African press review 19 November 2013

Kenya bids to protect Kenyatta from the ICC. Communal violence in CAR could get out of control. Kenyan teachers warn of teacher shortages. SA consumers are hanging onto their cash. Lawyers promise justice over the Marikana massacre.

According to this morning's Standard in Nairobi, the Kenyan government is banking on a proposal to shield sitting presidents from prosecution to block the trial of President Uhuru Kenyatta at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed said the African Union would spearhead amendment of the Rome Statute to provide immunity from prosecution to sitting heads of state and government.

Mohamed expressed confidence the proposed amendment would secure two-thirds backing from 122 members of the ICC attending the Assembly of States Parties that opens on Wednesday at the World Forum Convention Centre in the Netherlands.

The amendment, she said, was in the interest of peace and reconciliation in Kenya, suggesting Uhuru will be the first beneficiary if the amendment is adopted.

On its international pages, the Standard looks at the situation in the Central African Republic.

Yesterday UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said communal violence in the CAR risks spiralling out of control.

He warned the Security Council that armed groups were inciting Christians and Muslims against each other.

Ban called for the establishment of a UN peacekeeping force before the crisis leads to widespread atrocities.

The CAR has been in a state of chaos since rebels seized power last March.

A rebel alliance known as Seleka ousted President Francois Bozize, replacing him with the alliance's commander, Michel Djotodia.

Djotodia has since formally disbanded the rebels and integrated many fighters into the national army but former rebels linked to Seleka have continued to launch attacks on scores of villages, prompting the emergence of local civilian protection groups.

In a report to the Security Council, Ban said violence in the CAR threatens to degenerate into a countrywide religious and ethnic dispute, with the potential to spiral into an uncontrollable situation.

Next month the African Union is due to take charge of the regional peacekeeping force of 2,500 troops currently in the country.

Across the city at the Kenyan Daily Nation, troubled teachers are again making the headlines.

According to the top story in this morning's Nation, the Kenya National Union of Teachers has vowed not to sign any more job agreements with the government unless there is a commitment to address the current shortage of teaching staff.

The union chairman says the government should have allocated billions of shillings to hire 40,000 teachers at once instead of pumping public money into the hopeless laptop project that, he says, failed from day one.

The union says children need teachers, food and encouragement, not laptop computers.

Consumers are none too happy in South Africa.

According to this morning's Johannesburg-based financial paper BusinessDay, consumer confidence in the outlook for the economy has plunged to its lowest level in 20 years, worse than during the height of the financial crisis in 2008, as South Africans say they expect the economy to deteriorate over the next 12 months.

This emerged on Monday from the latest First National Bank/Bureau for Economic Research’s consumer confidence index, which remained in negative territory in the fourth quarter. The overall index changed very little, from minus eight in the third quarter to minus seven in the fourth.

Despite the marginal improvement in the overall index, the record low levels of confidence in the economy’s prospects are close to those that prevailed during the recession and severe power shortages in 2008.

Weak consumer confidence, together with a string of other economic data such as disappointing manufacturing output, would normally bode well for an interest rate cut, although analysts are unanimous that a rate cut is unlikely as the Reserve Bank wants to keep inflation in check.

The bank’s monetary policy committee starts its last meeting for the year today and will make an interest rate announcement on Thursday.

Also in BusinessDay, human rights lawyer George Bizos says a strong case is being presented to counter the police’s defence that it acted in self-defence during last year’s Marikana massacre in which 34 striking mineworkers were killed.

He said that "justice will be done" and the Farlam commission of inquiry   meant to finish its work last month but still in session after numerous delays   would make a finding based on the facts.

Bizos, who defended Nelson Mandela and other leaders under the former apartheid regime, is senior counsel for the Legal Resources Centre. The centre backed victims and families in their recent successful bid to receive legal aid. He remains perturbed, however, that six police cameras at the site of the shootings allegedly did not work.

"You can say what you like," says George Bizos, "but the facts and probabilities speak for themselves. Self-defence has to be rational. There has to be an answer to what sort of self-defence this was if 34 people were killed and 80 seriously wounded while there was not a single scratch on a single policeman."