African press review 13 January 2014

The ANC's 2014 election manifesto, funding stalls power project in Zimbabwe and the military intervention in South Sudan are all topics in today's African papers.

According to the main story in this morning's South African financial paper, BusinessDay, the ruling African National Congress has made key labour and economic concessions to its allies in its 2014 election manifesto. This, says BusinessDay, is an apparent bid to shore up the ANC's alliance with its leftist partners in the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

The manifesto was released to coincide with the ANC’s 102nd anniversary celebrations in Mbombela at the weekend.

The move by the ANC to appease its leftist allies comes as the National Union of metalworkers, Cosatu’s largest affiliate, withdrew its support from the party in the 2014 polls, saying the ruling party had not yet made good on its 2009 promises.

The manifesto says the ANC will investigate the viability of introducing a national minimum wage, which Cosatu adopted at its national bargaining conference early last year to address wage inequalities.

The election programme does not herald any significant shift in policy, according to BusinessDay's analysts. The National Development Plan will continue to be the foundation for long-term planning over the next 20 years.

BusinessDay also reports on a setback for the platinum sector in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

Harare’s ambitious plans to enforce the local smelting of platinum have been dealt a blow by a Chinese company’s failure to raise funds to complete a two billion euro upgrade to the Hwange power station.

The delays to the expansion underscore the impracticality of the Mugabe government’s efforts to force platinum producers to build a refinery in the country before the end of the year.

Also on BusinessDay's mining pages, analysis of the probable impact of Indonesia's ban on the export of mineral ores.

Describing the ban as one of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's most far-reaching economic policy decisions since he took office nearly a decade ago, BusinessDay says halting exports of nickel ore could spark the biggest shake-up in years in the global nickel industry, with China likely to suffer most.

The ban is intended to boost Indonesia’s profits from its mineral wealth by forcing miners to process ore before export.

According to a story in this morning's Nairobi-based Daily Nation, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation believes the four gunmen who attacked the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi last September died during the subsequent intervention be security forces.

The FBI’s legal attaché in Nairobi says his organisation had found no evidence that the attackers escaped.

Investigations are continuing in a bid to identify the terror network involved in the attack.

In Uganda, The Daily Monitor reports that President Yoweri Museveni and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame are to meet later today to discuss security issues.

The two leaders will be joined by police chiefs from at least 16 countries for the two-day retreat at which they will discuss the prevention of events similar to those in Arab countries that led to the overthrow of several governments.

The meeting comes at a time when there is growing concerns about human right abuses by the Ugandan police, with civil society blaming the service for using excessive force during demonstrations.

According The East African newspaper, regional governments are sharply divided over military intervention in South Sudan. This as peace talks in Addis Ababa flounder over political detainees and the presence in South Sudan of Ugandan troops.

President Salva Kiir last week expressed his frustration with neighbouring countries for their failure to sanction military intervention to help him quell the rebellion led by his former deputy, Riek Machar.

Uganda sent troops, officially to help with the safe evacuation of Ugandan nationals from the conflict zone, but Kenya and Ethiopia have resisted Kiir’s appeal for military intervention, opting to pursue diplomatic options.

Also in the regional daily, a report that President Museveni faces rebellion over Uganda's recently passed anti-gay law.

As he moves to defuse a potentially damaging falling out with Western donors over a law that criminalises same-sex relations, President Museveni faces opposition from within the ruling National Resistance Movement and from the religious right concerned about what it sees as declining moral standards.

Museveni will convene a meeting of the National Resistance Movement party caucus next month in an effort to get party hardliners to moderate their position on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2012, which prescribes life imprisonment for people convicted of engaging in same-sex relations. The new law has been widely condemned outside Uganda.