African press review 27 September 2012

Is the African Union a failure? What is the Lonmin effect? Who helped Ferdinand Waititu dodge the cops? Do Kenyans have reasons to be cheerful? And is the UN doing any good in Kivu?

An opinion piece in today's South African BusinessDay looks at Thabo Mbeki's recent assessment of the African Union as "a failure".

Considering that the former South African president was one of the African Union’s founding fathers, hosting the summit at which the organisation was born in Durban in 2002, his recent attack on the AU comes across as something like infanticide, says Adekeye Adebajo of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town.

Mbeki criticised the AU’s failure to undertake a "serious, systematic and strategic review" and regarded the "embarrassing and debilitating" failure to elect an AU chairman  - until Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s victory in July - as part of a "malaise that is poisoning the African body politic".

Mbeki further condemned what he calls Africa’s post-independence "liberation coalition" as having been dominated by an unprincipled, corrupt, group of rent-seeking profiteers.

Mbeki is also critical of the failure of AU members to integrate their decisions into domestic laws, to respect democratic rule and avoid military coups and their overreliance on Western donors to fund their security operations.

He does, however, credit the AU with laying the foundations for today's high economic growth rates, monitoring elections and establishing the Pan-African Parliament, the African Peer Review Mechanism, the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights and the AU Peace and Security Council.

Says BusinessDay, pointing out that Mbeki ruled South Africa for six of the 10 years in question, he surely has to accept some responsibility for the failures he identifies.

Also in the Johannesburg-based financial paper, news that AngloGold Ashanti suspended production at all of its operations in South Africa yesterday after its employees embarked on an unofficial strike.

Harmony, which produces the bulk of its gold in the Free State, is now the only major miner that has not been affected by the strikes sweeping the industry.

David Davis, a mining sector research analyst, said yesterday SA’s mines were experiencing the "Lonmin effect" after workers at the platinum company secured a 22 per cent wage increase thanks to their illegal strike.

In Kenya, The Standard reports that a group of parliamentary staff, MPs and police are being accused of helping Embakasi MP, Ferdinand Waititu, to evade arrest.

The MP, who allegedly incited a crowd to violence against the Maasai community in Nairobi’s Kayole Estate, slipped out of the parliament grounds on Tuesday night, despite a police cordon. The Embakast representative could face murder charges.

Waititu remained in parliament all day, as the law protects MPs against arrest within the precincts of the National Assembly.

Says The Standard, it remains a mystery how the entire police force and the National Security Intelligence Service failed to track down the MP and execute the warrant of arrest against him.

By the time of going to press Wednesday evening, Waititu was still at large, more than 48 hours after the internal security minister and the director of public prosecutions ordered his arrest.

The main story in The Daily Nation has President Mwai Kibaki assuring the United Nations General Assembly that Kenya is full of hope for a bright future.

He further said hundreds of thousands of children were enrolled in school while many adults have acquired life skills through job training.

“Poverty, disease and unemployment still remain big challenges,” Kibaki pointed out in his 18-minute address.

The president painted an optimistic picture of the prospects for peace in neighbouring countries. He said that, acting in concert with the African Union, Kenya has helped bring about the progressive liberation of large areas of Somalia from the Islamist insurgents of al-Shebab.

According to regional daily The East African, the blame game over the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern Kivu region has sucked in the United Nations, with analysts citing the ineffectiveness of the local UN peacekeeping force.

Analysts have told the United States Congress that, while Rwanda is primarily to blame for the violence, the ineffectiveness of both the DRC’s government and the United Nations peacekeeping force have deepened the crisis.

The analysts, nongovernmental researchers and rights advocates, also urged the US and its allies to apply greater pressure on Rwanda to stop supporting rebel forces in the Kivus.

And they expressed scepticism concerning the proposed “neutral force” that Kenya, Tanzania and Angola say they intend to deploy in unstable areas of eastern DRC.