News Africa Extended

News Africa Extended

Gabon opposition leader challenges vote

Posted: 08 Sep 2016 11:38 PM PDT

Gabon's opposition leader lodged a constitutional court challenge against a presidential election he narrowly lost.

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Libreville - Gabon's opposition leader lodged a constitutional court challenge on Thursday against a presidential election he narrowly lost, hoping to overturn a result whose validity has been questioned at home and abroad.

Former foreign minister Jean Ping lost the August 27 election to President Ali Bongo by fewer than 6,000 votes, an outcome that sparked days of riots in which at least six people were killed.

Ping's spokesman said in a statement he would seek a recount in the province of Haut-Ogooue, a stronghold of the Bongo family, who have ruled the central African oil-producing nation of 1.8 million for nearly half a century.

The poll and its aftermath have shone a rare and unwelcome international spotlight on Gabon, a former French colony where petrodollars, invested by foreign firms including Total and Royal Dutch Shell , have mostly benefited the elite.

France, which still has a military base the country, reiterated calls for a recount, a foreign ministry spokesman saying a "transparent, impartial examination of the results" was needed to resolve the political crisis.

Bongo has said only the court can consider that request, while Foreign Minister Emmanuel Issoze Ngondet said an African Union (AU) mediation mission, due to arrive in the now becalmed capital Libreville on Friday, had been postponed until further notice.

The mission's head, Chad's President Idriss Deby - who took power in 1990 and is one of Africa's longest serving rulers - was "tired" after attending a summit in China, the minister said.

Opposition parties in Africa frequently dispute elections citing fraud and, while it is unusual for foreign governments to press for further scrutiny after an election has been declared, results are rarely overturned.

Ping has also said he says he has little faith in the court, his only legal avenue for redress and which he says is tied to the government.

Criticism of the poll has focused on Haut-Ogooue, where results showed 95.46 percent of voters backed Bongo on a turnout of 99.9 percent, more than double the participation rate of other regions.

The president, who has in turn accused the opposition of cheating, was re-elected after coming to power in 2009 on the death of his father, Omar Bongo, who had ruled for 42 years.

Ping says the Haut-Ogooue numbers were inflated to give Bongo victory, and the European Union has also reported anomalies.

Sarah Crozier, EU election monitor spokesman, said on Thursday the official turnout for Haut-Ogooue indicated just 47 abstentions out of more than 71,000 registered voters.

Election uncertainty may complicate Gabon's adjustment to lower oil prices and that could have implications for the country's credit profile, Fitch Ratings agency said on Thursday.

Gabon produces 200,000 barrels of oil per day.

Critics of Bongo say he has not done enough to redistribute the wealth of that production beyond a small elite.

Bongo has accused the opposition of cheating in its turn and said on Wednesday he would ask the constitutional court to investigate irregularities in Ping's stronghold and elsewhere.

Ping, a former African Union Commission chairman, was an ally of Omar Bongo but fell out with his son and resigned from the ruling party in 2014.

Reuters

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Public demonstrations in Harare remain banned

Posted: 08 Sep 2016 07:22 PM PDT

Lawyer says there has been a misunderstanding of what happened in the Harare High Court on Wednesday.

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Harare - All public demonstrations in Harare remain banned. There has been no let-up.

The judge who was hailed as “brave” in fact issued a “reprieve” to the police as her ruling in the Harare High Court on Wednesday upheld the ban on demonstrations for a further seven days when the police are then expected to present correct documentation to the court.

The continuation of the ban takes it to the eve of when the bans expired anyway on September 16.

Judge Priscilla Chigumba ruled that the September 1 ban on demonstrations was unconstitutional and therefore illegal, but should remain in place for a further seven days while police collect the correct paperwork together.

Under the 2013 constitution and with reference to the Public Order and Security Act, the police should have consulted with various political parties and other interest groups before slapping the ban on public demonstrations.

One lawyer, who asked not to be named, said: “I have not seen one correct report in the media on what actually happened in court with this case. The ban remains. There has been a misunderstanding of what happened in court.”

He said the state regularly failed to pay attention to the detail of cases brought to court.

“She could have said what she did say, that the prohibition was illegal, and left it at that, but she then went and gave the police a way out, and allowed the ban to remain to within a day of when it would expire anyway.”

President Robert Mugabe and others heavily criticised the judiciary for granting permission for a public demonstration by a coalition of opposition political parties on August 26.

Jeremiah Bamu, a lawyer with Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, said Judge Chigumba may have been “brave” to say in court that the ban on public demonstrations was “illegal, but the reality is she has given the police seven days to correct its case so the ban remains”.

The small demonstration which provoked the ban was tear-gassed before it started. Some protesters from opposition political parties did block off some streets nearby, and unknown people did loot a few shops in the centre of the city on August 26.

By midday the High Court declared the demonstration was legal and approved a route for demonstrators to march through the city protesting about the need for reform of electoral laws.

More then 90 people were arrested during the day of the demonstration in various parts of the city and 69 were refused bail last week. Among them are more then a dozen who claim they were heavily beaten by unknown people in the Zanu-PF headquarters before they were handed over to the police.

Some political commentators have said in the state-controlled media that Zanu-PF, using its two-thirds majority in Parliament, should rewrite some clauses in the constitution so that the courts, under certain conditions, cannot grant permission for public demonstrations.

INDEPENDENT FOREIGN SERVICE

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Congo call centre gives glimpse of what might be

Posted: 08 Sep 2016 02:51 AM PDT

Congo's first call centre gives a glimpse of how the country could follow a path already taken by the Philippines and India, which have long hosted low-cost offshore operations for overseas companies.

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Kinshasa - In a renovated warehouse here, dozens of young Congolese wearing headsets sit in rows of identical orange cubicles, fielding phone calls in six different languages.

Congo's first call centre gives a glimpse of how the central African country could follow a path already taken by the Philippines and India, which have long hosted low-cost offshore operations for US and British companies.

Serving companies, aid agencies and even churches, the Congo Call Centre (CCC) handles queries from 8,500 people each day on everything from problems with phone bills to spiritual anxiety and domestic abuse or sexual violence.

CCC isn't new - it was founded by two Congolese women with European telecoms experience in 2005 - and so far it has had only a handful of overseas clients, usually on short-term contracts.

Nevertheless, its business is growing fast and the Democratic Republic of Congo - which remains far poorer and less developed than the Asian countries it wants to emulate - needs a services sector to cushion itself against a slump in the mining and oil revenues that usually account for 95 percent of export earnings.

As a Francophone former Belgian colony in the same time zone as Western Europe, Congo could be well-placed to become a telecoms hub, including for tele-services in French and other languages.

"In terms of language, we manage well," co-founder Huguette Samu said at CCC's new headquarters, its walls plastered with inspirational quotes by Winston Churchill, Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela.

"Whether it's in English or French, clients don't really notice the accent over the phone," she told Reuters. "Europeans find that Congolese have a quite acceptable accent."

The company also works in Congo's four national languages - Lingala, Swahili, Tshiluba and Kikongo - and employs 350 agents, almost all in their 20s and 30s. It hopes to expand to as many as 600 within three years.

But alongside the commodity slump, which led to a 22 percent cut in this year's budget, political uncertainty has further deterred investors in Congo as President Joseph Kabila looks likely to defy opposition demands that he step down at the end of his term in December.

Against this gloomy backdrop, an expanding telecoms sector - fuelled by a young population and annual economic growth of around 8 percent in recent years - offers hope.

Overall, the services sector's contribution to GDP growth increased from 28 percent in 2014 to over 40 percent last year.

In April, French telecoms giant Orange paid $160 million for Millicom's Congo subsidiary Tigo DRC, noting that Congo is the largest mobile phone market in west and central Africa after Nigeria.

Long-term, CCC's managing director Faly Tamuna Lukwaka is optimistic. "The Congolese market has 70-80 million people," he said. "We're pioneers but we think it's a sector that is developing rapidly."

CCC has ridden Congo's infant tech wave, with revenues jumping from $400,000 in 2009, when it landed its first major corporate client, to $2.7 million last year. Foreign clients have included Altai Consulting in France and Access Bank Ghana .

The average monthly salary for an agent is $300 - not a lot but an attractive proposition to most young Congolese. According to 2012 African Development Bank research, of 9,000 graduates from Congolese universities each year, fewer than 100 find work in the formal sector.

Most growth is from the domestic market, spurred by a tripling of mobile phone users since 2009 to 53.5 percent of the population in 2014, according to the World Bank.

Domestic clients include two of the largest telecom providers, banks, the local operations of U.N. agencies such as the World Food Programme, churches and a government hotline for rape victims.

However, CCC is a rare success story. While some big Congolese firms have their own call centres, no one else has set up a stand-alone operation.

CCC executives say this is partly a lack of familiarity with the concept but it also points to broader weaknesses in Congo's business climate and previous government failures to diversify away from resources.

Congo ranks 184 out of 189 countries on a World Bank index that measures the ease of doing business. It has a byzantine tax regime, high domestic borrowing costs and a decrepit power grid that makes private generators a costly necessity.

More broadly, African countries have struggled to live up to hype casting them as "the next India".

KenCall, Kenya's leading outsourcing company, has suffered repeated losses since it was created in 2005 despite a well-educated, English-speaking labour force and efforts by the government to sell the sector abroad.

South Africa and Mauritius have fared better, though South Africa's call centres have had trouble attracting foreign clients, according to research by Chris Benner of the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research.

The Congo finance ministry wants increased investment in agriculture, infrastructure and energy. "The recent crisis... recalls the necessity of working to diversify the economy in order to reduce its dependence on the extractive sector," the ministry said in a response to Reuters questions.

Reuters

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Zim court outlaws banning of demonstrations

Posted: 08 Sep 2016 01:37 AM PDT

Opposition spokespeople in Zimbabwe have hailed the bravery of a Zimbabwe High Court judge who has outlawed the banning of demonstrations in the country.

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Harare - The Zimbabwe High Court on Wednesday outlawed the banning of demonstrations in the country.

The court declared Statutory Instrument 101 (A), which bans demonstrations in the Harare Central District, unconstitutional and ruled that it was invalid.

In her ruling Justice Priscilla Chigumba said the procedure in Section 27 of the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) which was used to gazette the Statutory Instrument 101 (A) had not been followed. Chigumba suspended the regulation for seven days to allow the respondents to address the defects.

This followed an application by opposition political parties under the banner of the National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) and some residents associations to have the regulation quashed, arguing that it violated their right to demonstrate peacefully as enshrined in the country's constitution.

The applicants, who are being represented Tendai Biti and Dzimbabwe Chimbga of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) had argued that the regulatory authority, in this instance the Zimbabwe Republic Police, which had enforced the statutory instrument did not have powers to make laws.

They also argued that SI 101 must comply with Section 134 of the country's constitution in that it should respects; that the Act must empower the authority to make law, that the regulatory authority did not have the power to make laws and that the constitution was clear that statutory instruments could not undermine the rights given by the constitution.

Democratic Assembly for Restoration and Empowerment (DARE) president, Gilbert Dzikiti, who was part of the applicants, welcomed the judgment saying it was a reminder that the country was republic and not a monarchy that pandered to the whims of Robert Mugabe.

"We salute the bravery of Justice Priscilla Chigumba against the backdrop of threats and victimisation by Mugabe in his speech some days ago. We have stood up to tyranny and we will never allow injustice to hinder our road to democracy and liberty," he said.

Dzikiti said the statutory instrument was an attempt by the Zanu PF government to subvert the constitution, adding that it was treasonous. He said the judgment was a warning toil-advised law officers being used by their superiors and other arms of the state. "We hope in future he will refuse to be used to protect a rogue regime bent on denying citizens their right," he said.

African News Agency (ANA)

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