African press review 27 May 2013

The International Criminal Court's relationship with African leaders as well as raids on media premises in Uganda - both stories in today's papers...

The main headline in today's Kenyan Standard is quite a mouthful. It reads: "Uhuru Kenyatta in secret talks with John Kerry as leaders condemn International Criminal Court cases".

The small print is a lot less clear. The story explains that the Kenyan president met the US Secretary of State on Sunday, but adds that this meeting took place against the background of strong sentiment from fellow African leaders against the International Criminal Court.

The Standard reports that at Sunday's closed session of the African Union 53 countries of the 54 attending had expressed dissatisfaction at alleged humiliation and embarrassment of African leaders by the Hague-based International Court. Only the President of Botswana opposed the motion, arguing that the ICC should be allowed to handle the case in accordance with its mandate.

Uganda President Yoweri Museveni and his Zambian counterpart Michael Sata lead those pushing for either a termination or referral of the cases to Kenya.

However, as The Standard points out, any resolution by the AU is not binding on the ICC in the two Kenyan cases where President Kenyatta, his deputy William Ruto and journalist Joshua Sang are facing charges of crimes against humanity.

Sister paper The Daily Nation is reading the same story differently. The main headline on the front page of the Nairobi-based paper says "African leaders back plea to halt ICC trial".

The Nation says a majority of presidents on Sunday supported a petition calling on the International Criminal Court to drop crimes against humanity charges facing President Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto.

The leaders want the trials sent back to the national courts.

However, the human rights group, Amnesty International on Sunday asked the African leaders to reject what Amnesty says is an attempt to shield Kenyan leaders from justice.

Kenyatta and Ruto are charged at the ICC in connection with the 2008 post-election violence in which more than 1,000 people died and 600,000 were forced to flee their homes.

In Uganda, The Daily Monitor is still having difficulties with the authorities. The main headline reads "Day seven: Daily Monitor premises still surrounded by police".

On Monday last week, policemen surrounded the offices of the company, bringing its operations to a halt. Seven days later, according to the Monitor's own report, the premises are still occupied by armed police officers, despite a court order directing them to quit the building.

The newspaper claims that police officers exceded the terms of the search warrant when they switched off the Daily Monitor printing press and disabled the company’s internet servers as well as stopping all employees from accessing the building.

They also shut down KFM and Dembe FM - both radio stations owned by Monitor Publications and housed in the same building.

The Red Pepper, a local tabloid also met similar treatment.

The raid on the two media houses was prompted by the attention they gave to a letter that was written by Gen. David Sejusa, the Coordinator of Intelligence Services to the Director General of Internal Security, asking the intelligence agency to investigate claims that there are plots to assassinate top government officials opposed to the “Muhoozi Project.”

That project is allegedly intended to prepare the son and current head of the Special Forces, Brigadier Muhoozi Keinerugaba, to succeed President Yoweri Museveni when he steps down in 2016.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called on the Kampala government to halt the siege of the premises of Monitor Publications and Red Pepper Publications immediately.

South African financial paper BusinessDay reports that the National Union of Mineworkers is to call a national conference of all mining stakeholders before the start of wage negotiations to look at the rules of the game and prevent a further lowering of investor sentiment.

Mining companies and investors are anxiously watching the wage bargaining process, following a wave of violent strikes last year.

The process began last week with the submission of ambitious wage demands for the gold and coal sectors by the National Union of Mineworkers, amounting to a 60% increase for entry-level workers. At a press conference on Sunday following the union’s two-day central committee meeting last week, general secretary Frans Baleni said the union wanted a pre-bargaining indaba with the Chamber of Mines, all unions in the industry and relevant government departments.

Baleni said for there to be "a peaceful and mature" bargaining process, the union wanted to ensure that employers did not concede to meetings with unrecognised worker groups during the bargaining process.