October 19, 2015.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Sane Dhlamini.
Making headlines:

Student protests hit Rhodes University.

Guinea president Alpha Conde wins re-election with a clear majority.

And, Parliament says re-vetting has no relation to rooting out whistle-blowers.

 

Rhodes University has suspended classes as students began protesting against fee hikes.

A news agency reported that a group of about 100 students, some armed with sticks, turned people away from the Eastern Cape campus on Monday morning.

Rhodes SRC president Zikisa Maqubela told a news agency that the protest was over the minimum initial payment of 50% of the fees.

The protests came after Wits University suspended an increase in fees pending the outcome of negotiations, after being hit by protests that halted academic work.

Guinea's electoral commission on Saturday declared President Alpha Conde winner of the October 11 election to give him a second five-year term.

Conde gained 58% of almost 4-million votes cast, avoiding a runoff vote that several observers had said was possible.

Opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo won 31%. He called for calm, but said he did not recognise the result and would ask his supporters to protest against fraud and rigging.

Guinea holds one-third of the world's reserves of the aluminium ore bauxite and also produces diamonds and gold. It is relying on mining to boost its economy, estimated by the World Bank at $6.6-billion in 2014, after a slowdown caused by Ebola.

 

Parliament’s re-vetting of officials has no relation to the rooting out of whistle-blowers, a parliamentary spokesperson said.

Re-vetting was a normal and regular practice in government, the spokesperson added.

This was in response to a report published in a news agency in which it was alleged that Parliament had launched a campaign to clamp down on officials in a bid to "root out spies and whistle-blowers".

This allegedly involved the State Security Agency and was initiated by Parliament’s secretary Gengezi Mgidlana.

According to Parliament’s statement, a vetting programme similar to the current process was undertaken in 2005.

According to a news agency report, intelligence officers in a series of meetings also reportedly told parliamentary staff that certain non-government organisations specifically Right2Know, were "known to be agents working for foreign governments".

Meanwhile R2K spokesperson Murray Hunter said he wholeheartedly condemned this latest sign of the securitisation of Parliament.

 

Also making headlines:

The value of announced merger & acquisition transactions with any Sub-Saharan African involvement reached $23.4-billion during the first nine months of 2015.

And, turnout was low in Egypt's long-awaited parliamentary election.

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That’s a roundup of news making headlines today