African press review 29 October 2014

Burkina Faso is shaken by protests. The US warns of jihadist threats In Egypt. There's dissatisfaction with South Africa's medium-term budget. And Malema is found guilty of contempt of parliament.

In Burkina Faso the main story in privately-owned daily Le Pays says the proposed revision of Article 37 of the Burkinabe constitution is now a question of ethics and legitimacy. Article 37 limits to two the number of consecutive mandates an individual president can serve.

Current President Blaise Campaoré has blown up a political and popular storm by proposing that he should stand again despite having accumulated 27 years in power. Le Pays says the idea is unreasonable to the point of madness and may completely destabilise the country.

The front page of Le Pays says both Ouagadougou and Bobodialaso were paralysed by yesterday's protest marches by those opposed to the revision with tear gas used by police to disperse demonstrators in the capital.

The front page of the Cairo-based Egypt Independent carries the news that the US embassy in the Egyptian capital has warned US citizens to exercise caution following what the embassy described as jihadist threats that named specific areas in Egypt as targets for terrorist operations.

A recent anonymous posting on a jihadist website encouraged attacks against American and other Western schools and teachers in the Middle East and specifically mentioned Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Maadi in Egypt as locations with high concentrations of potential targets.

South African financial paper BusinessDay reports that there's dissatisfaction with the medium-term budget announced last week.

According to the daily, parliament's two finance committees are flexing their muscles and intend to interrogate the Treasury’s fiscal plans more thoroughly than has been the case in the past.

The greater assertiveness was displayed during Tuesday’s joint public hearings on the revised fiscal framework underlying the medium-term budget.

Members of the standing committee and the select committee on finance from all political parties both want to hear alternative perspectives and concrete recommendations from the Treasury. They have commissioned Parliament’s Budget Office to submit specific recommendations on the public sector wage bill and state-owned enterprises by January.

Says BusinessDay, since both committees are dominated by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), changes are likely to be marginal.

In a separate story, BusinessDay reports that the public wage negotiations currently under way will be an "early and important" test of the Pretoria government’s "capacity" to deliver on its new targets of keeping spending under control, according to the international ratings agency Fitch.

The agency said on Tuesday that implementing spending cuts announced in October would be challenging for government given rising public debt that is putting pressure on public finances.

Some unions representing public servants have opened negotiations with demands for 15 per cent wage increases while government is committed to keeping all settlements in the single-digit range.

Still in South Africa, the independent initiator advising parliament’s powers and privileges committee says Julius Malema and 19 MPs from the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party are guilty of contempt of parliament according to the evidence presented at their disciplinary hearing.

Malema and the EFF MPs walked out of yesterday's hearing saying the committee had no legitimacy. The EFF contend that any punishment will be illegitimate because the ANC majority is the accuser, prosecutor and judge in the matter.

The 20 MPs are facing punishment for disrupting presidential question time on 21 August when they chanted "Pay back the money!" at President Jacob Zuma. They were referring to Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s finding that Zuma unduly benefited from public spending on his private Nkandla home and should repay some of the cash.

Over at The Sowetan, news that a pathologist yesterday ruled out claims of an explosion as the cause of a fatal building collapse at the Nigerian church last month, saying none of the victims had blast injuries.

Yesterday's coroner's inquest in Lagos heard that 116 people died in total, 84 of them South Africans, revising the death toll upwards by one.

The court heard that identification of the bodies, some of which took a week to extract from the rubble, is still not complete.

The hearing continues today.