African press review 12 June 2015

Things are not getting any easier for the collapsed African Bank. If South African President Jacob Zuma thinks we're going to forget about those security upgrades at Nkandla, he's wrong. And Pierre Nkurunziza knows who's been causing all the recent trouble in Burundi . . . it's foreign journalists!

"More pain for African Bank as loss balloons,"that's the main headline in this morning's South African financial paper BusinessDay.

The details are simple: the Johannesburg-based bank's losses this year amount to the rand equivalent of 667 million euros and the struggling institution is to be relaunched in October, dividing the current operation into a "good" bank which actually has assets, and a "bad" bank which has gazillions of rand in debts.

The lender is estimated to have lost a total of 20 billion rand, well over one billion euros.

A report from the commission of inquiry headed by advocate John Myburgh into whether African Bank had been reckless‚ negligent or fraudulent before its collapse has been handed to the Reserve Bank.

Also in BusinessDay, news that African National Congress (ANC) Gauteng chairman Paul Mashatile yesterday became the first senior party official to publicly voice dissatisfaction over spending on President Jacob Zuma’s private home in Nkandla.

Mashatile told a conference he disagreed with the findings of a report issued by Police Minister Nathi Nhleko that more funds would be needed, in addition to the 20 million euros already spent, for more security at Nkandla.

Mashatile attempted to distance the ruling ANC from Nhleko’s widely criticised report.

Nhleko absolved Zuma of any obligation to pay for the upgrades to his private property, contradicting a finding by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela that the president had unduly benefited from the upgrades and should pay back a portion of the public money spent.

Responding to a comment that more public money was to be spent on Nkandla, Mashatile yesterday said that was "not an ANC position".

Burundi’s government said yesterday that weeks of protests against a third-term bid by the president were over, claiming that the remaining demonstrators were being organised by journalists.

The central African nation has been in crisis since late April over President Pierre Nkurunziza’s controversial bid to stand for a third consecutive five-year term, a move branded by opponents as unconstitutional and a violation of a 2006 peace deal that ended 13 years of civil war.

"There are no more demonstrations in Bujumbura or inside the country," a deputy spokesman for the security ministry and police said in a statement yesterday, adding that the media were to blame for the remaining pockets of protests.

"It is a movement of some journalists   especially those sent by the international media    who... organise groups of people in remote areas, away from police, and ask them to sing, to exhibit placards."

Several journalists who have been covering Burundi’s crisis, which has seen weeks of street demonstrations, a violent police crackdown and a failed coup attempt by a section of the army, have complained of being subjected to threats   including death threats   by members of the police or other branches of the security forces.

Burundi’s domestic independent media has also been largely silenced amid the unrest, with private radio stations attacked and destroyed during the coup attempt.

The main story in the Kenyan Daily Nation looks to South Africa and Burundi as well, with the African Union summit set to open in Johannesburg on Sunday.

The global migration crisis, xenophobia and turmoil in Burundi are expected to dominate proceedings.

The continent's heads of state will meet for two days in the upmarket business and retail district of Sandton under the official theme of the "Year of Women's Empowerment and Development".

The Kenyan Standard gets its bad news from a lot closer to home, announcing that tax-payers are heavily penalised in the national budget unveiled by National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich yesterday.

Teachers and students were, however, big winners in the budget, more than a quarter of which will be financed through borrowing.

Petrol prices will increase by three shillings per litre.

And the main story in the Cairo-based Egypt Independent reports that Mike Coupe, chief executive of British supermarket chain Sainsbury's, was yesterday acquitted by an Egyptian court on all charges in a long-running business dispute.

The case was brought against Sainsbury's and Coupe by Amr el-Nasharty, with whom the firm entered into a joint venture in 1999.

Coupe was appealing a two-year jail sentence for embezzlement, handed down in absentia by an Egyptian court last September.

Coupe was not employed by Sainsbury's at the time of the original dispute in 2001 and has never met the complainant.