African press review 18 September 2012

There's much in the South African press about yesterday's Cosatu conference, and in Nigeria,  Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka wonders about the status of the Bakassi peninsula..

We'll start in South Africa, where Cosatu, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, got through the opening day of its annual conference yesterday, without too much bloodshed.

The Johannesburg-based financial paper, BusinessDay, reports that congress re-elected all of its top officials, despite tensions in the build-up to the federation’s week-long meeting.

Going into the Johannesburg conference, there were moves by two groups - one dominated by Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and the other by federation president Sdumo Dlamini - to attempt to win control of the trade union group. But the contest did not materialise as neither group acted to oust rival leaders.

This, says BusinessDay, will boost President Jacob Zuma’s campaign for a second term as African National Congress president at a crucial stage in the party’s succession battle, because his backers in the union federation - most of them in the Sdumo Dlamini camp - have held onto their positions.

Jacob Zuma, in his address to the Cosatu delegates, appealed to politicians to refrain from comparing the state’s crackdown on the illegal strikes in the mining sector to "apartheid-era measures".

Last week, the state said it would no longer tolerate unruly and illegal behaviour during labour action in the mining sector.

This was followed by a crackdown at Lonmin’s Marikana operations in Rustenburg, with police conducting early morning raids, confiscating anything that could be used as weapons.

BusinessDay also reports that police officers frog-marched expelled African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema out of Marikana yesterday, preventing him from addressing thousands of striking Lonmin miners.

Malema denied that he had incited anyone to take any form of action. He said there was no third force at work in the mine dispute and claimed that the government, mine bosses and their black economic empowerment partners were responsible for the current labour disputes.

In a separate story in BusinessDay, under the headline "SA man gets 85 years for plot on Mswati", we learn that South African Communist Party member Amos Mbedzi, who was convicted of murder, sedition, the unlawful possession of explosives and breaching Swaziland’s Immigration Act, was yesterday sentenced to 85 years’ imprisonment by the Swazi high court.

Fifty years was for murder, after Swazi citizen Musa Dlamini and South African Jack Govender were killed when a bomb the three had rigged went off prematurely in a botched plan to overthrow King Mswati’s regime.

The sentences were backdated to 20 September 2008 when the offences were committed and will run concurrently, which means Mbedzi will be jailed for 25 years.

In Nigeria, The Daily Punch carries an article in which Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, urges the Federal Government to appeal against the ceding of the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon. That officially happened nearly a decade ago, but the problem has refused to go away, and remains a live issue between the two countries.

Soyinka said Bakassi remained a testing ground for Nigeria’s national integrity, and he stressed that the government should base its policy on what the people of Bakassi actually want.

Soyinka said the crucial question that the International Court does not appear to have considered is what do the people of Bakassi want for themselves? To become Cameroonians? To become Nigerians? Or simply to remain Bakassians? Soyinka went on to say that Bakassi became a focus of interest and desire only because of the region's oil reserves and the greed of state corporations – dressed up as national interest.

Nigeria's appeal against the decision ceding the teritory to Cameroon is still to be heard by the International Court. This time, says Soyinka, let the suppressed voice of Bakassi’s humanity be heard.

In Kenya, The Standard reports that more homes were set on fire in Tana River County earlier this week, despite the presence of the paramilitary General Service Unit officers.

Residents are reportedly afraid that the arson attacks might rekindle violence between Orma and Pokomo tribes.

More than 2,000 security personnel are hunting for weapons and enforcing the dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed by President Kibaki last week.