May 12, 2016.
For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Sane Dhlamini.
Making headlines:

Vuwani residents boycott ANC meeting and clash with police.

Lindiwe Zulu says black business are left out for generations. 

And, DA calls on Zuma to reverse VVIP jet decision.

Residents in Vuwani boycotted an ANC meeting yesterday, clashing with police yet again as they continued to burn tyres and blockade roads.

Police had earlier used rubber bullets to disperse protesters.

While ANC deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte addressed an almost empty hall – with only government employees, councillors and ANC officials in attendance – a fight broke out between police and protesters.

The Vhembe municipal area was this week declared a disaster area after 50 schools were either burnt down or vandalised in protest against a Municipal Demarcation Board decision to incorporate Vuwani into a new municipality.

Small businesses were beginning to take their place as the engine of the economy but were catching up from generations of being left out in the cold, Minister of Small Business Development Lindiwe Zulu said yesterday.

She said last year at least 18 000 small businesses submitted their tax returns for the first time.

Zulu said small businesses contributed to the record R1-trillion that the South African Revenue Services raised.

She added that the black population was still generations behind wealthy whites because their legal participation in the economy was only 22 years old.

 

She said South Africa was in urgent need of a black-owned bank that would understand the needs of a developing country.
Defence and Military Veterans Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has insisted that the defence department had an obligation to buy a VVIP presidential jet.

But DA leader Mmusi Maimane had called for President Jacob Zuma to reverse the decision, after Mapisa-Nqakula announced yesterday that the acquisition of the jet would go ahead.

It would not cost R4-billion, as widely speculated, she said as she briefed media in Parliament.

Maimane said Zuma ought to do the responsible thing and clarify whether it would be bought.

Also making headlines:

ANC to bus supporters to Mabuza-Phosa defamation case.

Sudanese President Al Bashir heads for Uganda to discuss bilateral ties with President Yoweri Museveni.

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That’s a roundup of news making headlines today