African press review 8 April 2014

Kenya steps up security. Raila is accused of threatening bloodshed in 2007. SA's Netcare denies it is bankrupting Lesotho's health system. Opposition parties plan to march against Zuma. Rwanda's genocide commemoration is judged short on reconciliation. And Indonesia says no to Noah.

Security has been scaled up at key installations across Kenya and senior state officials assigned more bodyguards as part of an effort to avert "terrorist attacks", according to the front page of this morning's Nairobi-based Standard newspaper.

Yesterday security chiefs met in Nairobi to assess preparedness to counter terror threats. The authorities declared a shoot-to-kill policy for armed criminals. Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo said that armed criminals deserve no mercy and assured his officers of the government’s backing if police kill those plotting attacks on Kenyans.

Also in the Standard, news that former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga warned of massive bloodshed if he was not declared winner of the 2007 presidential elections.

This according to a witness at the International Criminal Court yesterday. In her evidence, the witness said she watched Raila on television threatening that the Mediterranean and the Red seas would be filled with blood if he was not declared winner.

For the second time, the same witness maintained that she saw Deputy President William Ruto slap the then Electoral Commission Chairman Samuel Kivuitu during a bitter exchange over the presidential results. She claimed that Ruto, then an Orange Democratic Movement luminary, slapped the late Kivuitu at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre on 29 December, 2007 a day before the results were announced. Ruto denies the allegations.

Johannesburg-based financial paper BusinessDay reports that South Africa's biggest private hospital group, Netcare, yesterday defended its flagship public-private partnership in Lesotho. This comes in the wake of a report by the charity group Oxfam saying the project was costing so much more than expected that it threatened to blow the impoverished country’s health budget.

Netcare holds 40 per cent of the consortium that won the 2007 tender competition to build, finance and run the Queen Mamohato Memorial Hospital in Maseru for the Lesotho government.

The Oxfam report says the project is consuming more than half of Lesotho’s health budget, is diverting funds from primary healthcare in rural areas, and threatens to break the country’s health budget.

Netcare accepts that the Lesotho government is indeed paying more than it had originally expected for services provided by the hospital but this was solely due to higher demand than forecast, it says.

BusinessDay also reports that South African opposition parties have held high-level talks to plan a march to the Union Buildings before Freedom Day, the 27 April anniversay of the first post-apartheid elections, to demand that President Jacob Zuma resign over the use of millions of rand in public money to upgrade his private residence at Nkandla.

Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema says the date for the march will be announced soon.

On its African news pages, BusinessDay reports that emotions were raw in Kigali on Monday at the commemoration of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. According to the South African paper, although angry truths were on display there was precious little sign of reconciliation.

The French government was absent and furious after Rwandan President Paul Kagame revived claims that French troops were complicit in the genocide.

Neither President Jacob Zuma nor any of his ministers were in attendance, marking another step in the virtual breakdown in relations between the two African countries whose memories of April 1994 are in such stark contrast. As South Africa was welcoming the dawn of multiracial democracy, Rwanda saw the start of the mass murder of minority Tutsis by Hutu extremists.

Diplomatic links between South Africa and Rwanda have hung by a thread for more than a month, since three Rwandan officials were expelled after a reported attempt on the life of a Rwandan exile living in Johannesburg.

The Egypt Independent reports that Indonesia has banned Hollywood biblical epic Noah, starring Russell Crowe. Indonesia thus becomes the latest Muslim country to stop the film being screened due to concerns that it contradicts Islamic values.

Censors in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country said they decided to ban the film, which was due for release on Friday, as the depiction of prophets is forbidden under Islamic law.

As well as being a biblical figure, Noah is also a prophet for Muslims.