African press review 16 October 2013

SA's front pages ignore Hollande's visit. But papers there do have space for a rugby kicking tally. Zambia issued arrest warrants for missing football players. France is reported to be intevening in the ICC's stand-off with Kenya's top politicians, following a Francophone-Anglophone split at the AU.. 

There's not a mention of French president François Hollande on the front page of South African financial paper BusinessDay. Which is a bit surprising following a two-day state visit and tons of palaver about strengthening economic ties. South Africa has other things on its mind.

The main headline in BusinessDay reads "Unions must face reality" and there we read that worker groups have been told they must be aware of the consequences of their actions and can no longer act with impunity in halting sectors of the economy to bolster their demands. This, according to the boss of Anglo American Platinum. He should know. The recent two-week stoppage at Amplats is estimated to have cost the company about 75 million euros in lost revenue.

Further down BusinessDay's front page we learn that, with hours left for the US to raise its borrowing limit, South African economists are not ruling out the possibility of a US debt default, which some believe would trigger a global financial crisis far worse than that caused by the Lehman Brothers failure in 2008.

Failure to reach a deal will have catastrophic effects on the local debt market, push up borrowing costs and make financing South Africa’s current account deficit increasingly difficult, as well as putting further pressure on the rand.

Business meets sport in a story headlined "Steyn tops Rugby Championship kicking log".

Springbok rugby supporters may curse every time flyhalf Morné Steyn misses a kick at goal but according to a new actuarial ranking tool he is the best kicker of the 2013 Rugby Championship, involving Australia, Argentina and New Zealand, as well as South Africa.

Jurie Nel, a product development actuary in the life insurance industry, has developed a mathematical measure for rating and ranking rugby goal kickers that includes the difficulty of the particular kick.

Nel, a member of the Actuarial Society of South Africa, calculates the estimated probability of success of a goal kick to allocate it a difficulty rating.

He then combines the result of the goal kicks attempted by the flyhalf with the difficulty rating to derive a measure to rank the kickers.

Steyn is ranked in top position, ahead of New Zealand’s Aaron Cruden in second place. Sadly, it wasn't enough to have the best kicker in the championship, since New Zealand won the competition, beating Steyn and the Springboks in the decider in Ellis Park. That's statistics for you!

The papers in Zambia all proudly note the national football squad's performance in holding Brazil to just two-nil in a friendly played yesterday in the Chinese capital, Beijing.

According to The Times of Zambia, despite the chaotic preparations which saw an ugly tug-of-war between DR Congo club, TP Mazembe, and the Football Association of Zambia, the Chipolopolo, who were missing six key players, still put up a splendid showing before an ecstatic crowd.

The authorities in Zambia have now issued arrest warrants for three international players who missed the match.

DRC club TP Mazembe insisted Rainford Kalaba, Stoppila Sunzu and Nathan Sinkala were injured. Their passports have been impounded but the three are understood to have crossed the border anyway and are now back in the DRC.

You have to go to Kenya to find out how François Hollande is getting on in Africa.

The Standard reports that France is ready to find a way to ensure that Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto can continue to govern while they stand trial before the International Criminal Court

This emerged on Monday during French President François Hollande’s state visit to South Africa. At a press conference after meeting President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria, Hollande was asked if France would support the AU summit’s weekend decision to ask the Security Council to defer the trials of Kenyatta and Ruto by at least a year.

Although he did not answer the question directly, Hollande said France was ready to discuss a “simplification” of the procedures for trying the two Kenyan leaders.

Hollande, however, insisted that France is committed to the ICC and does not condone impunity. But he said it was important to consider ways to strike a balance between the two principles at stake – international justice and the rights of individiual states.

The ICC has indicted the two Kenyan leaders for crimes against humanity over the 2008 post-election violence.

On its analysis pages, the Daily Nation says a clash between French-speaking and English-speaking African countries sank the move in Addis Ababa at the weekend to withdraw Africa from the International Criminal Court.

Francophone countries opposed the proposal for mass withdrawal, saying the AU should raise its concerns with the UN Security Council.