African press review 20 April 2011

In Wednesday's African press: corruption and presidential polls in Kenya, questions about the Ocampo Six, fuel cost cuts in Uganda, hate speech controversy in South Africa - and when is a marathon world record not a world record?

In Kenya, MPs on Tuesday blamed the high cost of fuel on corruption in the energy sector, according to the Daily Nation.

They demanded that the Ministry of Energy introduce reforms to stop oil companies from acting as importers, distributors and retailers.

MP Ababu Namwamba led the onslaught on the government as he moved to have the house suspend normal business and discuss fuel prices as a matter of national concern.

The Nation also reports that the commander of the British Army Training Unit in Kenya is under investigation after a shooting incident in which a Kenyan was injured.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the Royal Military Police Unit is looking into the allegations involving a senior officer after shots were allegedly fired at Kenyans who had strayed into a training ground.

The group said they were herdsmen who wandered onto the training ground by mistake.

The Standard in Kenya publishes an opinion poll in which Prime Minister Raila Odinga remains the preferred presidential candidate if elections were held today.

The poll shows Raila leading the pack with 38 per cent. Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta trails at 18 per cent followed by Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka at 13 per cent and suspended Agriculture Minister William Ruto at eight per cent.

Kenyatta and Ruto are, of course, members of the so-called Ocampo Six. They face trial at the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands, accused of directing the post-election violence in 2008 in which 1,500 people lost their lives.

The Kenyan National Council of Non-Governmental Organisations has started identifying victims of that post-election violence, with a view to letting them take part in the trial.

National chairman Ken Wafula said they would identify victims and help them travel to the International Criminal Court at The Hague to have their interests represented during the trials.

There's an opinion piece in The Standard, headlined "Were the Ocampo Six selected for the wrong reasons?" The writer, Johnson Odero, is a retired police officer.

He wonders if it is reasonable to compare the Kenyan accused to other suspects who have appeared or have been summoned before the bar of international justice, like Joseph Kony or Slobodan Milosevic.

The article goes on to say that, despite the presence or absence of the six accused, the politically motivated murders and destruction would have taken place anyway.

Johnson Odero suggests we may go through the ICC process just to discover that Muthaura’s only crime was to be a head of civil service for Kenya under unique circumstances, and that Major-General Ali was guilty only of being commissioner of a police service that nobody has cared to seriously invest in for 40 years.

And the article ends with a question: "At the end of the trials, might we discover that Ocampo relied on politically motivated evidence to choose those who bear the highest responsibility, but left behind characters who will eventually make Lord's Resistance Army leader, Joseph Kony, look very ordinary?"

In Uganda, the Daily Monitor reports that Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya’s Finance Minister, has announced a 20-per-cent-per-litre cut in excise tax on diesel, aiming to reduce the difficulty that rising fuel and commodity prices is inflicting on Kenyans.

Despite the current walk-to-work protests over high fuel and commodity prices in Uganda, the Kampala government last week declared that it will neither reduce taxes on fuel nor control commodity prices.

The Uganda Broadcasting Council has warned the media that it will take “appropriate action” against any broadcaster who airs material deemed to promote the culture of violence, ethnic prejudice and public insecurity.

The board chairman said that several complaints had been received about the manner in which some of them were reporting the walk-to-work demonstrations, especially in Kampala.

The Star in Johannesburg reports that the ANC is not protecting its youth league president, Julius Malema. Malema faces charges of hate speech at the Equality Court.

ANC secretary-general Gwédé Mantashé told the court yesterday that every member of the party was subject to discipline, if they stepped out of line.

Mantashe also told the court that he thought “Malemaphobia” had hit many Afrikaner organisations.

Afrikaner group AfriForum took Malema to court, contending that his singing of a struggle song that includes the lyric “shoot the boer” constitutes hate speech.

On its sports pages, The Star reports that Boston Marathon officials have said they will ask the IAAF to have Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai's fastest-ever marathon effort run on Monday sanctioned as a world record.

The move comes even though IAAF rules prevent any Boston Marathon result being declared a world record because the course is technically downhill and offers the chance of tailwinds providing a boost to runners since it's a point-to-point run, as opposed to a circuit.

Mutai's epic run of two hours, three minutes and two seconds would, if sanctioned, shatter the world record of 2:03:59 by Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia in 2008 at Berlin.