African press review 25 October 2012

Kenyan election preparations and a diplomatic spat between Uganda and Canada are among the stories in today's African press.

The Kenyan Standard reports that the Nairobi Government is on the spot after International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, asked for official help to identify money, property, and other assets belonging to the four Kenyans facing trial at The Hague.

The Rome Statute, which established the international court and which Kenya has signed, binds the Government to help the Prosecutor, upon request, to identify, trace, and freeze or seize proceeds, property, and assets of the accused.

In the event that any of the four is found guilty, the Court can seize their assets and transfer them to the Trust Fund set up to aid victims of the crimes for which they are convicted.

Eldoret North MP William Ruto and radio journalist Joshua Sang are joint suspects in the first case.

Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, and former Head of the Civil Service Francis Muthaura are suspects in the second case.

Ruto and Kenyatta are both in the running to be Kenya's next president.

All four are suspected of involvement in the 2008 post-election violence.

The next Kenya elections are due on 4 March next. Despite Prime Minister Raila Odinga's assurances that the date of the elections is “cast in stone”, the chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission yesterday declared that, if the 15,000 biometric voter registration kits are not delivered within the next ten days, then the entire electoral calendar could be in danger.

Among the problems is the fact that 30,000 registration clerks have been employed, but they cannot be trained until the kits are delivered.

Justice Minister Eugene Wamalwa on Tuesday accused some people in the Treasury of sabotaging the acquisition of the kits, warning this was a plot to scuttle elections.

There is currently no dependable register of Kenya's 18 million voters.

The big story in Kenya's Daily Nation is that those who are causing chaos in Coast province have been given a two-week amnesty to surrender. After that, says the Nairobi paper, they'll risk a government crackdown.

The amnesty offer was announced on Wednesday by Internal Security Minister Katoo Ole Metito when he received a group of 79 youths from Tana River who turned themselves in and pledged to cooperate with the government.

The offer came as two MPs are today set to be interrogated by the commission investigating the Tana Delta clashes that led to the death of 112 people and the displacement of 12,000 others in September.

In Uganda, the parliamentary speaker, Rebecca Kadaga is reported to have caused a diplomatic stir on Monday on her official trip to Canada, getting involved in a spat with the host Foreign Minister, John Baird, whom she accused of attacking Uganda’s human rights record in respect to sexual minorities.

On Monday, according to The Daily Monitor, Baird demonised Uganda on allegations of persecuting sexual minorities. Speaking at the Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly in Quebec, the Foreign Minister referred to the specific incident of gay-rights activist David Kato, who was bludgeoned to death in January 2011.

Kadaga has since reminded Baird that Uganda is neither a colony nor protectorate of Canada and as such her sovereignty, societal and cultural norms are to be respected.

She told Inter-Parliamentary Union organisers that she was not aware that the assembly had been summoned to promote gay rights.

There's more bad news for the South African economy on the front page of the Johannesburg-based financial paper, BusinessDay.

Foreign direct investment plummeted by nearly 44% in the past year - the largest decline among all developing economies - according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s latest Global Investment Trends Monitor.

Following three government departments’ opposition last year to Walmart’s efforts to gain a foothold in South Africa, the country is perceived as hostile to foreign investors.

South Africa’s poor performance, attributed by the authors of the report to slower global economic growth, is in sharp contrast to the rest of Africa, which saw a 5% growth in foreign investment.

South Africa attracted nearly 3 billion euros in the first half of last year, but this plunged to 1.5bn in the first half of this year, the report says.

China was the world’s largest recipient of foreign investments in the first half of this year.