African press review 5 March 2014

Sissi drops presidential hints. Egypt bans Hamas. Why Egypt owes Cate Blanchett a meal. SA striking miners soften their stance. Why Nairobi residents are walking to work. A witness tells how Kenya's 2007 violence was prepared. And Bezigye's defence claims a witness against him was an undercover cop.

The Cairo-based Egypt Independent gives pride of place to the man who might be the country's next president.

Egypt's military chief, Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, yesterday hinted that he will be a runner in presidential elections expected some time next month.

Speaking at an officers' graduation ceremony on Tuesday, Sissi said he could not turn his back on the majority of Egyptians who want him to run for the top job.

The exact date for the presidential elections will be announced after the law governing the vote is issued, says the Egypt Independent, and Sissi is unlikely to announce his candidacy until such measures are taken.

The Cairo Court for Urgent Matters yesterday banned the activities of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas in Egypt and ordered the closure of its headquarters.

Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zahri denounced the ruling, saying it reflects an Egyptian stance opposed to Palestinian resistance and damages Egypt's image and its position on the Palestinian cause.

Further down the front page of the Independent, we learn that Cate Blanchett, who won her second Best Actress Oscar on Sunday night, actually began her acting career in Egypt.

In 1990, when Blanchett was 21 years old and traveling the world, she made a stop in Egypt. At her hotel in Cairo, a fellow guest asked if she wanted to be an extra in a movie, as they were looking for someone to play an American pompom girl.

She was offered two Egyptian pounds for a day's work and was supposed to receive free food as well. Blanchett remembers that the work was very boring and the promised food never materialised.

The main story in South African financial paper, BusinessDay, reports that the striking Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union has softened its stance on a wage demand for entry-level workers in the platinum sector. Says the Johannesburg-based paper, this offers a glimmer of hope that the pay impasse may be resolved at the bargaining table.

This is the first time the union has moderated its demands in eight months of wage talks and almost seven weeks of strike action. The demand for a doubling of the basic underground wage dates back to the events at Marikana in 2012, when police killed 34 striking mine workers.

The union yesterday said it was willing to give producers a three-year grace period to reach the new basic wage, in order to end the strike that has hit more than 40 per cent of global platinum production.

Platinum producers on Tuesday acknowledged the revised demand but said the union’s position remained unaffordable.

BusinessDay also reports that a proposed Unilever billboard advertisement urging New Jersey to embrace its reputation as the "armpit of America" drew an outcry from the state’s residents, prompting the company to abandon the idea.

As part of an ad campaign for Dove underarm products, the company had planned to put up a billboard saying, "Dear New Jersey, when people call you ‘the Armpit of America’, take it as a compliment. Sincerely, Dove."

After a preview of the billboard appeared in the New York Times last week, irate Garden State residents went on Facebook and Twitter criticising the ad.

Unilever, the world’s largest consumer-products maker after Procter & Gamble, responded by saying the company was dropping the idea.

Unilever's US headquarters is in New Jersey.

Many residents of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, are walking to work this morning as some striking matatu minibus drivers have blocked roads in protest against increased parking charges and road levies.

The Standard says services on few routes are normal. The Nairobi police chief said the authorities had received several complaints from passengers and motorists and that officers had been mobilised to provide security.

The matatu operators say they have been betrayed by the city governor who, the drivers claim, promised to reduce the contentious charges in a deal worked out on Monday.

Also in the Standard, a witness at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday narrated how Orange Democratic Movement leaders prepared the ground for the December 2007 post-election violence in the North Rift.

Prosecution witness 442 said party leaders, including the movement’s residential candidate Raila Odinga, national chairman Henry Kosgey and some councillors organised meetings at which they called on people to reject “the rule by one tribe”. She also narrated how broadcaster Joshua Sang used the Kalenjin radio station, Kass FM, to rally the community to reject the proposed constitution in 2005.

The witness further testified that as the campaign developed, civic leaders openly said the Kikuyu would be removed from the northern Rift Valley.

In Uganda the Daily Monitor reports that the trial of three aides of former opposition Forum for Democratic Change leader Kizza Besigye yesterday took a new twist as it it was alleged that a leading state witness is a police officer.

While testifying against the three accused last year, the witness identified himself as a hawker from Makerere-Kikoni in Kampala.

Yesterday the defence team produced photographs of the witness dressed in a police uniform. He denies ever working for the police.

The three accused have pleaded not guilty to charges of theft.