wing, Kudzai Chipanga, accused the army chief of subverting the constitution.

Truth behind Mnangagwa sacking

In Zimbabwe itself, the Harare-based NewsDay reports that the banned opposition Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu) claims to know why Mnangagwa was sacked.

Far from being a base political manouvre to favour Grace Mugabe, NewsDay says Mnangagwa was hounded out of government and Zanu-PF because he was ready to expose the ruling party’s implication in the 1980s Gukurahundi massacres that claimed over 20,000 lives of ruling party opponents in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.

Mnangagwa was expelled from both government and Zanu-PF last week, prompting him to sneak out of the country into South Africa, allegedly after threats on his life.

The Zimbabwe Daily News warns that the country could be on the brink of a calamitous political crisis, the Harare-based paper describing the military chiefs as "restless" and criticising the ruling party for "mindless bloodletting".

Regional paper the East African also gives the top of the front page to the situation in Harare with a main headline reading "Anxiety over troop movements in Zimbabwe," and a related story saying that the country is reeling following the army chief's warning to Mugabe.

Besigye back behind bars

Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye is back in jail.

According to regional paper the East African, four-time presidential contender Besigye was arrested after police disrupted a rally he was expected to address in Mbarara District west of the capital, Kampala.

Security personnel fired teargas and live bullets to disperse the supporters of the former Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) presidential candidate.

A scuffle ensued when the police blocked Besigye's car from passing through Mbarara Town High Street, on his way to the stadium where Patrick Amuriat Oboi, who is vying for the FDC presidency, was expected to address a rally ahead of the 21 November election.

Besigye, his driver and FDC secretary for mobilisation Ingrid Turinawe were arrested and detained at Mbarara Central Police Station.

A police spokesman said the three have been charged with inciting violence.

Tanzania to sell more impounded cattle

Tanzania will sell off more than 10,000 head of cattle belonging to Ugandan and Rwandan herders.

Livestock and Fisheries minister Luhaga Mpina said the cattle would be auctioned in a similar manner to cows belonging to Kenyan herders which were sold last month, a move that sparked a diplomatic spat between the two neighbours.

Tanzania claims thousands of hectares of its land are being destroyed by animals from neighbouring countries, putting its water sources, roads and pastures at risk.

Cash no help to South Africa's poorest

Six out of every 10 children in South Africa live below the poverty line, the Johannesburg-based financial paper BusinessDay tells us, citing a report compiled for the United Nations' childrens fund, Unicef.

More than 12 million children   or 63 percent of all kids in South Africa   receive a child-support grant.

But the report underlines the fact that cash alone is insufficient to address all the social, material, mental, physical and educational challenges the children face.

Poor families and the communities they form need help, too, says the report, otherwise the money intended to help the country's most vulnerable children will be largely wasted.