African press review 31 October 2012

The Kigali High Court sentences an opposition party leader to eight years in jail. Kagame tells African leaders to work for the people and gives his analysis of the DRC's failings. A Kenyan junoir minister is questioned about hate speech. Police and an aircraft manufacturer fall out at the hearing into a fatal helicopter crash. And a Ugandan bureaucrat is under the corruption spotlight.

The Rwandan New Times reports on yesterday's sentencing in the Victoire Ingabire trial.

The New Times is privately owned but strongly pro-government. The paper reports that the Kigali High Court yesterday sentenced Ingabire to eight years in jail after finding her guilty of terrorism, endangering state security and denying the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

The judge cleared Ingabire on charges of promoting genocide ideology.

Ingabire is the leader of the as yet-to-be registered political party, FDU-Inkingi. She was not present in court.

Following the ruling, her British lawyer, Iain Edwards, said he was going to appeal.

The main story in the New Times reports President Paul Kagame's call yesterday to African leaders to work towards doing away with counterproductive political influence and concentrate on meeting the development aspirations of their peoples.

The president was speaking at the seventh African Economic Conference which opened in Kigali yesterday.

The continental meeting, organised by the African Development Bank, the Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Development Programme, has a mandate to explore the continent’s prospects for sustainable and inclusive growth in the wake of the global economic crisis.

Citing the example of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, President Kagame claimed that the DRC has two major problems - the failure of the country’s leadership and the inability of the international community to address the root cause of the crisis.

The president didn't mention the fact that many in the international community consider Kagame himself to be the root cause of at least one aspect of the crisis. But that's a different story.

The Nairobi Standard reports that Kenyan assistant housing minister Margaret Wanjiru was questioned yesterday by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission over allegations of hate speech.

Wanjiru is accused of making offensive remarks about her rivals in the Nairobi County gubernatorial race during a campaign meeting last Friday.

Also in The Standard, further controversy yesterday about a defect in the helicopter in which Internal Security Minister George Saitoti, his deputy Orwa Ojode and four police officers lost their lives earlier this year. There was a heated exchange between police and the aircraft manufacturer during yesterday's hearing into the crash.

A message about the failure of the electronic data recorder, a device that registers information about engine activity, was sent by Eurocopter two days before the 10 June crash.

Yesterday Eurocopter said the plane could fly for 200 more hours with the defect, on the advice of Turbomeca, the manufacturers of the engine.

But the lawyer representing the police rejected the email document, claiming it was an attempt by Eurocopter to “pass the blame” to Turbomeca.

The Eurocopter lawyer reacted angrily, calling on the police representative to use his words carefully.

"No one is mentioning any blame at all," said the Eurocopter man, we are offering an explanation.

The hearing continues.

In Uganda The Daily Monitor reports that pressure is mounting on the Kampala government to suspend the permanent secretary in the office of the prime minister, Pius Bigirimana, who is among the top officials named over the loss of billions in donor funds meant for the reconstruction of northern Uganda and the Karamoja sub-region.

Following public outcry and the suspension of foreign aid by some donor nations, the government on Monday broke its silence and suspended 17 officials from the Bank of Uganda, the PM's office and the finance ministry.

A special audit carried out by the Auditor General found substantial evidence detailing how aid from Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark was transferred to unauthorised accounts in a sophisticated scam which resulted in the theft of billions of shillings.