African press review 6 June 2013

Kenya's MPs hitting out at journalists and plans to loosen strike restrictions in South Africa are both stories in today's African papers ...

The big story in Kenya this morning concerns a row between journalists and parliament.

According to The Daily Nation, Kenyan MPs have hit back at journalists over the coverage of their standoff with the salaries commission over their pay.

The lawmakers therefore decided to kick journalists out from the Media Centre in Parliament, allowing them to cover parliamentary business only on invitation.

The decision was reached at a meeting of the powerful House Business Committee after an MP sought to know why journalists had been allowed to “keep reporting bad things” about the National Assembly.

Just to remind anyone who came in late, the main bad thing has been the MPs' insistance on a monthly salary of 7,600 euros per month, despite a salaries commission decision to cut that to 4,800 per month, all this in a country where the average annual salary is 1,300 euros.

That's me locked out of the media centre at the National Assembly in Nairobi!

"Britain agrees to pay Mau Mau Sh1.8 billion over torture," says the main headline in this morning's Kenyan Standard.

London has agreed to a 16.5 million euros compensation settlement for thousands of Kenyans tortured by colonial forces during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising.

Later today, foreign secretary William Hague is expected to announce payments of 3,000 euros each to more than 5,000 survivors of the vast network of prison camps that the British authorities established across its colony during the conflict.

After weeks of negotiations with lawyers representing three elderly former prisoners who brought a series of test cases in the high court in London, the UK government has agreed to fund the construction of a memorial in Nairobi to Kenya's victims of colonial-era torture.

The Standard also reports that general crime incidents in Kenya decreased by ten per cent between January and May this year compared to the same period in last year.

The Daily Nation looks at the same statistics and concludes that, sadly, murder and robbery are on the rise as more police officers take to crime

Police officers are among the criminals terrorising Kenyans, according to the report released by the Kenya Police Service on Wednesday. The report, which compares the first five months of each of the last three years, says there was a threefold increase in the number of officers reported to have been involved in various crimes.

However, there was a reduction in cases of stealing, motor vehicle thefts, offences against persons, criminal damage, break-ins, theft of stock, offences against morality and theft by servants.

South Africa's BusinessDay reports that African National Congress MPs on Wednesday dug in their heels against amendments to South Africa’s labour law on strike ballots, picketing rules and labour brokers - despite the new rules having been accepted by the National Economic Development and Labour Council.

Says BusinessDay, the MPs appear to have fallen in with ANC ally the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ opposition to parts of the Labour Relations Amendment Bill. With an election next year and Cosatu’s unconditional support for the ruling party not entirely secured, the concessions could be seen as sweeteners to ensure the federation’s continued support for the ANC.

News that parliament’s labour committee was swinging strongly in favour of removing provisions for strike ballots and picketing rules, and effectively banning labour brokers, shocked labour expert Andrew Levy.

"This is utterly beyond belief," he is quoted as saying. "What it means is that there has not been one single lesson learned from Marikana or from the high levels of unemployment," says Levy.

"The government is prepared to sacrifice anything and everything for a handful of votes," he continues. "I have never seen such a disastrous move in all my 40 years of being involved in labour relations."

He warned the result would be widespread job losses. Strikes would be more frequent, longer and more violent because of the absence of rules. The move will also harm the currency and possibly lead to a downgrade of South Africa’s credit rating, Mr Levy said.

Cosatu has fiercely opposed the operations of labour brokers, who provide cheap, temporary labour. It is also against the reintroduction of strike ballots and picketing rules that aim to address violence and damage by limiting pickets to genuine employees.