African press review 27 October 2016

South Africa comes under fire for inspiring an African revolt against the International Criminal Court while a Nigerian wizard on a "plantain leaf" jet en route to the UK crashes into a Niger Delta State river.

We begin with the gathering storm in South Africa over the government's decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court.

The Mail and Guardian argues in an editorial that the decision by this bastion of respect for human rights, to withdraw from the ICC is a sign that something is terribly wrong with the tribunal.

According to the paper, it’s no secret that since 2005, when the Tribunal issued its first arrest warrant, all of the 39 people indicted so far are African.

South Africa is the second country in the same week to cancel its Rome Statute adhesion, after Burundi and Gambia opted to leave the ICC.

With several African countries expected to follow the trend, Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma told Mail and Guardian that the Pan African organization is not a signatory of the Rome Statute and “has no standing in the ICC”.

Mrs Dlamini Zuma insisted that any moves to join or withdraw from the Hague-based tribunal is “purely” a sovereign decision bereft of African countries.

The Johannesburg Star says South Africa’s withdrawal from the ICC has spurred on other African countries to follow suit, with Kenya the latest to pull out of the institution.

The paper also observes that South Africa is facing a backlash on the home front. It reports that on Monday, the opposition Democratic Alliance and the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution filed urgent applications in the Constitutional Court to reverse the decision.

They reportedly warned that the decision was unconstitutional and that only Parliament - and not the cabinet - could take South Africa out of an international treaty that it had ratified.

Uganda's Red Pepper newspaper also reacts to the ICC's rejection in Africa. It reports that Gambia pulled out accusing the world body of ignoring the “war crimes” of Western nations and seeking only to prosecute Africans.

The decision by the tiny West African nation followed calls by the country's president, Yahya Jammeh, on the court to investigate African migrant deaths on the Mediterranean.

According to Red Pepper, the ICC has had to fight off allegations of pursuing a neo-colonial agenda in Africa, where all but one of its 10 investigations have been based.

The Ugandan Star points to the paradox or irony of sorts that the current chief prosecutor of the ICC, Fatou Bensouda, is Gambian and a former top adviser and justice minister to Gambian dictator Yahyah Jammeh during the early years of his rule after he seized power in a coup in 1994.

According to the paper, rights groups accuse Jammeh of cracking down on political opponents as he eyes a December election, where he will seek his fifth term after he scrapped term limits.

In Nigeria Vanguard headlines on an unbelievable saga of an alleged wizard rescued from a river in the Niger Delta enclave of Sapele.

According to the newspaper, the self-confessed magician told newsman he was ‘flying’ from a Benin Airport, to attend a meeting in the United Kingdom, when his jet (known in the physical realm as ‘Plantain Leaf,’ crashed into the bridge on the Ajogodo river.

Vanguard quotes the man as saying that members of his secret cult were due to arrive there at night fall to refuel “the plan” so he can continue his journey to the United Kingdom.