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African press review 14 October 2014

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The main headline in this morning's Madagascar Tribune is a simple one. It may also be misleading. It reads "He's back home." The gentleman in question is former president, Marc Ravalomanana, who returned from exile in South Africa yesterday and addressed supporters and journalists from the balcony of his home at Faravohitra, a northern suburb of the capital Antananarivo.

The Tribune wonders what the former president's intentions are, noting that he has already observed that nothing has changed in Antananarivo, despite the promises of those who deposed him. The Tribune says more than a few observers are worried that this return may signal a resurgence of political turmoil.

Sister paperMidi Madagasikara has the same lead story, saying that Ravalomanana is indeed back, but has already been placed under house arrest at an unknown location.

Midi Madagasikara is also concerned about this surprise return to the Malagasy political scene, by a man who said yesterday that "we have to change the unacceptable situation currently endured by the people of Madagascar," adding, with reference to the next scheduled presidential election, "we can't wait until 2018".

Shortly after making that statement, and again according to Midi Madagasikara, forty special security forces members used tear gas to disperse the former presiden'ts supporters, fired a machine gun to open the front door of his home, beat the living daylights out of two private security men, and then whisked Ravalomanana away.

His lawyer immediately condemned the action as an illegal arrest, saying it had been carried out without a warrant and violates the immunity normally accorded to former heads of state. Plus, Ravalomanana was deprived of legal support when he was arrested. Officially, the former president has been taken into custody for his own protection. His whereabouts are unknown.

You have to imagine that South Africa's Finance Minister would feel perfectly at home here in France.

Nhlanhla Nene has been in the job for less than six months, and has already had to contend with strikes, a shrinking economy, sliding currency, power outages, a credit rating downgrade and even a broken toe. But his greatest challenge, according to Johannesburg-based financial paper, BusinessDay, will come when he presents his first budget update to Parliament next week.

During that tenure, Nene's message has been consistent: to cap spending and trim the deficit. To do so, he must withstand calls for higher spending and less austerity from labour unions allied to President Jacob Zuma and the governing African National Congress.

The South African economy will probably expand 1.8 per cent this year, down from the 2.7 per cent estimate on which the February budget was based.

The editorial in BusinessDay is headlined "Ebola challenges our assumptions". The article reminds us that a World Bank study published last week estimated that the economic cost of the ebola epidemic to West Africa could be as high as 30 billion dollars if the disease spreads beyond Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. But with the US having confirmed its second case of infection, it is apparent that containment may not be as simple as the world initially assumed.

The International Monetary Fund’s decision to change its rules to allow countries that have been afflicted by Ebola to borrow more and run up bigger deficits will help in the short term, as will the sharp increase in pledges of aid from the developed world, says BusinessDay.

The South African paper's editorial goes on to say that the combination of porous borders, ignorance, weak governance and poverty might make the World Bank’s prediction of the financial and human damage likely to be caused by Ebola appear hopelessly conservative. A further concern is that the latest outbreak has infected a higher than usual proportion of healthcare workers. It remains unclear whether this is because of poor working conditions or because the particular strain of the disease is more virulent.

The great fear, according to BusinessDay, is that the virus will mutate to enable transmission through the air, which researchers have documented in strains of the disease affecting pigs and monkeys.

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