African press review 11 January 2012

Pro-Kagame Rwandan papers are happy about a French judge's report. South Africa's univresity inscription ends in tragedy. Malema carried on fighting for his political life. Ugandan ministers' careers may come to an abrupt end. Kenyans may face shortages if vital supplies.

The Rwandan New Times is privately owned but strongly pro-government. Not surprisingly, the New Times is quite pleased to report on the latest French investigation into the 1994 downing of the plane carrying Rwanda’s former President Juvenal Habyarimana.

The French investigators have, this time, decided that the attack was a coup d'état.

Their report confirms that the missile that brought the plane down as it prepared to land at Kigali International Airport was fired from Kanombe military barracks, where elements of the presidential guard, the para-commando battalion, and most importantly, the anti­aircraft battalion, were based.

The reason the new report is significant is that it reverses the 2006 findings of another French judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière.

He accused members of the current government of involvement in the assassination of Habyarimana, thus suggesting that the genocidal uprising against Rwanda's Tutsis had actually been provoked by Tutsi elements under the control of Paul Kagame, the man who is now Rwanda's president.

The Mutsinzi Report, published in 2009 by a commission led by Justice Jean Mutsinzi, had already established that the missile that downed the plane was fired from Kanombe Barracks.

With help from ballistics experts from the UK’s National Defence Academy, who provided scientific advice and analysis, the Mutsinzi team collected and analysed thousands of documents and interviewed nearly 600 witnesses.

They concluded that the assassination of Habyarimana was the work of Hutu extremists who “calculated that killing their own leader would torpedo a power-sharing agreement known as the Arusha Accords”.

Genocide survivors have welcomed the latest findings. Habyarimana's widow, Agathe, is disappointed. She wanted the French inquiry to find out who had bought the allegedly Russian missile that hit the plane because that would help to identify those behind the attack.

South Africa's BusinessDay reports that the annual spectacle of long lines of students hoping for a place at university may end this year, after yesterday's tragic stampede at the University of Johannesburg in which a woman was killed and more than a dozen injured.

About 180,000 young people who matriculated with a university-level pass will not get university places this year.

In the past week more than 14,000 people had gathered outside the university, attempting to take advantage of Johannesburg’s policy of allowing late registration for degrees and diplomas.

Speaking at a hastily convened press briefing yesterday, Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande said his department would move towards a centralised process for university applications and would reconsider whether late, walk-in registrations should be allowed at all.

The woman who died yesterday was the mother of a prospective student and two other victims remain on the critical list in intensive care.

The Sowetan reports that ANC Youth League president Julius Malema will appear before the ANC's appeals committee on 23 January.

Youth League lawyers are expected to argue that their client did not violate the ANC constitution and that therefore his suspension should be set aside.

Late last year, the ANC disciplinary committee handed Malema a five-year suspension for sowing divisions and bringing the ANC into disrepute.

Should Malema lose his appeal he would have to vacate his position as leader of the  league and his new position as member of ANC provincial executive in Limpopo.

In Uganda The Daily Monitor reports that an ongoing countrywide investigation has implicated 35 government ministers in the suspected abuse of public resources which has cost Uganda Broadcasting Corporation more than Shs50 billion (that's getting on for 45 million euros), a revelation which could potentially force mass resignations from the 79-member cabinet.

High-level sources at UBC say nearly 200 local and international radio and television frequency holders among them ministers have been illegally using the national broadcaster’s land, equipment and electricity connections for the past 10 years.

Police and UBC officials have contacted the ministerial suspects over the past week.

The front page of the Daily Nation in Nairobi warns Kenyans to expect shortages of essential goods like cooking gas in the coming days following delays in offloading goods at Mombasa port.

According to the newspaper, the port is choking under piles of containers, with ships taking more than seven days to offload, up from three days. This has been blamed on inefficiencies in the clearing process over the past six months.

A ship carrying cooking gas is, for example, yet to be allocated space to offload the product two weeks after it arrived at the port.

Ships are taking between 10 and 15 days to be allocated a berth, meaning the importer is paying ship delay charges of between 14,000 and 20,000 euros per day, depending on the size of the vessel.

This cost is automatically passed on to consumers, says the Daily Nation, leading to a rise in the cost of goods.