African press review 22 June 2015

Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir is back on South African front pages. Not only did the Pretoria authorities left Bashir leave in defiance of an order from a Johannesburg court, ignoring the international arrest warrent for the Sudanese leader but the ANC government appears to have carefully planned the whole affair.

According to the main report in this morning's Johannesburg-based financial paper, BusinessDay, the South African government secretly plotted to ensure safe passage out of the country for the Sudanese leader, despite an international warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges.

Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the conflict in Darfur, flew out of Pretoria last Monday despite a court order blocking his departure.

The Sunday Times newspaper, revealing what it said was a secret meeting of top ministers to discuss protecting Bashir, said he was escorted to his plane by South African leader Jacob Zuma’s own Presidential Protection Unit.

The ICC asked the South African authorities to detain Bashir while he was in the country for an African Union summit.

But security ministers agreed at a meeting before the Sudanese leader arrived that South Africa would protect Bashir by any means necessary   even if it meant flouting court rulings and undermining the constitution, according to The Sunday Times report.

The South African government has come under fire from the ICC, from rights groups and several other governments over its failure to detain Bashir. A South African court last Monday gave the government one week to explain why it defied an order barring the Sudanese leader from leaving.

The main story in the Kenyan Daily Nation reports that boys as young as 12 are being recruited as fighters in areas of northern Kenya prone to banditry, cattle rustling and ethnic conflicts.

Teaching has been paralysed in 25 local primary schools because of insecurity. According to the Kenya National Union of Teachers, 37,000 school children have been affected.

A Kenya Police reservist said he and colleagues on security patrols had been ambushed several times by bandits as young as 14, who appeared to be well-trained and competent users of firearms.

The Baringo County Commissioner confirmed that youngsters between ages 12 and 17 were in possession of illegal firearms and have been carrying out violent raids in the region.

Over at The Standard, there's a report that Kenyan security agencies and their allies have turned their attention to foreign jihadists whose influx is blamed for recent terrorist attacks in the country.

According to the Nairobi-based daily, when the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) entered Somalia in 2011, there were about 400 jihadists from the West in the ranks of the Al-Shebab terror group but the numbers have significantly increased in the past year.

Last week, the police placed a 10-million-shilling bounty on German national Andreas Martin Muller who has been linked to the botched attack on Baure army camp in Lamu County in which 11 attackers were killed. Muller is said to have escaped with injuries from the attack in which British terrorist Thomas Evans was killed. Mueller is believed to have arrived in Kenya in 2011.

A story on the front page of the Lagos-based Guardian says Nigeria generated the naira equivalent of 184 billion euros from crude oil proceeds and taxes between 2011 and 2014, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Federal Ministry of Finance.

Yet the country is so poor that paying the salaries of public-sector workers has become impossible.

Last week, the Nigeria Labour Congress counted over 20 states that owe salaries, some for as long as nine months.

The main story in the Egypt Independent says Cairo appointed its first ambassador to Israel since 2012 on Sunday, signalling improving ties between states that both see the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a threat.

Islamist former president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood recalled the Egyptian ambassador to Israel in November, 2012 following an Israeli attack that left Hamas's military commander dead and initiated weeks of violence.

Egyptian courts have declared Hamas, its armed wing and the Brotherhood to be terrorist organisations, although the ruling against Hamas has since been reversed.