African press review 21 June 2012

An epic battle with lions in Kenya and more on the internal divisions within South Africa's ANC are big stories in today's African dailies...

The Kenyan Daily Nation reports that Maasai tribesmen early yesterday killed six lions in a battle with the cats that lasted five hours from midnight.

The lions strayed from the Nairobi National Park into a home in a village in Kitengela, a suburb of Nairobi, where they killed 28 sheep and goats.

The livestock owner raised the alarm and about 50 young men turned up with spears, pangas and swords. Others came in vehicles and used the headlights to herd eight stray lions into an enclosure where the mob butchered them.

Two lions escaped. One man’s arm was mauled.

Witnesses said three armed Kenya Wildlife Service game wardens arrived at 3am and spent an hour attempting to convince the mob not to kill the animals.

Forestry and Wildlife minister Noah Wekesa condemned the killings and said that those responsible will face legal action.

Also in The Daily Nation, we learn that Kenyan MPs can now hop freely from one political party to another and still hold onto their parliamentary seats.

Yesterday, parliament passed changes to the Political Parties Act to allow MPs and councillors to defect from their political parties and still retain their seats.

But the House rejected proposals to allow presidential candidates to contest constituency elections as they seek the top seat.

It is reported in Dakar that the terrorist group Al-Qaeda announced on Wednesday that it was adding Senegal to its list of countries likely to be attacked.

The independent Le Quotidien newspaper in Dakar says the decision by Al-Qaeda appears to follow Senegal’s decision to contribute troops to the Economic Community Of West African States Mission in Mali.

That Ecowas force is to be deployed in northern parts of Mali, where Islamist extremists, Ansar Dine, which seized control of the north of Mali flanked by other rebel groups, has been implementing strict Islamic sharia law since late March.

We've been talking recently about Greek tax evaders, chaps and chapettes who pay an average income tax of five per cent, while the rest of us shell out between 15 and 20 per cent. Well, if regional newspaper The East African is to be believed, Tanzania is the African equivalent of Greece.

Tanzania is losing 800 million euros every year from tax evasion and capital flight by local and foreign investors.

A report by the Interfaith Standing Committee on Economic Justice and Integrity said investors were increasingly taking advantage of loopholes in the tax administration regime, even as the country struggles to meet its growing expenditure needs.

The data appeared to support earlier assessments by a senior government official who claimed that mobile phone firms in Tanzania are not paying their tax dues as they should. In 2010, mobile phone companies in Rwanda collected nearly 10 times what the Tanzania government earned.

The researchers concluded that only 1.5 million Tanzanians out of 15 million potential taxpayers actually pay their taxes.

The news analysis pages of the South African financial paper, BusinessDay, carry a story headlined "Media set to be used for ANC ‘strategic leaking’".

Last weekend, several reports in different publications claimed that African National Congress national executive committee member Tony Yengeni swore at Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande during a meeting to decide whether or not to review the expulsion of Julius Malema. The reports appeared to highlight deep divisions in the ANC’s most senior body.

As the party heads towards its December Mangaung conference at which the next president will be chosen, this appears to be an indication of a more fractious ride to come. However, the ANC has issued several strong denials, saying these reports were evidence of a "malicious attempt" to sow discord. BusinessDay says the incident is a portent of how the ANC’s leadership battles will play out in the media over the next few months.

All the reports seemed to use the same quote, that Yengeni had asked Nzimande "who the f*** do you think you are?", in reference to the fact that Nzimande is a former member of the Inkatha Freedom Party. That would seem to show that the stories were likely to be true, in that they all contained the same central fact. However, the ANC claims that all of the stories were based, in fact, on one SMS sent around by a group of disgruntled individuals.

Wits University journalism professor Franz Kruger believes journalists are more likely to be dragged into internal ANC fights ahead of the Mangaung conference, as the atmosphere becomes ever more strident.