African press review 18 September 2014

SA inflation is higher than expected ... but it hasn't stopped the shoppers. Economic Freedom Fighters are thrown out of parliament. Kenyan hecklers try to apolgise to their president. Have all the Westgate victims been identified? Will ebola flight bans be lifted? And did the Muslim Brothers leave Qatar of their own accord?

South Africa's inflation rate rose more than expected last month, remaining outside the targeted range for the fifth consecutive month. That range is between three and six per cent. According to Johannesburg-based financial paper, BusinessDay, it remains unlikely that interest rates will be hiked when the Reserve Bank meets later today.

The inflation data coincided with the release of better than expected retail sales figures.

Another front page story in BusinessDay attempts to explain why it is proving so difficult to get an accurate toll of the number of South African victims in last Friday's building collapse in Lagos, Nigeria.

According to South African presidential spokesman, Mac Maharaj, current information is based on statements received from victims’ families and friends. The local authorities are not providing details of those dead and injured.

South African has sent a team of experts to Lagos.

Over at the Sowetan it is reported that two members of the Economic Freedom Fighters party have been kicked out of parliament.

The pair, Floyd Shivambu and party leader Julius Malema, were told to leave the National Assembly yesterday after Malema refused to withdraw his claim that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has “blood on his hands” in reference to the 34 miners who were killed during a strike at Marikana in August last year.

The main story in the KenyanStandard looks back to an incident in Migori earlier this month. You may remember that President Uhuru Kenyatta was heckled by some parts of the crowd when he visited the town near the Tanzanian border to launch an anti-malaria scheme.

The good people of Migori, over 400 of them, led by local governor Okoth Obado, arrived at Uhuru Park yesterday, having travelled 370 kilometres to present their apologies to the president.

Unfortunately, the group had not been slotted into the head of state’s diary and they were left stewing in the sun in four specially chartered buses. That'll teach them!

All's well that ends well, however. The president has agreed to meet them at 10 o'clock this morning.

Also in the Standard, news that a Kenya Red Cross report says 76 people died in last year's terrorist attack at Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi but only 67 bodies were identified. This implies that at least nine bodies have never been positively identified.

Says the Standard, the revelation by the humanitarian organisation, whose rescuers were the first at the scene, reignites debate on just how many people were actually killed during the four-day siege.

The Kenyan government has yet to answer questions about what became of the bodies of the al-Shebab armed group that raided the centre.

The authorities in Nairobi are reviewing the possibility of lifting the ban on flights to west African countries worst affected by ebola.

On Wednesday the transport, immigration and health ministries of east African countries asserted that the travel bans should be lifted.

Kenya and Botswana are among the few countries to have banned movement to and from west Africa.

The World Health Organisation has said that countries which have suspended flights and banned travellers from the region are compromising the deployment of international staff and supplies required to tackle the outbreak.

The main story in this morning's Cairo-based Egypt Independent has the Muslim Brotherhood denying that the organisation was thrown out of Qatar.

Despite reports that the organisation was asked to leave, Brotherhood officials insist that their departure from the kingdom came following agreement with Qatari authorities and without pressure. They say the group is changing its regional organisation in response to the US-led "war agaist Islam".