Daily Podcast – April 11, 2016

11th April 2016 By: Sane Dhlamini - Creamer Media Senior Contributing Editor and Researcher

Daily Podcast – April 11, 2016

Des van Rooyen
Photo by: storify.com

April 11, 2016.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Sane Dhlamini.
Making headlines:

Van Rooyen denied meeting with the Guptas in Dubai.

Mugabe defends indigenisation.

And, the EFF says the Guptas have conceded. 


Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs minister Des Van Rooyen did not meet any of the Guptas during a trip to Dubai last year, his spokesperson said yesterday.

Departmental spokesperson, Tsakani Baloyi denied the meeting ever happened and added that the one-day trip was private.

Baloyi's comments came in response to a Sunday Times report that certain government officials – including Van Rooyen – had travelled to Dubai last year at times when the Guptas were in town.

As a result, DA MP Kevin Mileham said he would raise questions with Van Rooyen regarding the trip.

Mileham said Van Rooyen had been in Dubai in December last year, “less than two weeks after his ill-fated appointment as finance minister, a post he held for four days”.

Last week, the Gupta brothers and Zuma's son, Duduzane, announced their resignations from various positions in Oakbay companies.

 


President Robert Mugabe told his ruling party that its indigenisation programme was motivated by the losses sustained by black Zimbabweans at the hands of the colonial power, state media reported on Saturday.

The 92 year-old President said whites had treated black Zimbabweans "cruelly and callously" during the 1970s war for independence, killing thousands of them, according to a report carried by the Chronicle and the Herald newspapers.

A deadline for white and foreign-owned companies to submit their plans to
hand over 51% shares to black business expired last week.


The Gupta family leaving the country was a clear sign that the controversial businessmen have conceded, the EFF said yesterday.

The party said it was eyeing the removal of President Jacob Zuma.

EFF spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi insisted that the EFF’s motto remained that Zupta must fall.

He alleged the family was in a “corrupt relationship with the president and other ministers based on looting the state, the only institution directly in the hands of the black majority”.

City Press yesterday reported that Ajay and Atul Gupta left South Africa for Dubai on Thursday after the family was seen leaving Lanseria Airport "with a mountain of luggage".


The family had come under increasing pressure due to allegations that they influenced President Jacob Zuma's appointment on some Cabinet positions.


Also making headlines:

DA leader Mmusi Maimane  said true democracy would be achieved the day politicians started to fear the voters.

Rhodes University Professor Matthew Lester said the positive spin from the Gupta saga was that corporate governance in South Africa was working as it indeed should - and that was worth a great deal for the future.

And, Oakbay Investments believed that it had been caught up in a political storm over President Jacob Zuma and had done nothing to deserve its current circumstances.


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That’s a roundup of news making headlines today