African press review 27 March 2014

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's decision to stand in Egypt's presidential election, from South Africa more on Zuma's private farm, the report on the Westgate shopping centre attack in Kenya - all covered in today's African newspapers ....

Cairo first this morning, and the long-awaited declaration yesterday by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi that he will, indeed, be a candidate in Egypt's upcoming presidential election.

Sisi, who toppled the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi last July after mass protests against Morsi's rule, vowed to fight what he called the terrorist threat facing Egypt, a reference to the wave of attacks and public protests that have plagued the country since last summer.

Sisi has resigned as army chief and minister of defence.

He is easily the country's most popular political figure and is widely expected to win the election.

Sisi is riding on a wave of nationalist fervour and demands for a firm leader who can restore stability after more than three years of turmoil since the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak.

However, according to a poll published by the Egyptian Center for Public Opinion Research, 48 per cent of Egyptians have still not decided who they are going to vote for.

The Muslim Brotherhood has warned there can be no stability in Egypt under the "shadow" of Sisi's leadership.

From a potential president to a sitting one. South Africa's Jacob Zuma is back at the top of the front page of the Johannesburg-based financial paper, BusinessDay, under a headline which says "ANC shows cracks in war of words on Nkandla".

The report says there are indications that the controversy over the use of public funds to upgrade Zuma's private farm may yet divide the governing African National Congress. This as former and current party leaders are engaged in a war of words.

The clash was sparked by last week’s findings that Zuma benefited unduly from hundreds of millions of rand, supposedly spent improving security at his private residence at Nkandla, in northern KwaZulu-Natal.

Former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils said his conscience moved him to speak out against the maladministration, corruption and scandals troubling the ANC ahead of elections due in early May.

Former arts and culture minister Pallo Jordan says Zuma’s administration has been "littered with scandal".

Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel became the first sitting Cabinet minister to speak out, saying in a radio interview yesterday that "taxpayers should not pay for a swimming pool at any individual’s house, regardless who they are".

Zuma’s supporters seemed to have turned a blind eye to the criticism. A group of ANC-aligned KwaZulu-Natal lawyers, prosecutors and trade unions on Wednesday instructed a Durban-based law firm to file papers in the high court in Durban, asking for Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s Nkandla report to be set aside.

In Kenya, The Daily Nation looks ahead to President Uhuru Kenyatta's State of the Nation address, due to be delivered to parliament this afternoon, to mark the Jubilee coalition’s first year in office.

It is likely that the statement will focus largely on the achievements of the young administration measured against the promises outlined in the Jubilee campaign manifesto.

The president, says The Nation, will be hard-pressed to put a positive spin on a first year that was marked more by challenges and distractions than solid achievement.

The challenges included terrorist attacks and general insecurity; distractions such as the ICC trials; failure to deliver key campaign promises such as free laptops for primary school children; little evidence of economic recovery and job creation; and a perception that corruption is making an aggressive return, as seen in the troubled procurement process for the Mombasa-Malaba railway line.

Also in The Nation, a report that MPs last night rejected a report on last year's Westgate shopping centre terror attack.

The report was by a joint parliamentary committee, but the lawmakers criticised their colleagues, accusing them of ‘shoddy’ work that could not be adopted by the House.

The MPs voted down the findings by the committee on Administration and National Security, and the Defence and Foreign Relations team.

The report was described by one MP as a useless pile of paper.

In the Ugandan Daily Monitor there's a report that the authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have rejected 20 bodies of Congolese nationals, drowned in last weekend's Lake Albert boat tragedy. This follows a decision by a Congolese chief that local ritual does not allow the burial of bodies beyond 72 hours after death.

More than 100 people, mainly Congolese refugees, last Saturday drowned in Lake Albert after the boat they were travelling in capsized.

Yesterday, Chief Samuel Bamukoka directed the Congolese army and relatives at Busunga border post not to receive any more bodies, arguing that they could not accept them beyond 72 hours after death.