As "demonstrations" and "bloody unrest shake the country in his name," The Mail and Guardian reports, former president Jacob Zuma awaits a new judicial decision. Virtual hearing Monday July 12 at South Africa's Constitutional Court, explains The Mail and Guardian, the former head of state wishes to see his 15-month sentence annulled for contempt. "10 hours of arguments, summarizes The Mail and Guardian, dominated by Jacob Zuma's lawyer's insistence that he was denied his constitutional rights."

Judgment was ultimately reserved, but the violence that has reigned for four days now has continued in the country. A "chaos," writes The Citizen. The newspaper analyzes and sees here "the combination of pro-Zuma supporters" who first ignited the KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces, now with the exploitation of this chaos by "ordinary criminals," "to enrich themselves." But The Citizen sees clearly that these riots are above all the result of "political and economic failure."

The president's call for calm

And the current president made a call for calm last night, Monday July 12, 2021. An address by Cyril Ramaphosa delivered "reading from a teleprompter – and once again without answering journalists' questions – a visibly desperate Ramaphosa," The Mail and Guardian describes. An address in which, reports Sunday Times. Cyril Ramaphosa promised "to unleash the full power of the state against looters and protesters responsible for increasingly violent incidents." The president thus announced the deployment of the military, we learn further, he promised to restore "calm and order." A highly noticed reaction here from opposition figure Julius Malema, leader of the EFF, IOL tells us. "No soldiers in our streets [...] we need a political solution to a political problem," he wrote, threatening to join the protesters. Julius Malema was thus criticized for his opportunism, IOL tells us further.

Burkinabè press concerned about the fate of François Compaoré

"Back to court for François Compaoré," writes L'Observateur Paalga. "Indeed, yesterday, the younger brother of former president Blaise Compaoré was before the French Council of State in Paris. The highest court of France's administrative judicial order was to examine the extradition decree issued last year against he who was called the "little president", who is charged with "incitement to murder" in the Norbert Zongo case," explains L'Observateur. "Concretely, this hearing consisted essentially of answering two questions on which François Compaoré's judicial future depends," namely "does the extradition request [from Ouagadougou] have a political aim?" and "will the defendant benefit from fair proceedings before Burkinabè courts?" L'Observateur explains to us that for François Compaoré's counsel, the answers were: yes, it is a political matter and no, there is no fairness.

"If François Compaoré is extradited, he will be killed in a cell," declared the interested party's lawyer. "The Council of State now has two weeks to render its final decision." However, this will not be the end of this judicial saga that has lasted four years, the article warns, since the defendant's lawyers could, as a last resort, seize the European Court of Human Rights to have the French government suspend the extradition decree.

In Senegal, the contentious plane...

"Macky inaugurates his controversial jewel..." To read on the front page of Walf Quotidien, a new presidential aircraft confirms Seneweb, an Airbus A320 NEO and christened "Langue de Barbarie," the website reports. The presidential camp explains that this should be seen as "a sort of tribute to the Langue de Barbarie national park, which is a sandbar between two waterways: the Senegal River and the Atlantic Ocean." But a tribute that is going over badly we learn from Walf, notably for the Nio Lank collective of civil society: "The president has a priorities problem at a time when the country lacks everything," it assesses. A criticism also formulated by former prime minister Abdoul Mbaye: "the price of Macky Sall's plane would be enough to replace all temporary shelters with classrooms," he denounces... Walf specifies here: the catalog price of the aircraft amounts to around 110 million dollars, or some 59 billion CFA francs. "Payment made in installments, the last upon delivery, for a contract signed in June 2019" affirms the government. And the first route of this new aircraft is already known. "For the inaugural flight of Langue de Barbarie, the president of the Republic did not choose long-haul," writes Walf. It is indeed Mauritania that Macky Sall chose to "test his flying bird," where he will soon visit his counterpart.