African press review 15 June 2016

The South African press watches the Pretoria high court and the re-trial of Oscar Pistorius for the alleged murder of his girlfriend, while President Muhammadu Buhari fights an attempt by  a Nigerian lawyer to prosecute him for  "erring" about his education.

DR

We begin in South Africa where the papers consider the fate of  Oscar Pistorius as a Pretoria high court hears the emotionally charged re-trial of the disgraced Paralympian for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, three years ago.

The Citizen

The paper recalls the facts of the case. It reports that Reeva Steenkamp died after being shot in the head, arm and hip when Pistorius fired into the locked toilet door she was sitting behind. The Citizen says that Pistorius had told the court he thought he was shooting at an intruder. According to the paper, his lawyers are trying to build an argument for leniency by offering mitigating circumstances to the court, with his defence centered on his alleged "disability".

Mail and Guardian

The paper takes up the emotional testimony made on Tuesday by Reeva's 73 year-old father Barry Steenkamp now paralyzed by a stroke. According to the publication, he caused some people in the court gallery to cry when in a trembling voice he evoked how he took his diabetes injection and shoved it into his arms and stomach to see if he could feel the same pain his daughter went through.

This according, to the paper, was after the court was shown a photo of Steenkamp’s head wound after Pistorius shot her through the door of his toilet on February 14, 2013.

The Star

According to the paper, it is almost certain that the “Blade Runner” will be convicted for murder, which according to the paper carries a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison in South Africa.

The Johannesburg publication reports that after serving one fifth of his five year jail term for culpable homicide at a Pretoria prison hospital Pistorius, was placed under house arrest at his uncle's home. But in December the Supreme Court of Appeal overturned the verdict, and found Pistorius guilty of murder.

ThisDay

Meanwhile , ThisDay takes up President Muhammadu Buhari's appeal of a ruling by the Federal High Court in Abuja which declared itself unable to dismiss a case of falsification academic  of qualifications filed against Buhari by an Abuja-based legal practitioner.

According to the newspaper, Nwokocha-Ahaaiwe alleged that Buhari was unqualified for the  Office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria because he did not sit for the Cambridge West African School Certificate in 1961, as he claimed.

ThisDay claims that when the suit came up on May 26, Buhari challenged the summons insisting that he ought to have been served at his private residence in Kaduna and not at the national secretariat of his All Progressives Congress in Abuja.

The Nation

The publication takes a look at a row that has broken out in Osun State following a court ruling upholding the right of Muslim female children to wear the Hijab or veil that covers the head and chest to school. The Nation reports that Christian children showed up for classes wearing choir robes and cross in a dramatic twist to the court ruling on Tuesday.

According to the Nation, some of the Christian pupils were holding rosaries and their Muslim mates allegedly took to the Tesbih.

The paper says it is able to report that normal academic work was on-going in the school and that pupils’ relationship has remained "cordial with some seen exchanging pleasantries".