African press review 15 May 2012

South Africa's Home Affairs Minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, is once again pitching got the AU's top job. The price of gold falls. Julius Malema struggles to keep his value on the political market. A hundred Kenyan MPs look set to be thrown out of parliament. East Africa sells off its land in secret. 

According to this morning's edition of the Johannesburg-based financial daily, BusinessDay, a new bid by Pretoria to secure support for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as chairwoman of the African Union Commission has been greeted with dismay in Kenya and Gabon.

You'll remember that a decision was deferred in January when neither Gabon's Jean Ping nor Dlamini-Zuma secured two-thirds majority support. The next vote will be at the African Union heads of state summit to be held in Lilongwe, Malawi, in July.

Relations between Kenya and SA have soured since the January vote when South Africa was accused of putting pressure on AU member states to back Dlamini-Zuma.

A foreign affairs commentator in Kenya said South Africa’s bid to lead the AU was viewed as an attempt to become the "godfather of the continent" in the same vein as Libya’s late dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Also in BusinessDay, news that the value of gold fell for a second day, shedding as much as 1.5 per cent on Monday, erasing gains made earlier this year and enduring its worst performance in seven years.

And speaking of declining values, BusinessDay tells us that Julius Malema cut a figure desperate to remain relevant at a media briefing in Johannesburg yesterday.

Malema, who was recently expelled from South Africa's ruling party for various misdeeds, took time off from his new life as a cattle rancher in Limpopo at the behest of the African National Congress Youth League, to announce that he would one day lead the ANC.

Offering his opinion on everything from phone-tapping, surviving on "handouts" from comrades and being broke, Malema was adamant he was not defying the ANC, as he took his orders from the youth league, which still considers him as its president.

Malema is probably not going to stay with the cows for very long. Yesterday he said "I’m going to lead the ANC. Whatever it means... I’m going to be a leader of the ANC, no matter what time it takes."

The Star gives the cowboy's claim the main headline: "I will lead ANC."

The Sowetan says Malema and his allies are planning to "reclaim" the African National Congress. Reiterating that there was a political agenda behind the chargers that led to the ANC national disciplinary committee's decision to "purge" him and his supporters, Malema said they "would fight and ultimately win this political battle, whatever it takes".

To Kenya, where The Daily Nation reports that presidential aspirants Uhuru Kenyatta, Musalia Mudavadi, William Ruto and Peter Kenneth are among scores of MPs who risk losing their seats for defecting from the parties that sponsored them in the run-up to elections.

This follows a decision by a lobby linked to Prime Minister Raila Odinga to seek court orders to eject nearly 100 MPs from Parliament.

The Friends of Raila lobby wants the court to declare the seats held by the MPs vacant, claiming that party hopping after an election is unconstitutional.

Uhuru Kenyatta left Kanu, which sponsored him to parliament, and is now associated with the National Alliance while Peter Kenneth, who went to parliament on a PNU ticket is now in the Kenya National Congress.

Deputy Prime Minister Mudavadi and International Criminal Court suspect Ruto ditched the Orange Democratic Movement for the United Democratic Forum and United Republican Party respectively.

Regional paper The East African reports that Tanzania leads east African countries in secretive land investment deals.

The report claims that the Dar-es-Salaam government has been signing off huge chunks of land to foreign governments and private investors. And according to a new survey, east Africa tops the global chart for dishing out farmland, edging out south-east Asia, South America and central Africa.

Tanzania recorded at least 58 deals involving an estimated 2.2 million hectares, according to the Land Matrix Project, a new online database:

• Kenya follows with 13 deals covering an estimated 633,500 hectares;
• Uganda comes in third with four deals over an estimated 76,512 ha;
• Rwanda tails with just a single deal for an estimated 3,100 ha;
• There is no information on the situation in Burundi.

While the entry of foreign investors is supposed to provide jobs and boost economic growth, some security analysts and humanitarian organisations say the trend is exposing east African countries to food insecurity, instability, social unrest and conflict in coming years.

The sale of farmland to foreign investors has already sparked land invasions in northern Tanzania.